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From the book
jacket: The town of Río Fugitivo in
Bolivia is on the verge of a social
revolutionnot a revolution of strikes
and street riots but a war waged
electronically, where computer viruses
are the weapons and hackers the
revolutionaries. In this war of
information, the lives of a variety of
characters become entangled: Kandinsky,
the mythic leader of a group of hackers
fighting the government and
transnational companies; Albert, the
founder of Black Chamber, a state
security firm charged with deciphering
the secret codes used in the information
war; and Miguel Sáenz, Black Chamber's
most famous codebreaker, who begins to
suspect that his work is not as innocent
as he once supposed. All converge to
create an edgy, fast-paced story about
personal responsibility and complicity
in a world defined by the
ever-increasing gulfs between the global
and the local, government and society,
the virtual and the real.
Comment: Edmundo Paz Soldan is
the author of six novels and two short
story collections (he is also a prolific
blogger in Spanish). He has won the
National Book Award in Bolivia, the
prestigious Juan Rulfo Award, and was a
finalist for the Romulo Gallegos Award.
He is currently an assistant professor
at Cornell University and is one of the
leading lights of the McOndo movement
- a growing group of South American
writers who favor cultural realism over
magical realism. As Salon
wrote in a
2004 article, "the fantastic,
picturesque, mango-happy lifestyle --
flying grandmothers, 100-year rainfalls,
butterfly storms -- that saturated the
Latin American literary landscape in the
1970s has made its permanent exit. The
characters in more recent Latin American
novels are middle-class city dwellers
with TV sets and Internet connections.
If people fly, it is because they're on
airplanes or drugs."
Apparently the term McOnda derives
from McDonalds, Apple Macs and condos.
The movement is led by a new generation
of South American writers, particularly
from Chile, who take issue with how
South American literature has been
pigeon holed by magical realism for 30
years (pretty much since Gabriel García
Márquez published One Hundred Years
of Solitude in Argentina in 1967,
with an English translation three years
later).
Turing's Delirium is a dark,
political thriller set in the near
future, in the fictitious city of Rio
Fugitivo, in Soldan's home country of
Bolivia. Incidentally, Rio Fugitivo was
also the setting of his previous novel,
The Matter of Desire. Turing's
Delirium is an ultra-contemporary
novel that, as we're bandying about
literary terms, would probably be
categorized by those who decide such
things as cyberpunk (i.e. fast-paced
science fiction involving futuristic
computer-based societies); but, please
don't let that description put you off -
this is an excellent, fast-paced story,
and an interesting contemplation on the
nature of personal responsibility.
In addition, through the character of
Albert, the mysterious first director of
the Black Chamber, we learn much about
the history of cryptanalysis - and a
fascinating history it is too.
The first few chapters are a little
slow - because the novel is told from
the perspective of seven different
characters in three different persons -
first, third, and the slightly awkward
second - which takes a bit of getting
to grips with, but once the groundwork
is laid the plot moves at a fair clip,
offering many reasons to keep reading,
not least of which is the opportunity
to experience a different side of
Bolivia from what most of us imagine -
suffice to say, it ain't all ponchos and alpaca!
As always, you can browse an excerpt and
the full range of media reviews for
yourself; and, if you have the time, I
recommend the interview with Soldan.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in September 2006, and has been updated for the June 2007 edition. Click here to go to this issue.
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