The Book of Lamentations (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)
Thirty years before the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas brought this little-known corner of Mexico to the world's notice, Mexican author Rosario Castellanos created a similar rebellion in her 1962 novelThe Book of Lamentations. Castellanos has framed her story, which is set in the 1930s, around an actual 1860s uprising of Maya Indians against the Chiapan white ruling class. History and fiction meld seamlessly, mainly because conditions in the Chiapas Castellanos knew as a child hadn't changed much in the intervening 70 years; as late as the 1920s, impoverished Indians still served as mules, carrying white landowners strapped to their backs.The book's title is apt; Castellanos casts an unflinching eye on the effects of oppression, ignorance, and misery. The central characters, motivated variously by desperation, superstition, or ambition, may not be admirable, but they are all too human. In the end, a rebellion culminating in the grisly crucifixion of a child is doomed to failure. AlthoughThe Book of Lamentationsis not a pleasant book, in an age where history seems increasingly to be repeating itself in Asia, in the Balkans, in Mexico, and elsewhere, it is a deeply instructive one.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.