Buenos Aires' celebrated El Ateneo bookstore. Photograph: Daniel Garcia/AFP/Getty Images
This month we’re off to the country that gave us Jorge Luis Borges, as well as many lesser-known but equally dazzling writers.
By Richard Lea
After a month in Colombia, the tour returns with recommendations ranging from Jorge Isaacs’s Maria, described by dande as “One of the most notable works of the Romantic movement in Spanish literature” to Tomás González’s La Luz Difícil, a newly released novel which according to K “Colombian Literature junkies are giving … outstanding reviews”.
Along the way Daryl suggested Elena Garces’s Colombian Women “deserves to be read as an indicator of the contemporary situation of women in many other Latin American countries”, while Rafael Leal cited the “reactionary” philosopher Nicolás Gómez Dávila, who apparently “did not believe in translations and read everything in its original language” – though his own works, consisting “mostly of aphorisms” are available in “Polish, German, Italian and French”. For Leandro, whereas Gabriel García Márquez describes “Latin-American reality”, Fernando Vallejo “describes Colombian reality” in particular, so that Colombians reading Vallejo feel “pain, anger” from descriptions which “destroy our hearts”. Thanks for all these recommendations, especially the outpouring of love for Victor M Roselló’s East of the Orteguaza.
