Puerto Rico (United States) / All works
Novel
La llamarada
Not translated into English
Enrique A. Laguerre · 1935
Synopsis
La llamarada (The Blaze): Juan Antonio Borrás, the son of a small coffee grower, has just finished his studies in agronomy in Mayagüez. Full of hope, he goes to work on the lands of an American sugar mill, where he discovers the poverty of the peons, such as Ventura Rondón, an exhausted peon. Put in charge of two cane colonies, he runs up against the hypocrisy of the management and gradually sides with the workers, while fires break out in the fields.
Context
The author's first novel, published in 1935 at the urging of Pedreira, who prefaced the second edition in 1939, the book received the prize of the Instituto de Literatura de Puerto Rico and was long required reading in the island's literature courses, reaching a twenty-fifth edition in 1984. The Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico sees in it the moment when Puerto Rican fiction ceases to be a mere reflection of the European novel. The Moreau house, in Moca, appears in it under another name.
Who it is for
For reading the founding novel of modern Puerto Rican prose, at the heart of the cane plantations of the 1930s.
Prizes and reception
The Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico regards the author as the best novelist of his generation and the best exponent of the Puerto Rican novel.
Sources for this page 3
The pages consulted to check this page.