The Maypole Warriors

Alegria ( Paradise Lost or Gained ) turns to the history of his native Chile in this visionary new novel. The book traces the crises of a family during the tumultuous years of the 1930s and 1940s. As it opens, Don Carlos, the dominating patriarch, has died, leaving his family adrift amid changing realities in their country. The bourgeois clan's fortunes have sunk but its members still cling to vestiges of their lost prestige. Family ruination is never far from the center of this novel--the lives of the characters and their decline serve as metaphors for Chilean society. Fascists clash with left-wing students, violence against women provides a cheap substitute for genuine power. Alegria's Chile is eerily akin to the Civil War-Spain in Man's Hope by Andre Malraux, whose name is evoked early on. Like Malraux, Alegria is concerned with what motivates human beings--what it is that causes them to seek to transcend themselves. Alegria's prose, however, is more lyrical than Malraux's. He is deft at finding the evocative metaphor, the searing image. In a stylish translation by Lozano, the book will capture both the reader's attention and conscience. (June)