A note from Jaina Sanga

Once Upon Argentina – by Andrés Neuman – translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia

A blend of fiction, history, and autobiography, this novel is truly a breath of fresh air. Reading it, I felt that the art of storytelling is alive and well, that the author Andrés Neuman is someone who imagines both minutely and widely, and cares deeply about each sentence he puts on the page.  

The narrator, Andrés, tells the story chronologically from his birth in Buenos Aires, in 1977, to his family’s departure for Spain in 1991, when he is fourteen years old.  The story spirals and loops through four generations of his ancestors. These relatives, with roots in France and Eastern Europe, begin to arrive in Argentina—along with their passions and political tendencies—in the early 1900s. Family stories and national history intersect in interesting and often unexpected ways, so that ultimately what we get is a Bildungsroman of sorts, featuring not only the narrator, but Argentina the nation as well. 

The cast of Once Upon Argentina also includes “a handful of casual beings who complete our family picture.” For instance, Franca, a student of Andrés’s father appears for only a single paragraph yet becomes a memorable figure. Franca disappears when she is sixteen; the narrator insists that “she had to be somewhere: people don’t cease to exist from one day to the next without leaving any trace. Do they?” Implying that Franca is another tragically young victim of the government vendetta.

My favorite of these “casual beings” is José Luis, owner of the Pazzo Telmo ice-cream parlor, who befriends Andrés, and who in the final gesture of friendship, lets him win the game of chess and the wager of two kilos of grapefruit ice-cream.

The novel’s English translation by Caistor and García is superb. They even manage some impressive wordplay. Here’s a passage about the student roll call at school as it goes down the alphabet toward the name of the narrator’s classmate, Santos: “And the same letter that summons the silent, solitary, stolid, suffering, submissive, or smart, dragged Santos toward the principal’s desk.”

Neuman is the author of nearly three dozen books – novels, short story collections, non-fiction, and poetry. To see him at a live keynote event, come join DLS in February at the San Miguel Literary Festival!