LIGHT FROM A NEARBY WINDOW introduces a new generation of poets who have become a driving force in Mexican literature today. Until quite recently, contemporary Mexican poetry has been little-known and virtually unavailable to English-speaking readers. This bilingual anthology includes twenty-one poets - twelve men and none women - all of whom have received national and international recognition. In poems about sexuality and spirituality, politics and marginalization, history and tradition, urban and rural life, they write about the unique experience of being Mexican at the end of the millennium. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION; LUIS MIGUEL AGUILAR-The War of the Stones; Jose Maria, Lumberjack; Memo, Who Loved Motorcycles; GASPAR AGUILERA DIAZ- Does Anyone Know Where Roque Dalton Spent His Final Night?; Finally, After So Many Years, Hernán CortEs Declares; MARIA BARANDA- from The Garden of Enchantments; EFRAIN BARTOLOME- House of Monkeys; Letters from Bonampak; Coffee Harvest; ALBERTO BLANCO- The Parakeets; Luxury Hotel; I, Clouded; Good Wishes; Moon of Daily Life; The Poet Does and Doesn't Have; Why So Many Forms?; CARMEN BOULLOSA- Letter to the Wolf; Fire; The Other; RICARDO CASTILLO- The Poet of the Garden; Ode to the Urge; One Potato, Two; LUCHA CORPI- Undocumented Anguish; from Boundaries; ELSA CROSS- Night of San Miguel; Jaguar; Tenayuca; Uxmal; Malinalco; ANTONIO DELTORO- Submarine; Barefoot Days; The Sold House; Fossils; JORGE ESQUINCA- Fable of the Hunter; Hortensia; FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ- The Boy in the Photograph; Until the Poem Remains; To the Author of ‘Dream Song'; Autograph DAVID HUERTA- November Rain; from Incurable; Packages; EDUARDO LANGAGNE- Earthquake; Opening Up the Caskets; ELVA MACIAS- From Capricorn; Indications; Image and Likeness; FABIO MORABITO- My Regular Appearances; I Hear Cars; Swings; Master of an Expanse; ISABEL QUINONEZ- In Our Desolation; To Flow, Submerge; Craving for Light; Retirement; SILVIA TOMASA RIVERA- I sense you careening downshadow; Mother, I want to go to the sea; We're at a fiesta; The cowhands; JOSE JAVIER VILLARREAL- An imposing silence Ballad in Memory of Francois Villon; Untitled IV; MINERVA MARGARITA VILLARREAL- Song of Penelope; Sleep's Faithless Lady; VERONICA VOLKOW-The House; Hunger; Deep darkness; You are naked; The Circle; God; CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES. . . JUVENAL ACOSTA was born in Mexico City in 1961. He studied economics in Mexico City, and philosophy in Morelia, Michoacan, where he lived, miraculously, as a poet. He is the author of the prize-winning Diciendo unas palabras negras and PAPER OF LIVE FLESH. He lives in Berkeley, California. . TRANSLATORS - F. Bell, Forrest Gander, Robert L. Jones, Elaine Katzenberger, Michael Koch, W S. Merwin, Nancy J. Peters, LaVonne Poteet, Catherine Rodriguez-Nieto, John Oliver Simon, Iona Whishaw. . The following poems were published originally in these Spanish-language editions: LUIS MIGUEL AGUILAR-La guerra de las piedras; Jose Maria, maderero; Memo, motociclista-from Todo lo que se, Editorial Cal y Arena, 1996. GASPAR AGUILERA DIAZ-Alguien sabe donde paso la ultima noche Roque Dalton?; Al fin despuEs de tantos anos Hernan CortEs declara-from Zona do derrumbe, Editorial Katum, 1984. MARIA BARANDA-Parte I del libro-from El jardin do los encantamientos, Coleccion Molinos de Viento, Universidad AutOnoma Metropolitana, 1989. EFRAIN BARTOLOME-Casa de los monos; Cartas desde Bonampak; Corte de cafE-from Ojo de jaguar, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, (UNAM), 1990. ALBERTO BLANCO-Los pericos-from El libro do los pajaros, Ediciones Toledo, 1990. Para quE tantas formas?