“Latin American Literature Today” has published a review of “La sombra del comandante” (2022) by Luis Mora-Ballesteros, Ph.D., a lecturer of Spanish and Literatures of Latin America and the Caribbean in the Department of World Languages and Culture. The journal is associated with “World Literature Today,” and seeks to reflect new realities of Spanish-language literature through a quarterly online publication, circulating in the United States as well as the literary communities of Latin America and Spain.
In his review, José Francisco Velásquez Gago of Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela, writes, “Mora-Ballesteros’s fictionalization of the border brings a range of marginalized voices into sharp focus. It echoes and projects the realities of a harsh landscape in an ongoing conflict: he has succeeded in painting a detailed picture of life along this border shared by two nations, and one which, on several occasions, serves as something of a review of its recent history.”
“La sombra del comandante” is the next instalment in the “Trilogía de la frontera,” and picks up where Mora-Ballesteros’ debut novel, “Díptico de la frontera” (2020) left off. In his review for Mora-Ballesteros’ earlier work, Bernardo Navarro Villarreal of Simón Bolívar University noted that it “combines memoir, crónica, and prose poetry, in order to portray, at the crossroad of fiction and autobiography, events trapped in oblivion and indifference.”
