Author: Jorge Franco
- Fiction
- Alfaguara
- ISBN: 9781622639403
- Release Date: 06-02-2014
-Reviewed by: Julia Shirek Smith
El mundo de afuera begins with a Colombian Army bulletin dated 9 August 1971 tersely informing the public that Señor Diego Echavarría Misas of Medellín has been abducted by three armed criminals.
The scene is set, and for a moment the reader wonders whether the literary market really needs yet another sensational crime story. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Jorge Franco has used the details of this real-life kidnapping (carefully researched by the author) not for their shock value but as framework for a marvelously imaginative work of fiction about the lives of those involved in the event. Skillfully managed flashbacks and parallel stories present a fascinating collection of characters, some invented, some drawn from real life. The major ones (and indeed, many of the minor) have desires and dreams at odds with the realities of the outside world, hence the title.
Don Diego, the kidnap victim, is a wealthy industrialist who prefers Europe to Latin America, adores Wagner and scorns Colombian poets. He comes home from Paris with his German beloved, Dita, and builds her a replica of a 17th century French castle, which rises arrogantly above the hustle and bustle of daily life in Medellín.
The couple’s daughter, Isolda, sheltered from that hustle and bustle, carries on a make-believe life in the castle’s lush gardens. As a child, she befriends mythical rabbit-like creatures, who adorn her hair with flowers; as a teenager, she dons a stolen red miniskirt and performs solo rock-and-roll shows in a wooded grove.
Spying on Isolda as she spins her fantasies is Mono, an aging Mama’s boy from the slums. Obsessed by love for this inaccessible princess, he hides in a tree on the castle grounds and reads poetry as he patiently waits for her to appear. Mono resolves to kidnap Isolda, but she dies suddenly, and he abducts her father instead. Bewildered when the victim’s family won’t pay the ransom, and unable to control his bumbling cohorts, he escapes into drink and an affair with a neighborhood boy. The young lover talks Mono into the purchase of a pricey motorcycle, which depletes the kidnap gang’s cash supply. Not surprising that things do not turn out well.
El mundo de afuera is the product of a sure and experienced hand: Colombian Jorge Franco has published six other novels, several of them prize winners. He does not burden the reader with tricks and flourishes of style that might obfuscate the various narrative strands—the prose is straightforward, yet polished. Dialogue abounds, and believable dialogue it is. There are just enough “colombianisms” to lend authenticity to the characters’ speech. Nor does he overburden the reader with the cruelty and violence inherent in a story about a major crime: El mundo de afuera has many comic moments. The reader laughs when the kidnap gang’s only female member, Twiggy, painstakingly applies eye makeup before heading out to burglarize a house, or when Isolda’s stern governess, Hedda, neglects her charge as she indulges erotic fantasies about the lover left behind in Germany.
