Ron's rages are sincere and — according to his wife — healthily cathartic. But can these splenetic outbursts loosen the grip of capitalism at its most monstrous?
Letters From Latin America
Review of fiction by Uruguayan writers Ida Vitale and Fernanda Trias
(L to R) Ida Vitale and Fernanda Trias
[(L to R) Pdx123/Creative Commons; Charco Press]
ANGUS REID considers the power of the podcast as a vehicle for consensus building in opposition to mainstream media narratives
GLENN FOSBRAEY recommends a biography worth reading for both existing George Michael fans and those yet to be converted
FRANCIS DEVINE introduces a new collection of essays that draws on Pease McKenna’s example to indicate future paths for the movement
KEVIN DONNELLY and MARIA DUARTE review Shoot the People, The Last One For The Road, Rosebush Pruning, and Moana
JAMES WALSH recommends an exceptional documentary about the experience of Western doctors in Gaza
BYOBU (Charco Press, £9.99) is a puzzling book by the Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale (b1923), a member of the acclaimed Generation of ’45 and winner of one the most important literary distinctions in the Spanish language, the Cervantes Prize.
It is Vitale’s first book of prose to be published in English and has been superbly translated by Sean Manning. It could be read as an experimental novel, an essayistic notebook or as a series of concatenated aphorisms.
But it is also a book of poetry written in prose, where the main character, the elusive Byobu, navigates a tantalising world woven through by many strange and playful stories.
Similar stories
CAL McBRIDE relishes the lyrical truth of an unstable identity in an over-tidy and conventional social realist treatment
From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin