Two Crimes by Jorge Ibarguengoitia. Boston. 1984. David Godine. 0879235209. Translated from the Spanish by Asa Zatz. 201 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Teresa Fasolino. Jacket calligraphy by Richard Lipton. Author photograph by Jerry Bauer.
DESCRIPTION - ‘The story I am going to tell begins on a night the police violated the Constitution . . . ‘ From this opening sentence, it is clear we are in Ibarguengoitia country, a world of seduction, repression, deception, and, surprisingly, humor. Marcos, a Mexico City radical, is on the run, escaping the anti-terrorist net. He heads for the provincial town of Muerdago and the home of his rich invalid uncle, Ramon Tarragona. To the intense suspicion of his cousins, all of whom are counting on the riches the old man's death will bring, Marcos is welcomed with open arms by Ramon. And there are other arms in the household even more welcoming. So begins a game of bluff and counter-bluff in which nothing is ever what it seems, a dangerous game in which the two crimes the title leads us to expect become more inevitable with each move. TWO CRIMES is a thriller, and an exciting one, but it is more than that as well: a novel of greed and passion, told with the dark, laconic irony that marks this most original of writers. ‘A writer of genuine, exciting originality. - SALMAN RUSHDIE, author of SHAME and MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN.
In paperback:
Two Crimes by Jorge Ibarguengoitia. New York. 1985. Avon/Bard. 0380896168. Translated from the Spanish by Asa Zatz. 197 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - ‘LIFE HAS HANDED ME A SCREWING' - So young radical Marcos Gonzalez, alias El Negro, often lamented. Plus he was fast learning that one thing could get him in deeper trouble than his politics. Women. Politics had made him a fugitive, running for his life from the Mexico City police to the home of a rich uncle in a provincial town. But three women-each with irresistible charms - would trap him in a dangerous game of greed and passion, bluff and counterbluff, where nothing was as it seemed. except murder. ‘A clever, fast-clipped, extraordinarily subtle novel of intrigue and murder. . . and an unsettling account of political repression and revolution, whose mirror image is reflected in the deadly love and power struggles of a single doomed family.' - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. . . ‘As in DEAD GIRLS, Ibarguengoitia has once again managed to transmit the particular flavor of provincial Mexico's brand of sanity.' - SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Ibargüengoitia Antillon (Guanajuato, Mexico, January 22, 1928 - Madrid, November 27, 1983), was a Mexican novelist and playwright who achieved great popular (though not always critical) success with his satires, three of which have appeared in English: Las Muertas (The Dead Girls), Dos Crimenes (Two Crimes), and Los Relámpagos de Agosto (The Lightning of August). His plays include Susana y los Jovenes and Ante varias esfinges, both dating from the 1950s. In 1955, Ibarguengoitia received a Rockefeller grant to study in New York City; five years later he received the Mexico City literary award. Often, in his fiction, he took real-life scandals and subjected them to whimsical, sardonic treatment. Thus, Los Relámpagos de Agosto (1964) uses cartoonish mayhem to debunk the Mexican Revolution's heroic myths; improbably it won for its author the Premio Casa de las AmEricas, despite or because of the consternation which its flippancy caused. For Las Muertas (1977) he turned to the most outrageous criminals of his native state: the brothel-keepers Delfina & María de Jesús González, whose decade-long careers as serial killers emerged in 1964. Ibarguengoitia himself met a tragic end, on what became one of the blackest days in Latin American artistic history: having visited Paris, he perished (along with Peruvian poet Manuel Scorza, Uruguayan critic Angel Rama, Argentinian academic Martha Traba, and 176 others) in the Madrid air disaster of November 1983. La ley de Herodes (1967) is a collection of short stories, most of which are clearly based on details from his own life. He describes, among many other events, the misadventures of getting a mortgage in Mexico and his experiences at Columbia University's International House. Like his novels, these stories combine farce, sexual peccadilloes, and humor. ‘Las Ruinas que Ves' is a farce based on realistic details of academic life that are still visible in early 21st century Guanajuato: the clanging of church bells disconcerting a speaker, cutting the ribbon at museum openings, the set of cultural movers and shakers who have known each other since kindergarten. ‘Maten al Leon' although set on an imaginary island is another novel mirroring Guanajuato (or perhaps Mexican) society; its details are comic but the end is dark. Ibarguengoitia was also known for his weekly columns in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior which have been collected in a half dozen paperback volumes. His novels are also available in paperback. The writer has been quoted as saying he never meant to make anyone laugh, that he thought laughter was useless and a pointless waste of time. He is buried in Antillon Park in Guanajuato where a talavera plaque marks his remains. In translation, it says simply, ‘Here lies Jorge Ibarguengoitia in the park of his great-grandfather who fought against the French.'
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