La Charca

Set in a rural village in Puerto Rico in the late nineteenth century, this naturalist novel follows the poor families who live along a stagnant pond. Hunger, sickness and the grip of powerful landowners shape their days, and the hard labour of the fields leaves little room for hope. Gandía portrays the lives of ordinary people with unsentimental detail, showing how poverty and injustice pass from one generation to the next. It is a bleak, socially engaged portrait of the island's countryside, written by a Puerto Rican author in Spanish.