Novel
The Love Parade
El desfile del amor
Sergio Pitol · 1984
Synopsis
January 1973. Miguel del Solar, a Mexican historian in his forties who teaches in England, returns to Mexico City and wants to write a book about the year 1942. His research takes him back to the Minerva building, in the colonia Roma, where he lived at the age of ten and where, one night in November 1942, gunshots rang out during a party. He questions the witnesses still alive, his aunt Eduviges, the gallery owner Delfina Uribe, the writer Balmorán, and each tells a different story, while a mysterious Pistauer remains impossible to find.
Context
The novel was published in Barcelona by Anagrama in 1984, in the Narrativas hispánicas series, and only came out in Mexico later. It opens what its author would call the Tríptico del carnaval, with Domar a la divina garza (1988) and La vida conyugal (1991). The investigation serves as a pretext for a gallery of characters from polite society, and the historian acts as a translator between versions that do not agree. It was translated into French in 1989 and into English in 2022.
Who it is for
About two hundred and fifty pages, made of successive testimonies, easy to read and often funny; translated into French and English.
Prizes and reception
Herralde Prize 1984, awarded unanimously; a Mexican critic regarded it as its author's best novel and one of the best in the country's literature.
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