Leopard in the Sun (Vintage International)
- Book Review,
by LAURA RESTREPO, STEPHEN LYTLE (Translator)
From Publishers Weekly
Basing her transcendent novel on contemporary events in her native Colombia, Restrepo (The Angel of Galilea) tells a riveting tale of the vicious war between two families made wealthy by crime and clandestine business. Nando Barrag n begins his career selling Marlboros on the black market. In a surge of drunken rage, he impulsively kills his beloved cousin, Adriano Monsalve, over the attentions of a widow, and immediately "knows he has entered the fathomless domain of fate." Although he desires penance, he is informed in a dream that his rash act means a terrible new existence for both families: the Monsalves and the Barrag ns are bound to slaughter each other until all the males on one side are dead. Each act of vengeance is ritually committed on a zeta, or anniversary, of a family death, and the violence continues for two decades until only four Barrag n males are left. Battle-hardened Nando heads the Barrag ns, and Adriano's nouveau-riche younger brother, Mani, married to beautiful Alina, leads the Monsalves. Then Alina gets pregnant and issues an ultimatum: one more murder and she will leave Mani. Unfortunately, that murder is already in motion. Mani's efforts to launder his money and lifestyle and win back his wife, and the escalation of the war past the bounds of prophecy and tradition until it requires drug money and hired assassins, are the forces that drive the novel toward its tragic end. Restrepo's singular narrative style, in which her present-tense exposition is frequently interrupted by conversations between neighborhood onlookers, who debate the particulars of the story being told and present their own versions, retains echoes of magic realism, but has a freshness that is all its own. Brutal, intense and beautifully written, the novel delves deep into family hierarchies, the heady glamour and destructive power of sudden wealth and the play between fact and legend. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
This family epic set in contemporary Colombia holds all the indulgent pleasures of the tragic, steamy telenovellas watched by the novel's characters. The Monsalves and the Barragans are related criminal families launched by a single murder into a bloody war of revenge against each other. Most of the characters are easily identifiable types--the golden child, the brute, the secretly sexy maiden aunt, the beauty queen--which the author remains faithful to in her description; the attractive characters remain gods and goddesses, the unattractive are portraits of hideous brutality. As each family builds up its shady, prosperous businesses, its members continue cyclical, ritualistic assassinations of the opposite clan, a culture of violence that ultimately destroys the book's central love story. Despite all the blood spilled and tortures endured, this is old-fashioned brutality, based on traditions and loyalty, until the story's end, when cocaine becomes the family business and enemies become global. In narration that includes commentary by unseen, omniscient town gossips, Restrepo combines prose swollen with sensory description and magical exaggeration with a journalistic precision. Gillian Engberg
From Kirkus Reviews
Leopard In The Sun ($23.00; Sept. 1; 256 pp.; 0-609-60386-8): A yeasty melodrama, first published in 1993, about the violent underpinnings of her country's thriving drug trade, by the Colombian author of The Angel of Galilea (1998). It's an amusingly over-the-top tale about the ``chain of blood'' that links together several generations of the rival Barrag n and Monsalve families: a bitter ongoing feud that spawns epic sexual rivalries and brutal assassinations, and features such boldly drawn characters as businesslike crime boss Mani Monsalve, emotionless ``young prince of horror'' Raca Barrag n, and the imperturbably erotic ``La Muda,'' a mature beauty whose virtue is reputedly protected by ``a chastity belt with thirty-six sharp teeth in front and fifteen in back'' Subtle it isn't, but Restrepo keeps the pot boiling energeticallyproducing an improbably entertaining, guilty-pleasure Colombian Godfather. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"A writer who captures a hitherto hidden way of life. . . . A writer who illuminates a world." --The Washington Post Book World
"Laura Restrepo breathes life into a singular amalgam of journalistic investigation and literary creation . . . and infuses [her novels] with unmistakable reading pleasures." --Gabriel García Márquez
"This family epic set in contemporary Colombia holds all the indulgent pleasures of the tragic, steamy telenovellas watched by the novel's characters." --Booklist
"A gripping tale of passion and revenge." --New Woman
Review
"A writer who captures a hitherto hidden way of life. . . . A writer who illuminates a world." --The Washington Post Book World
"Laura Restrepo breathes life into a singular amalgam of journalistic investigation and literary creation . . . and infuses [her novels] with unmistakable reading pleasures." --Gabriel García Márquez
"This family epic set in contemporary Colombia holds all the indulgent pleasures of the tragic, steamy telenovellas watched by the novel's characters." --Booklist
"A gripping tale of passion and revenge." --New Woman
Book Description
In Laura Restrepo's stunning novel, a feud between two Colombian drug families escalates into a bloody, high-stakes war that will leave no one in its path untouched. The Barragáns and the Monsalves are rival clans, each steeped in wealth and power, each subject only to laws of their own making. The similarities end there. While the Barragáns, headed by the brutal Nando, remain tied to the ancient traditions, the Monsalves grapple with whether or not to follow Mani, their charismatic and conflicted leader, into a modern age in which even fewer rules apply. As both clans ponder the profits they might reap from an expanding global cocaine trade, Nando and Mani are faced with the consequences of their violent pasts--and forced, by their disillusioned women and the prices on their heads, to reckon with the possibility that nothing will be left once all their bullets have found their targets.
Rife with sensual detail, this epic story of lust, betrayal, and revenge is as timeless as interfamily conflict and as immediate as today's news.
