Memory of Fire (Magill Book Reviews)

In CENTURY OF THE WIND, Galeano follows the method he established in the trilogy’s first two volumes: GENESIS, which begins with pre-Columbian creation myths and concludes in A.D. 1700, and FACES AND MASKS, which spans the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Each book consists of a series of brief entries ranging in length from a few lines to a page (the average is about a third of a page). Each entry begins with a date, a place, and a title; thus, the first entry in CENTURY OF THE WIND, “1900: San Jose de Gracia/THE WORLD GOES ON,” tells how the people of a village in central Mexico prepared for the end of the world, which they expected to coincide with the end of the century. The entries are in chronological sequence, and the focus is on Latin America, though sometimes the scene shifts to North America or--rarely--another continent. Each volume concludes with an extensive numbered list of sources, to which the entries are referenced.

What emerges from this collage is an alternative history--valuable reading for North Americans, since it provides a fresh slant on familiar events. Galeano writes as a partisan of the oppressed--he was exiled from Uruguay for many years; it is no accident that CENTURY OF THE WIND concludes in 1984--and few readers will finish his trilogy unmoved. At least some readers, however, while sharing his moral outrage at the complicity of the United States in the horrors of twentieth century Latin American history, will weary of Galeano’s unrelenting leftist bias.

Bibliography

Broderick, Thomas. “Eduardo Galeano: Memory of Fire: Genesis,” in The Review of Contemporary Fiction. VI (Fall, 1986), p. 144.

Christ, Ronald. “Dramas That Scorch: Memory of Fire: I. Genesis,” in The New York Times Book Review. XC (October 27, 1985), p. 22.

Conant, Oliver. Review of Memory of Fire: Faces and Masks in The New York Times Book Review. XCII (March 1, 1987), p. 20.

Franco, Jean. “The Raw and the Cooked,” in The Nation. CCXLIV (February 14, 1987), pp. 183-184.

McMurray, George R. Spanish American Writing Since 1941: A Critical Survey, 1986.

The New Yorker. “Eduardo Galeano.” LXII (July 28, 1986), pp. 18-20.

Staggs, Sam. “Eduardo Galeano: In His Trilogy Memory of Fire, the Uruguayan Writer Attempts to Portray ‘The Masked History’ of America,” in Publishers Weekly. CCXXXIII (June 3, 1988), pp. 64-65.