Pedro Mairal

Si la historia de un país retrocediera hasta su fundación, ¿cómo sobreviviríamos?

«Yo, que unos meses atrás atendía el teléfono en oficinas alfombradas, que traducía cartas al inglés vestida con mi tailleur azul y mis sandalias, ahora hundía las manos en la sangre caliente, separaba vísceras, abría al medio los animales, despellejaba, buscaba coyunturas con el filo.»

La intemperie avanza implacable, cercando la ciudad de Buenos Aires, convirtiendo los barrios en descampados y borrando a su paso las costumbres civilizadas. En un mundo que parece estar volviendo a sus orígenes, donde reina el caos, se pudren los alimentos, brotan las epidemias y las mujeres ven recortados sus derechos drásticamente, María deja atrás su trabajo como secretaria y se adentra en la barbarie: de los prostíbulos del puerto a las extensiones de la pampa, sus pasos la llevarán a olvidar de dónde vino, su relato le permitirá recordarlo.

El año del desierto es una asombrosa distopía, metáfora de la eterna crisis argentina, que nos invita a reflexionar sobre la inquietante deriva de nuestras sociedades. Publicada en 2005 y convertida en una novela de culto en su país, es una pieza imprescindible del extraordinario universo literario de Pedro Mairal.… (altro)

Argentinian author Lucas Pereyra has passed his 40s and displays all the symptoms of a mid-life crisis. He is suffering from writer’s block, his finances are in bad shape, and he suspects that his wife Catalina is having an affair. But a turn of fortune beckons. Lucas is due a substantial payment on foreign sales of his work, and he plans to travel from Buenos Aires where he resides, across the River Plate, to Montevideo, in order to smuggle the sum in cash back to Argentina, dodging taxes. If he succeeds, Lucas can then settle down, concentrate on his writing, and start to gather the lost pieces of his life.

But Lucas also has another reason to visit Montevideo: meeting the young woman of the title – Guerra – with whom he had gotten acquainted at a writers’ event. His infatuation with Guerra gives Lucas a taste of youth, and his increasingly desperate attempts to seduce her are worthy of a love-struck teenager.

It is hardly a spoiler to state that things will not go exactly as planned. The novel(la) plays out over Lucas’s eventful day, giving us an insight into his psyche. He is, obviously a flawed character. Even a middle-aged male reader such as I, while more forgiving of the protagonist’s foibles, recognise that Lucas can be ego(t)istic, vain, sexist and, in some of his choices, incredibly short-sighted. Yet, there is a thread of endearing self-irony running through his monologues, turning Lucas into a tragicomic figure as we hurtle towards the novel’s bittersweet conclusion. The narrative voice is perfectly pitched, and brilliantly conveyed in Jennifer Croft’s translation. Pedro Mairal mixes suspense and comedy, philosophical insight and slapstick to create an entertaining and well-observed novel.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-woman-from-uruguay-by-pedro-maira...… (altro)