Monday, April 13, was a difficult day for world literature. Uruguayan journalist and Eduardo Galeano, one of Latin America’s foremost writers, died at 75. And the German Nobel Laureate Günter Grass – author of, inter alia, The Tin Drum, The Diary of a Snail, Cat and Mouse, Dog Years, and The Flounder – died at the age of 87.
Revered by lovers of literature in that generation that preceded today’s young readers, both of them left behind bodies of work that serve to illustrate and explain them. Here are seven things to read about Grass, and five books of Galeano’s that you must know about.
Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015)
In 2006, Arundhati Roy and Eduardo Galeano met at the Town Hall in New York City to have a conversation and read extracts from their books. Roy introduced Galeano as her “twin from across the world.” That statement is justifiable.
Although Galeano’s first work was published two years after Roy was born, both writers have been trenchant critics of the neoliberal world order. Both began as writers of fiction, but almost immediately branched off into lyrical but fierce political writing.
Almost every word of praise that poured in after Galeano’s death recount his most influential works: The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (1971), the three-volume Memory of Fire (1982-86), and Soccer in Sun and Shadow (1995).
Of these, The Open Veins of Latin America laid down a benchmark in understanding how the continent was transformed by the twin forces of colonialism and global capital. It was banned by the right-wing governments of Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina after publication. In 2009, Hugo Chavez famously handed a copy to Barack Obama; the next day, so many people had bought the book that it shot up to #2 on Amazon's bestsellers list.
Like many prolific writers, Galeano eventually disavowed this earlier work despite its great success. He said he had lacked the knowledge in political economy to write it well, and that the style was too ponderous. Although this was his personal view, it would certainly be an injustice to remember him only for these books alone. He wrote many more over the course of the last four decades. Whether writing extraordinary poems such as Los Nadies/The Nobodies, or exploring Latin American folklore, world history, or football, Galeano was a man of incredible literary prowess.
Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History (2013), translated by Mark Fried
This book contains a story for each day of the year, one for each page. Every one of them is a tale of historical significance relevant to that particular day, and in the process, puts back on the map all kinds of stories and heroes that are unsung, and would otherwise be forgotten. All the stories are written with the intention to celebrate progressive politics, and champion the underdog. In praise of this book, Julia Alvarez has said, “What category to put our beloved poet-historian, historian-poet in? Galeano is truly a Scheherazade. He keeps me morally awake, while also lifting my spirits...”
Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (2009), translated by Mark Fried
Galeano uses 600 small stories to retell the history of the world. The stories talk about class, gender, the environment, racism, and are located all over the world, from the Africa of Adam and Eve, through ancient Greece and Rome, India and China, to contemporary Uruguay. With Mirrors (excerpts here) Galeano continued his project of excavating world history from the perspective of the dispossessed, in a way that situates it within contemporary struggles of justice.
Upside Down: A Primer For the Looking Glass World (2001), translated by Mark Fried
Galeano compares the influence, power, and wealth of the "North" (a shorthand not just for the developed, rich nations, but also for the elite and the upper class in developing countries) and the "South" (underdeveloped nations as well as people). This is an indictment of consumer culture and capitalism, examining how continuing systems and patterns of power contribute to greater inequality, poverty, and injustice around the world. It focuses on Latin America, but remains worldwide in scope, like so many of Galeano’s other works.
Walking Words (1995), translated by Mark Fried
This work also uses vignettes to retell histories, but these are imagined, and not lived histories. Galeano draws on old and contemporary Latin American myth and folklore to write his stories, illustrated by Brazilian woodcut artist José Francisco Borges. Revealed here is the great fabulist in Galeano, the writer not just rooted in Latin American history and politics, but also at home with the literary concerns and conceits favoured by the continent's best loved authors.
The Book of Embraces (1991), translated by Cedric Belfrage
This book provides glimpses into Galeano's own life, including his time in exile from Uruguay, and the baby whom he and his wife lost. Yet it remains, in vintage Galeano form, incisively political in its observations and analysis of his times. It defies easy classification in a particular genre, including everything from anecdotes to dreams in Galeano's inimitable style.
Günter Grass (1927-2015)
Grass died of a quick, but dire, illness. He had lived a long, full life – much of it as an internationally known name. It was a life that was not bereft of controversy and contradiction.
His greatest success was his debut novel, The Tin Drum, at first condemned as obscene, but later recognised as among the greatest novels in the Western literature of the 20th century.
But the critics and readers who accorded The Tin Drum high praise did not do the same with many of his subsequent works. When acclaim came, it was sometimes after years, as with the publication of Crabwalk, one of his most lauded later works. It can be argued that all his later books only hoped to surpass the pathbreaking impact of his first novel, and none of them succeeded in doing so. Yet, many were hugely significant in their own right and have left a lasting literary impact.
