My Uncle Napoleon

Name: Hedieh Tabrizian

Title: My Uncle Napoleon

Author:  Iraj Pezeshkzad

Language: Persian

Country: Iran

Publishing Date: 1970

    

SUMMARY:

This book is based on a rich man, who was the biggest brother of the family in Iran, and everyone called him Agahjon. He was divorced from his wife and lived with his daughter. Agahjon had seven brothers and sisters, who lived with him in his big house. He had a feeling that he was responsible for the family, but they ignored his feeling. As a result, that caused him to have mental problems.

 After a while he compared his life with a man called Napoleon. Then he imagined himself being Napoleon. His servant made the obsession of being Napoleon bigger by encouraging him that he was really Napoleon. At first, his family didn’t notice this serious mental issue, so it got worse as time went by. Furthermore, this issue became so worst that he actually thought he was a hero, and England was looking to kill him. Afterwards, his family tried to prevent his mental illness, but they were not successful. Hence, so Agahjon suffered a lot from this mental disease for a very long time. He ultimately died from this debilitating disease because of the extreme stress caused by it.

RECOMMENDATION:

This book, My Uncle Napoleon, is a timeless classic novel, known since the 1970s to this day. This novel was later adapted into a very successful Iranian TV series. It also has a lot of humor and family intrigue. The author Iraj Pezeshkzad shows how people influence each other in different ways that can be negative or positive. For instance, Pezeshkzad describes how some individuals can help others mental problems with good influences as well as some can make others worse by bad influences.

Lazarillo de Tormes

Name: Miguel Herrera

Title: Lazarillo de Tormes (Clasicos para Ninos/Classics for Children)

Country: Mexico

Language: Spanish

Author: Anonimo

Publishing Year: 2010 (Publisher: Selector)

SUMMARY:

This work is one that relates the Lazarillo de Tormes' life. It is a picaresque novel classified as exemplar, although previously it's classified as a work of imagination. This book talks about one boy who lives many situations in his life. In short, you will read about each event during Lazaro’s life

Lazarus, who passes from being a naive and innocent child without knowledge of life, to become the paradigm of "rogue" young boy who must defend himself in life to eat every day. A constant reference in this treaty will be the "hunger" Lazarus devoted all his efforts to deceive the blind, a man of great cunning, to get some food or wine each day. At the conclusion of the treaty, Lazarus come from all the beatings to which subjected him cheating on his blind master and leaving him to his fate.

This is a miserable man, who refuses to properly feed your servant, and save the few foods that are in your home locked in a chest. Lazarus, once again gripped by famine and emaciated, must sharpen his cunning to the maximum to gain a crust of bread to the mouth. Finally, I learned cleric boy deception and theft, decided to dispense with his services.

The Squire is a noble low level rundown, living in abject poverty but, still insists on maintaining a false image of tranquility, respectability and wealth. Lazaro not understand the pretensions of grandeur of his master, but takes pity on him and feeds many times. Hounded by creditors, Esquire flees the city, so this time is the master who abandons the servant.

Lazarus talks about his new master, a friar of the Merced no friend of the obligations of a religious and passed on from one place to another taking "certain businesses" whose nature is never clear. In addition, the treaty ends by saying: "For these and other things that do not count, I left my master." The ending leaves all possibilities open: what are these "little things" by Lazarus decided to leave the fray?

The Pardoner was a priest who used to tour the parishes selling bulls, papal indulgences that allowed those who bought did not have to meet certain religious precepts (like fasting, abstaining from meat during Lent, etc.). Lazarus describes the dirty tricks used by the priest to sell their bulls, without any true religious feeling and for the sole purpose of getting good returns.

Again, the master of Lazarus is a religious. In this case, the chaplain allows Lazaro work as aguador the city. Once the boy has gotten profits and could change their clothes, Lazarus decides to quit and find a new love.

After working with a sheriff (police) job that seemed too dangerous, Lazarus is at the service of an archpriest, who suggests that marries one of his servants. They have the gossips in town that actually desire the archpriest was giving an air of decency to his relationship with the wife of Lazarus, who was actually his mistress.

Lazarus, who knows the rumors, prefer to deaf ears have reached the "happiness" and some popularity in the city, yes, in exchange for giving up its honor and allow his wife's infidelities.

RECOMMENDATION:

This novel can show us about a guy’s life who doesn’t have nobody in his life, so he has to look for someone who can help him to survive. It’s a sad novel but at the same time it can show us how hard life can be, even if you are working and getting money, or working just to get something to eat.

The Alchemist

Name: Jessica Barbara Rocha Perez 

Country: Brazil 
Language:Spanish Book 
Title: The Alchemist 
Author: Paulo Coelho 
Year of Publication: 1988 
Image Source: Google 

SUMMARY: 
Santiago is a shepherd boy. He has a recurring dream about a child who tells him that he will find a hidden treasure if he travels to the Egyptian pyramids. An old tells informs Santiago that this dream is prophetic and that he must follow the instructions. Next Santiago meets a mysterious old man who seems able to have read his mind. This man introduces himself as Melchizedeck, or the King of Salem. He tells Santiago about good and bad omens and says that it’s the shepherd boy’s duty to pursue his personal legend. Santiago wavers briefly, selling his flock and purchasing a ticket to Tangier. Right after he arrives at this location, a thief steals all of Santiago’s money. Therefore, the shepherd boy then decided to find a way to make enough money to return home. He finds work in the shop of crystals. After r eleven months of working in the shop, Santiago is unsure on how to proceeds. He meets an Englishman who teach him the secrets of alchemy, or turning any metal into gold. Santiago arrives at the Egyptian pyramids and begins to dig. However, he finds nothing buried in the ground. Thieves beat Santiago and rob the money he was carrying. After he tells them of his dream, though, one of the thieves recount his own dream about buried treasures in the society of an abandoned church. After returning to Andalusia, Santiago goes back to the church where he dreamed of the treasure near the pyramids. He digs where he slept, beneath a sycamore tree, and there it is Santiago’s treasure. He learns a life lessons along the way. Santiago is a dreamer and a seeker. He stands for the dreamer and seeker in all, of us. The alchemist has many themes, but it’s the principal message and the people mostly follow their dreams.

