8.8

When the powerful February 2010 earthquake struck Chile, its largest city, Santiago, was hosting an international children's literature conference. Among many notable attendees was Villoro. Besides his heralded work in journalism and literary fiction, he has written a number of well-received children's titles, some featuring the zany inventor Profesor Ziper. As a citizen of Mexico, Villoro is no stranger to earthquakes; he was also on hand for the other most powerful temblor in recent Latin American history, which hit Mexico City in 1985. Here he shares a thoughtfully chosen chronicle of human responses to this tremendously arresting force of nature. Much of this episodic book relates the variety of experiences of just before, during, and after the event that Villoro recorded from talks with many conference colleagues, who become richly developed characters under his narrative hand. Other sections explore the author's Chilean connections and compare the 2010 event to that of 1985, no stronger but far more destructive owing to negligent building by his country's much less principled construction sector. A short chapter explores Heinrich von Kleist's 1807 novel, The Earthquake in Chile, drawing human commonalities between this moment and that story of a 17th-century disaster. Having experienced an epochal quake and its aftermath myself (Kobe, Japan 1995), I found Villoro's testimony and his approaches to the story brilliant. Almadía adds to a growing list of beautifully designed paperbacks that are consistently trenchant and affordable. Recommended for general readers and students of cultural criticism.—Bruce Jensen, Rohrbach Library, Kutztown Univ. of Pennsylvania