In English

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Manuel Corleto Baptized by fellow Guatemalan novelist Mario Monteforte Toledo as a "hell of a writer," Manuel Corleto never feared to break the mold of traditional narrative to embark upon something more daring and challenging for the reader, always with the eye a director of stage in laying out the framework for his novels. He is called "incomprehensible and difficult" by many theater directors. Among other things, he is remembered as the head of the invasion to Spain in 1990 for his play La Profecía and winner of many international literary prizes in theater and novel. Columnist in newspapers, founder of Lectores Anónimos, Club Adictos al Libro (Anonymous Readers, Book Addicts Club), actor, director, karate instructor, painter, book illustrator, art designer and many more things. Author of the theories: Continuous Theater, NonTheater and the Stars Factory. Born in Escuintla, southern coast of Guatemala, on February 23, 1944, he now resides in Guatemala.

Just Published... Buy it now!
With Every Drop of Blood from the Wound
(A novel from Guatemala)
Manuel Corleto
Translated by Michael B. Miller


Audacious, provocative, iconoclastic, with elements of the carnavalesque,
the erotic, irreverence toward the institutions that have governed
and continue to govern Guatemalan society,
With Every Drop of Blood from the Wound breaks with the traditional
concepts of the Latin American novel and magical realism to challenge
the reader to grapple with fragmented chronology and intersecting
textuality in the discordant and inverted world of Gerona,
a semi-urban neighborhood in which Corleto projects a violent
and often strange picture that serves as a microcosm of the corruption,
failures, and evils of his country. His portrayal of sex, at times crude
and violent, is not gratuitous, but rather serves to make a point:
that in the end the only enduring and worthwhile value is love,
love raised to its highest sense: the human need for each other,
the need of family, of belonging, the need of warmth.
The story is set during the second half of the twentieth century, in the
late 40s and early 50s, with reference to the dictatorship
of General Ubico (1931-44), and unfolds in the actual barrio of Gerona,
located near a railroad yard where the two protagonists—Gabriel and Willy—
carry out their adolescent games in the abandoned railway cars,
including their first sexual encounters, thanks to the very willing and
precocious González sisters. Later the two boys finally go their
separate ways, but years later are reunited when they are grown men,
when their boyhood illusions and dreams have faded,
and they are resigned to facing the hard reality of their individual failures.
Still the human being survives despite his lack of ideals.
From this perspective, With Every Drop of Blood from the Wound
—the words from a song at the end of the book that Corleto wrote
to underscore the pain of lost dreams and the plaintive cry of a people
ruled by the iron fist of repressive rulers—
paradoxically is, when all is said and done, an affirmation of life, hope,
and love,the values Corleto holds most dear.



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