El hablador. (The Storyteller)
Reviewed by Liliana Wendorff, Univ. of North Carolina at Pembroke -- Críticas, 9/1/2008
Vargas Llosa, Mario.
Peru/U.S: Alfaguara: Santillana. 2008. 269p. ISBN 603-40-1659-0. pap. $22.99. FICTION
CLASSIC RETURN
Originally published in 1987 by Spain’s Seix Barral, this work received public acclaim when it debuted and has continued being the subject of many research articles and literary publications. The novel is narrated by two well-defined characters: one that can be identified as the Peruvian novelist himself, such as in the style of La tía Julia y el escribidor (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter) and a migrant storyteller of the Machiguenga tribe in the Peruvian Amazon. Their narratives are clearly delineated in different chapters. The Machiguenga Indian tribe’s tales of myths, customs, ceremonies, legends, and beliefs are framed within the first narrator’s stories, using the well-known technique of the matryoskas. While vacationing in Florence, Italy, the first narrator discovers a photography exhibit of the Amazonian tribe, the Machiguengas. One of them reproduces the figure of a storyteller who is surrounded by his tribe, who listen attentively to him. This blurred photograph piques his curiosity and impels him to remember an old university friend, Saúl Zuratas, nicknamed “Mascarita” (“Little Mask”) because of a dark birthmark that covered half of his face, provoking looks of pity and disgust from the public. Vargas Llosa uses the Amazon as background, just as in La casa verde (The Green House), and evokes the 1950s and 1960s dictatorships of Manuel Odría and Juan Velasco Alvarado, and the restoration of democracy in Peru. He also reflects on his own literary praxis and the process of writing, themes that he explored in previous works—La tía Julia y el escribidor, La señorita de Tacna, and Kathie y el hipopótamo, among others. An easy read; the prose flows easily and the stories of the machiguengas are engaging. Recommended for all public and academic libraries.
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