Dona Ines versus Oblivion by Ana Teresa Torres

Dona Ines versus Oblivion by Ana Teresa Torres

Dona Ines is the narrator of this wonderful novel that follows the history of Venezuela from the 18th century to the present day. Claiming to be a descendant of the earliest conquistadors, she is a wealthy landowner and member of the ruling class in Caracas - a small village in the 1780s. Dona Ines is obsessed with a legal wrangle over a parcel of land, now a cocoa plantation, for which the deeds has disappeared. Is the land hers, or does it belong to Juan del Rosario, the illegitimate son her husband had by one of their slave women? A village name Curiepe has been built on the land but Dona Ines has had the local governor evict its slave population and burn it down. So is set a pattern that moves through two centuries, beyond the death of Dona Ines, who continues to narrate the story from beyond the grave. We follow the descendants of her own line and the slaves, in a continuous bloody battle for the land, mirroring the country's many civil wars. Modernization and railways arrive and people's lives change dramatically but the battle between the classes, for the land, is only resolved in the twentieth century, when tourism offers some kind of solution. Here is a broad, vivid canvas, peopled with a nation's history and conflict, dotted with Venezuelan words and rituals, a beautifully-phrased eye-opener of a novel.

Born in Caracas in 1945, Ms Torres trained in clinical psychology and worked as a psychoanalyst before becoming a writer. She is the author of three previous novels and is a regular cultural columnist for El Universal in Caracas.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780297643746
ISBN 10	0297643746
Title	Dona Ines versus Oblivion
Author	Ana Teresa Torres
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Orion Publishing Co
Year published	1999-11-11
Number of pages	320
Prizes	Winner of Mobil Pegasus Prize 2000
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.