Taibo, Paco Ignacio, II 1949-

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Taibo, Paco Ignacio, II 1949-

PERSONAL: Born January 11, 1949, in Gijon, Asturias, Spain; immigrated to Mexico, 1958; naturalized Mexican citizen; son of Paco Ignacio (a writer) and Maricarmen Taibo; married Paloma Saiz, 1971; children: Marina.

ADDRESSES: Home—Mexico City, Mexico.

CAREER: Writer. Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, professor, 1984-89. Director, Etiqueta Negra and Biblioteca Policiaca; Semana Negra (crime fiction festival), Gijon, Spain, organizer.

MEMBER: International Association of Crime Writers (president), PEN, Mystery Writers of America.

AWARDS, HONORS: Premio Grijalbo de Novela, 1982, for Heroes convocados; Café Gijon, 1986, for De Paso; Premio Nacional de Historia, INAH, 1986, and Premio Francisco Javier Clavijero, 1987, for Los Bolshevikis; Premio Dashiell Hammett, 1987, for La vida misma, 1991, for Cuatro manos, and 1994, for La bicicleta de Leonardo; Premio Novela Latinoamericana, 1989; International Prize, 1990, for Cuatro manos; Premio Internacional de Novela Planeta-Joaquin Mortiz, 1992, for La lejania del tesoro; Premio Bancarella, 1998, for Ernesto Guevara: Tambien conocido como el Che.

WRITINGS:

FICTION IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Cosa facil, Grijalbo, 1977, translation by William I. Neuman published as An Easy Thing, Viking (New York, NY), 1990.

No habra final feliz, Laser (Mexico), 1981, translation by William I. Neuman published as No Happy Ending, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Heroes convocados: Manual para la toma del poder, Grijalbo, 1982, translation by John Mitchell and Ruth Mitchell de Aguilar published as Calling All Heroes: A Manual for Taking Power, Plover (Kaneohe, HI), 1990.

Algunas nubes, Leega, 1985, translation by William I. Neuman published as Some Clouds, Viking (New York, NY), 1992.

Sombra de la sombra, Planeta (Mexico City, Mexico), 1986, translation by William I. Neuman published as The Shadow of the Shadow, Viking (New York, NY), 1991, Cinco Punto Press (El Paso, TX), 2006.

De paso (novel), Leega, 1986, translation by Martin Michael Roberts published as Just Passing Through, Cinco Puntos, 2000.

La vida misma, Planeta (Mexico City, Mexico), 1987, translation by Beth Henson published as Life Itself, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1994.

Regreso a la misma ciudad y bajo la lluvia, Planeta (Mexico City, Mexico), 1989, translation by Laura C. Dail published as Return to the Same City, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Cuatro manos, Ediciones B, Grupo Z (Mexico), 1990, translation by Laura C. Dail published as Four Hands, St. Martin’s (New York, NY), 1994.

68, Joaquin Mortiz, 1991, translation published as ’68, Seven Stories Press (New York, NY), 2004.

La bicicleta de Leonardo, Joaquin Mortiz, 1993, translation by Martin Michael Roberts published as Leonardo’s Bicycle, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Returning as Shadows, translated by Ezra E. Fitz, St. Martin’s (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Subcomandante Marcos) The Uncomfortable Dead: (What’s Missing Is Missing): A Novel by Four Hands, Akashic Books (New York, NY), 2006.

NONFICTION IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Ernesto Guevara: Tambien conocido como el Che (biography), Planeta (Mexico City, Mexico), 1996, translation by Martin Michael Roberts published as Guevara, Also Known as Che, St. Martin’s (New York, NY), 1997.

OTHER

Nacimiento de la memoria (anthology; title means “The Birth of Memory”), ENAH, 1971.

Dias de combate (title means “Battle Lines”), Grijalbo (Mexico), 1976.

La huelga de los sombrereros (title means “The Hat-makers’ War”), Centro de Estudios Historicos so-bre Movimiento Obrero (CEHSMO), 1980.

Asturias 1934, Jucar, 1980, 3rd edition, edited by Sil-verio Canada, Gijon, 1984.

(With Jorge Fernandez) El primer primero de mayo en Mexico (title means “Mexico’s First May Day”), Asociacion Mundial Centros de Estudios Historicos sobre Movimiento Obrero, 1981.

La huelga del verano de 1920 en Monterrey (title means “The Great Strike of the Summer of 1920 in Monterrey”), Oidmo, 1981.

(Editor, with Sealtiel Alatriste Lozano, and contributor) Mexico, historia de un pueblo (history comic book), twenty volumes, Nueva Imagen, 1981-82.

