Novel
Deep Rivers
Los ríos profundos
José María Arguedas · 1958
Synopsis
Ernesto, fourteen, the son of a lawyer who travels from town to town, goes through the villages of the southern Andes with his father, then enters the religious school of Abancay as a boarder, run by Father Linares. There he discovers the cruelty of the older pupils and takes refuge in memories of rivers, Quechua songs and a singing spinning top, the zumbayllu. Outside the school, the revolt of the chicheras demanding salt for the poor, then the arrival of the Indian colonos who come to ask for a Mass for those who died of the plague, shake his view of the town.
Context
The novel appeared in Buenos Aires from Losada in 1958; the author lends the narrator a childhood he had known himself. The title refers to the depth of the Andean rivers and to the ancient roots of Andean culture, in which the author saw the true identity of the country. Critics see in it the beginning of neo-indigenism, a reading of the Indian world made from closer up, from the side of the Indians themselves. Translated into French as early as 1966 by Jean-Francis Reille, it was translated into English in 1978 by Frances Horning Barraclough, with an afterword by Mario Vargas Llosa.
Who it is for
A novel in Spanish, studded with words, phrases and songs in Quechua; the annotated editions give their meaning.
Prizes and reception
Ricardo Palma National Prize in 1959, finalist for the William Faulkner Foundation prize in 1963; its author's masterpiece in the view of most critics.