Faces and Masks

The second volume of Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire trilogy, Faces and Masks is an astonishing Latin American-eye view of the New World in the making. Here is the tangled, cataclysmic history of our hemisphere from the 1700s up to the dawn of our present century, told through characters as resonant and compelling as Simon Bolivar, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Billy the Kid. With its brilliant and imaginative blend of journalism, scholarship, and political passion, Faces and Masks is a panoramic interpretation of the Americas no work of history has previously imagined.

Eduardo Galeano‘s works, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages, include Memory of Fire (three volumes); Open Veins of Latin America; Soccer in Sun and Shadow; Days and Nights of Love and War; The Books of Embraces; Upside Down; and Mirrors. Born in Montevideo, he lived in exile in Argentina and Spain for years before returning to Uruguay. He was the recipient of the first Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom and the front-runner for Spain's esteemed Cervantes award.