From Eduardo Galeano, one of Latin America's greatest living
writers, author of the Memory of Fire trilogy, comes Children of
the Days a new kind of history that shows us how to remember and
how to live. This book is shaped like a calendar. Each day brings
with it a story: a journey, feast or tragedy that really happened
on that date, from all possible years and all corners of the world.
From Abdul Kassem Ismail, the tenth-century Persian who never went
anywhere without his library - all seventeen thousand books of it,
on four hundred camels; to the Brazilian city of Sorocaba, which on
February 8 1980 responded to the outlawing of public kissing by
becoming one huge kissodrome; to July 1 2008, the day the US
government decided to remove Nelson Mandela's name from its list of
dangerous terrorists, Children of the Days takes aim at the
pretensions of official history and illuminates moments and heroes
that we have all but forgotten. Through this shimmering historical
mosaic runs a common thread, one that joins humanity's darkest
hours to its sweetest victories. Children of the Days is the story
of our lives. "Eduardo Galeano is the great master of fragments and
splinters, a prince of the absurdly truthful. Children of the Days,
his Calendar of Human History, is an immensely varied gathering of
facts and oddments and truths and stories of every kind. Underlying
them all is a passionate and humane concern for the underdog, the
poor, the forgotten. How this can be so funny and at the same time
so moving is a great mystery". (Philip Pullman). "Bedtime stories,
you remember? This is a book of stories for each day of the year,
addressed to adults. Stories of the historical human venture. Each
story half a page. Put it beside your bed and the bed of those you
love". (John Berger). "Marries meticulous journalistic detail with
lyrical flair...Comprises 365 vignettes that range from the birth
of Chekhov (January 29) - "He wrote as if he were saying nothing.
And he said everything" - to The Saddest Match in History (November
21). But where to start? On QI, Alan Davies might pick January 1,
the first day of the year. It's where Galeano begins too, but only
so his inner Stephen Fry can point out that for Mayas, Jews, Arabs,
the Chinese and others, this day doesn't herald the New Year at
all, before adding the optimistic kicker that given the transience
of time, this day is as good as any other "to be bright and joyous
as the colours of an outdoor market". Of course, like most people,
I dipped in on my birthday". (Shaun Phillips, The Times). "Galeano
performs the sort of extraordinary feats of compassion, artistry,
and imagination achieved in fiction by his fellow visionary Latin
American writers, especially Borges, Garcia Marquez, and Bolano".
(Booklist, starred review). "Galeano's prose is nearly lulling in
its lyricism". (Neil Gordon, New York Times Book Review). "The
elegance of Galeano's words - they're just penetrating, so
beautiful". (San Francisco Chronicle, Danny Glover). "Galeano is a
superstar in the Hispanic world...His writing is full of candour,
empathy, humane concern [and] he has a wonderful eye for the quirky
...he evokes the wonders of a remarkable world that is not so bad
after all". (John Paul Rathbone, Financial Times). "The telling of
such secret histories makes it easy to see why Galeano is one of
Latin America's most influential writers ...he has produced
literature that will endure, monuments to the imagination". (Toby
Green, The Independent). Eduardo Galeano is one of Latin America's
most distinguished writers. 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 recipient of
many international prizes.
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