Novel
Santa
Federico Gamboa · 1903
Synopsis
Santa, a young girl from Chimalistac, a village on the outskirts of Mexico City, is seduced and then abandoned by a soldier; her family drives her out. She enters the brothel of doña Elvira, where her health is examined like that of merchandise, and quickly becomes the clients' favourite. Hipólito, the establishment's blind pianist, becomes attached to her without asking for anything, while a Spanish bullfighter, El Jarameño, courts her and ends up taking her to live with him.
Context
The novel appears in 1903 in Barcelona, from Araluce; written in the wake of Zola and the Goncourts, it makes Mexico City a character and prostitution an almost clinical object of study, while borrowing the forms of melodrama. Its sales brought its author royalties that he found amusing. Mexican cinema adapted it four times, in 1918, 1932, 1943 and 1969; the 1932 version is the country's first sound film. An English translation appears in 2010.
Who it is for
A naturalist novel of medium length, rich in descriptions of the city; no French translation found.
Prizes and reception
One of the best-selling novels in Mexico, and the most famous of Mexican naturalism; José Emilio Pacheco saw in it the only myth of the national novel.
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