An old man who read love novels

This is the title of a novel written by Luis Sepúlveda, who died with the Coronavirus this past April 16.

The protagonists and axes of this wonderful novel are many: the Shuar indigenous people, the immense and impenetrable Amazonia that, despite the settler's machete, always "returned to grow with vengeful vigor"; The idyll as a place of being; the Nangaritza, Zamora, Yacuambi rivers, the El Dorado river port; a dentist with a sonourous name (Rubicundo Loachamín); the novels of love and the wise Antonio José Bolívar Proaño, who well illustrates that intense passion for “appropriating words”, for seeking to understand the plots of those words that are read over and over again.

And, even more, it is the story of a tigrilla whose young were killed by ignorant whites who also mortally wounded the male. She occupies from beginning to end the sound of wisdom, of an ethos or way of life, a trilling, a sound, a silence, a depth that is only seen, felt, hurt and tasted by souls connected to the imperious singing of the jungle.

With beautiful voice and strength, these lines of Luis Sepúlveda came to our hearts. A writer who, a few days after meeting him, through his novel, went to inhabit the world of the dead, the world of the immortals.