Spanish / Colombia
Eliador y el viaje de regreso
(Eliador and the journey home)
Díaz, Gloria Cecilia
(text)
Díaz, Carlos Manuel
(illus.)
Bogotá: Panamericana Editorial, 2021. – 125 p.
ISBN 978-958-30-6307-7
River | Old age | Farewell | Death | Nature
Reading age: 10+
White Ravens issue: 2022
Mateo has lived almost all his life along the river Eliador. He has the power to communicate with Eliador in the same way he can with his tomcat Aristóbulo. When Mateo’s powers slowly begin to fade away, Eliador – which, together with all of nature, the forest, the animals, and everything on its banks, means everything to the old man – takes him on a final journey. Traveling on a float down the river to the ocean is at the same time a journey back to Mateo’s childhood and youth. Along the route, memories of experiences and encounters alternate with the depiction of the journey of the three protagonists – Mateo, Aristóbulo and Eliador. In her own uniquely rich, melodious, and poetic language, the multiple award-winning author Gloria Cecilia Díaz writes about living and dying, as well as about the fragility of an endangered natural world, which is being exploited and destroyed by man. A calm, serene melancholy overlies the narrative. Because death and leave-taking are part of the cycle of life, they also signify a new beginning. [JW]