Novel
La bola
Not translated into English
Emilio Rabasa · 1887
Opening lines
El pueblo de San Martín de la Piedra despertó aquel día de un modo inusitado.
The town of San Martín de la Piedra woke that day in an unusual way.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
San Martín de la Piedra, a provincial town at the end of the nineteenth century. Juan Quiñones, an educated young man whose father has died, loves Remedios, the gentle niece of the formidable Mateo Cabezudo, who opposes their love. When Cabezudo takes the lead of a “bola”, an armed uprising to overthrow the town's political chief, Juanito is drawn into it against his will; the agitation rolls on and swells, camps form and dissolve, and he discovers from the inside how a political career is born.
Context
The book appeared in 1887 with the printer Alfonso E. López, signed Sancho Polo, one of the author's pseudonyms; Gutiérrez Nájera reviewed it as early as July. It opens the series of the “Novelas mexicanas”, four volumes published in 1887 and 1888, which follow the life of Juan Quiñones: each book has its beginning and its end, but all form the links of a single story. The word of the title denotes in Mexico unprincipled agitation, which the author contrasts with true revolution.
Who it is for
A short, fast-moving novel, dry in its irony, told in the first person by an elderly narrator remembering his twenties; no French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the great realist novels of Mexico; the first and most widely read of its author's four novels.
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