Strange Pilgrims
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Strange Pilgrims is a collection of unforgettable stories about distinctive South American individuals in Europe from the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garca Marquez author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.
'The first thing Senora Prudencia Linero noticed when she reached the port of Naples was that it had the same smell as the port of Riohacha'
The twelve stories here tell of Latin Americans adrift in Europe: a bereaved father in Rome for an audience with the Pope carries a box shaped like a cello case; an aging streetwalker waits for death in Barcelona with a dog trained to weep at her grave; a panic-stricken husband takes his wife to a Parisian hospital to treat a cut and never sees her again. Combining terror and nostalgia, surreal comedy and the poetry of the commonplace, Strange Pilgrims is a triumph of storytelling by our most brilliant writer.
'Celebratory and full of strange relish at life's oddness, the stories draw their strength from Marquez's generous feel for character, good and bad, boorish and innocent' William Boyd
'The most important writer of fiction in any language' Bill Clinton
'Often touching, often funny, always unexpected, the experience is as enriching as travel itself' New Statesman
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Exile and loss are the principal subjects of these 12 stories from the author of Love in the Time of Cholera , which capture with lyrical precision the emotions of disorientation and fear, coupled with a sense of new possibility, experienced by Latin Americans in Europe. Their pilgrimages seldom achieve their goals: the deposed politician in `` Bon Voyage , Mister President'' sells all his personal belongings to have an operation in Geneva that doesn't alleviate his pain; the devoted father who brings the miraculously intact remains of his seven-year-old daughter to Rome in ``The Saint'' can't get an audience with the Pope; a particularly chilling tale, ``I Only Came to Use the Phone,'' shows a woman accidentally taken to an insane asylum who can't get out even after she contacts her husband in Barcelona. A note of hard-won hope enters in stories like ``Maria dos Prazeres,'' which portrays an elderly prostitute selecting her burial site, but the mood darkens again as the collection closes with ``Tramontania,'' ``Miss Forbes's Summer of Happiness,'' ``Light Is Like Water'' and ``The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow,'' tales of suicide, murder, accidental death and tragically missed communications. Lovely prose and some poignant insights contribute to a collection that pleases in its parts but fails to strike a lasting note. But even a minor effort from Garcia Marquez is a standard toward which other writers aspire. 75,000 first printing; BOMC alternate.