-from Cromos, INBA/SEP, 1987. CARMEN BOULLOSA-Carta al lobo; El fuego; El otro-from La Salvaja, Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1989. RICARDO CASTILLO-El poeta del jardin; Oda a las ganas; Pin uno, pin dos-from El pobrecito señor X, Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1980. LUCHA CORPI-Margenes; Indocumentada angustia-from Variaciones sobre una tempestad/Variations on a Storm, Third Woman Press, 1990. ELSA CROSS-Noche de San Miguel; Jaguar; Tenayuca; Uxmal; Malinalco-from Jaguar, Ediciones Toledo, 1991. ANTONIO DELTORO-Submarino; Los dias descalzos; La casa vendida; Fosiles-from Los dias descalzos, Editorial Vuelta, 1993. JORGE ESQUINCA-Fabula del cazador; Hortensia-from El cardo en la voz, Editorial Joaquin Mortiz, 1991. FRANCISCO HERNÂNDEZ-El nino de la fotografia; Hasta que el verso quede-from En las pupilas del que regresa, UNAM, 1993. DAVID HUERTA-Lluvias de noviembre-from Lluvias de noviembre, Multiarte, 1976. Incurable (Fragment)-from Incurable, Editorial ERA, 1987. EDUARDO LANGAGNE-El temblor-from A la manera del viejo escarabajo, Gobierno de Sinaloa, 1990. ELVA MACIAS-De capricornio-from Lejos de la memoria, Jean Boldo i Climent, Editores, 1989. Imagen y semejanza-from Imagen y semejanza, UNAM, 1982. FABIO MORIBITO-Mi periodica aparicion; Oigo los coches; Los columpios; Dueno de una amplitud-from De lunes todo el año, Joaquin Mortiz, 1992. SILVIA TOMASA RIVERA-Te siento correr sombras abajo-from Poemas al desconocido/ poemas a la desconocida, Penelope, 1984. Madre, quiero ir al mar; Estamos de fiesta; Los vaqueros-from Duelo de espadas, FCE, 1987. JOSE JAVIER VILLARREAL-Un largo silencio; Balada a la memoria de Francois Villon; Sin Titulo IV-from La procesion, Joaquin Mortiz, 1991. MINERVA MARGARITA VILLARREAL-Cancion de Penelope; Dama infiel al sueno-from Dama infiel al sueño, Cuarto Menguante, 1991. VERONICA VOLKOW-La casa; El hambre; Profunda oscuridad; Estas desnudo; El circulo; Dios-from El incio, Joaquin Mortiz, 1983. .
Juvenal Acosta is a fiction writer, poet, and journalist born in Mexico in 1961. He has edited two anthologies of contemporary Mexican poetry published by City Lights Books. The original version of The Tattoo Hunter (El Cazador de Tatuajes), his first novel, was published in Mexico City to wide critical acclaim. This Fall, The Violence of Velvet (Terciopelo Violento), his second novel, will be released by Planeta Press. His essay on bullfighting, ‘The Gaze and the Blood,' was translated into English by Gregory Rabassa and published by Periplus Books in London as an introduction to Tauromachia, a book of photography. Acosta writes for Cambio, a weekly magazine published by Gabriel García Márquez in Mexico City, directs the M.F.A. in Writing and Consciousness at the New College of California, and teaches creative writing at the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco.
