Fiction

This is the first chapter of my novel: Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand.
The translation from the Spanish was done by Margaret Sayers-Peden.
I hope you will want to read the whole book. You can find it at Amazon.com, both in English or Spanish. Clic on the Amazon link and start reading it soon!!!

P a r t 1
Ma l e and Female
He Created Them

Chap t e r 1

And he was.
Suddenly. From not being to being conscious that he was.
He opened his eyes. He touched himself and knew he was a man, without
knowing how he knew. He saw the garden and he felt someone
watching him. He looked in every direction hoping to see
another like himself.
As he was looking, air spilled into his throat and its coolness
stirred his senses. He could smell. He took a deep breath.
In his head he felt the confused whirling of images seeking a
name. Words, sounds, surged up inside him, clean and clear, and
settled on everything around him. He named, and saw what he
named recognize itself. The breeze moved the branches of the
trees. A bird sang. Long leaves opened their finely drawn hands.
Where was he? he asked. Why didn’t the one who was watching
allow himself to be seen? Who was this Other?

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Author: Gioconda Belli
Trans. by Margaret Sayers Peden

Belli (The Scroll of Seduction, 2007, etc.) profiles the First Woman. The novel, first published in Spain, is a more somber, meditative treatment of the First Family than Elissa Elliott’s Eve (2009). Belli’s Serpent is female, and mischievous, not evil. Instead of tempting Eve, she reveals that the creator, Elokim, is offering humans the option of inaugurating history (with all that labor, heartbreak, chaos and death) or remaining eternally, happily and, one senses, rather dully (for Elokim, at least) cocooned in Paradise. Once Eve chooses knowledge of good and evil, the first inkling she and Adam experience of fundamental upheaval is violent sexual attraction. Uprooted from the Garden (by a cataclysm involving neither Elokim nor sword-wielding angels), Eve and Adam seek shelter, figuring out everything for the first time. That stomach pain? Hunger. Those previously friendly beasts? Predators—and prey, when Adam discovers that, unlike Eve, he’s not a vegan at heart. Blindsided by her nausea and swollen belly, Eve and Adam puzzle out pregnancy, childbirth and nursing by observing animals. Eve bears two sets of fraternal twins, first Cain and Luluwa, then Abel and Aklia. Unlike Elliott, Belli doesn’t posit the existence of other humans in Adam and Eve’s milieu (although Eve encounters helpful monkeys). Thus mankind’s mandate to go forth and multiply entails incest. A rare directive from Elokim, however, forbids the coupling of each son with his twin sister. But Cain prefers beautiful Luluwa to Aklia. When Cain murders Abel, resulting in his and Luluwa’s exile, the Serpent has mating suggestions for Aklia that will resolve the reproduction, not to mention the evolution, dilemma. Although slowed by philosophical rumination, this narrative presents Adam and Eve and their offspring as individuals, not archetypes.

A realistic portrayal of the children of a laissez-faire God.

Kirkus Reviews
February 1, 2009

Belli’s philosophical re-creation of the Adam and Eve story is a transcendent meditation on a well-worn tale. Shimmering with provocative insight, the narrative repaints an Eden where all is not as straightforward as the Bible would have us believe. Adam and Eve are complex, humanistic creatures whose temptation and subsequent fall perhaps signal the intellectual, social, and artistic fruition of mankind. As the two struggle with new and unexpected challenges, joys, and sorrows, Eve and the serpent philosophize on a variety of searing and soul-searching topics. Rather than merely turning the biblical version on its head, Belli’s luminous portrait of the first couple respectfully provides material for discussion and reconsideration. More multifaceted than Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent (1997), this mystical rendering of Eden and beyond will be in demand by both fans of biblical fiction and book clubs.

