Catalogue

Sepúlveda (The Name of the Bullfighter, LJ 7/96), a novelist exiled from Chile in 1975, opens this personal narrative with the advice of his grandfather to visit his birthplace of Martos, Spain. His life-long journey begins in Temuco, a Chilean prison, where he was a political prisoner for three years. Surprisingly, he does not harbor anger or bitterness from the experience. Later, he is a miserably poor professor in Ecuador and then holds a curiously surreal job writing the memoirs of a wealthy haciendado whose widowed daughter hopes to marry him to her daughter to preserve the family line. His experiences in Patagonia are the most interesting, beginning with his acquaintance with Bruce Chatwin, the Englishman whose book on Patagonia is considered a classic in travel literature. Eventually, he arrives in Martos, where he meets his grandfather's brother and is able to bring his journey "full circle." This book has a decidedly South American tone, seeing magic and wonder where most North Americans do not. Recommended for cosmopolitan travel collections.‘Mary Ann Parker, California Dept. of Water Resources Law Lib., Sacramento (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.