Schavelzon Graham Agencia literaria Barcelona

Hunter of Stories

NON FICTION. SIGLO XXI, 2016. 272 PAGES

The 21st century is not turning out to be a great one. The abuses of a system made up of rich people getting richer and richer and screwed really screwed are the order of the day. The fleas are still dreaming of buying a dog and the nobodies are still dreaming of getting out of poverty. In this work, which he finished a year before his death, Eduardo Galeano goes hunting in that jungle to show us with crudeness, with humor, with tenderness the world we live in, laying bare certain realities that, despite being within reach, not everyone gets to see.

But, as its title suggests, El cazador de historias also reveals the narrator who lurks behind all the stories. And so, although he was always reticent to talk about himself, Galeano closes this book with a handful of beautiful and powerful stories that are surprising both because they offer clues to his biography, to his childhood and youth, to his early travels in Latin America, to the people who marked his life and his writing, and because they express his ideas about death. Far from any lament, with the pure impulse of curiosity and imagination, he wonders what the end will be like, what desires, affections or needs will appear then.

Eduardo Galeano created a work that did not go unnoticed, culminating in this book. Several generations have read it with fruition and will surely continue to do so, because some fires, silly fires, do not light up or burn; but others burn life with so much desire that one cannot look at them without blinking, and whoever approaches them lights up.