Sixteen original essays of women writers from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil are gathered in this book. Each establishes the relationship between the biography of the subject and her literary production. Some of these writers, like Nobel Prize-winner Gabriela Mistral, Elena Poniatowska, and Victoria Ocampo, are well known; others are still largely undiscovered. All of them defy the limits imposed upon them by society, and all have been able to find freedom through creative imagination. All the writers included here are vitally concerned with the problems women face in Latin America. Children and mothers are the central focus of their lives and of many of their writings. These writers have participated in essential ways in the history of their respective countries and in the intellectual history of Latin America, and at the same time, their greatest contribution has been in the sharing of the private details of personal stories, their own and others. In the strong connections that many of them have had with each other, Marjorie Agosin sees a culture of sisterhood. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION - From a Room of One's Own to the Garden by MARJORIE AGOSIN; Sofia Ospina de Navarro: Wise Advice from an Optimistic Grandmother by MARY G. BERG; Victoria Ocampo & Spiritual Energy by DORIS MEYER; Clementina Suárez: Poetry & Womanhood by JANET GOLD; The Creation of Alfonsina Storni by GWEN KIRKPATRICK; Gabriela Mistral: Language Is the Only Homeland by ELIZABETH HORAN; Violeta Parra: Singer of Life by INES DOLZ-BLACKBURN; Cecilia Ansaldo: Woman between the Private and Public Space by PATRICIA VARAS; Marta Traba: A Life of Images & Words by GLORIA BAUTISTA GUTIERREZ; Carmen Naranjo: From Poet to Minister by PATRICIA RUBI0; Rigoberta Menchá: The Art of Rebellion by MARY JANE TREACY; Julia de Burgos: Woman, Poet, Legend by CARMEN ESTEVES; Elena Poniatowska: Search for the Voiceless by KAY S. GARCIA; Delmira Agustini: Portraits & Reflections by RENEE SCOTT; Clarice Lispector: Dreams of Language by GIOVANNI PONTIERO; Alejandra Pizarnik: The Self & Its Impossible Landscapes by ALICIA BORINSKY; Marosa Di Giorgio: Uruguay's Sacred Poet of the Garden by TERESA PORZECANSKI; Notes; Bibliography. . MARJORIE AGOSIN, professor of Spanish and literature at Wellesley College, is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, short stories, and, most recently, A CROSS AND A STAR: MEMOIRS OF A JEWISH GIRL IN CHILE, also available from the University of New Mexico Press. . .
Marjorie Agosín (born June 15, 1955) is an award-winning poet, essayist, fiction writer, activist, and professor. She is a prolific author: her published books, including those she has written as well as those she has edited, number over eighty. Two of her recent books are both poetry collections, The Light of Desire / La Luz del Deseo, translated by Lori Marie Carlson (Swan Isle Press, 2009), and Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juárez, translated by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman (White Pine Press, 2006), about the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez. She teaches Spanish language and Latin American literature at Wellesley College. She has won notability for her outspokenness for women's rights in Chile. The United Nations has honored her for her work on human rights. She also won many important literary awards. The Chilean government awarded her with the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor for Life Achievement in 2002. Agosín was born in 1955 to Moises and Frida Agosín in Chile, where she lived her childhood in a German community.
This landmark collection rescues the voices of great women of Latin American letters, many of them distinguished in their own countries but largely unrecognized abroad. The stories of Landscapes of a New Land show the wide range of themes, images, and languages encountered in the new territories of the Latin American narrative written by women. The anthology contains over twenty stories from ten countries, including work by: Bombal; Valenzuela; Steimberg; Glantz; Riesco; Pinon; Lispector; Rendic; Fagundes by Telles; Bedregal; Balcells; Brunet; Bins; Ocampo; Araujo; Poniatowska; Orphee; Naranjo; Hilst; Peri-Rossi; Alonso. The themes of the stories are as eclectic as the natures of these women, ranging from stories exploring love and its mysteries to stories reflecting social/political concerns and reactions to authoritarian and repressive powers and to the magic-real stories which are characteristic of contemporary Latin American fiction. ‘From tenuous wisps of narrative to well-knit plots, from half by overheard reveries to public statements, and from the riddles of the sorceress to the good sense of seasoned women, Landscapes of a New Land brings together the variety of brief prose by contemporary Latin American women.' - Naomi Lindstrom . . . ‘Perhaps because the short story lends itself to the brevity required of literature practiced during moments stolen from other non-literary activities, women writers in Latin America, often especially those vying for the attention routinely denied them, have been assiduous adherents of the short story genre. Bringing to the venerable genre of the short story remarkably original voices that confirm the vigor of Latin American narrative and the essential role women writers must now be recognized to play in it, writers like those brought together in this anthology constitute both allied and alternate strands of writing in Latin America. This anthology brings together figures well established both in English and Spanish, but it also accords appropriate recognition to authors whose writings have yet to attain international stature. It would be fitting if this anthology were able to do that through the medium of English.' - David William Foster. CONTENTS: Introduction by Marjorie Agosin; GENEALOGIES by Sky, Sea and Earth by Maria Luisa Bombal (Chile); Genealogies by Margo Glantz (Mexico); DESTINATIONS by ‘Good Evening, Agatha' by Yolanda Bedregal (Bolivia); An Avid One in Extremis by Hilda Hilst (Brazil); Natural Theology by Hilda Hilst (Brazil); Destination by Patricia Bins (Brazil); I Love My Husband by Nelida Pinon (Brazil; The Message by Elena Poniatowska (Mexico); The Key by Lygia Fagundes Telles (Brazil); Solitude of Blood by Marta Brunet (Chile); Plaza Maua by Clarice Lispector (Brazil); THE OPEN LETTER by The Open Letter by Helena Araujo (Colombia); Cecilia's Last Will and Testament by Alicia Steimberg (Argentina); The Compulsive Couple of the House on the Hill by Carmen Naranjo (Costa Rica); The Snow White Guard by Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina); Cage Number One by Dora Alonso (Cuba); A CHILD, A DOG, THE NIGHT by Jimena's Fair by Laura Riesco (Peru); A Child, a Dog, the Night by Amalia Rendic (Chile); The Enchanted Raisin by Jacqueline Balcells (Chile); THE BEGUILING LADIES by The Servant's Slaves by Silvina Ocampo (Argentina); The Beguiling Ladies by Elvira OrphEe (Argentina); The Museum of Futile Endeavors by Cristina Pen Rossi (Uruguay); Authors; Translators. . .
