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Review of Zorro, by Isabel Allende (HarperCollins, 2005)
First aired on NPR May 10, 2005
THE LATEST WORK OF FICTION by ever popular Isabel Allende, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, takes us back into early-nineteenth-century California and Spain and spurs to life the legendary romantic hero, known as Zorro, a sort of Superman of the Spanish tenancy of western North America, beginning with the romance that led to his conception.
Zorro! When I was a kid, living in North Jersey and imbued with the values of American pop culture, I used to go to the Roky Theater to watch the Saturday-afternoon serials about the adventures of this masked swordsman with a black cape, who rode his fine horse along dusty trails and always used his lightning blade-work and his lashing whip on the side of justice and the maltreated. Back then in Jersey, we had no clue about the early California or romantic Spain where this hero found his origins. To us Zorro seemed like Robin Hood in a smartly cut black suit and mask. Of his heritage we remained blissfully ignorant. Zorro, long live Zorro! Not even the Anthony Hopkins-Catherine Zeta-Jones-Antonio Banderas movie of a few years ago made much of a dent in our antiknowledge.
"Let us begin at the beginning," says the narrator at the...