Think Gabriel Garcia Marquez with a compelling, imaginative account of injustices around the world with myth. Evocatively written by the author of "Open Veins of Latin America" -- the one Hugo Chavez gave to Barack Obama and reviewed by Thom Hartmann for BuzzFlash.com -- this sweeping book may be Eduardo Galeano's final step to a Nobel Prize

"There is a mysterious power to Galeano's storytelling. He uses his craft to invade the privacy of the reader's mind, to persuade him or her to read and to continue reading to the very end, to surrender to the charm of his writing and the power of his idealism."

-- Iasabel Allende


From Booklist:

*Starred Review* In his poetic nonfiction, Galeano performs the sort of extraordinary feats of compassion, artistry, and imagination achieved in fiction by his fellow visionary Latin American writers, especially Borges, García Márquez, and Bolaño. Galeano’s seminal works, most notably Memory of Fire (1988), have been enormously influential in both content and form, and now this historian of conscience, this humanely ironic commentator and dazzling storyteller, distills the entire wild pageant of human history into a radiant mosaic of pithy fables, essays, and portraits. Galeano circles the planet, tallying our triumphs and crimes from cave paintings to genocide, gathering myths, exposing lies, and reclaiming forgotten heroes. Origin stories are a favorite subject, both authentic and impishly improvised, as in “Origin of the World Trade Organization,” in which Zeus chooses Hermes to be the god of trade “because he was the best liar.” Galeano is particularly ardent in his parsing of the perpetual injustice and violence against women, the perversion of religion and the habit of war, the horrors of slavery, the evolution of science, and the pillaging of the earth. Themes and connecting patterns rise up like waves and carry forward flotillas of essays in this gorgeously fluid and caustic chronicle of the human condition.

Officially released by Nation Books on June 1, "Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone," is already reaping praise for its mesmerizing style and passionate cry for equality and economic justice.

In a recent interview, Galeano noted: "The world, which is the private property of a few, suffers from amnesia. It is not an innocent amnesia. The owners prefer not to remember that the world was born yearning to be a home for everyone."

Amen and Awoman! (By the way, "Mirrors" places a special lens on the suppression of women throughout history.)

Poetically, trenchantly and profoundly, Galeano takes us on a fast-paced provocative journey through the interlocking of our imaginative and real world.