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Haunted by the Past
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10175 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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8 / 1993 |
2,707 Words |
| Author
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Barbara Mujica
Barbara Mujica is a novelist, short story writer, and
essayist. Her latest novel, Frida, was published in 2001. Her
other books include Premio Nobel (an anthology of Hispanic
Nobel Prize winners), Sanchez Across the Street (short
stories), Books of the Americas (reviews and interviews from
Américas magazine) and another novel, Affirmative Actions!
(1998). Mujica is professor of Spanish at Georgetown
University. |
FANTASMAS DE CARNE Y HUESO
(Flesh and blood ghosts)
Jorge Edwards
Barcelona: Tusquets, 1993
239 pp.
Forty years after the publication of El patio, his first collection of stories, Jorge Edwards returns to the short narrative, a genre that has always fascinated him. In the eight exquisitely crafted, profoundly insightful tales that compose Fantasmas de carne y hueso Edwards for the most part forsakes the hard-hitting politics that dominated his writing for decades and delves into the fantasies and memories through which the individual comes to terms with his innermost self. Perhaps such perspicacity is possible only now that democracy has been restored in Chile, and the author feels free to distance himself from the fray in order to meditate on his past, on the "flesh and blood ghosts" buried deep in his memory.
Between 1970 and 1973 Jorge Edwards was a career diplomat stationed in Havana, where Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile, had sent him to open an embassy. During his stay in Cuba, Edwards maintained close contact with dissident Cuban intellectuals, including writer Heberto Padilla, an outspoken critic of the Castro regime. Edwards soon became the subject of intense police vigilance. When Padilla was jailed, Edwards was accused of consorting with elements hostile to the revolution and declared persona non grata. Forced to leave Cuba, he went to Paris, where he was assigned to assist Pablo Neruda, then Chilean ambassador to France. In Paris, Edwards wrote Persona non grata, a searing indictment of the Cuban regime in which he depicted Castro's brutal treatment of nonconformists. Described by Octavio Paz as "one of the truly vibrant classics of modern Latin American literature," the book won international acclaim and made Edwards--already a respected writer in Chile--a literary celebrity.
Although Persona non grata was published in Spain, England, France, Italy, and elsewhere, it was banned in Chile. The right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet had just come to power, and because Persona non grata denounced all authoritarian systems, the Pinochet government considered the book subversive.
In 1978 Edwards returned to Chile, where he wrote several important novels--Los convidados de piedra (The stone guests), El museo de cera (The wax museum), El anfitrion (The host)--all of which had definite political implications. He also
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