What do you think?
Rate this book
La ceinture de feu
'Long lines of solidified ash, zigzags of rubble, snakes of stone, broad stripes dividing the black earth.' That is Nicaragua in 1979, recovering from an earthquake even as it plunges into a revolution.
A French seismologist arrives to study the country's volcanic region. He soon becomes involved with the Sandinistas - workers and poets, priests and whores, young and old, invading the woods, occupying the underbrush, organizing strikes, disseminating propaganda. Among them are two brothers: Alvaro, thoroughly macho, and Abel, an irrepressible homosexual. They are fighting for the same cause, but their personal lives and loves make them enemies. Their separate destinies unfold in brilliant, hallucinatory sequences, against a background of city and countryside, mountain guerrilla bases and urban hideouts. A social and political revolution in action with its all-too-human undercurrents - sublime and squalid, tragic and comic, cowardly and heroic.
A French seismologist arrives to study the country's volcanic region. He soon becomes involved with the Sandinistas - workers and poets, priests and whores, young and old, invading the woods, occupying the underbrush, organizing strikes, disseminating propaganda. Among them are two brothers: Alvaro, thoroughly macho, and Abel, an irrepressible homosexual. They are fighting for the same cause, but their personal lives and loves make them enemies. Their separate destinies unfold in brilliant, hallucinatory sequences, against a background of city and countryside, mountain guerrilla bases and urban hideouts. A social and political revolution in action with its all-too-human undercurrents - sublime and squalid, tragic and comic, cowardly and heroic.
312 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1984
5 people want to read
About the author
Conrad Detrez
17 books2 followersConrad Detrez (1937-1985) was a Belgian (from 1982 on French) journalist, diplomat and novelist.
Abandoning his theological studies at the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain), Belgium, Detrez traveled to Brazil at age 25 and, while teaching French literature there, became involved in revolutionary politics. Deported by the Brazilian authorities, he went to Algeria and Portugal before settling in Paris in 1978. He became a French citizen in 1982.
Detrez’s first published works were translations of Brazilian authors and revolutionary essays. As his political disillusionment grew, he turned to autobiographical fiction. Ludo (1974) is a fictional account of his World War II childhood, and Les Plumes du coq (1975) treats the 1951 abdication of the Belgian king Leopold III. Detrez’s most celebrated novel is L’Herbe à brûler (1978; A Weed for Burning), in which he recounts with carnivalesque glee the fatal return of his disillusioned protagonist—who has wandered for years in South America—to a Europe sapped of its revolutionary zeal. Criticism of leftist intelligentsia continued to be a theme in Detrez’s later work. He also published one book of poetry, Le Mâle Apôtre (1982), and his novel La Ceinture de feu (1984), about a French scientist in war-torn Nicaragua, was translated into English as Zone of Fire.
Abandoning his theological studies at the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain), Belgium, Detrez traveled to Brazil at age 25 and, while teaching French literature there, became involved in revolutionary politics. Deported by the Brazilian authorities, he went to Algeria and Portugal before settling in Paris in 1978. He became a French citizen in 1982.
Detrez’s first published works were translations of Brazilian authors and revolutionary essays. As his political disillusionment grew, he turned to autobiographical fiction. Ludo (1974) is a fictional account of his World War II childhood, and Les Plumes du coq (1975) treats the 1951 abdication of the Belgian king Leopold III. Detrez’s most celebrated novel is L’Herbe à brûler (1978; A Weed for Burning), in which he recounts with carnivalesque glee the fatal return of his disillusioned protagonist—who has wandered for years in South America—to a Europe sapped of its revolutionary zeal. Criticism of leftist intelligentsia continued to be a theme in Detrez’s later work. He also published one book of poetry, Le Mâle Apôtre (1982), and his novel La Ceinture de feu (1984), about a French scientist in war-torn Nicaragua, was translated into English as Zone of Fire.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.