(With Rogelio Vizcaino) El socialismo en un solo puerto, Extemporaneos, 1983, third enlarged edition published as Las dos muertes de Juan Escudero (title means “The Two Deaths of Juan Escudero”), Joaquin Mortiz, 1989.

(Compiler and author of prologue) Jose C. Valades, El socialismo libertario Mexicano (title means “Libertarian Socialism in Mexico”), Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa, 1984.

Irapuato mi amor, Informacion Obrera/Macehual/Leega, 1984.

(With Rogelio Vizcaino) Memoria roja. Luchas sindi-cales de los anos 20 (title means “Red Memory”), Leega/Jucar, 1984.

Dona Eustolia blandio el cuchillo cebollero y otras historias (short stories), Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa, 1984

(With Luis Hernandez) Danzon en Bellas Artes, Informacion Obrera, 1985.

(Coauthor) Octubre 1934, cincuenta anos para la reflexion (title means “October 1934, Fifty Years of Reflection”), Siglo Veintiuno, 1985.

(With Mario Gil) Pistolero y otros reportajes (anthology), Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa, 1985.

Reportaje (anthology), Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa, 1985.

Los Bolshevikis: Historia narrativa de los origenes del comunismo en Mexico, 1919-1925, Joaquin Mortiz, 1987.

Ataca Oaxaca, Leega, 1987.

Arcangeles: Cuatro historias no muy ortodoxas de rev-olucionarios (title means “Archangels”), Alianza, 1988.

Pascual: Decimo round (title means “Pascual: Tenth Round”), Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa, 1988.

El regreso de la verdadera arana y otras historias que pasaron en algunas fabricas (title means “The Return of the Real Spider and Other Stories”), Joaquin Mortiz, 1988.

Fantasmas nuestros de cada dia, Marco Polo (Mexico), 1988.

Sintiendo que el campo de batalla… (title means “Feeling That the Battlefield…”), El Juglar Editores, 1989.

Santa Clara, la batalla del Che (title means “Santa Clara, Che’s Battle”), Planeta (Mexico City, Mexico), 1989.

Amorosos fantasmas (title means “Loving Phantoms”), Promexa (Mexico), 1990.

Suenos de frontera (title means “Frontier Dreams”), Promexa (Mexico), 1990.

Desvanecidos difuntos, Promexa (Mexico), 1991.

El hombre de los lentes oscuros de llama Domingo y se llama Raul, H. Politica, 1991.

De cuerpo entero, Ediciones Corunda, 1992.

La lejania del tesoro, Planeta (Mexico City, Mexico), 1992.

Cuevas-Taibo, mano a mano, Ediciones La Letra (Mexico), 1993.

Adios, Madrid (title means “Goodbye, Madrid”), Promexa (Mexico), 1993.

El caso Molinet, Difusion Editorial (Mexico), 1993.

Cardenas de cerca: Una entrevista biografica, Planeta (Mexico City, Mexico), 1994.

(Editor, with Froilan Escobar and Felix Guerra) El ano en que estuvimos en ninguna parte: La guerrilla africana de Ernesto Che Guevara, Ediciones de Pen-samiento Nacional (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1994.

Nomas los muertos estan bien contentos, Joaquin Mortiz, 1994.

Mascara Azteca y el doctor Niebla (despues del golpe), Alfaguara (Mexico), 1996.

El general orejon ese, Planeta (Mexico City, Mexico), 1997.

Insurgencia mi amor, El Atajo Ediciones (Mexico), 1997.

(Coordinator, with Victor Ronquillo) Cuentos policiacos mexicanos, Selector, 1997.

Arcangeles: Doce historias de revolucionarios herejes del siglo XX, Planeta (Mexico City, Mexico), 1998.

Que todo es imposible, Txalaparta (Tafalla, Mexico), 1998.

Mi amigo Moran, Micronovela Azoth/Fundacion Cultural de Tabajadores de Pascual y del Arte/Universidad Autonoma de Tlaxcala, 1998.

Primavera pospuesta: Una version personal de Mexico en los 90, J. Mortiz (Mexico), 1999.

Diarios de guerra: Rauu Castro y Che Guevara, Fábrica (Madrid, Spain), 2006.

Pancho Villa: Una biografía narrativa, Planeta (Mexico City, Mexico), 2006.

Also author of Memoria del Congreso de Merida, 1981; El primer primero de mayo en el mundo, 1982; Pascual sexto round, 1983; and Bajando la frontera, 1984. Contributor to Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Knopf (New York, NY), 1988, and to Frontera de espejos rotos, Roca (Mexico), 1994.

