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Summary
Summary
Here is a true literary event--the long-awaited new novel by Carlos Fuentes, one of the world's great writers. By turns a tragedy and a farce, an acidic black comedy and an indictment of modern politics, The Eagle's Throne is a seriously entertaining and perceptive story of international intrigue, sexual deception, naked ambition, and treacherous betrayal. In the near future, at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, Mexico's idealistic president has dared to vote against the U.S. occupation of Colombia and Washington's refusal to pay OPEC prices for oil. Retaliation is swift. Concocting a "glitch" in a Florida satellite, America's president cuts Mexico's communications systems--no phones, faxes, or e-mails--and plunges the country into an administrative nightmare of colossal proportions. Now, despite the motto that "a Mexican politician never puts anything in writing," people have no choice but to communicate through letters, which Fuentes crafts with a keen understanding of man's motives and desires. As the blizzard of activity grows more and more complex, political adversaries come out to prey. The ineffectual president, his scheming cabinet secretary, a thuggish and ruthless police chief, and an unscrupulous, sensual kingmaker are just a few of the fascinating characters maneuvering and jockeying for position to achieve the power they all so desperately crave.
Author Notes
Carlos Fuentes was born in Panama on November 11, 1928. He studied law at the National University of Mexico and did graduate work at the Institute des Hautes Etudes in Switzerland. He entered Mexico's diplomatic service and wrote in his spare time. His first novel, Where the Air Is Clear, was published in 1958. His other works include The Death of Artemio Cruz, Destiny and Desire, and Vlad. The Old Gringo was later adapted as a film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda in 1989. He won numerous awards including the Fuentes the Romulo Gallegos Prize in Venezuela for Terra Nostra, the National Order of Merit in France, the Cervantes Prize in 1987, and Spain's Prince of Asturias Award for literature in 1994.
He also wrote essays, short stories, screenplays, and political nonfiction. In addition to writing, he taught at numerous universities, including Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Brown. He served as the ambassador of Mexico to France. He died on May 15, 2012 at the age of 83.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Starred Review. The year is 2020, and Mexican politics is dirtier and more violent than ever. Condoleeza Rice is the President of the United States, and the Big Brother to the North has just sent troops to occupy drug-infested Colombia. Owing to Mexico's vigorous opposition to the invasion of Colombia, the United States has invoked Operation Cucaracha, whereby all communications to and within Mexico, controlled by the Florida Satellite Center, have been cut off. There are no phones, no faxes, and no Internet, and because Mexicans have had to return to old-fashioned means of communication, the action of this page-turner depends entirely on letters exchanged between a wide array of ruthless intellectual characters, among them two politically gifted women, Maria del Rosario Galvan and Paulina Tardegarda. As the septuagenarian Fuentes tantalizingly reveals the identity and parentage of new interim president Nicolas Valdivia, it is obvious he is at the top of his storytelling mastery, and his insights into Mexico's sad decline into global thuggery will further heighten the fascination for this book. Highly recommended.--Jack Shreve, Allegany Coll. of Maryland, Cumberland (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Publisher's Weekly Review
An ailing Mexican president, two years into his mandated six-year term and manipulated by everyone around him, has banned oil exports to the U.S. and called for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from occupied Colombia. In retaliation, American President Condoleezza Rice has, through the magic of an unimagined technology, shut down all of Mexico's telephone, fax and Internet communications. That's the fanciful but not entirely implausible futuristic backdrop for this corrosive political satire from Fuentes (The Old Gringo), considered Mexico's leading novelist (and one-time ambassador to France). His darkly comic tale of backbiting, double-crossing, murderous duplicity, sexual scheming and outright assassination is primarily epistolary, and it's a format that suits Fuentes's flowery prose style, though the voices of his various characters tend to blur into one another. Readers with even a smidgeon of familiarity with Mexico's unkempt political traditions will wallow in this caustic indictment. (May 16) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
