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Luz Ainaí Morales Pino
Lima y sus alrededores (1897), by French lawyer Camille Pradier-Fodéré, and Mi estancia de medio siglo en Lima (1913), by French editor and typographer Carlos Prince, refer to the capital city of Peru. Pradier-Fodéré's text, written in French almost a decade after leaving Peru, combines costumbrista manual features with the memoir. Prince's text is an autobiographical and bibliographical essay written in Lima, in Spanish, recounting his experience living in Peru over fifty years and his bibliographical contributions to the country's history and culture. Prince also expresses his resentment towards Peruvian society because of the lack of interest in his work. In different languages and settings, both authors write about a Lima that feels aloof in various manners: geographical and temporal, in Pradier-Fodéré's text; affective, in Prince's. Whereas Pradier-Fodéré assures that Lima gave him the happiest years of his life, Prince resents spending a lifetime in a nation that paid back with amargas decepciones (bitter disappointments) (20). Their texts reveal the uneasiness, estrangements, and disaffection that underscore the complexity of being foreign. This essay explores these entanglements and their effects through Sylvia Molloy's notion of escribir afuera (writing from outside), which problematizes the concepts of exile and migration by emphasizing, instead, the sense of displacement.
