Traiciones de la memoria /Treasons of the Memory (Spanish Edition)

The latest work by this renowned journalist and Casa de las Américas Award recipient is a thrilling hybrid. Part autobiography, part fiction, and part essay, this audacious tour de force begins with the discovery of a handwritten poem inside a dead man's pocket. The dead man is the author's father, an activist and journalist who lost his life at the hands of Colombia's paramilitary. Abad Faciolince's father credits Jorge Luis Borges with being the author of the handwritten poem, but that is put into question when—in a Borgesian twist—a Colombian poet claims to have written the poem six years later, declaring that Abad's father carried the poem in his pocket before the poem's conception. A fervent search for the poem's true author ensues, illustrated by beautiful, color-printed images of the evidence: magazine articles, journal pages, rare books, photographs, letters, and government papers, all laid out and labeled. The book closes with a story and an essay that ruminate sensitively on time, exploring the moment when fictions and truths draw close together and our hypothetical futures feel as real as our assumed one. An intriguing if demanding story; recommended for libraries and bookstores with a contemporary Latin American literature collection.—Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Palo Alto, CA