Terra Nostra

Terra Nostra is a 1975 novel by the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes. The narrative covers 20 centuries of European and American culture, and prominently features the construction of El Escorial by Philip II. The title is Latin for "Our earth". The novel received the Xavier Villaurrutia Award in 1976 and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 1977. Plot Terra Nostra is divided into three parts, "The Old World", "The New World" and "The Next World" (it has been pointed out that the title of "The Next World" is mistranslated to English, and should be "The Other World"). Most of the novel takes place in and around the unfinished El Escorial in the 16th century. Its main character is King Felipe II, his family and court, his friends the peasant girl Celestina and the student Ludovico, and three mysteriously identical youths, each with twelve toes and a red cross on their back. The main characters are reborn in different ages. The novel opens in Paris on 14th July 1999 and ends in the same city five and a half months later on the eve of destruction. The middle part of the novel is a young Pilgrim's tale of his journey through the New World. Style and structure Terra Nostra, perhaps Fuentes' most ambitious novel, is a "massive, Byzantine work" that tells the story of all Hispanic civilization. Modeled on James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Terra Nostra shifts unpredictably between the sixteenth century and the twentieth, seeking the roots of contemporary Latin American society in the struggle between the conquistadors and indigenous Americans. Like The Death of Artemio Cruz, the novel also draws heavily on cinematic techniques.