The Old Man Who Read Love Stor

Antonio Jose Boliva Proano, an old man who has lived in peace with the Shuar Indians in Ecuador's jungle for over 40 years, takes part in a hunt for an ocelot whose cubs were killed by a gringo and who now kills men

Gold prospectors, gringo intruders and seedy adventurers murder indigenous peoples, slaughter endangered species and turn Ecuador's lush jungle into a wasteland in this short, poignant novel with a resounding environmental message. Living in a hut in the jungle for over 40 years, Antonio Jose Bolivar Proano, now an old man, reads romantic novels to fill the void left by the death of his wife from malaria years ago. From the Shuar Indians, Antonio has learned to live in harmony with nature; he participates in their secret rites and drinks hallucinogenic potions with them. Then an unscrupulous mayor forces the reluctant Antonio to take part in the hunt for an ocelot whose cubs were killed by a gringo, turning her into a predator that stalks and kills men. The ensuing horrific confrontation between man and cat reveals the extent to which human depredations have tortured wildlife and disrupted ecosystems. Chilean writer Sepulveda, a political exile living in Germany since 1980, worked in the Amazon jungle for UNESCO, and his intimate familiarity with the land and all its creatures illuminates a taut, moving parable.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From a Chilean living outside his country, a provocative novella set in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. The village of El Idilio is remote, to say the least, and twice a year an itinerant dentist makes his way up river to rid the villagers of their oral afflictions. One of the dentist's buddies is an old-timer to whom he brings a six-month supply of the romance novels he loves to read. Antonio Jos{‚}e Bol{¡}ivar and his wife had gone into the jungle to live, but the jungle claimed the life of his beloved; Antonio at first blamed the jungle, but as time passed--as he passed time spent with the Indians of the region--he came to appreciate the jungle as the magnificent entity it is and to appreciate the destructiveness "civilization" brings to it. Now Antonio lives a village existence, alone with his romance novels. But when a female ocelot begins carrying out a reign of terror in the area, Antonio's expertise in jungle ways is called upon to get rid of the problem. Over her beautiful dead body he sheds tears, and to his romance novels he retreats. As simple on the surface as a fable, this economically presented tale is, true to a fable, deeply resonant--in this case, about the need for a worldwide ecological mind-set. Brad Hooper