Novel
Tear This Heart Out
Arráncame la vida
Ángeles Mastretta · 1985
Synopsis
Puebla, in the 1930s. Catalina Guzmán is fifteen when General Andrés Ascencio, fifteen years her senior, courts and marries her. First a candidate and then governor, he is corrupt, unfaithful and brutal, and Catalina hears of men beaten or killed, if not by him, then at least with his knowledge. She raises children he has had with other women, is bored in her large house, and then, during a rehearsal, meets the conductor Carlos Vives, young and idealistic, with whom she falls in love.
Context
A publisher offered her six months' salary to leave her job and write this first novel; six months became a year, and the book appeared in Mexico City in 1985. General Ascencio is inspired by the figure of Maximino Ávila Camacho, brother of President Manuel Ávila Camacho. The book has been translated into some fifteen languages, into English first under the title Mexican Bolero (1989), then Tear This Heart Out, and Roberto Sneider adapted it for the cinema in 2008.
Who it is for
About two hundred and fifty pages of quick reading, often funny, told by Catalina herself; translated into English and French.
Prizes and reception
Winner of the Mazatlán Prize for Literature, and an immediate success in Mexico and abroad; the best-known novel by its author.
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