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A Luminous Republic

Andrés Barba,

Edmund White (Foreword)

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Dec 11, 2020 Tony rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, kids, setting-south-america, translated-fiction

This dark tale about a tragedy involving 32 quasi-feral children in a fictional South American provincial city carries the qualities of a fable. It's narrated some 25 years after the events by a civil servant who was involved at the time, almost as if the reader is in a dark sitting room with him. Almost the story of a witness giving their account, with all the distance that implies. The format carries the whiff of remorse and pensive bewilderment that accompanies gothic tales told before a fire This dark tale about a tragedy involving 32 quasi-feral children in a fictional South American provincial city carries the qualities of a fable. It's narrated some 25 years after the events by a civil servant who was involved at the time, almost as if the reader is in a dark sitting room with him. Almost the story of a witness giving their account, with all the distance that implies. The format carries the whiff of remorse and pensive bewilderment that accompanies gothic tales told before a fire -- as the reader is aware that at some point, how 32 children died is to be revealed.

The narrator moved from the capital to this city of 200,000 on the edge of the jungle, to take a high-level position in the local government in the Department of Social Affairs. The city has its usual share of homeless street children, who beg on the streets, but at some point a new group of 10-13 year olds become evident. They act strangely and seem to speak their own language, and while at times seem to function as a collective, do not appear to have any leader. Their activities grow somewhat bolder, as they attack and rob people, and the authorities are pressed to get them under control.

Comparisons to Lord of the Flies are inevitable -- and it's presumably no coincidence that this story's group of 32 is exactly double the 16 from Golding's classic story. But what it all means is rather slippery -- there are threads around society's expectations of children and the construction of childhood, there's a running theme of race and otherness involving the indiginous people of the region, there's themes of marital love, parental love, and the manufactured nature of both, the uses and construction of language, and so forth. But whether it all congeals into something moving or meaningful will vary significantly from reader to reader.

It came as no surprise when I learned, after reading the book, that the author had studied philosophy as a student, as some sections felt more like his working through ideas than the narrator's own headspace. As an exploration of the nature of objective "understanding" it again calls back to a long legacy of gothic horror, but I can't say I quite went for it, But since it can be read in an evening, it's also not a huge commitment if any of the above sounds interesting. ...more

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