Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano

Eduardo Galeano is a famous Latin American writer, little known in Anglo-Saxon countries until Hugo Chávez presented Barack Obama earlier this year with a copy of his classic 1973 book The Open Veins of Latin America (now once again available from Serpent's Tail). Galeano is a radical journalist from Uruguay, but he is also a poet and a novelist, and the brilliant inventor of a special genre of historical writing. He presents the reader with small, discrete episodes of the past – often no more than half a page long – to illuminate its darkest corners with little-known and often humorous stories.

Open Veins was more of a conventional history, dealing with the economic exploitation of Latin America by Europe and the United States over five centuries. Memory of Fire, published in 1986, was his first experiment with a new form, dealing over three volumes with the history of Latin America in bite-sized chunks of biography, fiction and poetry. Now in his latest book, Mirrors (translated by Mark Fried), he has used the same technique to retell the history of the world (with a continuing bias towards Latin America) – in 600 brief episodes.

In his original subtitle, Galeano described his book as "a history of the world, refracted", never an easy word to explain (which might be why the publishers decided to abandon it for "stories of almost everyone"). Yet it is useful to recall that refraction is responsible for rainbows, and Galeano's history is exactly that – a brightly coloured commonplace book of a kind that was once popular in our culture but has now almost disappeared, except in the Guardian's multiply authored Notes and Queries.

The beauty of Galeano's book lies not just in the eclectic choice of stories he tells, but more especially in his elegant, pared-down prose, sensitively translated by Mark Fried, with never an unnecessary word, nor one out of place – and he never misses a chance to tell a good joke. He takes world history from Adam and Eve – probably black, since human history begins in Africa – to the contemporary water wars of Bolivia, via Greece and Rome, China and India, the French Commune, the Nazi holocaust, and the experience of European and US colonialism. He also emphasises the permanent repression of women, the never-ending story of slavery and racism, and the continuing waste of the world's resources.

Part of the charm of such a collection is in being reminded of the stories that you know, and surprised by those you do not. Among the tales of which I was ignorant I include the story of the guillotine, which laboured on until 1977. "Its last victim was a Tunisian immigrant executed in the yard of a Paris prison by a superfast model with an electronic trigger." Neither did I know that the kindly, white-bearded, red-coated figure of Santa Claus was appropriated in 1930 as the new face of Coca-Cola by the American artist Haddon Sundblom. Coca-Cola is one of Galeano's favourite targets, and he tells again the story of how Fanta was invented in Nazi Germany during the war when the more traditional American soft drink was not available. At the same time, Ezra Pound was book-ending his broadcasts from fascist Italy with the music of Vivaldi.

Galeano, brought up as a Catholic, also has it in for the church. "The Catholic church invented hell and also invented the devil," he writes. "The Old Testament makes no mention of the perpetual barbecue, neither do its pages feature an appearance by the monster reeking of sulphur . . ." Yet the church wondered what would become of God without the devil; and "concluded that the threat of hell is more effective than the promise of heaven, and from then on ministers and holy fathers have terrorised us with sermons about torture in the fiery abyss where the evil one reigns." And what's more, Pope Benedict XVI confirmed in 2007 that "there is a hell. And it is eternal".

Some of Galeano's stories I recognise, but not always in the way he tells them. Here is his account of the end of the monarchy in Brazil in 1889:

"One morning, monarchist politicians woke up as republicans.

"A couple of years later, the constitution established universal suffrage. Everyone could vote, except women and the illiterate.

"Since nearly all Brazilians were either female or illiterate, practically no one voted.

"In the first democratic election, ninety-eight of every one hundred Brazilians did not answer the call to the ballot box."

What a useful story to be reminded of when considering the flaws in the democratic process imposed on contemporary Afghanistan.

Sometimes, one can enjoy catching Galeano out. I knew, for example, that Hermann Göring's father, Heinrich, was one of those responsible for the genocidal massacres in Namibia early in the 20th century. Galeano goes on to claim that the German chancellor Von Bülow coined the term Konzentrationslager. This is also true, yet he fails to point out that it was a Spanish general who devised the concept of the "concentration camp" when fighting against the Cubans in the 1890s.

Galeano's book is pure delight – a cornucopia of wonderful stories. It should be by everyone's bedside – and in every Christmas stocking.

Richard Gott's books include Cuba: A New History (Yale).

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