Memory of Fire

Memory of Fire

Author	Eduardo Galeano
Original title	Memoria del fuego
Translator	Cedric Belfrage
Language	Spanish
Subject	History of Latin America
Publisher	Nation Books
Publication date	1982
Publication place	Uruguay
Published in English	1982 (1st edition) 2010
Media type	Print
Pages	xv, 336 p.
ISBN	978-1-56858-444-7

Memory of Fire (in Spanish: Memoria del fuego) is a trilogy written by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano.

Published between 1982 and 1986, it consists of the titles Genesis (1982), Faces and Masks (1984) and The Century of the Wind (1986). It is a rewritten history of the Americas since the days of creation myths to the 21st century.

Content

Considered Galeano’s greatest achievement, the trilogy encompasses the entire history of the Americas, from creation myths to the date of its first publication in 1982. He claims to have written it out of his growing dissatisfaction with Open Veins while living in exile in Spain as a result of the military dictatorships in Uruguay and Argentina. Open Veins, he worried in 1983, “may reduce history to a single economic dimension” when life “sings with multiple voices.” Thus, Galeano brings the reader not just through the pillaging of mineral rights but through the grand dreams of the Western Hemisphere.

The volumes of the trilogy are arranged chronologically:

• Genesis: from the creation of the world to the 17th century.
• Faces and masks: 18th and 19th centuries.
• Century of the wind: 20th century.

The text is composed of a series of short stories, each less than a page long. The stories are written in prose, some of them in poetic prose:

"Before, the winds blew incessantly over Vancouver Island. There was no such thing as good weather or low tide. Men decided to kill the winds."

— Eduardo Galeano, Genesis