La casa de Dostoievsky. (Dostoievsky’s House)
Reviewed by Carlos Rodríguez Martorell, East Elmhurst, NY -- Críticas, 9/1/2008
Edwards, Jorge.
Spain: Planeta. 2008. 329p. ISBN 978-970-37-0809-3. pap. $37.97. FICTION
Winner of the second Planeta Casamérica prize, La casa de Dostoievsky novelizes the life of an unnamed poet (loosely based on Chile’s renowned poet Enrique Lihn), starting during his youth as a leader of a group of avant-garde poets who mock the “official poet” Pablo Neruda. Edwards (who had previously won the Cervantes Prize and Spain’s National Prize) playfully recreates Santiago de Chile’s earnest, somewhat provincial literary scene in the 50s. But, for the most part, the novel takes place in Cuba, where the Poet settles in the mid-60s, gets married, and befriends a group of writers that would soon be prosecuted by the Communist regime. He later goes back to Chile, where writers feel the pressure of Allende’s leftist government (Nicanor Parra is harassed because he made a visit to the White House). In his final days in the late 80s, and under Pinochet’s ruthless regime, the Poet belatedly joins the Socialist Party. A witness of major events, the Poet never seems to commit to anything politically or intimately¾the love of his life, a Chilean woman named Teresa, remains elusive through and through, and he never engages with his Cuban wife. Edwards has chronicled the early 1970s Cuba before; 35 years later, his most famous book, Fuera de Juego, about the failures of the Cuban Revolution, is still an essential read. (In both books, the most dramatically charged character is Cuban writer Heberto Padilla, an early dissenter of the Communist regime who was forced to turn in his friends—an event that sparked off Cuba’s infamous “Quinquenio Negro,” an era of repression against intellectuals.) Whereas here the Poet’s contemplative stance serves Edwards to calmly reflect on some of his generation’s main events and disappointments, Fuera has more substance and sense of urgency. Nonetheless, La casa de Dostoievsky is, in contrast, a very readable and insightful piece. Recommended for large fiction collections.
View All Blogs
