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A review by ghosthermione
Lunatics, Lovers and Poets: Twelve Stories after Cervantes and Shakespeare by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Soledad Puértolas, Rosalind Harvey, Nell Leyshon, Anne McLean, Rhidian Brook, Yuri Herrera, Kamila Shamsie, Ben Okri, Salman Rushdie, Vicente Molina Foix, Samantha Schnee, Marcos Giralt Torrente, Daniel Hahn, Christina MacSweeney, Margarita Valencia, Hisham Matar, Valeria Luiselli, Deborah Levy, Lisa Dillman, Frank Wynne
4.0
I'm going to start by saying that quite a few of these stories fell pretty flat for me. The first one was not the most interesting either, and I found myself skipping through paragraphs.
However, I don't want to mark it down because a lot of the stories were also brilliant, and besides, this is the most post-colonial Shakespeare I've read in... well, ever. I don't know about Cervantes, but in the Shakespeare field we like to say we're open and doing New Things and being Inclusive, but all the same when I read the concept of this book, six Shakespeare stories written in Spanish and six Cervantes stories written in English, I was expecting US and American white men's writing, and Spain-spanish writers too.
What I got instead was quite a few very interesting stories about Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, and Nigeria. Really touching stories, too, at times. So, overall, it's well worth the read.
However, I don't want to mark it down because a lot of the stories were also brilliant, and besides, this is the most post-colonial Shakespeare I've read in... well, ever. I don't know about Cervantes, but in the Shakespeare field we like to say we're open and doing New Things and being Inclusive, but all the same when I read the concept of this book, six Shakespeare stories written in Spanish and six Cervantes stories written in English, I was expecting US and American white men's writing, and Spain-spanish writers too.
What I got instead was quite a few very interesting stories about Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, and Nigeria. Really touching stories, too, at times. So, overall, it's well worth the read.