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As part of La Antigua Guatemala’s town fair celebrations of Santiago, there are books stands right on Central Park. These book fairs are a great opportunity to get Latin-American literature a discounted prices.

Today I bought four books for Q25; that’s about the price of an economic meal in La Antigua Guatemala. El examen by Julio Cortazar, Ensueños and Demián by Hermann Hesse, and Amor y Pedagogí­a (3 novelas ejemplares y 1 prólogo) by Miguel de Unamuno are part of our library and my to read list. With those four books and three more books given to me recently by LAGDP readers I pretty much have my books to read for the rest of year. I am a slow reader; I wish I was not.

I am in the middle of The Divine Husband by Francisco Goldman, which was given to me recently as a present (Thanks! you know who you are). When I finish reading this amazing Guatemalan novel by Francisco Goldman, I will embark in two Canandian novels: The Age of Longing by Richard B. Wright and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood thanks to Pues sí­ tú Manolo.

If you are in Antigua right now, don’t let this opportunity to buy some great Guatemalan literature go by; bookmark a stroll to Central Park.

L-R: Ronald Flores, Ana Marí­a Rodas, Javier Payeras, Julio Serrano, Francisco Alejandro Méndez

As I have shared with you, last Saturday I went to listen to the Guatemalan writers of the post-war in a dialogue they held about Contemporary Central American Literature. Those of us who attended were lucky enough to listen to the opinions and positions of Francisco Alejandro Méndez, Julio Serrano, Javier Payeras, Ana Marí­a Rodas, Ronald Flores, Allan Mills and Juan Pablo Dardón. Except for Ana Marí­a Rodas (the lady in the picture above) who belong to writers’ generation of 1960-1970, all the other Guatemalan writers and poets belong to the post-war period.

The Guatemalan civil war began after a successful overthrow of the freely-elected Guatemalan government by the CIA coup “Operantion PBSUCCESS” in 1954. The Peace Accords were signed by the end of December 1996, after the death and disappearance of more 200,000 people.

So, in the forum on Saturday there were two generations of Guatemalan writers, each with its own style and specific issues to write about. Ana Marí­a Rodas and Mario Roberto Morales belong to the war years and thus they find it very difficult to understand the very prolific post-war generation and the subject-matter they choose to write about.

I like reading both generations of writers, but I most definitely identify with the post-war writers and their disenchantment with the right and left wings and the war and its aftermath as a whole. Anyway, I do not want to bore you with all the details of the dialogue between the writers. Suffice it to say, it was a great evening and the dialogue continue afterwards in a local restaurant in Central Park. As to not bore you with all this dry writing, I prepared a mini photographic chronicle. If you click at the photos below, you can get more details and background information from the titles of the photos.

If you guys want me to write a little review about some of the Guatemalan writers of the post-war period and all their incredible novels and poetry, please, let me know. I will be more than happy to comply. In the mean time, if you can read Spanish, please visit the blog of Allan Mills to get an literary overview of the night.

Photographic Chronicle of the Diálogo sobre Literatura Centroamericana Contemporánea

Sometimes, you just feel like abandoning all reason and common sense in order to have bacon for breakfast. Sure, fresh fruits with honey are tasty and colorful, but it doesn’t compare with a ‘real’ antigüeño breakfast with refried black beans, eggs, charcoal-broiled tomatoes, bacon and a strong cup of the best coffee in the world.

See, even a fancy-looking Guatemalan breakfast includes the black beans and eggs. With today’s photo you have seen three different versions of the Guatemalan breakfast. For sure, you remember the Typical Guatemalan Breakfast at Fernando’s Kaffee and the fast-food version of the Typical Breakfast served at Pollo Campero. Would you have a Guatemalan breakfast tomorrow morning if you were given the opportunity?

The Guatemalan Writers Side Note:
For being such a tiny banana/coffee writers republic, Guatemala does produce and export quite a few good writers. I have mentioned some of them in this site like Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Pepe Milla, Ronald Flores. But, I have not done enough to talk about the great Guatemalan Literature written by its many excellent writers. Thanks to a comment by Coltrane_Lives about the possibility of his adopted Guatemalan daughter becoming a writer, I can point out a great Guatemalan novel written in English by Francisco Goldman, a respected journalist whose work appears often in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books and Harper’s (source: literaturaguatemalteca.org [ES]). “Francisco Goldman won accolades and international recognition with his extraordinary first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens, the winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts… ” (source: amazon.com). Another great contemporary novel is Ruido de fondo (background noise) by my dear friend Javier Payeras. Javier Payeras is one of the clearest and loudest voices of this generation and his poetry and prose has won the recognition in and outside Guatemala. Ruido de fondo has been reissued by the Guatemala’s Government Editorial Cultura to be required reading for High School students in Guatemala. For those who are fluent in Spanish, I leave the link to one of my favorites poems by Payeras: Soledadbrother.

I have said that I really enjoy being in this building so many times that you might actually believe that I work for the PR department of Agencia Española de Cooperación International in La Antigua Guatemala. I do not, just to get it right out in the open. However, I do check out books sometimes and read magazines from Spain from the Biblioteca (library) from time to time.

Honestly, I just cherish the atmosphere of the building. On the other hand, one thing I really want to do is sit on the bench in the corner, in the other side of the fountain, for lunch and read Un paseo en primavera (ES) by Ronald Flores. I could really get on the shoes of the protagonist, a tourist guide, since I’ve been told by Maggied that I am her personal tour guide. Just wait Maggied, I am preparing your invoice. Interestingly enough, the one thing I did not want to be was a tourist guide, nor I wanted for this site to become a touristic guide; it seems I have failed at both.

For now that is not possible because of the rainfall in the afternoons. I just have to wait until I can sing Requiem for the rain again. Also, I need to get an autographed copy of Un paseo en primavera from Ronald, like my friend Juan Carlos Escobedo.