The Future Is Not Ours

Marcello Fois Memory of the Abyss Patrick Creagh, tr. MacLehose Press The tale of the legendary Sardinian hero Samuele Stocchino is brought to vivid life in this artful blend of history, myth, and inspired fiction. Death and mystery, ever present in Memory of the Abyss, beckon the reader on, page by tantalizing page. Marcelo Fois, a native of Sardinia, is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and dramatist. january–february 2013 • 61 Tewodros Fekadu No One’s Son Leapfrog Press Unwanted as a child and passed around among his relatives, Tewodros Fekadu recounts his devastating childhood in Eritrea and Ethiopia. This moving biography paints the picture of a boy overcoming adversity in search of a better life. Fekadu continues to be involved in the African community as a film producer and inspirational speaker. Nota Bene Sid, Markus, and the other denizens of his not-quite-our-world. And even in this roller-coaster Ragnarok, Doubinsky challenges us to think about religion and belief. Born in France, Doubinsky lives in Denmark, where he teaches French and English literature at the University of Aarhus. The author of several books of poetry and some ten novels published in France, he is bilingual. This is his second Englishlanguage book of fiction. His first was the The Babylon Trilogy (2009), a triptych of tales linked by a common setting and the passion for poetry and politics that animates The Song of Synth. That his fiction is not published and promoted by major presses is an outrage. That is it available at all is a gift, a wondrous opportunity for readers, and reassurance, however slight, that our civilization has not quite sunk to the vacuous level of Viborg City. (Note: The Babylon Trilogy is available in hardcover and e-book format [pspublishing.co.uk] and as a trade paperback from Black Coffee Press under the title Goodbye Babylon [2012].) Michael A. Morrison University of Oklahoma The Future Is Not Ours: New Latin American Fiction. Diego Trelles Paz, ed. Janet Hendrickson, tr. Rochester , New York. Open Letter. 2012. isbn 9781934824641 The Future Is Not Ours compiles twenty -three stories from fifteen Latin American countries, including Brazil. The anthology only includes authors born in or after 1970 and therefore provides readers with a definitively contemporary array of writers. Starting from a sensible rejection of clich és, Diego Trelles Paz affirms that the future indeed does not belong to the young, a fact that bears itself out in many of the stories’ meditations on rupture and uncertainty. For example, one of the best stories in the collection, “Fifteen Flowers,” by Federico Falco (b. 1977, Argentina), portrays the struggle for continuity in a rural community traumatized by a pregnant girl’s unexpected suicide. Written in a distinctive, coherent style that deftly combines the adult narrator’s comprehension of how he perceived life as an adolescent, Falco’s story is a poignant exploration of first loves, complicated friendships, and the outmoded community traditions that not only fail to help but actually hinder how young people understand their world. “Shipwrecked on Naxos,” by Ariadna Vázquez (b. 1977, Dominican Republic), intercalates letters with first-person narrative in a story about living in Mexico City that also contemplates rupture and continuity, this time in the figure of a 62 World Literature Today reviews young woman who struggles to piece together the disparate elements of her existence, which range from her job as a drug dealer to the demand by her eccentric landlord that she tell him stories once a week simply because her name is Ariadne. On the whole, the anthology succeeds in developing a nuanced representation of contemporary Latin American life as seen through its short-story writers, who focus on a broad range of topics but who do not, as Trelles Paz puts it, aim to explain “an era in its totality” or to “faithfully [span Latin America ’s] tragicomic history.” Additional examples that strengthen the anthology include “Any Old Story,” by Ricardo Flores (b. 1973, Guatemala ), about the brutal trials and tribulations suffered in Guatemala City by a young woman from the provinces; “Boxer,” by Carlos Wynter Melo (b. 1971, Panama), which concisely characterizes the longterm effects of condensed rage; and

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