Paperweights: a debut book and an entertaining manual to learn about the Political Constitution of Peru

“Living lucidity”: the criticism of Lights to the diaries of Albert Camus

“The day is coming”: the unmissable sample of the House of Literature about a César Vallejo as you have never seen him before

“Only one way to grow in public”

Author: Malena Newton

Pages : 176

Publisher: Tusquets

Although it is normal that in a literary debut the weight of some influences can be traced (some thicker than others), it is surprising when that first book shows enough originality to not resemble almost anything. That is what happens with “A single way to grow in public”, a set of stories that make up the first work published by Malena Newton (Lima, 1993).

The first thing that jumps out is the permanent estrangement of the situations in which the author plunges her characters. In general, everyday settings that are gradually being disfigured by subtle alterations, some even bordering on surrealism or sordid dystopia.

Stories that range from a portrait of the much talked about “toxic masculinity”, although without unnecessary emphasis (as in “An ex guy”), to what seems like a geological phenomenon as a metaphor for a society in crisis (“A roof on the ground ”). Remarkable is also the ability to assume peculiar and diverse voices (the students of an elite school in “Is a password a name or a lie?” or the carefree paraathlete in “A Tired Sportsman”), which breathe life into a book about the insurmountable differences and fractures between human beings. Highly recommended.

“informed”

Author: Constanza Borea

Pages : 256

Publisher: First Person

The relationship of Peruvians with the Political Constitution is worthy of analysis. Whether as fervent defenders or as bitter detractors, there is a kind of fetishism for that document that supposedly governs us as a nation, despite the fact that it has had twelve different versions throughout our hectic independent life.

And if last year the poet Santiago Vera published his own “Political Constitution of Peru”, a collection of poems in which he experimented with the dismemberment and recontextualization of the content of the Magna Carta, today Costanza Borea also addresses it, but from a more pedagogical angle. : as a kind of manual to know and understand it properly, a small detail that, it is certain, many compatriots have not even bothered to do.

The constitutional lawyer examines in simple language – and with illustrations by Amadeo Gonzales, which make the matter more bearable – issues such as what a democracy is, the types of regulations, the organization of the State, the always controversial economic regime of the Constitution and Of course, the possible ways to modify it, today when the subject is discussed so much. Because we can be for or against its reform, but the important thing is to do it well informed.