Margarita, how beautiful the sea : a novel / by Sergio Ramírez ; translated by Michael B. Miller

"Winner of the Alfaguara Prize"--P. [4] of cover.

Ramirez is probably best known as a former vice president of Nicaragua (1984-90) and a strong critic of the United States, but in Spanish-speaking countries he is regarded as a leading Nicaraguan fiction writer. This English-language translation of his Margarita, Est Linda la Mar, which won Spain's Alfaguara Prize in 1998, is, writes the publisher, "a complete metaphor of reality and legend, the entire history of [the author's] country." In 1907, famed poet Ruben Dar!o returns to his native Nicaragua, where he inscribes one of his most famous poems-that of the title-onto the fan of a nine-year-old girl. Forty-nine years later, the dictator Anastasio Somoza is assassinated by a group of intellectuals and poets. The novel weaves together these two stories in a highly complex structure: the reader must wade through several narrators; read transcribed radio conversations, letters, and even Somoza's curriculum vitae; and sift through legends and actual events.