Columbus's Egg: New Latin American Stories on the Conquest

by Nick Caistor (Editor)

This anthology of contemporary Spanish American fiction both celebrates and challenges the legacy of inheritance from Spain and the discovery of the Americas. Contributors include Juan Jose Saer, Luis Britto Garcia, Miguel Angel Asturias, and others. All but two of the stories are published here for the first time.

Genres: Short Stories

162 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1992

About the author

Nick Caistor is a British journalist, non-fiction author, and translator of Spanish and Portuguese literature. He has translated Cesar Aira, Paulo Coelho, Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Marsé, and Manuel Vázquez Montalban, and he has twice won the Valle-Inclán Prize for translation. He regularly contributes to Radio 4, the BBC World Service, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian. He lives in Norwich, England.

Reviews

[El Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps inevitably, this enjoyable anthology put together to mark the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the New World has fallen into deep obscurity. My rating was only the 4th on Goodreads and when this is finished it will be the first review.

That is almost certainly the way for most anthologies of this nature. By definition they lose the relevancy of their raison d'être pretty quickly. After all, who was looking to read a book this a year after publication? (I will draw a veil of the fact that I sought out a copy in 2024).

The way we think about European colonisation of the Americas has moved on a long way in the last 3 decades so while I think the majority of the stories still hold up the collection's intentions while admirable at the time do feel less sophisticated than we would expect now. The list of contributors would almost certainly be better than 25% female and the lack of indigenous or even overtly mestizo voices would seem even more egregious than it should have done then.

[Nooks Full Of Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Predictably, some stories were better than others but I did not actively dislike any of them. I have noted down a few authors whose stories I have enjoyed the most - I would like to check out more of their work!