Bewitched Lands by Adolfo Costa Du Rels. New York. 1945. Knopf. Translated from the Spanish by Stuart Edgar Grummon. 204 pages. hardcover. Cover: Carlos Merida.
DESCRIPTION - BEWITCHED LANDS is a novel of conflicting passions and loyalties, a fascinating tale of long-latent - and at last overt-violence on a feudal hacienda deep in the lush, uncharted Chaco region of Bolivia. The principal characters of this unusual and sophisticated story are: Don Pedro Vidal, aging and absolute master of the vast isolated Hacienda El Mataral; Doña Maria de Vidal, his pretty, pathetic, and unhappy young wife; Carlos Vidal, Don Pedro's son by a former wife, dead under mysterious circumstances; Mr. Treweek, a very English petroleum prospector - and the sympathetic narrator. Carlos Vidal, educated at military school in France, has been paroled in his father's custody after participating in an abortive revolt against his country's dictator. He is in rebellion against the medieval social ideas dominating his native land and summed up in his own father. The arrival of Mr. Treweek and his companion, in search of the petroleum whose existence Don Pedro wishes to deny, galvanizes Carlos into emotions, thoughts, and at last actions that lead inevitably to a series of violent crises. In the fabric of this brilliantly colored novel, Carlos's love for his stepmother is but one thread.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Adolfo Costa du Rels (or Adolfo Costa du Reís) (1891–1980) was a Bolivian writer and diplomat who became the last President of the Council of the League of Nations. He was the author of many plays, novels and other writings, mostly in French, and received several literary awards. For much of his life, Costa du Rels made his home in Paris. According to the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld, Costa du Rels had the right to say of himself, as had Joseph de Maistre, ‘No foreigner is more French than me.' Costa du Rels died in La Paz in 1980. Costa du Rels wrote in both French and Spanish, and wrote poetry, plays, novels, short stories and essays.
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