Chinese Checkers
2007
First Published
3.38
Average Rating
139
Number of Pages
Three modern, edgy and superb stories by famous Mexican author Mario Bellatin—Chinese Checkers, Hero Dogs and My Skin Luminous—translated by Cooper Renner. This, his first book to appear in English, promises us an fascinating, unsettling and important new voice in modern writing. In these stories the narrator speaks rationally, cleanly, carefully, with a sense of precision and progression. But the life he describes is not rational, clean precise or progressive. His focus seems to be on exploring the ins and outs of specific situations. He is not plot-driven, nor do his characterizations seem to function in the normal way—that is, to create a sympathetic character whom the author leads through some sort of growth process to a sort of epiphany. Any given one of his sentences, isolated from its context, might seem like an ordinary narrative sentence in a traditional work. Bellatin's contexts don't work that way: situations and thought repeat and recur in an apparently random fashion; he refuses to orchestrate climaxes and artificial excitements, even where a conventional writer would immediately do so.
Avg Rating
3.38
Number of Ratings
302
5 STARS
13%
4 STARS
32%
3 STARS
40%
2 STARS
12%
1 STARS
4%
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Author
Mario Bellatin
Author · 15 books
Mario Bellatin grew up in Peru as the son of Peruvian parents. He spent two years studying theology at the seminary Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo and graduated from the University of Lima. In 1987, Bellatin moved to Cuba, where he studied screenplay writing at the International Film School Latinoamericana. On his return to Mexico in 1995, he became the director of the Department of Literature and Humanities at the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana and became a member of the National System of Creators of Mexico from 1999 to 2005. He is currently the director of the School of Writers Dynamics in Mexico City.