RECOMMENDATION: 
Paulo Coelho is one of the writer and novelist. He is very well known in the world with more than 150 million of books sold across 150 countries. The book is translated in 80 different languages. Since October of 2002, he is a member of the Brazilian academy of books. This is where Coelho had received international nominated awards. One of the awards of them is the prestige distinction chevalier de l’ordne national de la region. Also, he received the gold medal of Galicia and the crystal award that’s given from the foro economico mundial. Coelho is the peace messenger of the unit nations. One of the most well-known books is the Alchemist, it talks about all the tools required to achieve anything in life.

El llano en llamas

Name: Andrew Martinez

Country: Mexico
Language: Spanish
Book Title: El llano en llamas (The Burning Plain)
Author: Juan Rulfo (Sayula, Mexico, 1918 - Mexico City, 1986).
Year of Publication: 1953

Image Source: Google

RECOMMENDATION:

Mexican writer; One book of short stories, The Burning Plain (1953), and a unique novel Pedro Páramo (1955), Juan Rulfon is enough to be recognized as one of the great masters of Latin American fiction of the twentieth century. His work, as brief as intense, occupies a landmark for quality position within the called Boom of American literature from the 60s, publishing phenomenon that gave the world the size of the new (and not so new, as in the if Rulfo) narrators of the continent.

SUMMARY:
El Llano en llamas (The Burning Plains) of Juan Rulfo, is a story of a boy called Deo, in which the narrator is part of it. First are at war, then he stays in a field about eight months caring for chickens (about four, one of the Jorseses was dying) and animals in general. When you are feeling useless comes Amancio Alcala, who made her notes and letters to Pedro Zamora to fight again, this time going in a better position than they had been before. Then derail a train and hence the government really angry Indians joined them (government) and only thought of killing them. All he did was flee the main character. Pedro Zamora died, say that again Mexico, behind a woman, and there you killed. The main character spent several years in prison for having the bad habit of stealing women. And that is how he met his wife of 14 years. Villagran all were dwarfs and graceless. At the end of the story the wife of the protagonist showing your child appears, the main character finds it very like him. She says, "but it's not bad people. It's not a murderer." All this was out of jail.

Cecilia Valdes: Cirilo Villaverde

Name: Adrian Segundo Medina

Country: Cuba

Language: Spanish

Book title: Cecilia Valdes or Angel’s Hill

Author: Cirilo Villaverde

Year of Publication: 1882 (First publication, New York)
Image Source: Google

SUMMARY:

The events happened at the colonial Havana, in 1830. Cecilia is an attractive and young woman from the poor class. She is Mulatta, and she doesn't know she is a illegitimate daughter of Candido Gamboa; a rich  Spanish that had a romance with a slave woman, her mother. The rich's son, Leonardo, didn't know about that too, and he falls in love of Cecilia. Together, they maintain a secret  relationship. Later, he severs his relation with Cecilia because of the prison from the social classes is in an age where whites were considered superior than other races. Cecilia encourages her friend to kill the rich young woman. He is called Jose Dolores Pimienta. He acknowledged doing that due to the reason that he loved Cecilia. Pimienta killed Leonardo after the victim married another woman that was a rich owner Finally, Cecilia  was pregnant from Leonardo and was hospitalized, where she reunited again with her mother before she died. This is a cruel history with a lot of feelings that the author writes with the purpose to show the hard and inhumane social system of the colonial and pro-slavery age in Cuba.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

The author Cirilo Villaverde was born and raised in a sugar mill in Cuba where he could see how slaves were treated in a cruel slave system imposed by Spain to Cuba. These experiences facilitated him to write  criticism about the lives of wealthy settlers, natives and slaves on the island. This author stood out to belong to the Cuban Movement for Independence. When the Spanish government learned his involvement in this, he escaped to America and settled in New York where he began to write for several magazines. Here, Cirilo published the novel Cecilia Valdes in 1882, which is the most famous Cuban novel of the 19th century. This novel mirrors the social problems of that period, while the author provides a moving story. Up until then, this book has been published on many instances. Moreover, Villaverde embodied the "Cubania" in his writing, which is a mixture of cultures from Spain and Africa (now the culture of Cuba).

Del Amor y Otros Demonios

Name: Karol J. Aguirre-Bedoya

Title: Del Amor y Otros Demonios (Of Love and Other Demons)

Country: Colombia

Language: Spanish

Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Year: 1994

SUMMARY:

OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS is a book talks about Maria, a teenager girl with long and red hair who is Marques’s daughter. Maria spends all her life surrounded by slaves because she did not get attention from her parents. Therefore, for that reason, Maria learned slave’s traditions. One day she was at the square and a dog bit her. After that, she had different behaviors. She had to face different procedures in her life until she met and fell in love with an old priest. Finally, Maria’s father knew about the romance between the priest and her; he did everything to keep them separated. At the end, she died because of love.

RECOMMENDATION:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. In 2008, the opera Love and Other Demons, by Hungarian composer Péter Eötvös was premiered at the Glyndebourne Festival.

This book was interesting to me, but I was expecting something different like a romance between a young couple. However, OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS, demonstrated how strong a love can be between two people without any importance of their age, social status or circumstances.