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Lope de Aguirre, a conquistador, exchanges all that he once held sacred--family, career, king, and God--for the powers of evil, in a surreal, ironic, erotic novel by the Argentinian author of The Dogs of Darkness.

Written in Spanish in 1978 but only now published here, Posse's imaginative but ultimately facile novel posits that Lope de Aguirre, maddest and cruelest of the proverbially mad and cruel conquistadores, did not die leading a splinter of the conquistador Pizarro's campaign into the depths of Amazonia in 1561, as was previously thought, but sustained himself, his band of followers and his depraved sense of mission for another four centuries. In this way, Posse's Argentinian magical realism strives to eclipse the literal history of the European engagement with America: deep in the interior, Aguirre's men become drones of an extraordinarily voluptuous tribe of exogamous Amazon women, but--being Christians--are soon restless and double back to the European fringe on the coast. Then they depart in search of El Dorado and actually find the legendary great golden dune, but the quantity and sterility of the wealth there depresses Aguirre's spirit. So he abandons his mission, elopes with a nymphomaniac nun, and by 1802 has set up house in the still undiscovered city of Machu Picchu. There, for a time, he devotes himself to concupiscence rather than power and empire. Posse's ( The Dogs of Paradise ) slapdash narrative follows the manic character of his hero, to whom any whim is already a half-realized marching order, but the author's literary assertiveness, even combined with sensual detail, still amounts to a thin and glib gloss of 400 years of history.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In view of the 500th anniversary of Columbus's conquest, this 1978 work by Argentine author Posse is making a timely debut in English. This example of conquistador revisionist history is set in South America and relates the adventures of Lope de Aguirre, an aggressive fighter who initially supported Pizarro in his quest for Peru. In this dark version, which combines elements of exorcism, witchcraft, lust, and rapacity, Aguirre forsakes his leader by pledging himself to the Devil and launches a competing campaign in the grandiose manner of Alexander the Great. With the exotic jungle and primitive culture as backdrop, this surreal retelling of his native continent's history will deepen the positive reception he received with the appearance of The Dogs of Paradise ( LJ 9/1/90), his first novel to be translated into English. Recommended for academic and public libraries with Latin American literature collections.
- Mary Ellen Beck, Troy P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.