Novelist Miguel Bonnefoy (Heritage) combines a layered and vibrantly imagined history of Venezuela with a multigenerational saga based on his own ancestry in The Dream of the Jaguar, an enchanting novel filled with colorful and unforgettable characters.
The novel begins in Maracaibo, Venezuela, when a surly beggar, Mute Teresa, discovers an abandoned infant, Antonio Borjas Romero, on the steps of a church and decides to raise him as her own. After a formative stint as a servant in a brothel, Antonio goes on to medical school, where he meets the love of his life, Ana María Rodríguez. Both Antonio and Ana María excel in their field and become greatly involved in helping the straitened people of their country. When their daughter is born on the same day the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez is defeated in 1958, they name her Venezuela. Years later, Venezuela moves to France, marries a Chilean expatriate, and has a son, Cristóbal. As Bonnefoy did, Cristóbal becomes a writer and rediscovers his heritage in South America.
Bonnefoy's prose, expertly translated from the French by Ruth Diver, is radiant and dreamlike with touches of magical realism, evoking Gabriel García Márquez as an influence but maintaining its own originality. Though Bonnefoy's sweep of history is wide, even the minor characters populating his version of Maracaibo shine like stars. As Ana María says, "In every litter of kittens there is a jaguar.... It grows up differently. It emancipates itself. Those are the builders of this city. We are all the sons of a dream of a jaguar." --Debra Ginsberg, author and freelance editor