The first Borges story I ever read was ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’, in the translation by Alastair Reid, while living in a derelict shepherd’s hut on a Cretan hillside. A couple of years later, like so many others… Read More
Posted on September 26, 2015 by richardgwyn
Alastair Reid, Andrés Neuman, Angharad Price, Augusto Monterroso, Carlos Fuentes, Eduardo Halfon, Fiction Fiesta, Francesca Rhydderch, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, García Márquez, Inés Garland, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Juan Villoro, Julio Cortázar, Latin America, Mario Vargas Llosa, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Orbis Tertius, Owen Sheers, Pedro Serrano, Tlön, translation, Uqbar, W.N. Herbert, Wales PEN Cymru
I first came across the name Valparaíso via Neruda’s poem dedicated to Don Asterio Alarcón, the clockmaker of that city, many years ago. Neruda’s house is a fabulous creation, built on five stories, most of the rooms having large… Read More
Posted on November 7, 2014 by richardgwyn
On Tuesday at five I do a reading in the library of the University of Cartagena – whose most famous alumnus was Gabriel García Márquez – and learn from one of the Profs that there is a crypt in the… Read More
Posted on September 20, 2014 by richardgwyn
The first story I read by Borges, at the age of eighteen, was Tlön, Uqbar, Tertius Orbis. Although the name would have meant nothing to me at the time, the translation was by Alastair Reid. Forty years later,… Read More
Posted on August 19, 2014 by richardgwyn
When I remember things from childhood or early adulthood, it often feels as though I am a passive subject, a receptacle or vessel, and the process of remembering becomes one in which memory is seeking me out,… Read More
Posted on June 29, 2014 by richardgwyn
I wrote once before about Juan Rulfo and his novel Pedro Paramo, which has unparalleled status in Mexican literature and was a major influence on the young Gabriel García Márquez on his arrival in Mexico City… Read More
Posted on April 26, 2014 by richardgwyn
When travelling, how do we begin to learn when someone is wearing a mask, with intent to deceive, given that we all wear masks much of the time? We all know, as Hamlet says, that ‘one may… Read More
Posted on April 24, 2014 by richardgwyn
In Agota Kristof’s wonderful novel The Third Lie, Claus – or is it Lucas, his anagrammatic twin (the two central characters are indissoluble, or aspects of one and the same person) – spends his nights writing in a notebook…. Read More
Posted on January 19, 2014 by richardgwyn
Juan Rulfo and accomplice. This morning, after a restless night, I spent a couple of hours picking up books from the shelves around my room, almost at random, dipping into them, dropping them on the floor, where… Read More
Posted on January 4, 2014 by richardgwyn
Incredible the first animal that dreamed of another animal. Monstrous the first vertebrate that succeeded in standing on two feet and thus spread terror among the beasts still normally and happily crawling close to the ground through the… Read More
Posted on May 17, 2012 by richardgwyn
To schoolchildren of my generation, Sir Francis Drake was a hero, the epitome of English sangfroid, insisting on finishing his game of bowls before dealing with the Spanish Armada as it sailed up the Channel. It didn’t happen… Read More
Posted on October 2, 2011 by richardgwyn
Sometimes people ask really difficult questions. One of them, which crops up a lot, is ‘Who is your favourite living novelist’? First of all, it’s assumed it will be someone who writes in English, because the British and… Read More
Posted on August 2, 2011 by richardgwyn
Ricardo Blanco’s BlogRichard Gwyn is the author of Ricardo Blanco's Blog
