Save the fire is a novel by the Mexican writer Guillermo Arriaga. He won Alfaguara Novel Award 2020, having been highly praised by critics. In fact, it was considered by some media as one of the best books in Spanish of that year.
Guillermo Arriaga, author of great literary and cinematographic successes, arrives with a new novel about his country, Mexico. In her raises the division suffered by the republic among the thousands of paradoxes that shape and define it. A novel that captivates with a rhythm that is typical of this author. Have you already read it?
Save the fire
A place full of contradictions: history
The story is tremendously human. in it tothey seem like the deepest desires of two apparently opposite souls. A woman with a family, married with three children, successful in her profession, stage design, suddenly finds herself involved in a relationship that she would never have believed. Marina begins an affair with a man who is sentenced to fifty years in prison for murder. When she meets José Cuauhtémoc, the well-disposed world of this woman, and her security, disappear. and Marina, from a former privileged and well-to-do position, he faces the most brutal of a country he thought he recognized.
Mexico is a place full of contradictions. Although it is true, Arriaga exposes Marina and José, as if through an open wound, in a country of which they are both part, even though they are separated by a highly visible barrier. The bleeding reality of the most violent Mexico and its characters in a hopeless love story. That and much more is this paradoxical novel with a country as a surprisingly contradictory context. Marina and José become the pieces of this game board. The craziest thing was for Marina to agree, but now that she has, the inconceivable suddenly becomes plausible.
The style
Arriaga uses different points of view and different times to put together a story that is made up of fragments of lives They make all the sense in the world. At the same time, pieces appear everywhere and all of them fit together perfectly. All this is the author's hallmark, something that works again in Save the fire.
His style is also marked by cinema, the frenzy of the scenes and the short sentences, the few descriptions, as well as a lot of action. It is a very visual book and the characters have a very lively and powerful look, where the language and the speed of dialogue mark the harsh reality portrayed by Arriaga with mastery and knowledge.
Save the fire It is narrated with intensity, and where reality is neither twisted nor exaggerated. And beyond repeating a history of a violent and contemporary Mexico, like many others, makes it clear that it is a new and original testimony. If Arriaga knows anything, it's the art of storytelling and guiding the reader through an event that catches and converges in a credible and measured ending.
Conclusions
Save the fire It is an incendiary love novel, where the face of the most disastrous Mexico is shown.. Therefore, and as we speak of this country, we must not forget the importance of death, passion, as well as the hope of salvation. A salvation so that liberation is possible.
On the other hand, thanks to the sensitivity of the author, it is that the novel can be understood as an object of study of the Mexico that many live day by day and that few dare to know. Save the fire is the vision of a contemporary Mexico in which the objective focuses on the unexpected relationship of two distant characters, but that they understand each other and arrive at the right moment in each other's lives. Yeah. Save the fire it may be marked by tragedy, however, like the paradoxes of this Latin American country and its people, like no one else, knows how to rise from its ashes.
About the author: Guillermo Arriaga
Guillermo Arriaga describes himself as a chilango. Born in Mexico City in 1958. He is a professional who is passionate about his work and very versatile: he is a writer of novels and film scripts (Dog loves, 21 grams, Babel), producer and film director. Its scope is completely oriented to the fictional narrative. Arriaga is a storyteller.
He graduated in Communication Sciences and took a master's degree in History. From a very young age, Arriaga was in contact with the most impoverished sectors of society, which allowed him to discover first-hand content that would later inspire him. He is very connected to the wildest side of the human being.. This has also been very useful for narrating and describing the most lurid reality of Mexico.
His latest work as a novelist is Foreign (2023) and one of his most acclaimed books was A sweet smell of death (1994). In audiovisual media he has collaborated with Alejandro González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón.