With "Memory of Fire," Eduardo Galeano "rewrites" the history of Latin America, based on myths, prophecies, and real events. In "Genesis," the first volume of the trilogy, the history of Latin America is recorded from the pre-Columbian era to the early 18th century.

Columbus' journey led to the brutal colonization of the New World with "protagonists" such as conquerors, executors of the Holy Inquisition, Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Dutch slave traders, and "extras" the native population, the Indians, the victims of white flesh merchants, and African slaves on a journey to the hell of the New World.

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

Through a thousand allegorical stories, Eduardo Galeano describes the daily lives of ordinary people, retrieves symbols and memories, and blends the past with the present in search of a more just future. In Galeano's prose, journalism, essay, and narrative coexist, composing a unique art that could perhaps help the author "unearth history beneath bronze statues and marble monuments."