The Movie Teller
On sale
2nd November 2023
Price: £9.99
María Margarita, a young woman who lives in a mining town in the heart of the Chilean Atacama desert in the 1960s, has had the gift of telling movies since she was a child.
When a film starring Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper or Charlton Heston, or a Mexican feature packed with songs, arrives in the local village cinema, the exact change for a ticket is collected at María’s house and she is sent to watch it. When María returns from the cinema, she tells the movie to her father, confined to a wheelchair, and to her four siblings, and soon she is telling the movie to a large and impatient public.
Through this tender story, Hernán Rivera Letelier gives us the magical tale of village cinemas in their times of splendor – and of decadence.
Translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
When a film starring Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper or Charlton Heston, or a Mexican feature packed with songs, arrives in the local village cinema, the exact change for a ticket is collected at María’s house and she is sent to watch it. When María returns from the cinema, she tells the movie to her father, confined to a wheelchair, and to her four siblings, and soon she is telling the movie to a large and impatient public.
Through this tender story, Hernán Rivera Letelier gives us the magical tale of village cinemas in their times of splendor – and of decadence.
Translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
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Reviews
For the first time and after many years, something new and original
in Latin American literature
Hernán Rivera Letelier is one of the most original voices
of the new Latin American narrative