Cabezón Cámara’s novel has been nominated for the international Booker prize and you can sort of see why. It’s something of a romp with its bawdy portrayal of the titular heroine as she crosses the Pampas in the year of our lord 1872. China is the estranged wife of Martin Fierro, (Fierro meaning “iron” in spanish), the subject of the great national epic poem by José Hernández, who appears in the novel as a dissolute army captain running a fort in the wilderness. Fierro also pops up as do other characters from the poem. However, this is a feminist riff on the macho history of the evolving Argentina. China hooks up with an Englishwoman, Liz, looking to reach her husband who has inherited land in the Indian territories. China and Liz roll across the Pampas in their wagon, until they reach the fort. They have a few adventures and a great deal of vigorous sex, with Liz proving to be the model of the repressed Englishwoman who lets it all hang out as she goes native. After their sojourn in the fort, they flee into the Indian territory where they live a kind of Pantheistic idyll. It’s all quite charming and frothy, with some purple passages of beauty as the author describes the landscape they’re headed into, and their eventual assimilation into a (very free-love, hippy), native tribe.
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