MIRRORS

Overshadowed by the more celebrated writers of “El Boom Latino-Americano”, Eduardo Galeano has always been an acquired taste for readers in the English-speaking world. At once lyrical and highly political, the Uruguayan has always been difficult to pigeonhole. In the preface to Memory of Fire (1982-86), his mesmerizing three-volume narrative history of the Americas in vignette form – and the one on which his reputation is likely to rest – Galeano sets out his stall: “I don’t know to what literary form this voice of voices belongs... I don’t know if it is a novel or essay or epic poem or testament or chronicle… I do not believe in the frontiers that, according to literature’s customs officers, separate the forms.”