The Master of Fate a novel ISBN 978-0930773-557 |
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The Master of Fate a novel ISBN 978-0930773-557 |
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Winner of the 1998 Black Heron Press
Award for Social Fiction
The Master of Fate is a coming-of-age novel
of a different sort. It is not about the building of character, but about its
erosion. It is not about the traumatic experiences that the protagonist
must learn from as a part of growing up, but about the accumulation of small events and
pressures that result in the unraveling of a life. Oscar grows up in Bogota,
Colombia, a youth of intellect and ambition from a middle-class family. But social
corruption, notably demonstrated by the anti-Semitism that even the "best
people" accept as a fact of life, and political and economic corruption through their
affects on Oscar and his family, act to thwart his ambition and turn his intellect in upon
itself. The Master of Fate is a novel both existential and
realistic, reminiscent of Sartre's early post-war stories.
Gonzalo Munevar has a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science. He has written
several books in this field and has lectured throughout the world. The
Master of Fate is his first novel.
| What the Critics are Saying |
Publisher's Weekly, January 2000
Oscar Moreira, the narrator of this unsparing coming
of age novel, is a privileged Colombian adolescent boarding at a wealthy Catholic school
in Bogot . Class divisions are strong and evident in Latin America, and powerfully shape
Oscar's late 1950s world. His beautiful mother and successful father live in the rich
Bocagrande neighborhood of Cartegena, just a short distance away from miserable slums that
everyone ignores. Oscar's worries are not about food and clothing, but about God and
sexuality. Father Jorge, at school, counsels him on both issues, although he winds up
piquing, rather than subduing, Oscar's curiosity about onanistic functions. The secure
framework of the teenager's life starts to warp when his parents move back to Bogot .
Signs of downward mobility begin to avalanche when his father's business investments fail,
and Oscar and his brother, Homero, soon become targets of their father's frustration.
Tuition is paid late, the maid goes without her wages and the quality of family meals
becomes, to Oscar's taste, shabby. The choleric Mr. Moreira seems to delight in picking on
Oscar, while Oscar's mother strains to keep the peace. When his expectations of attending
an elite Colombian university are dashed, Oscar instead enrolls in La Nacional, whose
student body is largely working class, mostly Indian students. He angers his parents by
signing up for physics, which forfeits his scholarship. All along, Oscar is anxiously
exploring his sexuality while coping with his domestic and academic problems. He becomes
alienated from his schoolmates, and his interest in his studies flags; after his father
dies, Oscar must come to terms with his failures while attempting to reimagine his future.
Colombian academic Munevar's (Radical Knowledge) debut novel is lively with the often
stunningly blunt dialogue of teenagers exchanging boasts and sexual secrets, while Oscar's
inner life registers as an uncompromising study of the psychological origins of
resentment.
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