Archive - March 29, 2017

  Drums for a Lost Song (novel) by Jorge Velasco Mackenzie Rob Gunther (Ecuador 2009–2002) (Translator) Hanging Loose Press 200 pages March 2017 $18.00 (paperback) Reviewed by Jim Criste (PC Staff/Ecuador 1999-02) • Ecuador is an incredibly diverse country in so many ways. Jorge Velasco Mackenzie takes us on a journey through one part of that diverse country, the western lowlands along the Pacific Coast, to places both known and unknown, real and imagined. Drums for a Lost Song seems to be the literary equivalent of a school of painting in Ecuador known as “Magical Realism.” This is pointed out clearly by the translator in his afterword where he cites, “One of Velasco’s themes is the slippery nature of what we call “facts” or “truth. . .,” which just shows that Velasco was ahead of his time in the use of “alternate facts.” The reader is challenged not only to sort out what may . . .