Hunter of Stories

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By Eduardo Galeano

Translated by Mark Fried

Read by Jordi Caballero

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The internationally acclaimed last work by the legendary Latin American writer

Master storyteller Eduardo Galeano was unique among his contemporaries (Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa among them) for his commitment to retelling our many histories, including the stories of those who were disenfranchised. A philosopher poet, his nonfiction is infused with such passion and imagination that it matches the intensity and the appeal of Latin America’s very best fiction.

Comprised of all new material, published here for the first time in a wonderful English translation by longtime collaborator Mark Fried, Hunter of Stories is a deeply considered collection of Galeano’s final musings and stories on history, memory, humor, and tragedy. Written in his signature style — vignettes that fluidly combine dialogue, fables, and anecdotes — every page displays the original thinking and compassion that has earned Galeano decades and continents of renown.

  • "This is Galeano's parting gift, arriving to us, like a message from another dimension, from beyond the grave. It is more generous, wise, and wonderful than I dared hope."
    Naomi Klein,author of No Is Not Enough
  • "Galeano was a master of the shattered story. He had a way of making realism magical without being a magical realist. This book is yet another demonstration of his brilliance."
    Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things
  • "Story-hunter and -gatherer Galeano has captured a covey of extraordinary tales from the wise everybodies of the world and from his own wise observations. They are medicine for our times-tales to break our hearts open and restore us our humanity. To experience them alone is transformational. But to watch them soar to their full potential, they must be released from captivity and read aloud."
    SandraCisneros, authorof House on Mango Street
  • "Like a magician, combining on the page the arts of reading, storytelling and civic ethics, Eduardo Galeano conjures up for us long-forgotten images of our many worlds. If, as we have always suspected, our geographies spring from our stories, Galeano is our master geographer."
    Alberto Manguel, author of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
  • "Meticulously sculpted...with the lively and inimitable voice of a passionate rebel and storyteller... With a keen sense for ironic reversals and equal measures of sly humor, empathy, anguish, and hope, this compendium of bite-size stories of resistance (elegantly translated by longtime collaborator Fried) is a worthy addition to the celebrated oeuvre of a writer who remains a towering figure both as an artist and a voice of conscience across Latin America and the world."
    Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review
  • "Bittersweet it is to read the final offering of a beloved, erudite, and wholly gifted author... In his nearly 75 years, Galeano continually spoke truth to power, yet also fostered beauty and a stylistic legacy all his own... Hunter of Stories is a fitting, final work of a man who spent his days (and undoubtedly so many nights) envisioning a finer world for all."

    Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books
  • "A fitting final flourish for a literary giant of the Latin American left."
    Kirkus Reviews
  • "[Galeano's] trenchant social critique and playful style suffuse these posthumously published vignettes: some deeply personal, many fiercely political, others simply wise and penetrating, and nearly all humorous, whether satirical or self-mocking... A swan song from one of Latin America's greatest storytellers, this work is rich with social conscience, humor, insight, outrage, and love. Recommended to all."
    Library Journal, Starred Review
  • "Arranged with a novelist's gift for narrative sequence, a journalist's skepticism, and a storyteller's flair for dramatic tension... Each brief entry provides a snapshot into the rich imagination of one of the twentieth century's finest writers... A fitting finale for a lifetime of incisive writing."
    Booklist, Starred Review
  • "Hunter of Stories is a fitting bookend to Galeano's impressive literary career and a necessary book for all those who, like the author, care for the suffering of others and believe in the power of words to change minds and, perhaps, the world."
    World Literature Today
  • "A highly satisfying final collection of the great Latin American writer's ­signature ­vignettes, a swirling mix of history, philosophy, fable, poetry, ­humor, memory and conscience."
    Wall Street Journal

On Sale
Nov 14, 2017
Publisher
Hachette Audio
ISBN-13
9781478989547

Eduardo Galeano

About the Author

Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) was one of Latin America’s most distinguished writers. A Uruguayan journalist, writer, and novelist, he was considered, among other things, “a literary giant of the Latin American left” and “global soccer’s preeminent man of letters.” He is the author of the three-volume Memory of Fire, Open Veins of Latin America, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, The Book of Embraces, Walking Words, Upside Down, and Voices in Time. Born in Montevideo in 1940, he lived in exile in Argentina and Spain for years before returning to Uruguay.

His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. He is the recipient of many international prizes, including the first Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, the Casa de las Americas Prize, and the First Distinguished Citizen of the region by the countries of Mercosur. Galeano once described himself as “a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.” Isabel Allende, who said her copy of Galeano’s book was one of the few items with which she fled Chile in 1973 after the military coup of Augusto Pinochet, called Open Veins of Latin America “a mixture of meticulous detail, political conviction, poetic flair, and good storytelling.”

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