Destinations
Casa de Isla Negra, El Quisco, Chile
When Nobel laureate, Pablo Neruda, and his third wife, Matilde Urrutia, bought Casa de Isla Negra in 1938, it was a small stone cottage sitting loftily above the pounding waves of the Pacific Ocean. A lifelong lover of the sea, the poet was drawn to the property and bought it with an advance from his publisher. That investment paid off, as many of Neruda’s poems were inspired by, or even feature, the house, which, being the couple’s favourite of their three properties, has grown over the years.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez House Museum, Aracataca, Colombia
Born in 1927, in Aracataca, Colombia, Gabriel Garcia Marquez – affectionately known to Colombians as Gabo – immortalised his home town in the literary masterpiece, Cien Años de Soledad (100 Years of Solitude). A chronology of the Buendia family’s connection to the fictional town of Macondo (acknowledged by Marquez to be based on Aracataca), the novel blends the stories and experiences of Gabo’s childhood with a liberal dose of the paranormal.
Book Reviews
Review: Ten Women – Marcella Serrano
As the title suggests, Marcella Serrano’s Ten Women (AmazonCrossing, translated from Spanish by Beth Fowler) is a collection of stories detailing the lives of ten women in the Chilean city of Santiago. Nine of the women are patients of the tenth, Natasha; a psychologist who has brought them all together to meet for the first time. One by one, the women share their life stories.
Review: Against the Inquisition – Marcos Aguinis
Based on the true story of Francisco Maldonado da Silva, a Jewish doctor practicing (both medicine and religion) under the watchful eye of the Catholic Church, Against the Inquisition (AmazonCrossing, written by Marcos Aguinis, translated from Spanish by Carolina de Robertis) is a story of integrity and truth. Forced out of their native Spain by the Inquisition – first to Portugal and then to South America – Francisco’s ancestors have left a legacy for the generations to come; the key to the home from which they were exiled, and a secret identity.
Articles
Casa de Isla Negra, El Quisco, Chile
When Nobel laureate, Pablo Neruda, and his third wife, Matilde Urrutia, bought Casa de Isla Negra in 1938, it was a small stone cottage sitting loftily above the pounding waves of the Pacific Ocean. A lifelong lover of the sea, the poet was drawn to the property and bought it with an advance from his publisher. That investment paid off, as many of Neruda’s poems were inspired by, or even feature, the house, which, being the couple’s favourite of their three properties, has grown over the years.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez House Museum, Aracataca, Colombia
Born in 1927, in Aracataca, Colombia, Gabriel Garcia Marquez – affectionately known to Colombians as Gabo – immortalised his home town in the literary masterpiece, Cien Años de Soledad (100 Years of Solitude). A chronology of the Buendia family’s connection to the fictional town of Macondo (acknowledged by Marquez to be based on Aracataca), the novel blends the stories and experiences of Gabo’s childhood with a liberal dose of the paranormal.