Hunter of Stories

By Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano and published posthumously, Hunter of Stories offers glimpses into hidden histories, mythologies, and the untold crimes inflicted on indigenous peoples by European explorers and later by large nation-states seeking to exploit the natural resources and workers. Galeano's idealism comes through even as he retells hard histories in one- or two-page-long chapters.  As he notes in one of the stories, “Why not write the big story of the past by telling the little one?”

Two samples, each almost the entirety of its chapter:

“How did Europe view us in the sixteenth century?

Through the eyes of Theodor de Bry. An artist from Liège who never set foot in America was the first European to draw the inhabitants of the New World.”

“The man who burned the most books and read the fewest was the owner of the heftiest library in Chile.

Augusto Pinochet accumulated thousands upon thousands of volumes, thanks to the public monies he converted to funds for his personal use.

He bought books not to read them but to have them.”