With "Memory of Fire," Eduardo Galeano "rewrites" the history of Latin America, based on myths, prophecies, and real events.

In "The Beginning," the first volume of the trilogy, the history of Latin America is recorded from the pre-Columbian era to the early 18th century. Columbus's journey led to the brutal colonization of the New World with "protagonists" being the conquerors, the executioners of the Inquisition, the Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Dutch slave traders, and the "extras" being the local population, the Indigenous peoples, the victims of white slave traders, and African slaves on a journey into the hell of the New World.

The fever of black gold, the revolution of the oppressed populations, the lost civilizations of the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans, and the annihilation of thousands of people constitute a forgotten page in the books of official history.

Through a thousand allegorical stories, Eduardo Galeano describes the daily life of ordinary people, retrieves symbols and memories, and blends the past with the present in search of a fairer future.

In Galeano's prose, journalism, essays, and narrative coexist, composing a unique art form, which may be the only one that could help the author "unearth the history beneath the bronze statues and marble monuments."