Colombia

The Autumn of the Patriarch, Gabriel García Márquez
El otoño del patriarca

Gabriel García Márquez is probably my favourite author and I have read quite a number of his books. I'm lucky to be able to read them in Spanish, but I happened to pick up The Autumn of the Patriarch in English at a book sale. It's probably just as well because it is a terribly challenging read. I'm tempted to say I might not have actually been able to get through it in Spanish. In fact, The Autumn of the Patriarch frequently pops up on lists of most challenging books to read, up there with Naked Lunch and Finnegans Wake.

With sentences that go on for chapters, jump across time periods, and shift from first to third person, The Autumn of the Patriarch paints a vivid portrait of the rambling, failing mind of a dictator caught in the madness of his own dictatorship. The narrative challenges, while not ideal beach holiday reading, are perfect for describing the General's long, nightmarish reign and the surreal experience of totalitarianism. It's a book I would like to reread (in Spanish?) when I have the time for proper contemplative reflection.

Guadeloupe

La migration des cœurs
Maryse Condé

When Ann Morgan started her A Year of Reading the World project, she came up against the tricky question of what to do about reading works in translation. She is able to read in French and German "slowly and with a very big dictionary" and felt that surely it would be better to read something in its original language. Yet she had quite the inner struggle about the actual importance of translation to her project and the unfortunately disadvantaged position of non-English writers who must both face the juggernaut of the English language's massive literary output and the disinterest of English publishers in publishing translations. 

In the end, she embraced translation, and you can read all about her process of making the decision here. As a translator myself, I certainly understand the importance of promoting work in other languages and ensuring that people are able to express themselves naturally and to the best of their abilities in their native language. I too am going embrace translation as I read the world, but I'm not going to shy away from reading books in French and Spanish when I can. It will open up more options to me, especially from further-flung places like Mauritania or Paraguay, and will help me keep up my skills in those languages.

I read Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé's book La migration des cœurs in high school and, to be honest, I don't really remember much about it. I did discover that it is now available in English translation under the title Windward Heights, an allusion to Condé's reinterpretation of Wuthering Heights in the colonial Caribbean. One thing I do remember is that the dialogue was often written in French Creole – a most disconcerting fact to high-school-French-reading me. It would be quite interesting to see how the translator approached this sticky wicket and whether he or she used analogous English West Indian Creole.

Mexico

La ley del Amor
Laura Esquivel

Softmore work from Mexican author, Laura Esquivel, which followed on the heels of Like Water for Chocolate, a wonderful book made into an equally wonderful film, which is the highest-grossing Spanish-language film of all time in the United States. Big shoes to fill indeed.

The Law of Love is quite an interesting concept for a book, a multimedia effort incorporating music and artwork, with a CD and illustrations. I felt, however, the multimedia aspect was more of a novel aside than a really integral part of the book. This story of New Age-sci-fi-magical realism and spirituality, stretching from the twenty-third century back to Montezuma's Mexico, fell a bit flat for me. The narrative was a bit forced at times and the characters hard to relate to. 

Perhaps when you start off so high, like Esquivel did with Like Water for Chocolate, it's difficult to go anywhere but down. Her latest book, Malinche, about has gotten some good press however. It's about conquistador Hernan Cortes' native Mexican interpreter and mistress, a real historical figure who is both scorned as a traitor and revered as the mother of the raza cósmica in contemporary Mexico. I'm interested in reading more about this engimatic contradiction, so Malinche might figure in the list of next Mexican book to read.