First published in Spanish in 2002, the veteran Mexican author's ebullient revival of the epistolary novel casts a frosty eye on future (and contemporary) geopolitics. In the year 2020, lame-duck Mexican president Lorenzo Terán provokes the U.S. (and its chief executive, Condoleeza Rice) by formally protesting the presence of American troops in neighboring Colombia, and threatening to follow OPEC's lead in setting prices for oil shipped north. Mexico's conduit to the rest of the world--its satellite communication system (which is routed through Miami)--mysteriously goes down. The politically active find they're able to communicate only by writing letters--and Fuentes's richly comic premise begins to disclose a teeming little world of interconnected intrigues. Machiavellian beauty Mar"a del Rosario Galván schemes to place her handsome, sexually resourceful young "protg," Nicolás Valdivia, on "the eagle's throne" (i.e., Mexico's presidency, limited by law to a single six-year term). But Nicolás is a front, employed to pave the way for Mar"a's longtime lover, Secretary of State Bernal Herrera. Meanwhile, a former president fidgets in retirement, hungry for a return to power. A yes-man opportunist is set up as a straw man whom Valdivia can easily topple. Truculent General C"cero Arrunza dreams of establishing an efficient military dictatorship. These and other machinations are seen in the contexts of Mexico's embattled political history (recently scarred by the cruel fate visited on doomed na™f populist candidate Tomás Moctezuma Moro); skeletons hidden in numerous closets; and Nicolás's inconvenient independence. The world outside spins on, blithely unconcerned (nonagenarian Fidel Castro still thrives in Cuba)--and a Downs Syndrome child, an embarrassment locked safely away from public view, speaks the novel's poignant final words. Of course, the detailed (often redundant) exchanges of letters are anything but realistic. Still, in a gratifying return to form, Fuentes handles the hoary old convention with impressive finesse. A nerve-grating cautionary tale, and one of his best books. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
As politics and history imbue the Latin American consciousness, so do they play a major thematic role in Latin American fiction. In his new novel, world-celebrated Mexican novelist Fuentes immerses himself in the political history of his homeland. The title of his new novel refers to the office of the Mexican presidency; the plot centers on the question of who is to succeed an ineffective incumbent in that office. The time is the 2020s, and a disagreement with the U.S. has led to the severance of satellite power to Mexico, leaving communications defunct. People must rely on an old-fashioned medium: letter writing. And that is the conceit of the novel: it is in epistolary format, as a host of politicos discuss what is wrong with the regime and what should be done about it--each person, of course, holding an opinion based on their own preservation and advancement. The tension builds inexorably as letters are fired off, revealing political and personal secrets, private ambitions, and sexual liaisons. Dissembling is the game of the hour as jockeying for power is the obsession of all who have a hand in the federal government. Their various plots become the novel's plot, and characters spring to life as true individuals, fully developed in Fuentes' beguilingly unorthodox fashion. A novel that is truly a tour de force. --Brad Hooper Copyright 2006 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The year is 2020, and Mexican politics is dirtier and more violent than ever. Condoleeza Rice is the President of the United States, and the Big Brother to the North has just sent troops to occupy drug-infested Colombia. Owing to Mexico's vigorous opposition to the invasion of Colombia, the United States has invoked Operation Cucaracha, whereby all communications to and within Mexico, controlled by the Florida Satellite Center, have been cut off. There are no phones, no faxes, and no Internet, and because Mexicans have had to return to old-fashioned means of communication, the action of this page-turner depends entirely on letters exchanged between a wide array of ruthless intellectual characters, among them two politically gifted women, Maria del Rosario Galvan and Paulina Tardegarda. As the septuagenarian Fuentes tantalizingly reveals the identity and parentage of new interim president Nicolas Valdivia, it is obvious he is at the top of his storytelling mastery, and his insights into Mexico's sad decline into global thuggery will further heighten the fascination for this book. Highly recommended.-Jack Shreve, Allegany Coll. of Maryland, Cumberland (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.