Carolina Trujillo
The Return of Lupe García (De terugkeer van Lupe García)
For ever in love
Gono, the narrator, fell in love with Lupe García at school the day he met her. She had returned from exile in The Netherlands, where she and her mother had fled the military dictatorship that, for years, had imprisoned her father in the Penal, a notorious jail. Later, Lupe goes back to The Netherlands to study journalism but visits her country of birth every year. After finishing her studies, she returns to South America, planning to make a documentary about the jail.
She hires Gono, now an unemployed, alcoholic barman, as production assistant. Partly due to his heavy drug use, the entire project is derailed and is transformed into violent revenge against the former executioners of the military regime.
At least, Gono manages to realize the original aim of the documentary to film inside the notorious Penal – by ending up there himself. De terugkeer van Lupe García (De terugkeer van Lupe García) tells the story of a lost generation that does not know what to do with itself.
But Trujillo’s story is humorous and told at cinematic speed, with a quick succession of scenes full of absurd, colourful detail, bizarre characters and both comic and dramatic events. It is also a beautiful love story, about a man who manages to make his adolescent love his own by making a great sacrifice and, in doing so, is separated from her. In that sense, the story can be compared with Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Marquez, in which both lovers keep missing each other throughout their lives. In Trujillo’s novel, it is the military dictatorship which separates married couples from each other and their children, causing the pain to be passed on to a second generation. It is a formidable theme, but treated by Trujillo with stylistic bravura, humour and a beautifully constructed plot, which makes the story all the more exciting.
Publisher
J.M. Meulenhoff
Herengracht 507
NL - 1017 BV Amsterdam
TEL. +31 20 553 35 00
FAX +31 20 625 11 35
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.meulenhoff.nl
Rights
Guillermo Schavelzon & Asociados Agencia Literaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.schavelzon.com
Publishing details
De terugkeer van Lupe García (2009, 331 pp)
Biography
At eighteen, Carolina Trujillo (b. Montevideo, 1970) wrote her first novella, in Spanish. After graduating from the Film Academy in Amsterdam, she published her first novel, De bastaard van Mal Abrigo (The Bastard of Mal Abrigo), in Dutch, in 2002. It was awarded the Marten Toonder/Geertjan Lubberhuizen Prize for literary talent. De terugkeer van Lupe García (The Return of Lupe García, 2009) is her second, much praised novel. It received the BGN Literature Prize and was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize.
Dossier
Quotes
Trujillo has written a poignant novel that lingers in your mind for a long time.
Trouw
The seemingly light tone of the novel makes even the craziest situations seem credible. It’s true that the revolution eats its children, as De terugkeer van Lupe García proves with Latin American verve.
Knack
A novel in which great passion is kept in check by great skill – a novel about putting one’s past behind one, leaving the reader helpless and torn.
Jury report BNG New Literature Prize 2009