Copyright 2017 by Eduardo Galeano
English translation copyright 2017 by Mark Fried
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Spanish-language edition published by Siglo XXI de Espaa Editores, S. A., 2016.
First English-language Edition: November 2017
Published by Nation Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Collages by Eduardo Galeano, inspired by anonymous artists of popular art and by the work of April Deniz, Ulisse Aldrovandi, William Blake, Albrecht Drer, Theodor de Bry, Edward Topsell, Enea Vico, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Hieronymus Bosch, J. J. Grandville, Louis Le Breton, and Jan van Eyck.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Names: Galeano, Eduardo, 19402015, author. | Fried, Mark, translator.
Title: Hunter of stories / Eduardo Galeano ; translated by Mark Fried.
Description: New York : Nation Books, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017014189 (print) | LCCN 2017027554 (ebook) | ISBN 9781568589916 (ebook) | ISBN 9781568589909 (hardback)
Subjects: | BISAC: HISTORY / Latin America / South America. | LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Caribbean & Latin American.
Classification: LCC PQ8520.17.A4 (ebook) | LCC PQ8520.17.A4 A2 2017 (print) |
DDC 863/.64dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014189
ISBNs: 978-1-56858-990-9 (hardcover); 978-1-56858-991-6 (e-book)
E3-20171019-JV-PC
This book is dedicated to the compaeros who helped me along the way: Alfredo Lpez Austin, Mark Fried, Lino Bessonart, Carlos Daz, Pedro Daniel Weinberg, and other friends. Always and above all, this book is dedicated to Helena Villagra.
H UNTER OFS TORIES WAS WRITTEN DURING THE LAST THREE years of Eduardo Galeanos life, most of it a few hours every day sitting quietly alone, pad and pen in hand, as he traveled across Latin America, Europe, and the United States for public appearances. A consummate performer, Eduardo drew energy from his readers even as the drudgery of travel exhausted him.
I last saw him in 2013 on his final visit to New York City, when he was already being treated for an aggressive return of the cancer that had cost him half a lung a decade before. Though he did not look well, his spirit was undiminished. He excitedly recounted what he had recently seen or heard, tales that confirmed his habitual optimism about the human condition and his eternal pessimism about the course of civilization.
When an early draft of the book arrived on my desk at the beginning of 2014, sprinkled as it was with reflections on death, I realized how quickly his health was failing. By then, Eduardo had given up his itinerant lifestyle and was closeted at his home in Montevideo. He continued to rework and expand Hunter of Stories for much of that year, and I imagine his compulsive attention to detail and his delight in writing helped keep his mind off his illness.
Eduardo must have felt some urgency to tell the stories he had collected or imagined and to share the insights from a life fully lived. Yet the book retains his familiar tone of calm and delighted reflection, even when contemplating the prospect of leaving behind the world he critiqued so trenchantly and loved so dearly.
Mark Fried
E DUARDO G ALEANO DIED ON A PRIL 13, 2015. W E HAD signed off on the final details of Hunter of Stories the previous summer, including the cover image, the monster of Buenos Aires, which, as was his wont, he chose. He had spent 2012 and 2013 working on the book. Given that his state of health was not good, we decided to delay publication in order to protect him from the many tasks involved in any book launch.
During his last months he continued rewriting and polishing his texts, again and again, something that had always given him pleasure. He also began a new book, which he wanted to call Scribblings, a few stories of which he completed. After his death, when it was possible to move ahead with publishing Hunter of Stories, we reread the stories in that unfinished work and felt that a number of them had so much in common with those of Hunter of Stories that they should be incorporated into this volume. Some twenty of these scribblings are included here.
Eduardo was always a sober man, perhaps paying homage to the Welsh genes he so often denied, and he would rarely complain about his illness or his pains, even during his final days. A handful of the new texts seems to outline what he thought or imagined regarding death. They are so strong and beautiful that we took the liberty of adding a new section to the original manuscript and giving it the title of the poem he had chosen for the books ending, which in fact ends the book: I Crave, I Covet, I Yearn.
Besides these additions, we followed all of his indications, which, as usual, were obsessively and kindly detailed.
It is not easy to write the final word on this project, which benefited from the valuable commentaries and observations of Daniel Weinberg and the professionalism of Gabriela Vigo and the rest of the Siglo XXI team during the long editing process, all of whom must have been particularly motivated by the affection they felt and still feel for Eduardo.
I thank Helena Villagra for her priceless assistance in giving Hunter of Stories its final shape. Editing this book was a pleasant task, a reencounter with a beloved writer, and at the same time it was unavoidably difficult.
Carlos E. Daz
Wind smooths over the tracks of gulls.
Rain washes away human steps.
Sun bleaches the scars of time.
Storytellers seek the footprints of lost memory, love and pain that cannot be seen but are never erased.
In the pages of A Thousand and One Nights, this advice appears:
Get going, friend! Drop everything and get going! Of what use is an arrow if it never flies from the bow? How good would the melodious lute sound if it were still a piece of wood?
By day, the sun guides them. By night, the stars.
Paying no fare, they travel without passports and without forms for customs or immigration.
Birds are the only free beings in this world inhabited by prisoners. They fly from pole to pole, powered by food alone, on the route they choose and at the hour they wish, without ever asking permission of officials who believe they own the heavens.