THE HOUSE BY THE BAY
A professor, writer, and cultural manager Zulian Alexis Fernández (Sur del Lago, 1951), with a long and renowned career as a professor emeritus at Zulia University, cultural director (1992-1996), president of Apuz-ciencias (1996-2000), founder of Kuruvinda (2005) publishing house and magazine, and the author of more than twenty poem books, a novel and historical-literary research, adds up this novel now to complete his extensive work, that features one of the most important characters that have been born on this “beloved sun land.”
The house by the bay. Memorias of
Manuel Trujillo Duránes, a firsthand novel, passionate and fascinating, to be read without a break and learn first hand not only about the novel-like biography of entrepreneur, film maker, photographer, astronomer, editor, and inventor Manuel Trujillo Durán (Maracaibo, 1871-1933), but also about the cultural and social history of this city at the turn of the 19th century and the 1900s.
All legends, stories, and tales about that Maracaibo of yore come to life in this illustrated novel by Alexis Fernández, who spent almost a decade on doing research on the main character, his time and circumstances, as well as on the collecting work of photos, posters, letters, maps, and journalistic reviews all across Venezuela and the Colombian-venezuelan border where this bold pioneer stamped his mark.
The novel is divided into twenty-eight chapters reeled off in an enveloping and poetic prose that does not neglect historical research, captured in the last part of the book which details the source of quotes and illustrations. Each chapter raises the curtain to show us some stage in the story of a man's life who, since his teenage years, starts out as a cultural promoter, entrepreneur, photographer, film maker, and inventor, despite his own economic difficulties and the region's political isolation during Guzmánblanco´s, Cipriano´s Castro´s or Juan Vicente Gómez´s administrations that always favored the cultural, social and political development of the capital area at the expense of the rest of the country.