Feliza Bursztyn was a Colombian sculptress, and this book is her novelized biography. Poor Juan Gabriel Vásquez. He wants to get published, and who doesn’t? For a South American writer, it means managing to please the Spanish editors who are almost invariably female and politically far to the left of AOC. One ends up doing the most bizarre things to please them.
Vásquez did his darndest to give Feliza Bursztyn a positive portrayal. The woman was a monster but try saying that and see how fast your chances to get published evaporate. Vásquez made enormous efforts to humanize this horrible person but even his uncommon literary gift was unable to mask how despicable Feliza was.
Bursztyn dumped her 3 tiny daughters, simply walked out on them, because she wanted to sit in cafés prattling about the need for a Communist revolution and whore around with random dudes. She got the very first one she picked up to call her by the name of her own infant daughter whom she’d abandoned. This is all so perverted that one wants to pretend one never heard about it.
Of course, if Bursztyn hadn’t abandoned her children, humanity might have been deprived of her art, so there’s that. Here’s her art, just in case you are wondering what all the sacrifices were for:
Vásquez’s book brings to life an entire generation of Latin American intellectuals who admired the Cuban revolution and despised America. Most of them were probably less horrid than Bursztyn because it’s hard to be quite as nasty but Vásquez depicts them as an indifferentiated mass of prattly, vapid morons with boutique beliefs. I haven’t looked into it but I’m certain Vásquez himself is very lefty. But he’s also talented and the truth comes through in his writing in spite of what he might believe.
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