Novel
Don Goyo
Demetrio Aguilera Malta · 1933
Synopsis
At the mouth of the Guayas, islands and islets where a community of cholos lives, cutting mangrove wood to sell in the city. The narrative first follows Cusumbo, a day labourer bound by debt who tore himself by force from his master, became a fisherman and then came to cut mangrove in the archipelago. Then the lead role passes to don Goyo, the oldest inhabitant of the islands, said to have made a pact with the devil, who wants to defend his mangrove forests against the greed of the whites.
Context
The novel appeared in Madrid in 1933, three years after the collective volume that had revealed the writers of his city. Its material comes from the author's childhood on the hacienda Las Mercedes, on an island in the gulf, facing the Cerrito de los Morreños, where the action takes place. The concertaje, that debt servitude which bound the day labourer to his master, is named there without becoming the subject of the book. John and Carolyn Brushwood translated it into English in 1980.
Who it is for
In Spanish, a short novel, often descriptive; an English translation exists, no French translation.
Prizes and reception
Praised by Jorge Carrera Andrade; regarded as an early example of magical realism and, by Fander Falconí, as the first ecological novel in Latin America.
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