A radiant and epic new novel that is among the finest achievements of
Mexico's greatest man of letters.
The Years with Laura Diaz is Carlos Fuentes' most important novel in
several decades. Like his masterpiece The Death of Artemio Cruz, the
action begins in the state of Veracruz and moves to Mexico City--tracing
a migration during the Revolution and its aftermath that was a feature
of Mexico's demographic history and that is a significant element in
Fuentes' fictional world.
Now the principle figure is not Artemio Cruz (who, however, makes a
brief appearance) but Fuentes' first major female protagonist, the
extraordinary Laura Diaz. Carlos Fuentes' richly woven narrative
tapestry--filled with a multitude of dramatic scenes both witty,
amusing, and heartbreaking--shows us this wonderful creature as she
grows into a politically committed artist who is also a wife and mother,
a lover of great men, a complicated and alluring heroine whose brave
honesty prevails despite her losing a son and grandson to the darkest
forces of Mexico's repressive, corrupt regimes. In the end, Laura Diaz
herself dies, after a life filled with tragedy and loss, but she is a
happy woman, for she has borne witness to, and helped to affect, the
course of history and has vindicated the aims and intentions of the
highest art.
