Novel
Tirinea
Not translated into English
Jesús Urzagasti · 1969
Synopsis
In a country that exists only in the book, Tirinea, a young man, Fielkho, keeps pages in which his voice alternates with that of an old man. Both speak, write and watch time pass while drinking lemonades and listening to Bach sonatas, under the weight of the Chaco landscape. Nothing there advances through plot: the book progresses by associations and memories. As he writes in order to find himself, Fielkho meets this old man, who seems a freer part of himself, and he warns the anthropologist who would like to make a mystery of him.
Context
The text was written from February to June 1967 and appeared only two years later, in Buenos Aires, from Sudamericana: the Argentine essayist Héctor A. Murena, passing through La Paz, had read the manuscript and taken it to his publisher. The name of the invented country, the author said, had come to him in a dream. The book has writing as its subject, in a prose of long sentences where learned language mixes with the oral, and Luis H. Antezana read it as a novel of nomadism. An Italian translation by Claudio Cinti appeared in Milan in 2002.
Who it is for
In Spanish, with no French translation. Short, but with no plot: two voices alternate in a notebook, and time takes the place of action.
Prizes and reception
Welcomed on its publication by the Argentine poets Alberto Girri and Rodolfo Alonso, and counted today among the fifteen fundamental novels of Bolivia.
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