ADAPTATIONS: Dias de combate and Cosa facil were both made into films in 1982; Algunas nubes was filmed in 1989; Amorosos fantasmas was adapted for television by Producciones Alton, 1989.

SIDELIGHTS: Paco Ignacio Taibo II is a Mexican writer whose works include various mysteries featuring philosophical gumshoe Hector Belascoaran Shayne. Tai-bo’s entertaining fictional tales, as well as his biographies, historical works, and comic books, have brought him financial success and consistent best-seller status in his native Mexico. According to a Washington Post Book World contributor, Taibo “is good at revealing the fictions we tell ourselves to stay alive in adversity.”

Taibo was born in Spain in 1949, and he moved to Mexico with his family when he was only nine. His father, a noted cineaste and novelist, encouraged him to study literature, sociology, and history. To those disciplines Taibo added politics. In 1968, distressed by the abuses of power he saw occurring within the Mexican government, he joined the ill-fated student revolution, which came to a violent end that October when government troops killed nearly fifty students. This incident left a lasting impression on Taibo, and it has informed both his fiction and nonfiction.

During the 1970s Taibo worked as a journalist and a history teacher, and he wrote fiction in his spare time. His first detective novel, Dias de combate (title means “Battle Lines”), was published in 1976. The following year, he introduced detective Shayne in Cosa facil (translated as An Easy Thing). In this book, Shayne roams Mexico’s isolated countryside in search of a hermit who may or may not be the legendary revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. Subsequent Shayne novels include No habra final feliz (translated as No Happy Ending), which finds the detective opposing government corruption and organized crime in Mexico City. Nation reviewer Ilan Shavans called Shayne “Mexico’s contemporary hero of the oppressed, a detective with a lot of mileage in exploring the innermost symbols of the collective national psyche.”

In Regreso a la misma ciudad y bajo la lluvia (translated as Return to the Same City), Shayne, impressively recovered from the hail of bullets that riddled him at the close of No Happy Ending, finds himself in pursuit of a mysterious individual—replete with various identities—who has run afoul of an alcoholic American journalist and has probably become involved in a covert operation. A Publishers Weekly critic, who deemed the Shayne tales “an addicting import,” described the perspective of Return to the Same City, as “a beguiling world view in which everything, including crime and love, are elements in a cosmic joke.”

American reviewers have noted that Taibo’s crime fiction, including the Shayne stories, are more substantial than might be expected from fans of the genre. “Anybody who picks up Some Clouds in expectation of zipping through a standard private eye piece with no more than the added spice of an exotic location is in for a distinct disappointment,” wrote Bruce Cook in the Washington Post Book World. “Yet, as a rage-filled work of protest against Mexico’s inefficient single-party dictatorship and the society it has created, it should be read by any and all with an interest in that crippled giant of a nation to the south.” Charles Bowden expressed a similar opinion in the New York Times Book Review when he wrote: “Whereas American crime novels seize upon the darkness at the edge of town, Mr. Taibo. captures a completely different kind of world…. The criminals in this book are the officials and employees of the state government and of the national Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI—which, having run Mexico for sixty-five years, functions as the ultimate criminal syndicate. That is why in Mexico a detective novel is not a whodunit but a whydunit.”

In addition to producing crime fiction, Taibo has published mainstream novels expressing his concerns about Mexico. Cuatro manos (translated as Four Hands) and Leonardo’s Bicycle, for example, interweave history and current events as the heroes try to make sense of the chaos around them. A Washington Post Book World critic, assessing Four Hands, observed: “The Hispanic world, [Taibo] suggests, is an incredibly attractive universe where unsolved mysteries are buried forever. The more one struggles to uncover the truth in the Spanish-speaking world, the more one is likely to be covered with slime simply because in Latin America the truth is a mirage and chaos is the law of the land.”

Some of Taibo’s novels demonstrate his flair for inventive storytelling. De paso (translated as Just Passing Through), for instance, is presented as the biography, with accompanying footnotes, of a Mexican anarchist who disappeared in the early 1920s. In this novel, as a Publishers Weekly critic acknowledged, Taibo “blurs the boundary between fact and fiction.” The critic summarized the novel as an “affectionate account of working-class culture in a phase of heroic struggle.” Mary Margaret Benson, meanwhile, praised Just Passing Through in her Library Journal review as a “hilariously funny novel.”

In the novel The Uncomfortable Dead: (What’s Missing Is Missing): A Novel by Four Hands, Taibo collaborates with another author, identified as Subcomandante Marcos—a spokesperson for the real-life Zapatista movement, a modern revolutionary movement in Mexico. Together, the two write a fast-paced political thriller that involves a fictional counterpart to the Zapatistas, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (ZNLA). The collaboration is unusual in that the authors make no attempt to blend their work, but instead take charge of alternating chapters. “This unusual methodology would make the book a mere curiosity if it were a run-of-the-mill murder mystery but, luckily for us, it is much more,” wrote New Internationalist reviewer Louise Gray. In the story, Elias Contreras is a detective with the ZNLA, sent to investigate a murderer who apparently works with government support. Beyond the basic plot, however, the authors work with characters who discuss the parts they are playing in the novel and those who influence the plot even after their deaths. A reviewer for the Guardian Web site commented: “The plot of The Uncomfortable Dead is somewhat loose, the mystery tenuous. But the atmosphere is of a spectacular richness, and the many characters, dead and alive, who spring up on every page have a Pickwickian buoyancy, Mexico-style.” The reviewer concluded that the collaborative effort “has produced a witty, complex, at times moving piece of writing utterly different from and far more entertaining than anything either of them has written in the past.” The collaboration between the two coauthors was praised by Guy Savage, who wrote in Mostly Fiction: “This would be a dark tale indeed, but fortunately, both authors possess a light touch and a generous sense of self-deprecating humor. Taibo and Marcos instinctively know when to apply humor to the story and when to dive down to the dark, seamy side of Mexican political life.”

Taibo’s other writings include Ernesto Guevara: Tambien conocido como el Che (translated as Guevara, Also Known as Che), an account of the Marxist revolutionary who served with Fidel Castro before perishing in Bolivia. In New Republic, Taibo’s account was described as “provocative”and “overwhelmingly positive toward its subject.” In addition, Taibo was credited with fashioning “a sympathetic and multi-faceted figuration of the man and his deeds.”

Taibo’s popularity is well established in Latin America, and it is growing in other parts of the world. As one reviewer affirmed in the Washington Post Book World, Taibo “uses his wonderful talent for magical realism to show character and to build atmosphere,” and he added, “Lovers of modern Latin-American literature should snap up [Taibo’s work], as should mystery fans who like storytelling that’s as fractured as the age they live in, and far more artful.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August 1, 2006, David Wright, review of The Uncomfortable Dead: (What’s Missing Is Missing): A Novel by Four Hands, p. 52.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2006, review of The Uncomfortable Dead, p. 653.

Library Journal, February 1, 2000, Mary Margaret Benson, review of Just Passing Through, p. 119.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 5, 1990, review of Calling All Heroes: A Manual for Taking Power, p. 3; July 28, 1991, review of The Shadow of the Shadow, p. 2; September 12, 1993, review of No Happy Ending, p. 8; October 9, 1994, review of Life Itself, p. 15; October 8, 1995, review of Leonardo’s Bicycle, p. 12.

Nation, August 31, 1992, Ilan Shavans, review of Some Clouds, pp. 214-215.

New Internationalist, March, 2007, Louise Gray, review of The Uncomfortable Dead, p. 29.

New Republic, February 9, 1998, Enrique Krauze and Hank Heifetz, review of Guevara, Also Known as Che, p. 30.

New Yorker, October 6, 1997, Alma Guillermoprieto, review of Guevara, Also Known as Che, p. 104.

New York Times Book Review, July 21, 1991, Marilyn Stasio, review of The Shadow of the Shadow, p. 25; July 19, 1992, Marilyn Stasio, review of Some Clouds, p. 25; September 5, 1993, Marilyn Stasio, review of No Happy Ending, p. 19; August 7, 1994, Frederick Luciani, review of Four Hands, p. 10; November 6, 1994, Charles Bowden, review of Life Itself, p. 28; September 29, 1996, Marilyn Stasio, review of Return to the Same City, p. 28; October 26, 1997, Mark A. Uhlig, review of Guevara, Also Known as Che, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, November 10, 1989, Sybil Steinberg, review of An Easy Thing, p. 51; July 10, 1995, review of Leonardo’s Bicycle, p. 42; July 22, 1996, review of Return to the Same City, p. 229; January 10, 2000, review of Just Passing Through, p. 44; July 10, 2006, review of The Uncomfortable Dead, p. 56.

Tikkun, January 1, 2007, review of The Uncomfortable Dead, p. 81.

Washington Post Book World, July 1, 1990, review of Calling All Heroes, p. 8; August 18, 1991, review of The Shadow of the Shadow, p. 10; July 12, 1992, Bruce Cook, review of Some Clouds, p. 4; September 19, 1993, review of No Happy Ending, p. 11; August 14, 1994, review of Four Hands, p. 9; October 16, 1994, review of Life Itself, p. 10; September 17, 1995, review of Leonardo’s Bicycle, p. 8.