To Bury Our Fathers: A Novel of Nicaragua - Softcover

Acclaim for Sergio Ramírez and To Bury Our Fathers

“Ramírez is the kind of moralist who concedes each of his characters their mystery, but with an irreverent laugh.” SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“Civilisation and barbarity: our outdated theme is transported by Ramírez into a great fictional comedy about the ways in which we Latin Americans disguise ourselves, deceive ourselves and sometimes even amuse ourselves, casting veils over Conrad’s ‘heart of darkness’.” CARLOS FUENTES in EL PAÍS

“Despite the racy colloquialism of this translation, To Bury Our Fathers is a book entirely outside any European tradition, and equally outside the ‘magical fantasy’ material which European readers of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez so frequently anticipate.” THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

“This is not a dreary novel full of left-wing propaganda...the revolutionaries in this often very funny book are not heroic figures cut out of Soviet wood. They are instead very human, sometimes ridiculously so...a must for any student of Latin America.” PUNCH

Read slowly and carefully in order to appreciate and absorb all its nuances...Dr Ramírez is as important as the substantial literary merits of his book.”        NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“To Bury Our Fathers is intricate and ambitious, composed of six interwoven stories shuffled together like a deck of cards....What is most surprising and refreshing about the work is its even-handedness, Ramírez has allowed some sympathy and understanding for virtually all of his characters, regardless of their politics.”  ARIZONA REPUBLIC

“A supporter of the revolution might be expected to urge his faith on others, but Ramírez’s concern with the past is humbler than that. His characters are battered survivors restoring their fathers to memory, honouring and forgiving them, laying them to rest. These are acts of grief, for which solace is as unfitting as despair.” IN THESE TIMES

“Powerful themes do not a novel – or a revolution – make, and it is precisely here that Ramírez succeeds so well. His novel is largely anecdotal, small stories told by small people.” TEXAS OBSERVER

“It spans 30-odd years of Nicaraguan politics and history but, despite its austere title, it is not just a grim catalogue of Somoza family atrocities and revolutionary endeavour. The book is episodic rather than epic, slipping from black comedy in the bullring and brothel to torture and humiliation on the battlefield. The characters – hedonistic colonel, hopeful, Quixotic presidential candidate, dissident National Guards and hard-up prostitutes – interweave themselves through Nicaraguan history and myth. And it is chastening to remember that some of the most awful of the events recorded – like the caging of prisoners in a presidential zoo – are not fiction but fact.” CITY LIMITS

“Herein lies the power of this historical fiction. We are not only given reasons and purpose for each side’s position in the struggle for a voice in Nicaragua, but we see and feel and understand real characters living lives based on their views.” SOJOURNERS

Sergio Ramírez, writer and former civilian leader in the Sandinista revolutionary government from 1985-1990, has now won the Cervantes Prize, the highest literary award in the Hispanic world. He wrote his great panoramic novel from exile, and this was the first Nicaraguan novel ever translated into English. The long years of dictatorship in Nicaragua are dramatically recreated as cabaret singers, activists, policemen, prostitutes, beauty queens and would-be presidents haunt this sophisticated, lyrical and timeless epic of resistance and retribution.

“One of the most talented Central American writers of his generation”  NEW YORK TIMES

Subtle and convincing..., the book never loses its linguistic power or elegiac emotion.” LOS ANGELES TIMES

Rich in vivid and sensuous details of everyday life...out of which come potent emblems” TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT