The Nine Guardians
The magic and malice of warring gods and men crowd this novel of Mexico’s turbulent history, written by Mexico’s most important modern women writer.
Rosario Castellanos’ towering fictional achievement is wonderfully conveyed in Irene Nicholson’s translation from the Spanish, giving the reader all the urgency of Indian resentment, the jealousies of childhood, the fascination of ancient myths, dzulúms and the Nine Guardians, and the isolation and tension within a tiny, doomed landowning class as it fights to keep its power.
Castellanos’ narrator, a seven-year-old girl, watches wide-eyed as the old order – where a few powerful landowning families and their male heirs could dominate a region politically and even sexually – breaks down. Into her world of nursery tales, Indian magic and religious superstition come new and powerful dangers.
“Castellanos’ art… is mesmerizing and beautiful.” PUBLISHERS’ WEEKLY
“Reminiscent of the works of Diego Rivera or José Clemente Orozco in its sweeping blend of social realism and fabulism.” RAIN TAXI book review
“In The Nine Guardians, Rosario Castellanos, acknowledged as one of Mexico’s most important writers of the twentieth century, gives us a new world that is fascinating and lovely, haunting and dangerous.” SMALL PRESS REVIEW
“Gripping reading, giving a sense of the scenery and tensions that surrounded one of the most important economic and social shifts of post-revolutionary Mexico.”
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Cover image by Mexican artist José Chavez Morado.