The city of the wild gods
The City of the Wild Gods (Spanish: La ciudad de las bestias ) is the first book for young people by the Chilean writer Isabel Allende , published in 2002 by Suhrkamp Verlag ; It forms a trilogy with the youth books Im Reich des Goldenen Drachen and Im Bann der Masken .
action
Alexander, a 15-year-old son of a mother with cancer living in California, travels to the Brazilian jungle with his grandmother, Kate, a specialist journalist from National Geographic . But the relationship between Kate and Alexander is clouded. She once pushed Alexander into a pool to teach him to swim when he was three years old. Even now Kate tries to make it clear to Alexander that the sheltered childhood is over, so he has to find his way around the strange city of New York on his own . Kate takes Alexander on a scientific expedition to find a mysterious wild animal known as 'the beast' in the Amazon.
Exposed to the unfamiliar surroundings of the jungle, Alex soon sees the new situation as a challenge and adventure. He finds a friend in Nadia, the daughter of the local guide. From her he is introduced to the world of thought and mysticism of the jungle Indians. Both learn what their totem animals are - jaguars and eagles . Shared adventures deepen the bond and a quiet love story begins, in the course of which Alex discovers his own sexuality. He also succeeds in unmasking a conspiracy. Alleged fortunes that he made when he discovered an El Dorado turn out to be fool's gold .
At the end of the journey, Alex and Nadia are kidnapped by the Nebelmen, an Indian tribe; they are welcomed in a friendly manner, get to know the way of life of their "hosts" and also learn more about the wild animals they are looking for, which are probably a kind of giant sloth . Alex goes through an initiation ritual (it is described, among other things, how he gets into a state of intoxication caused by Indian drugs), he becomes a warrior and leaves his child-being behind.
Finally, Nadia and Alex solve the mystery of the beasts, the expedition returns to civilization, with Alex bringing his mother the "water of life" with which he hopes to be able to cure her.
Others
The City of Wild Gods is the first part of a trilogy about the adventures of Alex and Nadia, whose further experiences take place in the Himalayas and in Central Africa. The titles of volumes two and three are: In the realm of the golden dragon and In the spell of masks .
In August 2002, The City of the Wild Gods was published as an audio book by Hörverlag .
Reviews
The story is conceived as an entertaining adventure novel that is told not without tension. It is mostly criticized that the author puts the American civilization (culture) and the primeval forest (nature) against each other too blatantly and gives preference to nature rather uncritically. The book thus also becomes a document of the criticism of civilization and thus follows on from comparable novels by Karl May , Jack London or Joseph Conrad .