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A review by hsinjulit
The President and the Frog by Caro De Robertis
4.0
De Robertis wrote my favorite book ever, Cantoras (my review), and one of her other novels, The Gods of Tango (my review), is also among my top reads. Even before I flipped open the first page of The President and the Frog, I knew their writing is going to embrace me like an old friend, as flowing as breathing, and it certainly did.
I finished the book on the 74th anniversary of 228 Incident in Taiwan with a mug of hot yerba mate on my desk. For me personally, I don’t know if there was a more fitting time to read it. There is no way to not read this as a political work. The references of global politics are evident and impossible to miss.
Told in duo timelines, we follow an unnamed ex-president (82) of an unnamed Latin American country through an interview with Norwegian reporters in the present timeline. The ex-president realized that the interviewer seemed to be different from all previous reporters, asking questions like she really cared and understood, and he wondered if he would end up sharing his deepest secrets in this interview after all. We learn more about this secret in the past timeline, his history before being a president as an imprisoned guerilla who had no one to talk to but a boisterous talking frog.
Whether or not the frog really communicated with the president is up to each reader’s interpretation. The best thing about the story is that most characters were unnamed, not the president nor the frog nor the reporter. Because there were no names for them, you could either say that their stories were already lost in history and no one remembered the names, or that the book is universal, and hence no need to have names, no need for specificity. I tend to think of it as the latter, especially with the president’s country being unnamed, too.
It is a political piece with this ex-president representing South America, “North” alluding to the US during the Tr*mp era, Norway as Europe, and the Japanese flower-teacher Mr. Takata symbolizing the whole Asia. With all the dirt in the past timeline mostly taking place in a dingy hole of a prison cell and the lush garden of the ex-president’s humble abode in the present time, the main theme is life itself. From the earth, the dirt, sprouts flowers and other plants, and in turn, hope and a better future. It is about going through rock bottom and being reborn again, still having the power to live, the will to survive, and the fight left in him. There is also an underlying theme of generational pain from war and familial love through rebirth. From what I had gathered, the whole story expresses the idea of the world having a shared history as well as a shared future.
The President and the Frog is a book on political ideologies and idealities, a story paying tribute to Uruguayan ex-president José Mujica, whose personal journey this fictional president’s mirrored. It is almost a biography, but the fictional and fantastical elements made it more relatable for the global audience in the present day.
content warnings: incarceration, physical abuse, torture, mention of gun wound, animal injury, police brutality, mention of death, queerphobia, rape, mass shooting, blood, mention of war
I received digital review copies from Knopf via Edelweiss & NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Buddy read with Gabriella!
I have NEVER been SO EXCITED for another ARC in my life!!!
I finished the book on the 74th anniversary of 228 Incident in Taiwan with a mug of hot yerba mate on my desk. For me personally, I don’t know if there was a more fitting time to read it. There is no way to not read this as a political work. The references of global politics are evident and impossible to miss.
Told in duo timelines, we follow an unnamed ex-president (82) of an unnamed Latin American country through an interview with Norwegian reporters in the present timeline. The ex-president realized that the interviewer seemed to be different from all previous reporters, asking questions like she really cared and understood, and he wondered if he would end up sharing his deepest secrets in this interview after all. We learn more about this secret in the past timeline, his history before being a president as an imprisoned guerilla who had no one to talk to but a boisterous talking frog.
Whether or not the frog really communicated with the president is up to each reader’s interpretation. The best thing about the story is that most characters were unnamed, not the president nor the frog nor the reporter. Because there were no names for them, you could either say that their stories were already lost in history and no one remembered the names, or that the book is universal, and hence no need to have names, no need for specificity. I tend to think of it as the latter, especially with the president’s country being unnamed, too.
It is a political piece with this ex-president representing South America, “North” alluding to the US during the Tr*mp era, Norway as Europe, and the Japanese flower-teacher Mr. Takata symbolizing the whole Asia. With all the dirt in the past timeline mostly taking place in a dingy hole of a prison cell and the lush garden of the ex-president’s humble abode in the present time, the main theme is life itself. From the earth, the dirt, sprouts flowers and other plants, and in turn, hope and a better future. It is about going through rock bottom and being reborn again, still having the power to live, the will to survive, and the fight left in him. There is also an underlying theme of generational pain from war and familial love through rebirth. From what I had gathered, the whole story expresses the idea of the world having a shared history as well as a shared future.
The President and the Frog is a book on political ideologies and idealities, a story paying tribute to Uruguayan ex-president José Mujica, whose personal journey this fictional president’s mirrored. It is almost a biography, but the fictional and fantastical elements made it more relatable for the global audience in the present day.
content warnings: incarceration, physical abuse, torture, mention of gun wound, animal injury, police brutality, mention of death, queerphobia, rape, mass shooting, blood, mention of war
I received digital review copies from Knopf via Edelweiss & NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Buddy read with Gabriella!