Tiempo de ´ngeles / A Time of Angels

66 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews narrative, and therefore, it seems to us that they are taking up rather too much space here,” we can’t help but agree. The first two books in the Chonkin series managed to satirize the early 1940s and the wartime Soviet Union in a way that was relevant to the Brezhnev-era reader, but since then, Voinovich has not updated his satiric vision. Even as his characters age through perestroika and into the 1990s, their insights and exploits seem to be addressing a late-Soviet readership that no longer exists. A Displaced Person gives the reader the chance to spend another book with Chonkin and Nyura. Voinovich’s vivid imagination and sprightly prose still animate his world as he updates us on his characters’ lives and brings their love story to a satisfying conclusion . It is a pleasant read, a reunion with old friends, but little more. The sharp wit and penetrating satire are gone, stuck in Brezhnev’s stagnation . And like a reunion with old friends, this book’s greatest pleasure is remembering days gone by. Bradley Gorski Columbia University verse Homero Aridjis. Tiempo de ángeles / A Time of Angels. George McWhirter, tr. Francisco Toledo, ill. San Francisco. City Lights. 2012. isbn 9780872865648 With its side-by-side bilingual presentation , accompanied by Francisco Toledo’s bold, whimsical, and evocative sketches and watercolors, Homero Aridjis’s Tiempo de ángeles creates a magical bestiary of fortyfour poems about angels and of the consciousness of multiple selves and potential identities generated by an individual’s thought, desire, passion, and fear. These identities are created for a self, and for an entire culture, that may be viewed as endangered, both culturally and physically. Indigenous and European traditions have blended in Mexico, resulting in a fascinating, multilayered culture that is filled with contradictions and unexpected resonances, all of which problematize reality. Indigenous productions show native animals such as jaguars and parrots with the ability to shift their shapes to reflect human nature and to impart valuable lessons to those able to observe them. So it is with the angels in Tiempo de ángeles and Toledo’s illustrations, which show angels in human and animalesque form. Angels are particularly powerful within the context of Mexican cultural and artistic tradition. They remind one of the poetic tradition of Mixtec and Tzotzil (Mayan) speakers, whose art form takes the shape of spells and incantations, boldly asserting that language has power to impact the physical as well as spiritual realms. Much later, magical realism emerged, and Tiempo de ángeles shares characteristics of the best of that genre. Christian angels of the Europeans were incorporated into Mexican beliefs, possibly because they reinforce the idea that the divine comes to earth and is able to assume human form because it has work to do: naming , guiding, comforting, disrupting, and awakening consciousness. They function as a “spirit intermediary” and are constant presences (as in “The Angel of Ubiquity”). However, they are not just companions and comforters but assure us that something exists beyond the empirical world we perceive with our senses. Aridjis’s angels bring to light human qualities of mind and suggest mechanisms for how humans block their own self-awareness, often because an excess of knowledge is unbearable: “An angel who has seen its own double dies / because it turns into itself and its material / counterpart,” thus suggesting that the spiritual is truly endangered by too much contact with the material. Of course, the material is mortal, while the immortal, the angels, become important companions and cherishers of what is most intense Julia Lin Miah TSAR A truly international author confronts her simultaneously Taiwanese and Canadian past through these interlinked stories. The book functions as a loosely wrought family saga, leading the reader from modern Vancouver to 1940s Taiwan and back through the stories of immigrants, activists, and mothers. Julia Lin’s prose is frank and down-to-earth while retaining its capacity for subtlety and grace. Antjie Krog Skinned Seven Stories Press Antjie Krog has long been recognized as one of South Africa’s finest poets, but Skinned is her first collection available in English outside of the country. Translated from the original Afrikaans...

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