Overview

Akum, the Magic of Dreams is the color illustrated story of Maribel, a precocious girl whose imagination leads her to the enchanting world of two wandering gnomes in search of Muisca gold. Through Longtooth and Chichigua, Maribel meets Agmmandiel, a playful elf who transforms into a bird at will. Maribel must solve the enigma of Agmmandiel in order to cross the Bridge of Illusions, enter the Mountain of Akum and meet the warrior prince who holds the key to the secret of the Muisca culture. Maribel is the character in which the author condenses with extraordinary literary sagacity the elements of childhood. This story presents the power of children, which makes them participants in the inventions of Nature. Rigor and creative flight allow the reader to access the dimension of childhood, that threshold of the marvelous that represents the initiatory steps that is the transit of mythical splendors. Chavez-Vasquez combines magical realism, fantasy and mythical magical adventure into a story that celebrates courage, imagination and discovery. This treatment of theme and characters is preceded by the vital imprint of early age, interwoven with dreams, terrors and dazzles, expression of sociocultural environment, rich in contrasts and passions. The author approaches her narrative with singular skill in the use of language and an inventive audacity that ends up recreating the atmosphere with a geographical, human, cultural and historical content. Memories, dreams, legends, superstitions merge into an organic whole, with a procession of gnomes, elves and apparitions, that is to say, a vision of deep telluric content; with a folk background, where play is mixed with drama, sarcasm with humor, reality with fantasy, and where a longing for justice and a tormented effort to define the identity of a world persists. An exquisite synthesis of the anthropological sign, elevated to a great aesthetic dignity. AKUM is indeed, a powerful and imaginative and tender story, a hymn to life, backed by a solid spiritual and intellectual foundation, but above all by the great authenticity of the writer. The art of storytelling becomes living substance in the narrative of Gloria Chávez Vásquez.

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9798999230522

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Reviews

""Akum is a hymn to life"" Odon Betanzos, poet and writer, Spanish North-American Academy. ""In AKUM the art of telling stories becomes a living substance in the narrative of Gloria Chávez-Vásquez. Jesús Cos Causse, poet, Temas del Caribe, Cuba. ""A refreshing and tender story, a literary gem"" Guido Feliz, journalist and writer. ""Akum is a powerful and imaginative story, backed by a solid spiritual and intellectual foundation, but above all by the great authenticity of the writer Gloria Chávez-Vásquez. Jorge Velez, Anthropologist, UNESCO Cultural Advisor, Bogotá.

Author Information

Gloria Chávez Vásquez is a Colombian born writer, journalist and educator who has lived in the United States since 1970. She is the author of the Akum trilogy in Spanish of which Akum the Magic of Dreams is the first book translated to English. Her journalistic works have appeared in publications in the U.S. Canada, Colombia, Mexico, France and Spain.

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