Our first encounter during this recent book-club journey – as I like to call it, being an exploration into quite unknown territory that left us richer and wiser, as any journey should be – started with probably the most complex novel of the three: ‘ Rayuela’ (1963), known in English as ‘ Hoptscotch’, and written by the Argentinian author Julio Cortázar. Thanks to the richness of these new and powerful literary expressions, Latin-American literature crossed its boundaries and became well-known worldwide. Regarding the themes – despite the economic expansion – injustice, political turmoil, dictatorships, poverty, disillusion towards the ruling class and the subsequent alienation were often and unavoidably part of these writers’ works. The different Latin American literatures (we should use the plural, as there is not only one) saw a flourishing period in the Sixties: the authors experimented in terms of genres, language and form, also influenced by great writers like Faulkner, Joyce and Woolf. The experience took us first to Argentina with Cortázar(‘Rayuela’/Hopscotch, 1963), then Peru with Vargas Llosa (‘La casa verde’/ The Green House, 1966) and Colombia with Márquez (‘Cien Años de Soledad’/ One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967). We’ve been recently ‘travelling’ through some areas of Latin America during our literary journey, thanks to the three book-club sessions held by Ciriaco Offeddu in March.
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