Summer is a good time to read, to go to our trusted bookstore and get those works that friends recommended to us, to try to finish that novel that was given to us for our birthday or to get ahead of the pile of books that we have on the nightstand for a few months.
During the summer we usually have more opportunities to enjoy hobbies such as reading, to which we cannot dedicate as much time as we would like the rest of the year. It seems to me that it may be the appropriate time to learn a little more about the History of Lanzarote and I think that can be achieved, in a way, from reading three recent novels written by authors born or linked to the island. The three novels are very different but have in common that they all take place during the Old Regime in Lanzarote and that the main characters are female.
First of all, I would like to recommend the novel Tierra Quemada (Burnt Land) (Ediciones Remotas, 2023) by Nieves Rodríguez Rivera. I think it is a very interesting work because, in addition to its literary quality, I think we must recognize the great effort made by the author to recreate the way of life of the Lanzarote peasantry in the early eighteenth century, the difficulties and dangers they faced with the eruptions of Timanfaya in 1730. I consider it a great success, moreover, that the protagonist, María Hernández, is a woman of humble class and I was moved by the courage, the undoubted strength with which she faces the violence and uncertainties of the time in which she has to live.
Secondly, I would like to highlight the novel Un sueño ajeno (Someone Else's Dream) (Caballos Azules Editorial, 2023) by Víctor Bello Jiménez where with great historical rigor, based on the study of documentary sources of the time, the life of Inés Peraza de las Casas is addressed, born in Seville in the first quarter of the fifteenth century within a family that aspired to conquer and govern the Canary Islands. Inés Peraza became the Lady of the Canary Islands due to a series of family circumstances during a turbulent period that corresponds to the first phase of the conquest of the archipelago. The novel, making appropriate use of resources such as analepsis, describes the peculiar and problematic family relationships of Inés Peraza, as well as economic issues and social conflicts of the people of Lanzarote due to the way Inés Peraza exercised power.
Thirdly, I would like to mention the novel Ana Viciosa, La Señora de Tinajo (The Lady of Tinajo) (Senderos Atlánticos, 2024) by Ignacio Romero Perera. It is a novel based on the real and legendary character of Ana Viciosa, a powerful woman, with a unique personality, who dominated the economic and social life of the region of Tinajo in the transition from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries. It is a time of incursion of pirates and corsairs in the islands and the author has been able to take advantage of these issues through abundant dialogues and descriptions to generate interest in many people who are not so accustomed to reading.
Both in the case of Víctor Bello's novel and in Nacho Romero's, both choose as protagonists characters from the highest part of the social pyramid of the time but at the same time, they were paradoxically somewhat forgotten characters, in whom historiography had not particularly focused its interest, beyond the anecdotal, despite recent gender studies.
As I really could not stay with only three novels, I would like to recommend finally, yes, with a different historical context than the previous ones but also interesting and the same geography, the novel Eliza (Itineraria Editorial, 2024), first foray into the narrative of Myriam Ybot. The protagonist of this work, Eliza Drake, is a young English woman who travels to the Canary Islands in the early twentieth century. The character is fictional although undoubtedly inspired by trips and expeditions that other English women have carried out since the eighteenth century, leaving + testimony of these through various diaries or travel notebooks as in the case of Olivia Stone. It is a very entertaining novel, where you can see the extensive documentation that the author had to collect to create her fiction. The influence of classics of the English novel is also denoted. The use of narrative twists will lead to once the reading has begun, it cannot be abandoned until it is finished.
The novels are very different from each other and present different literary level and historical rigor although all have remarkable positive aspects. I even think they could be a didactic resource applicable to the classroom. But what is certain is that some of them or even all of them will be to your liking and will be able to satisfy your demand, you will surely learn something about History and your reading will enrich your summer.