Marjorie Agosín (born June 15, 1955) is an award-winning poet, essayist, fiction writer, activist, and professor. She is a prolific author: her published books, including those she has written as well as those she has edited, number over eighty. Two of her recent books are both poetry collections, The Light of Desire / La Luz del Deseo, translated by Lori Marie Carlson (Swan Isle Press, 2009), and Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juárez, translated by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman (White Pine Press, 2006), about the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez. She teaches Spanish language and Latin American literature at Wellesley College. She has won notability for her outspokenness for women's rights in Chile. The United Nations has honored her for her work on human rights. She also won many important literary awards. The Chilean government awarded her with the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor for Life Achievement in 2002. Agosín was born in 1955 to Moises and Frida Agosín in Chile, where she lived her childhood in a German community.
Fantastic literature, with its many classifications and variations such as magic-realism or the real-marvelous, has long been part of the Latin American critical imagination. Women writers have been a very important component of this genre, hut little attention has been paid to their particular tradition of fantastic literature, a tradition that continues to he produced and read today. This anthology traces the history of fantastic literature in Chile and Argentina and includes both the pioneer writers and the innovative and experimental writers of today. The stories, which represent the variety and complexity of this genre, include fairy tales, science fiction, and metaphorical political tales. The authors include: Isabel Allende; Olga Orozco; Maria Luisa Bombal; Elvira Orphee; Alma Diaconu; Alejandra Pizarnik; Sara Gallardo; Cristina Pen Rossi; Marosa DiGiorgio; Ana Maria Shua; Angelica Gorodischer; Marcela Sola; Liliana Hecker; Alicia Steimherg; Luisa Mercedes Levinson; Elizabeth Suhercaseaux; Silvina Ocampo; Luisa Valenzuela. CONTENTS: Reflections on the Fantastic-Marjorie Agosin; COMPULSIVE DREAMERS - The Compulsive Dreamer-Silvina Ocampo; Things-Silvina Ocampo; The Velvet Dress-Silvina Ocampo; The House of Sugar-Silvina Ocampo; Thus Were Their Faces-Silvina Ocampo; The Story of Maria Griselda-Maria Luisa Bombal; The Little Island-Luisa Mercedes Levinson; The Boy Who Saw God's Tears-Luisa Mercedes Levinson; AND THE WHEEL STILL SPINS - An Eternal Fear-Elvira Orphee; I Will Return, Mommy-Elvira Orpheè; How the Little Crocodiles Cry!-Elvira Orphee; For Friends and Enemies-Olga Orozco; And the Wheel Still Spins-Olga Orozco; THE WILD MIRRORS - The Mirror of Melancholy-Alejandra Pizarnik; Blood Baths-Alejandra Pizarnik; Severe Measures-Alejandra Piznarik; Excerpts from The Wild Papers-Marosa Di Giorgio; Excerpts from Dream Time-Ana Man a Shua; Other/Other-Ana Maria Shua; Fishing Days-Ana Maria Shua; The Man in the Araucaria-Sara Gallardo; The Blue Stone Emperor's Thirty Wives-Sara Gallardo; INVISIBLE EMBROIDERY - The Condemned Dress in White-Marcela Sold; Happiness-Marcela Sold; Invisible Embroidery-Marcela Sold; The Storm-Alma Diaconu; Welcome to Albany-Alma Diaconu; The Widower-Alma Diaconu; Country Carnival-Luisa Valenzuela; Legend of the Self-Sufficient Child-Luisa Valenzuela; Viennese Waltz-Alicia Steimberg; Garcia's Thousandth Day-Alicia Steimberg; Segismundo's Better World-Alicia Steimberg; LETTERS - The Perfect Married Woman-Angelica Gorodischer; Letters From an English Lady-Angelica Gorodischer; Under the Flowering Ju1eps-Angelica Gorodischer; The Resurrection of the Flesh-Angelica Gorodischer; ANNUNCIATIONS - When Everything Shines-Liliana Hecker; The Annunciation-Cristina Pen Rossi; Selections from Silendra-Elizabeth Subercaseaux - Tapihue, Enedina, Juana, Silendra, Francisco; Two Words-Isabel Allende; The Authors; The Translators. . .