But Grass was secretly preoccupied with something much more consequential and disturbing than the success of his writing career. Through his indictment of Nazism and acid criticism of German politics in his literary and public life, he had come to be known as the moral conscience of his country. To him, the art of writing was inextricably linked with questions of power, politics, and justice. His polemics and his activism made his subsequent revelations even more devastating. After years of suppressing the secret, he revealed in 2006 that he had been a part of the Nazi Waffen SS in 1943, as a teenager, and not merely as a child soldier, as he had led people to believe.
Grass said of the SS that he was lured by the “prettified black-and-white ‘truth’ they served up.” He was in denial of, and then tormented by, the organisation he had served. He spent much of his career as a fierce critic of the kind of values the SS espoused: namelyrabid nationalism, militarism, fascism. If part of the reason for his advocacy was atonement for his own involvement, it hadn't been enough. He had to finally reveal it, because “...the burden remained, and no one could alleviate it.”
The Nobel laureate was both exposed and was tormented by the truth that had seized his country before the Second World War. His writing is a testament to the painful, turbulent years after the war. In 1999, the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize, saying that he had given German literature “a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction.” His dark novels brutally interrogated German history, and raked up in ingenious ways the horrors of Nazism and all that it brought in its wake. Grass remained a troubling and significant literary voice forcing Germany to remember, and has left an enduring legacy.
Whether you are revisiting it, or encountering it for the first time, here’s what you can read to understand the complexity that characterised Grass through his long career.
1. A 1963 review of Cat and Mouse, his second novel, by the English poet Stephen Spender.
2. How I Spent The War, an account, written in 2007 in the New Yorker, of his time in the Waffen SS. Grass peels “the onion skin” of his memory and confronts himself.
3. This 1999 re-reading of Grass by The Slate, after he had won his Nobel Prize for Literature. The piece summarises in one sharp line the storm of feminist criticism against his novel The Flounder.
4. A 2012 poem, entitled What Must Be Said, a warning by Grass at the age of 84 about Israeli violence on Iran, which earned him heavy criticism from Netanyahu.
5. An interview with Grass under “The Art of Fiction” series by The Paris Review, in which he talks about process, among other things.
6. Daijiworld.com's report of Grass's relationship with the city of Kolkata, which he visited thrice.
7. These guides to Grass's best works by The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Irish Times.
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Revered by lovers of literature in that generation that preceded today’s young readers, both of them left behind bodies of work that serve to illustrate and explain them. Here are seven things to read about Grass, and five books of Galeano’s that you must know about.
Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015)
In 2006, Arundhati Roy and Eduardo Galeano met at the Town Hall in New York City to have a conversation and read extracts from their books. Roy introduced Galeano as her “twin from across the world.” That statement is justifiable.
Although Galeano’s first work was published two years after Roy was born, both writers have been trenchant critics of the neoliberal world order. Both began as writers of fiction, but almost immediately branched off into lyrical but fierce political writing.
Almost every word of praise that poured in after Galeano’s death recount his most influential works: The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (1971), the three-volume Memory of Fire (1982-86), and Soccer in Sun and Shadow (1995).
Of these, The Open Veins of Latin America laid down a benchmark in understanding how the continent was transformed by the twin forces of colonialism and global capital. It was banned by the right-wing governments of Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina after publication. In 2009, Hugo Chavez famously handed a copy to Barack Obama; the next day, so many people had bought the book that it shot up to #2 on Amazon's bestsellers list.
Like many prolific writers, Galeano eventually disavowed this earlier work despite its great success. He said he had lacked the knowledge in political economy to write it well, and that the style was too ponderous. Although this was his personal view, it would certainly be an injustice to remember him only for these books alone. He wrote many more over the course of the last four decades. Whether writing extraordinary poems such as Los Nadies/The Nobodies, or exploring Latin American folklore, world history, or football, Galeano was a man of incredible literary prowess.
Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History (2013), translated by Mark Fried
This book contains a story for each day of the year, one for each page. Every one of them is a tale of historical significance relevant to that particular day, and in the process, puts back on the map all kinds of stories and heroes that are unsung, and would otherwise be forgotten. All the stories are written with the intention to celebrate progressive politics, and champion the underdog. In praise of this book, Julia Alvarez has said, “What category to put our beloved poet-historian, historian-poet in? Galeano is truly a Scheherazade. He keeps me morally awake, while also lifting my spirits...”
Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (2009), translated by Mark Fried
Galeano uses 600 small stories to retell the history of the world. The stories talk about class, gender, the environment, racism, and are located all over the world, from the Africa of Adam and Eve, through ancient Greece and Rome, India and China, to contemporary Uruguay. With Mirrors (excerpts here) Galeano continued his project of excavating world history from the perspective of the dispossessed, in a way that situates it within contemporary struggles of justice.
Upside Down: A Primer For the Looking Glass World (2001), translated by Mark Fried
Galeano compares the influence, power, and wealth of the "North" (a shorthand not just for the developed, rich nations, but also for the elite and the upper class in developing countries) and the "South" (underdeveloped nations as well as people). This is an indictment of consumer culture and capitalism, examining how continuing systems and patterns of power contribute to greater inequality, poverty, and injustice around the world. It focuses on Latin America, but remains worldwide in scope, like so many of Galeano’s other works.
Walking Words (1995), translated by Mark Fried
This work also uses vignettes to retell histories, but these are imagined, and not lived histories. Galeano draws on old and contemporary Latin American myth and folklore to write his stories, illustrated by Brazilian woodcut artist José Francisco Borges. Revealed here is the great fabulist in Galeano, the writer not just rooted in Latin American history and politics, but also at home with the literary concerns and conceits favoured by the continent's best loved authors.
The Book of Embraces (1991), translated by Cedric Belfrage
This book provides glimpses into Galeano's own life, including his time in exile from Uruguay, and the baby whom he and his wife lost. Yet it remains, in vintage Galeano form, incisively political in its observations and analysis of his times. It defies easy classification in a particular genre, including everything from anecdotes to dreams in Galeano's inimitable style.
Günter Grass (1927-2015)
Grass died of a quick, but dire, illness. He had lived a long, full life – much of it as an internationally known name. It was a life that was not bereft of controversy and contradiction.
His greatest success was his debut novel, The Tin Drum, at first condemned as obscene, but later recognised as among the greatest novels in the Western literature of the 20th century.
But the critics and readers who accorded The Tin Drum high praise did not do the same with many of his subsequent works. When acclaim came, it was sometimes after years, as with the publication of Crabwalk, one of his most lauded later works. It can be argued that all his later books only hoped to surpass the pathbreaking impact of his first novel, and none of them succeeded in doing so. Yet, many were hugely significant in their own right and have left a lasting literary impact.
But Grass was secretly preoccupied with something much more consequential and disturbing than the success of his writing career. Through his indictment of Nazism and acid criticism of German politics in his literary and public life, he had come to be known as the moral conscience of his country. To him, the art of writing was inextricably linked with questions of power, politics, and justice. His polemics and his activism made his subsequent revelations even more devastating. After years of suppressing the secret, he revealed in 2006 that he had been a part of the Nazi Waffen SS in 1943, as a teenager, and not merely as a child soldier, as he had led people to believe.
Grass said of the SS that he was lured by the “prettified black-and-white ‘truth’ they served up.” He was in denial of, and then tormented by, the organisation he had served. He spent much of his career as a fierce critic of the kind of values the SS espoused: namelyrabid nationalism, militarism, fascism. If part of the reason for his advocacy was atonement for his own involvement, it hadn't been enough. He had to finally reveal it, because “...the burden remained, and no one could alleviate it.”
The Nobel laureate was both exposed and was tormented by the truth that had seized his country before the Second World War. His writing is a testament to the painful, turbulent years after the war. In 1999, the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize, saying that he had given German literature “a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction.” His dark novels brutally interrogated German history, and raked up in ingenious ways the horrors of Nazism and all that it brought in its wake. Grass remained a troubling and significant literary voice forcing Germany to remember, and has left an enduring legacy.
Whether you are revisiting it, or encountering it for the first time, here’s what you can read to understand the complexity that characterised Grass through his long career.
1. A 1963 review of Cat and Mouse, his second novel, by the English poet Stephen Spender.
2. How I Spent The War, an account, written in 2007 in the New Yorker, of his time in the Waffen SS. Grass peels “the onion skin” of his memory and confronts himself.
3. This 1999 re-reading of Grass by The Slate, after he had won his Nobel Prize for Literature. The piece summarises in one sharp line the storm of feminist criticism against his novel The Flounder.
4. A 2012 poem, entitled What Must Be Said, a warning by Grass at the age of 84 about Israeli violence on Iran, which earned him heavy criticism from Netanyahu.
5. An interview with Grass under “The Art of Fiction” series by The Paris Review, in which he talks about process, among other things.
6. Daijiworld.com's report of Grass's relationship with the city of Kolkata, which he visited thrice.
7. These guides to Grass's best works by The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Irish Times.