Trafalgar in Around the World in 80 Books

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Sep 11, 2021 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: author-white, publdate-1970s, author-woman, genre-scifi, transl-spanish, z-challenge-readtheworld21, z-read-gelesen-2021, 5-star, a-reviewed, genre-short-stories

Quite, quite brilliant. I can see why Ursula LeGuin loved Gorodischer so much that she teanslated her book Kalpa Imperial. And Gorodischer pays homage to LeGuin: she mentions LeGuin as one of the authors avidly read by her title character, the marvellous, the maverick, the ever-surprising Trafalgar Medrano.

This reminded me of Orlando Furioso and of Dostoyevski. It is also part travelogue, part fable, part adventure romp, part tall tale (or is it?), and all highly enjoyable, beautifully written s Quite, quite brilliant. I can see why Ursula LeGuin loved Gorodischer so much that she teanslated her book Kalpa Imperial. And Gorodischer pays homage to LeGuin: she mentions LeGuin as one of the authors avidly read by her title character, the marvellous, the maverick, the ever-surprising Trafalgar Medrano.

This reminded me of Orlando Furioso and of Dostoyevski. It is also part travelogue, part fable, part adventure romp, part tall tale (or is it?), and all highly enjoyable, beautifully written speculative fiction. The stories are all told as nested tales, with the narrator sitting in their local café-bar (for some of the stories) and listening to Trafalgar tell of his travels as an intergalactic tradesman. And what a raconteur is Trafalgar! Pacing his stories to excite his interlocutors' curiosity to fever pitch, teasing with and withholding information, delivering punch lines with understated bravado and garnishing all with profound philosophical musings. Trafaglar is a bon viveur: he loves his strong black coffee, his black cigarettes, his food, and he loves having sex with women on all planets -- and the most memorable sex he has ever had is precisely not with a beautiful young princess (of whom there are plenty on the diverse planets) but with a lovely I won't spoiler it.

The story of the planet where the natives all seem like uncultured savages reminded me so strongly of one of my favourite LeGuins, where people eschew their past technological achievements and live on a spiritual plane. Another planet splits itswlf into parallel universes -- or is the whole universe spliced thus? A third planet is boring in its respectability and reasonableness and exiles anyone who is poetic into crazyland. Yet another adventure reveals a deep ethical flaw in Trafalgar's behaviour while a different adventure shows his humane side.

The translation by Amalia Gladhart flows well with some clunkinesses. The Penguin paperback has too-tiny font (this is par for the course with Penguin, shame on them) and the cover, though in lovely relief, didn't appeal to me with its pseudo-Picassoesque drawing (designed to make this look like Literature rather than sci fi?). Drawing by Sofia Salazar.

What is a scandal is that this was published in Argentina in 1979 and not translated into English until 2013 (!).

Chosen for the #readtheworld21 challenge of 2020s South America. ...more

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Dec 28, 2013 Vesra (When She Reads) marked it as to-read

Shelves: tbr-2013, e-book, fiction, pc-200-299, short-stories, t, author-g, science-fiction-fantasy, c-black, pub-small-beer-press

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Dec 18, 2023 Charlene Oleah rated it liked it · review of another edition

2.5

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Around the World in 80 Books