Terra Nostra

by Carlos Fuentes

Paperback, 1976

Status

Available

Call number

863.64

Genres

Collection

Untitled collection

Publication

Farrar Straus Grioux (1976), Edition: Cover Worn, Paperback

Description

Chronological time is abolished and space concentrated into one area in a multi-dimensional pageant of Spanish history and culture that touches upon a facets of human experience.

User reviews

LibraryThing member eluminati

A vast, hugely ambitious novel aiming at nothing less than the unification of the myth systems of Europe and the Americas. Time, as we typically think of it, is meaningless in Terra Nostra. Layer upon layer of history, image, symbol, and allusion make the experience of reading the book more like

losing oneself in a complex painting. The eye barely knows where to fall next, and this makes it delightful and fascinating for readers who crave difficult, astonishing books. It's also one of the most delightfully anti-Christian books I've ever read, which is just a wonderful added bonus.

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LibraryThing member Mdshrk1

This book is on the same lines as "One Hundred Years of Solitude," though I don't find it as lyrical. Perhaps this needs to be reread several times.

LibraryThing member abirdman

A huge, difficult (possibly due to its translation) novel that rises to the level of literature. Well worth the effort of hefting it.

LibraryThing member DinadansFriend

This is an extended dream, more or less working on a biography of Charles V of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor. We meet his master huntsman, and enabler, Guzman, and Tiberius, the roman emperor, Elizabeth I of England, somehow married into the Spanish Royal family, and many or conflated portraits,

combining the entire sixteenth century. But it never grabs me with the immediacy of "The Old Gringo". Readable, and full of "Look! there's X!" moments.

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LibraryThing member jonfaith

This massive meditation on the Conquest and its effect on imaginations, moralities and all related matters pertaining to worlds both New and Old hit me like a cinder block. I recall going to Day's Espresso at the time, such a locale offered magnificent lattes, they made me fat. I didn't care. I

loved this book. There is a well of intertextuality within which is nerdy yet effective.

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