Tyrant Memory by Horacio Castellanos Moya (Trans. from the Spanish by Katherine Silver, New Directions, 2011)

I read this novel a few months after having read Moya’s The She-Devil in the Mirror (New Directions, 2009), both translated by Katherine Silver. They are equally captivating, both written, at least in part, in the voice of a woman who, although apparently apolitical, ends up being, through her record (her diary in Tyrant Memory; her monologue in The-She Devil) an incredible witness to a crisis in a chaotic San Salvador. I should add that the author himself, born in Honduras but raised in El Salvador, has been living in exile as part of the City of Asylum project in Pittsburgh.

The events in Tyrant Memory take place in 1944, when the general leading the country with a dictatorial fist is forced to resign after weeks of political turmoil. The crime in The She-Devil is non-political, but the background is the chaos of post-civil war. Both novels have an immediacy that reminds me of Bolaño’s style in The Savage Detectives (though I confess I only managed to read half of that novel). Although Tyrant Memory doesn’t claim to adhere strictly to history, I couldn’t help notice the slight inadequacy of the word “Nazi” used by both the opposition and the general to insult each other. I doubt the word was used in this way in 1944.

Moya is a writer definitely worth reading, and his translator, Katherine Silver deserves, I think, as much praise as him for her outstanding translations.