Best of
Latin-American-Literature

1978

Days and Nights of Love and War


Eduardo Galeano - 1978
    In this fascinating journal and eloquent history, Eduardo Galeano movingly records the lives of struggles of the Latin American people, under two decades of unimaginable violence and extreme repression. Alternating between reportage, personal vignettes, interviews, travelogues, and folklore, and richly conveyed with anger, sadness, irony, and occasional humor, Galeano pays loving tribute to the courage and determination of those who continued to believe in, and fight for, a more human existence. The Lannan Foundation awarded the 1999 Cultural Prize for Freedom to Eduardo Galeano, in recognition of those "whose extraordinary and courageous work celebrates the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry and expression." Originally published in Cuba, Days and Nights of Love and War won the Casa de las Am�ricas prize in 1978.

A House in the Country


José Donoso - 1978
    (Nancy Pearl)

Trujillo: The Death of a Dictator


Bernard Diederich - 1978
    This book is a riveting, minute-by-minute account of the plot to kill Trujillo, who was then the Western Hemisphere's most ruthless dictator, and the ferocious wave of revenge that ensued before his regime collapsed. The book also reveals the vacillating role of the United States -- and the CIA -- in first propping up the dictator, and then supplying weapons to slay him. Bernard Diederich knew most of those involved in the plot, and painstakingly recreates the events in a gripping book that reads like a novel, which also offers essential insights into the history of a troubled Caribbean nation.