Novel
Bewitched Lands
Terres embrasées
Adolfo Costa du Rels · 1931
Synopsis
A narrator come from England travels to the far reaches of the Bolivian south-east with Mr Treweek, an engineer in search of oil. They arrive at El Mataral, the hacienda that old don Pedro Vidal rules with boundless tyranny. His son Carlos, a former soldier and revolutionary, was caught after an attempt to change the government in La Paz, and has accepted his father's estate as his prison. Around them, the search for oil runs up against the heat, the forest, the mosquitoes, the thirst and the impatience of the men.
Context
The novel arises from the years when its author, back in 1912, was prospecting for oil in the forest of the Frontera, in Chuquisaca. Written in French, it first appeared in Paris in 1931, in three instalments of L'Illustration. The author himself produced a Spanish version in 1940, Tierras hechizadas, at the Club del Libro A.L.A. in Buenos Aires, and then Knopf published in New York in 1945 an English translation by Stuart Edgar Grummon. An Argentine adaptation made in 1948 by Emilio Guerineau was never released in cinemas.
Who it is for
In French, the original language, with a Spanish version by the author and an English translation. A story in which the country weighs as much as the characters.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the best Bolivian novels, and one of the few of its time to have appeared in English.
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