Margaret Flanagan
Kirkus Review

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International Covers

From Publishers Weekly
How crazy was Juana La Loca, the Spanish queen who allegedly would not stop kissing her husband, Philippe the Handsome, even after he died? A Madrid professor enlists the help of a student and a silk dress to find out in the latest from Nicaraguan poet-memoirist-novelist Belli (The Country Under My Skin). While touring the Escorial, 17-year-old Lucia, a Latin American–born orphan attending a Madrid Catholic boarding school, meets Manuel, a 40-something professor who draws Lucia into his obsession with 16th-century Juana. Soon, Manuel dresses Lucia like Juana, and, as he seduces (and eventually impregnates) her, she channels Juana’s spirit, allowing Belli to create—in sensuous detail—a turbulent, emotion-driven version of events that is at odds with historians’ accounts of Juana’s schizophrenia. Juana, as Belli depicts her, was a passionate woman who fell victim to power-hungry relatives, and whose eccentric behavior may have been symptoms of bipolar disorder. (As Belli explains in an author’s note, “any woman with a strong sense of self, confronted by the abuse and the arbitrary injustices she had to withstand, forced to accept her powerlessness in the face of an authoritarian system, would become depressed.”) Belli’s insights into Spanish culture prove provocative, aided by Dillman’s faultless translation. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Booklist
Belli’s rigorously imagined and sumptuously presented novel is a dual story of obsessive love, with a bi-level plot alternating between past and present. From the past, the author retrieves the almost legendary tale of Queen Juana of Castile, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and her alleged madness caused by the premature death of her handsome husband, Philip of Hapsburg. The contemporary story line is also set in Spain; over a period of time and in piecemeal fashion, a teenage student in a convent school, Lucia by name, learns from a college professor, who will become her first lover, of his own obsession: Queen Juana and her life story, specifically the unanswerable question of whether she was insane or simply the victim of a smear campaign by the male forces at court who would seek to control her. The professor, as if Scheherazade, tells Lucia a series of episodes concerning the tragic queen so Lucia may internalize Juana’s plight, all the while executing his seduction of her. Male manipulation of the female, as we see, is hardly a thing of the past. A balance between the two time levels is carefully maintained, the contemporary story intensifying the viability of the characters from the past–all this carried along, as if down a lovely stream, by the sheer beauty of the author’s prose style. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved –This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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International Covers

From Kirkus Reviews
This book, by a highly regarded Central American poet, is an intelligent romance, an action-adventure with considerable depth. The German edition alone has sold over half a million copies. Lavinia Alarcon, 23, an aristocrat from “Faguas” (read Honduras), has returned from her university studies in Italy to take her first job as an architect. By the standards of Faguas she is a very liberated woman: She lives alone, frequents discotheques with a group of modern young friends, avoids romantic commitment, and refuses to examine the hunger and violence all around her. Her life is slowly disrupted by her affair with her boss, Felipe, who is a leader in the National Liberation Movement. Lavinia is drawn into the Movement in spite of herself, aided by the spiritual presence of Itza, a 15th-century female resister to the Conquistadors who now inhabits an orange tree in Lavinia’s garden; whenever Lavinia makes fresh orange juice, her spirit and Itza’s become further intermingled. Itza’s story and Lavinia’s run parallel; this is a case not of possession but of spiritual influence. Lavinia’s gradual change from rebel-without-a-cause to guerrilla is carefully detailed and presented as her own destiny. With each small adjustment in her consciousness she leaves her old self farther behind. Felipe also undergoes a slow transformation from a stereotypical macho male into a real companion who can fight with his woman at his side, even if she does come from a higher social class. A gripping page-turner with a historical basis, an action tale that boldly dramatizes an inner struggle. Lavinia is the Everywoman of the 21st century, searching for a balance between the extremes of violence and privilege. — Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

More Reviews

“A passionate story of love, courage, solidarity, and death, where . . . the lives of the characters are intertwined with the destiny of a country.” –Isabel Allende

“An inviting novel of love, politics, and history, steeped in magical realism, served in rich prose.” –Booklist

“One of the most gifted writers to have come out of Central America . . . a wonderfully free and original talent.” –Harold Pinter

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