Granta 155: The Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists 2: An Indigenous Take

There were high hopes with this Spanish literature issue. Having read latin American novels before I’ve enjoyed the creativity especially Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

This collection brings together Spanish writing from Spain and Latin America. Interestingly, for a country with such a large Spanish speaking population USA is conspicuously absent, not Philippines, with one African country now represented. This was an opportunity to showcase upcoming young writers and no doubt does.

Valerie Miles take about a sonant quality to the writing, the sound of local languages, be it urban or regional. All the contributions are fiction. All the writers are young, what Valerie calls having attitude, who dare. She talks about humour in the irony and satire although I didn’t feel moved by the eccentricity and obscurity of some of the stories.

Take Jose Adiak Montoya which is an indigenous take on the birth of christ – promising but not memorable. Some do stay with you such as Michel Nieva’s Dengue Boy involving the near future and mosquitoes, an attempt at originality. There are many stories here to pluck from however, I could not engage with them emotionally enough to have wonder and life in the individual stories.