Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Signet Classics (1966), Edition: 1st Paperback American, Paperback, 222 pages
Description
Ricardo G�?iraldes? spent much of his childhood in the countryside living a life nearing that of a gaucho. He studied architecture and law but did not finish his university education. He was a friend of Jorge Luis Borges who founded the magazines? Mart�?n Fierro? and? Proa.
User reviews
LibraryThing member EricCostello
A novel set at some indefinite time in the late 19th/early 20th century in Argentina. The narrator starts out as a street urchin, until he falls under the sway of a strong, silent gaucho. The boy runs away from the aunts he hates and rides the pampa with his "godfather," learning the ways of the
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gaucho, which we see in a number of interludes. There comes a time when he comes into his own, in more ways than one, and has to part with Don Segundo, the gaucho master. Very evocative of a different time, with a strong flavor like the Old West, only with knives and not six-shooters. Codes of honour and the like. A very quick and absorbing read. The author himself (a friend of Borges) died quite young, at 41. Recommended. (After writing this, I read a review, which more or less called it a boys' book, and noted heavy Kipling and Twain influences. I can see that.) Show Less
LibraryThing member Gypsy_Boy
I’ve had this for ages but was finally prompted to read it by seeing it included in the Folha de São Paulo list. A coming of age story (written in 1926) in some ways, simply told. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing particularly creative or inventive--just a timeless story, very well done. (I must
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confess that I disliked the translation by Harriet de Onis, which seemed to prize literal accuracy over sensibility. That said, de Onis was largely, and single-handedly, responsible for introducing serious Latin American Spanish- and Portuguese-language literature to America in the 1950s and 1960s. She was a remarkable woman with a remarkable biography and was personally responsible for translating an astonishing number of major writers into English for the first time: Alejo Carpentier, Ernesto Sabato, Ricardo Güiraldes, Jorge Amado, Alfonso Reyes, Fernando Ortiz, João Guimarães Rosa, Gilberto Freyre. But all of her translations—and I have read many of them—have a literality about them that can be more or less off-putting.) Still, I had not realized the place of this particular book and having read it, confess that I’ll be looking for other works by Güiraldes. Show Less
Language
Original language
Spanish
Original publication date
1926
Physical description
222 p.; 7 inches
ISBN
0451503171 / 9780451503176