Flames Burning Money

里卡多·皮格利亚 / 吴娴敏Shanghai Translation Publishing House · ChinaJan 2025

Rating 4.3
Word count
92K words
Chapters
11
ISBN
9787532795017

Tags

Foreign Literature Suspense ThrillerTwin-City StoriesFate and FortuneCriminal GangJourney of EscapeComplex HumanityCriminal PsychologyViolent ExploitsTrue EventsSouth American Flavor

Summary

Blaze of Coins uses a kaleidoscopic approach to fictionalize a real historical event, turning it into a shocking story of violence. The story spans two cities, Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The criminals Brignone and Dorda, known as "the twins," join a criminal gang, collude with corrupt police and politicians, and rob a bank armored car.

They flee with a huge sum to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, and are besieged in an apartment by the combined police forces of Argentina and Uruguay. In the standoff, the killers, already drenched in blood, kill several more police officers and provocatively set the remaining loot ablaze. The two countries' police forces then launch their final assault. This brutal siege and its shocking outcome became a legend in Latin America.

In 2000, Argentine director Marcelo Piñeyro adapted Blaze of Coins into a film of the same name, which won the Goya Award for Best Spanish-Language Foreign Film.

Editor's review

Plata quemada turns a real criminal event into a kaleidoscopic literary narrative. Piglia is not content to retell the robbery; instead, he lets Buenos Aires and Montevideo, corrupt police and politicians, and the robbers known as "the twins" together form a cross-section of Latin American society. The story moves from an armored car robbery to a siege in an apartment, with violence escalating, and the robbers' act of burning the remaining loot in their desperation pushes money, defiance, and destruction to the extreme. The book's strength lies in its shifting narrative perspectives and control of pace; the real event, after fictional treatment, has both a documentary coldness and a legendary tension. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 2000 and won the Goya Award for Best Spanish-Language Foreign Film, which also shows the story's visual and dramatic intensity. It is best read as a Latin American literary sample about violence, greed, and end-of-the-road choices, rather than as pure crime reportage.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. First learn the general outline of the robbery, then enter the text and appreciate the handling of fictional techniques
  2. Pay attention to shifts in narrative perspective; you may mark passages where different voices appear
  3. After finishing, compare with the film adaptation and compare the choices made in literature and image
  4. If violent passages make you uncomfortable, read in sections; there is no need to finish in one sitting

About the publisher

Shanghai Translation Publishing House China · Founded in 1978

Shanghai Translation Publishing House is a Chinese publisher oriented mainly toward translation and publishing. Its publications cover foreign literature, world classics and classic works, as well as social culture, folk literature and classical poetry. The database contains 2,618 titles, including Never Let Me Go, Les Misérables (2 volumes), Don Quixote (illustrated collector's edition), The Complete Comedies of Molière (4 volumes), The Complete Novels of Kafka (3 volumes), The Collected Works of Dostoevsky (9-volume set), Reason and Persons, and Oedipus Rex (Translation Classics). Its author resources include foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Molière, as well as translators such as Zheng Kelu, Sun Jiameng, Li Jianwu and Zhang Kun. The publisher has brands such as "Translation Classics Selections" and "Translation Documentary," and emphasizes translated works in foreign literature and the humanities and social sciences, while also publishing bilingual dictionaries and foreign-language educational books. Public information is limited; the above is based on the book information in the database.

Contents

  1. 版权信息
  2. 一
  3. 二
  4. 三
  5. 四
  6. 五
  7. 六
  8. 七
  9. 八
  10. 九
  11. 后记

FAQ

Did the story in the book really happen? This book is based on real historical events and fictionalized. The story involves joint pursuit of the robbers by police in Argentina and Uruguay, and the robbers burning the remaining loot; these come from the event itself. The author uses a kaleidoscopic approach in literary treatment, so details and character voices contain fictional elements and should not be read as strict reportage.
Will not having seen the film adaptation affect my reading? No. The film was adapted and shot by Marcelo Piñeyro in 2000 and won the Spanish Goya Award for Best Spanish-Language Foreign Film, but reading the original does not depend on the film. The book's narrative perspectives shift often, and its pace differs from the image; reading the novel first allows you to appreciate the uniqueness of the textual treatment, and you can then compare it with the film.
Do I need to understand Latin American historical background while reading? Systematic knowledge is not necessary, but it helps to know that the story takes place between Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Montevideo, Uruguay. The book involves corrupt collusion between police and politicians, which is part of the story's internal setting; the author presents it through the plot, and you can follow the main line without additional background knowledge.

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About the author

里卡多·皮格利亚 Author

Ricardo Piglia is a contemporary novelist who writes in Spanish. Public information available in Chinese about his life and creative background is limited, and readers in the Chinese-speaking world have mainly come to know him through translated works. Three of his books are included in the catalogue: Plata Quemada, The Absent City, and The End of the Journey, all classified as foreign literature. These works show that he prefers to use the narrative framework of mystery and detective fiction to carry more complex literary and intellectual concerns. The unfolding of plot is often accompanied by questions about the boundary between reality and fiction, with carefully crafted structures and a restrained, enduring atmosphere. His writing is distinctive within contemporary Latin American literature: it retains the readability of genre fiction while constantly challenging readers' expectations, and is therefore valued by readers and critics of serious literature.

吴娴敏 Author

Wu Xianmin is an author about whom limited public information is available. Two works are currently known, Lieyan Fenbi and The Last Dream, commonly classified under foreign literature. Existing information is not enough to give a full picture of her writing: her dates of birth and death, nationality and educational background are not clearly recorded, and no English name is known. Judging from the titles and the classification of the two works, Wu Xianmin appears to favor strongly narrative subjects with emotional tension and imaginative color; the intensity and dream imagery suggested by the titles also hint that her writing may move between reality and fantasy. In the absence of fuller author statements and critical material, the sources of her style and her literary influence cannot be confirmed, and readers may begin with these two works to sense her narrative orientation and the texture of her language directly.