5 Mexican Books Everyone Should Read
Mexico has a rich literary legacy that spans centuries. Its authors have created some of the most significant works in Latin American literature. Enjoy 5 Mexican Books Everyone Should Read.
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5 Mexican Books Everyone Should Read
The Eagle’s Throne by Carlos Fuentes
The year is 2020. The Mexican President has provoked the United States by calling for the removal of US troops from Colombia and demanding higher prices for Mexico’s oil. But the country’s satellite communications system is controlled in Miami and suddenly Mexico is deprived of phone, fax and email.
In a country where politicians never put anything in writing, letters are now the only way to communicate, leaving the private lives and true feelings of all brutally exposed. Especially regarding the hot topic of the day: Who will be the next President, the next to ascend the Eagle’s Throne?
As the characters struggle to identify and ally themselves to the future President, the letters fly ever faster. Who will be the victor? Handsome Nicolas Valdivia? Bald satyr Tacito de la Canal? Or the ‘unsavoury’ ex-President Cesar Leon? There are many questions to be answered before the last letter is sent.
Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera
Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there’s no going back.
Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages – one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
The Witch is dead. After a group of children playing near the irrigation canals discover her decomposing corpse, the village of La Matosa is rife with rumours about how and why this murder occurred. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, Fernanda Melchor paints a moving portrait of lives governed by poverty and violence, machismo and misogyny, superstition and prejudice.
Written with an infernal lyricism that is as affecting as it is enthralling, Hurricane Season, Melchor’s first novel to appear in English, is a formidable portrait of Mexico and its demons, brilliantly translated by Sophie Hughes.
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
A masterpiece of the surreal that influenced a generation of writers in Latin America, Pedro Páramo is the otherworldly tale of one man’s quest for his lost father. That man swears to his dying mother that he will find the father he has never met—Pedro Páramo—but when he reaches the town of Comala, he finds it haunted by memories and hallucinations. There emerges the tragic tale of Páramo himself, and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul. Although initially published to a quiet reception, Pedro Páramo was soon recognized as a major novel that has served as a touchstone text for writers including Mario Vargas Llosa and José Donoso.
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family. Tita, the youngest daughter of the house, has been forbidden to marry, condemned by Mexican tradition to look after her mother until she dies. But Tita falls in love with Pedro, and he is seduced by the magical food she cooks. In desperation Pedro marries her sister Rosaura so that he can stay close to her.
For the next twenty-two years Tita and Pedro are forced to circle each other in unconsummated passion. Only a freakish chain of tragedies, bad luck and fate finally reunite them against all the odds.
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