Children of the Days
A Calendar of Human History
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2.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A fearless, poetic, day-by-day account of human history, narrated by one of Latin America's most beloved and influential writers
"The amazing Galeano has done it again. History becomes poetry, and mythology becomes politic." — The San Francisco Chronicle
Unfurling like a medieval book of days, each page of Eduardo Galeano’s Children of the Days has an illuminating story that takes inspiration from that date of the calendar year, resurrecting the heroes and heroines who have fallen off the historical map. Readers will encounter the Brazilians who held a “smooch-in” to protest against a dictatorship; the astonishing day Mexico invaded the United States; and the “sacrilegious” women who had the effrontery to marry each other in a church in the Galician city of A Coruna in 1901, and many others.
Beautifully translated by Galeano’s longtime collaborator, Mark Fried, Children of the Days is a majestic humanist treasure that shows us how to live, guiding us through our darkest hours and sweetest victories.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his latest, Uruguayan author Galeano (Memory of Fire) spreads the history of human civilization across a year's worth of impressionistic and factual daily entries. With each passing day, details of an important event or one lost to history's selective memory illuminate the humanity and barbarism of our species. Good and evil, beauty and ugliness, generosity and greed all are juxtaposed to great effect. An example that sets the conflicted tone for the entire work comes early on January 12, Galeano writes of the morning in 2007 when famed violinist Joshua Bell played unheeded to hurried masses of subway commuters in Washington, D.C.; the next day, TV evangelist Pat Robertson blames the massive 2010 earthquake in Haiti on the Haitian citizens themselves. The only criticism that can be leveled at Galeano's grand calendar is a familiar one the days just aren't long enough. Each takes up less than a page, and while their brevity adds to their impact, it also makes it difficult to slow down to appreciate each snapshot. Perhaps it is a challenge from author to reader to take one day at a time. Whatever Galeano's intention, this is a heady portrait of the human story rendered in broad, though no less incisive and affecting, strokes. 12 b&w illus.
