González León, Adriano (1931–)

Adriano González León (b. 1931), Venezuelan fiction writer. One of Venezuela's most innovative and demanding writers, González León is the author of one of the most accomplished Venezuelan novels of the century, País portátil (1969). He also published the novel Asfalto-infierno (1963) and several volumes of short fiction. His first set of stories, Las hogueras más altas (1957), portrays solitary and violent characters. González León used Faulknerian narrative techniques to construct his historical and political novel País portátil, which tells the story of the Barazarte family through the mind of one of its members, a young revolutionary. At the same time, País portátil also recounts Venezuelan history since the nineteenth century. The young revolutionary, Andrés, carries a bomb on a bus through the city of Caracas. The reader is bombarded with images of modern urban chaos in the city and the conscious and subconscious thoughts of Andrés. González León has published short fiction in the 1970s and 1980s, but no other novels.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

John S. Brushwood, The Spanish American Novel: A Twentieth-Century Survey (1975).

Giuseppe Bellini, Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana (1985).

George Mc Murray, Spanish American Writing Since 1941 (1987).

Additional Bibliography

Carrera, Liduvina. Reflexiones de lozanía: Cinco ensayso de crítica literaria. Venezuela: Fondo Editorial Toromaina, 1995.

Linares Angulo, Jorge. País portatíl en la sociología de la novela. Caracas: Ediciones Casa de Bello, 1994.

                                    Raymond Leslie Williams