A review by stacialithub
The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano

5.0

In a way, I find Galeano's work like Kurt Vonnegut's in that both write in a manner that comes across as deceptively simple, quick & easy to read, but then you realize that it's so tightly edited, so finely tuned, that just a few words are as accurate & as powerful as a bullet between the eyes. Galeano's wide net of musings range from friendships, to art, to dreams, to politics, to society, to heartbreaking realities of poverty, racism, war, & violence. As with many Latin American writers, there are elements of magical realism that seem to float through some of his work. (Do the Muses give the Latin American writers some special spark?) It's almost like a collection of poetry or (very) short stories. But... not quite. Most items are maybe a paragraph or two, certainly less than a page, interspersed with some wild & strange line drawings. It's not quite poetry, not quite short stories, not quite a memoir -- it is its own original creation & a lovely one at that. So glad that I stumbled onto this Uruguayan gem of literature. Highly recommended.