Published in 1992, Como agua para chocolate, written by Mexican Laura Esquivel, arrived to transfer the magical realism of the 60s boom to the pink genre, resulting in a recipe as addictive as it is memorable for the 7 million readers (and readers) who have been devouring it since then.
The success of the book was such that we even had a film adaptation after a few years and its author planned a second part that has taken twenty-four years to develop. The necessary time that, according to Esquivel, needed to mature the experiences of Tita, that woman trapped between the mole and a denied love.
Would you like to read the second part of Like water for chocolate?
The twenty years that they did not tell us
Set during the Mexican Revolution in Piedras Negras, in the northern state of Coahuila, in Mexico, Como agua para chocolate featured Tita, the youngest of three sisters and condemned, according to traditions, to watch over her parents and renounce love. . Her relationship with Pedro, her childhood boyfriend, becomes the main engine of this rose novel in which the typical recipes of this area of Mexico are used as metaphors to evoke the feelings of a young woman trapped between desire and tradition.
Como agua para chocolate was published in 1992 and obtained an unexpected success at a time when magical realism was believed to be in the doldrums, thanks in part to the good narrative work of its author and the use of an element as everyday as the kitchen to define those passions denied.
Twenty-four years later, Laura Esquivel, sixty-six years old, has published the sequel to the novel that launched her to fame and has dubbed El Diario de Tita. As a personal diary, the book explores Tita's opinion and actions regarding the unjust tradition that she had to obey, trying by all means to turn her complaint into an inspiration for future generations.
Hence, the author, during her recent arrival in Madrid, affirmed that in addition to highlighting the importance of food as a nutrient for the soul, sowing is also necessary both in fiction and in a convulsed political reality on both sides of the Atlantic.
Tita's diary has been published by Suma de Letras.
Will you dare to read it?
Yesiiiii. I would love to. I liked the first and I'm sure I'm going to like the second.