Agua

by Eduardo Berti, Alexander Cameron (Translator), Paul Buck (Translator)

The year is 1920, and Luis Agua, an authorised representative of an electricity company, arrives in Vila Natal, an inhospitable village in Portugal. His objective is to convince the inhabitants of the benefits of artificial light. Before long Agua learns that the village and the castle that presides over it hide deep secrets. A noble widow in decline, a will that is both cruel and impertinent, a pioneer of aviation, an epidemic and an unexpected ending; these are the ingredients of this novel in which the themes of love, revenge, humour, death and greed come together to form an almost arithmetic narrative.

Genres: Fiction, Portugal

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Eduardo Berti (Buenos Aires; 1964); escritor y periodista argentino, hijo de un padre rumano emigrado a Argentina durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Reviews

[Rowena · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Mister Roger used two keen terms to differentiate between each group: those in favour of electricity were known as the 'illuminatists', and those parishioners who supported the friar became the 'obscurantists.'"

A story about electricity being introduced to a small Portuguese town in the 1920s doesn't seem like a story that could ever be intriguing but it turns out to be just that.While reading this book I was thinking about how it must have felt to suddenly have electricity introduced into one's community; electricity is something we take for granted now but reading this book shed some light on how progress isn't always welcome, in fact it is often looked upon with suspicion. At times it can even become political or ecclesiastical:

"And now they intend to place a light in our streets which is the same as sunlight, as though the day would never end..."

"The illuminated streets shed light on everything that had remained shadowy until then: poverty and madness, crime and bohemia, lies and prostitution..."

All that is further complicated by the strange clause of a will, and the breakout of the plague. Definitely a gripping read.

[Christine Lapping · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange, almost dreamlike short novel, that left me feeling that somewhere I had missed the point.

[Juan Fuentes · Rating 2 out of 5]

No he visto por donde cogerlo.

https://liblit.com/eduardo-berti-agua/

[Jeanette Petersson Munro · Rating 4 out of 5]

original

[Hank · Rating 3 out of 5]

For being located on the issues of inheritance, plague, and a family's preoccupation to lose (or keep) its lineage, Agua is a surprisingly expansive novel. Set in the 1920s, it concerns the lineage of a family who owns a castle in a small (one character is told that it doesn't exist) town near Coimbra, Portugal. Luis Agua's job is to sell the electric light to such towns, but his trip to Vila Natal is disrupted by obscure clauses in wills and African fever. Eduardo Berti, who won the Casa de las Américas prize in 2012, has one of a kind charm as a storyteller and doesn't slavishly wield us to a character or particular story. Rather, he swings our allegiances with aplomb questioning heritage, identity, and what the future will bring.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars.

[Iván]

Entre la publicación de Agua (1997) y Todos los Funes (2004), del que hace poco hablé aquí, pasaron solo siete años y una novela, La mujer de Wakefield, que espero también leer pronto porque Berti es de esos autores que lo dejan a uno con muchas ganas de seguir leyéndolos. El escenario de su primera novela es la región central de Portugal, donde Luis Agua va introduciendo la energía eléctrica pueblo por pueblo. El itinerario del funcionario de Douglas & Banks lo lleva a Vila Natal, una aislada aldea sin alcalde donde decide asentarse. En las cercanías hay un viejo castillo habitado por una viuda obligada a casarse otra vez, por testamento, si quiere disponer de las propiedades que le dejó su marido. El hombre que la puede ayudar con esta empresa es Pedro Broyz, un joven que completó la carrera de medicina en Coimbra pero no tiene ninguna intención de dedicarse a curar enfermos.

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