And We Sold the Rain: Contemporary Fiction from Central America

by Carmen Naranjo

Book Overview

These twenty-plus short stories by leading Central American writers, by turns unsettling, absurd, tragic, exhilarating, and mystical, introduce us to the people behind the front-page horrors . . . A Torruban Indian loses a month's pay with a bad roll of the dice . . . The beautiful young Anita hunts beetles and cockroaches . . . To up its popularity rating, a government stages the first "Miss Underdeveloped Contest" . . . After the 1954 massacres...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1888363037
• ISBN13: 9781888363036
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Does the right wing write?

These wonderful stories have been chosen to represent, according to the foreword, the clash between the indigenous culture and the third world. Perhaps black English speakers are not considered indigenous enough and there is nothing from Belize or about the Garifuana. Only one story is from Panama. It would be interesting to know if the right wing is literate at all. I get two problems with politically motivated fiction. The first is that fiction may be one-sided and over-simplify a complex situation. The second is that when terrible atrocities have been committed then writing about them in fiction can make us complacent. We are able to say "it is only a story"(does Arturo Armas really remember the events of 1954). That said, these are are all remarkable. The influence of the South American magic realists can be seen, especially in the title story and there is a tendency to idealize Indian life and the Popol Vul. I has only read Quesada and Ramirez previously and shall be seeking out more by the other writers.