Macondo to MacOndo

Macondo stands for Magical Realism genre of the Boom writers such as Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar and Carlos Fuentes. These titans dominated the Latin American literary world in the last century. But in the post-Boom period, there is a new crop of writers who have embraced a neorealistic style of portrayal of the Latin American culture. These writers are said to be part of the MacOndo movement in the new era of MacDonalds globalisation.

Rio Fugitivo is the name of the fictional Bolivian town in Soldano's stories just as Macondo was in Marquez's novels.

In his blog, also titled as Rio Fugitivo, Soldano introduces himself saying, " I was born in the same country and year (1967) in which Che Guevara died". 

Edmundo Paz Soldan, the Bolivian writer, is a prominent name in the MacOndo genre. After having read “Turing’s Delirium”, I have just finished reading another one “ The Matter of Desire”. I found this one even more interesting and delightful than the first one.

The Matter of Desire is the story of Pedro from Bolivia, whose father, a revolutionary dies while fighting against the dictatorship. Pedro follows in his father’s footsteps to study in Berkeley and tries to decipher the coded messages in his father’s book titled Berkeley. After graduating in political science, Pedro teaches in a university in New York where he falls in love with Ashley an American student.

Soldan has produced a thrilling story, combining the political reality of Bolivia and the academic culture in the university campus of US in an insightful way.

Soldan studied in Berkeley and is teaching Latin American Literature at Cornell University since 1997

I am going to look for more books of Soldan, for sure…