The Armies in Around the World in 80 Books

Nov 17, 2014 Bogdan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mundus-novus

Madness and irrationality of war is the subject of this interesting novel. After reading it, I can understand at least partially what people from rural Columbia must endure. And of course people from many other similar conflicts around the world. There is no "us" and "them", all parties in the war being equally brutal with the civilians.

The premise is just that: a war does not have anything good for anyone, but especially civilians are victims. This short novel shows brilliantly how a rural comm Madness and irrationality of war is the subject of this interesting novel. After reading it, I can understand at least partially what people from rural Columbia must endure. And of course people from many other similar conflicts around the world. There is no "us" and "them", all parties in the war being equally brutal with the civilians.

The premise is just that: a war does not have anything good for anyone, but especially civilians are victims. This short novel shows brilliantly how a rural community is ravaged by the war and the main character is a symbol of that destruction. His physical and moral degradation is, perhaps, a symbol of how the entire community is shattering into pieces. It is not the first novel on war and with this message, but the interesting idea I noticed in it is no bias towards any of the combatants. There is no difference between guerrillas or National Army. This is why my rating is 5 for premise.

Regarding the form, I believe that it fits well the book premise. The first person narration allows easier to add inner monologue that complements the otherwise simple epic flow. And by the way, regarding the epic of the novel, it is one of those books that can be summarized in less than a paragraph. So don't expect to happen too many things. Overall, I will rate it with a 3 for form.

In terms of originality, there are a lot of other novels on war including modern conflicts. This one brings an original idea that none of the armies are good. Civilians suffer from both guerrillas and regular army. Thus the title. So I will give it a 3 for the level of originality.

The characters are interesting, especially that they are seen from the narrator perspective. An old retired school teacher that used to live quietly with his wife that shared the same profession. Villagers are also fairly idyllic people until the war comes over them. I believe characters are a strong point of Mr Rosero, so I'll rate it with a 5.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, despite the simple story (as I said not too many things happen), there are many ways of interpreting this story. This means in has many messages in the text substrata. Thus, I will rate it then with a 4 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility, I heard of people being kidnapped in Colombia, but I never imagined that the conflict that generated these is going on for so long time neither that it has a devastating effect over Colombia's rural areas. My rating for credibility is then 5, as it was an eye opener.

The last criteria is edition. I liked the covers, that despite being a paperback were from a thicker paper. I also liked the translation as with all good translation, it was not interfering with the original message of the novel. I will rate it with a 4.

To summarize, I liked this interesting novel and it made me realize that Colombia is a country torn apart due to a conflict lasting for over 50 years. All in all, my final rating for it is 4.14, which I will round it to 4 on Goodreads system.


+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 4.14 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+