The Book Club
Sweden
The Book of Embraces
Sunday/Sep/00:03 2010Eduardo Hughes Galeano
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born September 3, 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His most well known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into twenty languages. The Book of Embraces
By Eduardo Hughes Galeano
The spiel If you take the molds for a historian, a poet, a critic, a grand story-teller, a journalist, a novelist, and an artist and blend them all together what, or who, you’d have is Eduardo Galeano. He is an author who defies categorization, and his books are written across the boundaries of genre. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1940, Galeano’s work chronicles the history, or perhaps more aptly, the experience of Latin America. “I'm a writer obsessed with remembering,” says Galeano, “with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”
The Book of Embraces is a mosaic of vignettes, laid meticulously out—poetry next to autobiography, next to political commentary, beside allegory, nudged up against myth—to create a stunning, full-bodied picture of the spectrum of humanity. Galeano is a wondrous and radical story-teller, whose brain child—whose veritable book of wonders—is an articulation of just where the limits of language, indeed, of story telling, lie. And with each subsequent book, he pushes those boundaries farther. In The Book of Embraces, his writing is paired with woodcuts, which further exemplify the already luscious images his prose paint.
The Book of Embraces has a vast and visionary scope but also, an intensely intimate one. His musings are as much about love and losses as they are about justice, and the chasm of history. In The Night/1, one of the nearly 200 named vignettes that make up the book, Galeano writes, “There is a woman stuck between my eyelids. I would tell her to get out if I could. But there is a woman stuck in my throat.” And of course, that image—really, those words—have been stuck in my mind since I first read them, nearly ten years ago.
"When it is genuine,” Galeano writes, “when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice . . . Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others." In his writing, he creates worlds nestled within worlds, and with a flourish of his pen, invites us in. He bids us “turn loose the voices, undream the dreams,” and caught up in his writing, you do—he leaves you no other choice.
some of the hype
"The factual skeleton of the author's life is given flash and blood in his strangely beautiful book, in which poetry, fiction, autobiography, history, fantasy and political commentary mingle and reinforce each other in unexpected ways." —Jay Parini, New York Times Book Review
"[Galeano] is a dangerous radical storyteller, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, like Isabel Allende, and like Pablo Neruda before them. . . . The Book of Embraces is a mosaic, or Deigo Rivera mural in words." —John Leonard, New York Newsday
"In The Book of Embraces, Galeano goes out on the tightrope and then levitates in the air above it. . . . [His] subject is nothing less that the variety of human life and love." —Alan Ryan, Washington Post Book World
"In an enchanting book of wonders, Uruguayan writer Galeano applies the collage-like technique of Memory of Fire . . . to his own life and the contemporary scene . . . Galeano's surreal drawings complement the text, blending wild imagination, pointed satire and old-fashioned charm." —Publishers Weekly
some other things this author has written
Memory of Fire
Walking War
Days and Nights of Love and War
Upside Down
We Say No
Voices of Time Open Veins of Latin America
By Eduardo Hughes Galeano
The spiel If you take the molds for a historian, a poet, a critic, a grand story-teller, a journalist, a novelist, and an artist and blend them all together what, or who, you’d have is Eduardo Galeano. He is an author who defies categorization, and his books are written across the boundaries of genre. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1940, Galeano’s work chronicles the history, or perhaps more aptly, the experience of Latin America. “I'm a writer obsessed with remembering,” says Galeano, “with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”
The Book of Embraces is a mosaic of vignettes, laid meticulously out—poetry next to autobiography, next to political commentary, beside allegory, nudged up against myth—to create a stunning, full-bodied picture of the spectrum of humanity. Galeano is a wondrous and radical story-teller, whose brain child—whose veritable book of wonders—is an articulation of just where the limits of language, indeed, of story telling, lie. And with each subsequent book, he pushes those boundaries farther. In The Book of Embraces, his writing is paired with woodcuts, which further exemplify the already luscious images his prose paint.
The Book of Embraces has a vast and visionary scope but also, an intensely intimate one. His musings are as much about love and losses as they are about justice, and the chasm of history. In The Night/1, one of the nearly 200 named vignettes that make up the book, Galeano writes, “There is a woman stuck between my eyelids. I would tell her to get out if I could. But there is a woman stuck in my throat.” And of course, that image—really, those words—have been stuck in my mind since I first read them, nearly ten years ago.
"When it is genuine,” Galeano writes, “when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice . . . Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others." In his writing, he creates worlds nestled within worlds, and with a flourish of his pen, invites us in. He bids us “turn loose the voices, undream the dreams,” and caught up in his writing, you do—he leaves you no other choice.
some of the hype
"The factual skeleton of the author's life is given flash and blood in his strangely beautiful book, in which poetry, fiction, autobiography, history, fantasy and political commentary mingle and reinforce each other in unexpected ways." —Jay Parini, New York Times Book Review
"[Galeano] is a dangerous radical storyteller, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, like Isabel Allende, and like Pablo Neruda before them. . . . The Book of Embraces is a mosaic, or Deigo Rivera mural in words." —John Leonard, New York Newsday
"In The Book of Embraces, Galeano goes out on the tightrope and then levitates in the air above it. . . . [His] subject is nothing less that the variety of human life and love." —Alan Ryan, Washington Post Book World
"In an enchanting book of wonders, Uruguayan writer Galeano applies the collage-like technique of Memory of Fire . . . to his own life and the contemporary scene . . . Galeano's surreal drawings complement the text, blending wild imagination, pointed satire and old-fashioned charm." —Publishers Weekly
some other things this author has written
Memory of Fire
Walking War
Days and Nights of Love and War
Upside Down
We Say No
Voices of Time Open Veins of Latin America