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish
From the Inside Flap
In Laura Restrepo's stunning novel, a feud between two Colombian drug families escalates into a bloody, high-stakes war that will leave no one in its path untouched. The Barragáns and the Monsalves are rival clans, each steeped in wealth and power, each subject only to laws of their own making. The similarities end there. While the Barragáns, headed by the brutal Nando, remain tied to the ancient traditions, the Monsalves grapple with whether or not to follow Mani, their charismatic and conflicted leader, into a modern age in which even fewer rules apply. As both clans ponder the profits they might reap from an expanding global cocaine trade, Nando and Mani are faced with the consequences of their violent pasts--and forced, by their disillusioned women and the prices on their heads, to reckon with the possibility that nothing will be left once all their bullets have found their targets.
Rife with sensual detail, this epic story of lust, betrayal, and revenge is as timeless as interfamily conflict and as immediate as today's news.
From the Back Cover
"A writer who captures a hitherto hidden way of life. . . . A writer who illuminates a world." --The Washington Post Book World
"Laura Restrepo breathes life into a singular amalgam of journalistic investigation and literary creation . . . and infuses [her novels] with unmistakable reading pleasures." --Gabriel García Márquez
"This family epic set in contemporary Colombia holds all the indulgent pleasures of the tragic, steamy telenovellas watched by the novel's characters." --Booklist
"A gripping tale of passion and revenge." --New Woman
About the Author
Laura Restrepo livse in Bogotá, Colombia.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"That guy over there, sitting with the blonde, that's Nando Barragán."
Word runs quickly through the dimly lit bar. It's him, Nando Barragán. A hundred eyes steal furtive glances at him. Fifty mouths speak his name.
"There he is. He's one of them."
Wherever the Barragáns go, they are followed by murmuring, cursed through clenched teeth, secretly admired, deeply hated. They live on constant display. No longer allowed to be themselves, they have become what people say and think about them, living legends, constructed from the lies told about them. Their lives are no longer their own, but have become public domain. They are idolized, repudiated, imitated, and, most of all, feared.
"Sitting there at the bar, that's the boss, Nando Barragán."
The words glide across the dance floor, passing from table to table, and are multiplied in the mirrors on the ceiling. The palpable fear is diminished somewhat by the black lights, but a sharp tension cuts through the clouds of smoke, disrupting the tempo of the boleros coming from the jukebox. Couples stop dancing. The beams of light from the mirrored balls glow blue and violet, warning of danger. Palms become sweaty and hair on the backs of necks stands up. Ignoring the whispers and detached from the commotion that his presence produces, Nando Barragán, huge and yellow-skinned, smokes a Pielroja cigarette as he sits on a tall stool at the bar.
"What color is his skin?"
"Burned yellow, just like his brothers'."
His face is pocked with holes as if he had been attacked by birds, and his nearsighted eyes are hidden behind black Ray-Bans with reflective lenses. A greasy T-shirt shows beneath his guayabera shirt. From a heavy chain over the ample chest, hairless and glistening with sweat, a solid gold cross of Caravaca, heavy and powerful, hangs ostentatiously.
"The Barragáns all wear the cross of Caravaca. It's their good luck charm. They use it to ask for money, health, love, and happiness."
"They may ask for all four things, but the cross brings them only money. The others, they've never had and they never will."
Next to Nando, on another stool, a corpulent, formidable blonde crosses her legs provocatively. She is squeezed tightly into a black elastic bodysuit, a disco mesh, through which a large amount of mature skin and a satin bra, size 40C, can be seen. Her colorless, plain eyes are heavy with mascara, eyeliner, and shadow. She throws her head back and her long blond hair whips her back like stiff straw, revealing black roots. Moving with the sensuality of an alley cat, she has the mysterious dignity of an ancient goddess.
Nando Barragán looks at her adoringly and his crude warrior's heart melts drop by drop, like a holy taper burning on an altar.
"The years have been kind to you. You're beautiful, Milena. Just like you always were," he says, then punishes his throat with the raw smoke of his Pielroja.
"And you, all covered with gold," says the blonde, her voice hoarse and sensual. "When we met you were poor."
"I'm still the same man."
"They say you have cellars full of dollars, all piled up. They say your dollars are rotting, that you have so many you don't know what to do with them."
"They say a lot of things. Come back to me."
"No."
"You went with that foreigner to get away from here. You went so far you forgot all about me."
"It was a bad memory. They say you leave only widows and orphans behind. What evil things have you done to make so much money?"
The man doesn't respond. He downs a shot of whiskey and chases it with Leona Pura. The sparkling bubbles of the clear soda bring back a vague memory of children playing baseball in the dirt, with broomsticks for bats and bottle caps for balls.
The Monsalve gang enters and all hell breaks out. Nando Barragán and the blond woman are still at the bar, their backs to the entrance, and the burst of shrapnel throws them into the air.
"Nando and the blonde were talking and kissing, with their legs intertwined, when they were shot. I was there, in the bar, and I saw it with my own eyes."
No. That night Nando never touched Milena. He treats her with the respect that men have for the women who have left them. He talks to her, but he does not touch her. All he can do is look at her longingly.
"How do you know how he looked at her if he was wearing sunglasses? It's just talk. Everybody says what he thinks, but nobody really knows anything."
People are not so naive, they know what's going on. Nando's suffering was plain to see, like a faded aura around his body. When he's with Milena he loses his reflexes. He can't sense the danger lurking around him, because it's overshadowed by a deep anxiety that makes him forget everything but her. And he trembles. She's the only person who's ever made him tremble. She's the only one who ever said no to him.
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