News from the Empire

Just the best thing I've read since discovering Asturias or Garcia Marquez. As sensual as Terra Nova and as informative as an encyclopedia. Like all Balzac in a single volume. I'll re-read and re-read this again and again. Interior monologues worthy of Joyce or Faulkner intertwined with clinically precise historic reporting. As obscure as Eliot and as direct as a newspaper. I'm overwhelmed.

News from the Empire gives a detailed history of the failure of France's nation building project in Mexico, an account of Maximilian's death at the hands of Benito Juarez' soldiers and Carlotas' protracted madness. A history written by the man whom many of us believe to be Mexico's greatest writer, Fernando del Paso. Those who love his Palinuro will find many of del Paso's same qualities of style in News from the Empire. Missing is the Joycean humor and ruthless puns. Here one is reminded more of Faulkner's loaded paragraphs and densely populated narrative; or of Ford Madox Ford's use of the unreliable narrator in the mad empress who is equally frustrating and equally demanding of our close reading. In other words, this is very much a modern novel: it requires us to be careful readers, then tempts us back for a second reading in which we discover a work even more delightful than the one we had first considered. I love this type of writing, works that demand some effort on my part. I would also add that I have now read both the Spanish original and the new English translation and find the latter to be amazing in its ability to retain the voice and style of the original.