Novel
La heredad
Not translated into English
Marcos Carías Reyes · 1934
Synopsis
Around the Santa Fe hacienda, between the forest and the plains, former rebels and militiamen returned from the troubles clear the land and found an estate. Don Salvador Andino, owner of four self-sufficient haciendas, stands there for order and progress; opposite him, Juan García, a violent caudillo, rallies to a revolution. Around them pass a venerated old man, the Patriarch, and minds nourished more on books than on life.
Context
The novel appears in 1934 from the Tipografía Nacional of Tegucigalpa and will be reissued eleven years later. Divided into three parts, in a linear and polished style, it is part novel and part essay: the demonstration about the country's progress weighs as much as the plot, and the characters stand as figures of the forces they represent. A Honduran critic has compared it to the great South American novels of the land and the caudillo.
Who it is for
A novel in Spanish, with no French or English translation. The passages on the future of the country take up a good part of it: it is better to know this before opening it.
Prizes and reception
Hailed from its publication as a foundational piece of national criollismo, it is among the ten key books of Honduran narrative fiction selected by José Antonio Funes.
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