Books

I have just finished reading the sometimes frustrating but always absorbing The Years with Laura Díaz  by Carlos Fuentes.

Actually I thought he was a Mexican writer but now I have just found out he was born in Panama! - but he did in fact study in Mexico and was the Mexican ambassador to France in 1975; he is regarded as one of Mexico's great novelists.

This book is firmly set in Mexico. It has been a wonderful primer for me as it interweaves the life of Laura Díaz with the turbulent events of the 20th century in Mexico, starting from the migration of her grandfather from Germany to a coffee estate in Mexico at the time of French rule by Emperor Maximilian I, the Mexican Revolution in 1910 which saw the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz, and the revolutionary battles of Zapata, Villa, Carranza and Obregón. Along the way, she marries, has affairs (one of her lovers is an exiled movie producer from Hollywood due to the McCarthy persecutions), and among the many heart-wrenching losses of loved ones is the death of her grandson in Mexico City's 1968 police massacre of hundreds of protesting students. And she mixes in the bohemian circle of artist Frida Kahlo. It is all truly epic.

20 January

At the airport now. Am frantically trying to finishing reading Daniel Wilkinson's Silence on the Mountain - a fascinating book on 20th century history in Guatemala: full of intrigue. The collective amnesia of the people that the author interviews as he tries to dig up the largely unwritten history is bewildering and fascinating - particularly during the time of the land reforms under the government of Arbenz.