Marjorie Agosín (born June 15, 1955) is an award-winning poet, essayist, fiction writer, activist, and professor. She is a prolific author: her published books, including those she has written as well as those she has edited, number over eighty. Two of her recent books are both poetry collections, The Light of Desire / La Luz del Deseo, translated by Lori Marie Carlson (Swan Isle Press, 2009), and Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juárez, translated by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman (White Pine Press, 2006), about the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez. She teaches Spanish language and Latin American literature at Wellesley College. She has won notability for her outspokenness for women's rights in Chile. The United Nations has honored her for her work on human rights. She also won many important literary awards. The Chilean government awarded her with the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor for Life Achievement in 2002. Agosín was born in 1955 to Moises and Frida Agosín in Chile, where she lived her childhood in a German community.
The male writer in Latin America has often played a double role, as writer and as voice for the silent and sometimes colonized masses of the continent. Writers such as CEsar Vallejo of Peru, Pablo Neruda of Chile, Ernesto Cardenal of Nicaragua, were all men of letters, and all Marxists who were deeply involved in the social and political events of their respective countries. Vallejo and Neruda were both activists on behalf of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War, showing that their political concerns did not stop at their own borders. And now comes an interesting question. What about the marginal half of the population who are women? Who among the men writers, so concerned with speaking for and aiding the oppressed elements of the society, has recognized women as being part of the oppressed? The answer is not a single one. It seems astounding, but if we go by the writing, we have to conclude that the men writers never realized that women, even those closest to them, their own mothers and wives, sisters and daughters, inhabited a shadow world apart from the main current of society. They seem never to have suspected the existence of the hidden, silent intra-history of women's lives. It is only women writers themselves who have talked about this other world, and have undertaken, since time immemorial, to be heard and to describe the parameters of their special situation. If we examine a number of anthologies of Hispanic poetry we find that on the average one woman is represented for every ten men. In anthologies of translations, the situation is even worse. The present anthology has been inspired by earlier models and owes a great debt to the first bilingual anthology edited by Nora Weizer, Open to the Sun, Perivale Press, Calif, 1978, and the very recent anthology edited by Mary Crow, Women Who Have Sprouted Wings (LALR Press, Pittsburgh, 1984). Weizer's anthology incorporates traditional voices such as Alfonsina Storni and Mistral; Crow's collection leans toward new voices but includes a range of writers and periods. Our anthology begins with the year 1940, an important year for Latin American women writers. First of all, it was that year that literary work of women in all genres began to be known to a wider audience than had been accorded them before and in addition, a number of outstanding women writers were horn that year. This anthology aims to be eclectic and to include writers of various regions and styles. For example we have included texts of the Guatemalan writer Alaide Foppa who is best known as an essayist and literary critic, although she has an important body of poetical works to her credit. We have tried to give some special visibility to some poets from Central America who have been so often overlooked, poets such as Eunice Odio of Costa Rica for example; and we have included Julia Alvarez from the Dominican Republic who now lives in New York and writes in English. We believe that an important component of our anthology is that we have included women of various cultural backgrounds hut who write out of their Hispanic heritage, some from their present homes in the United States. This is the case of Rosario Morales of Puerto Rico and Cecilia Vicuna who lives in New York but is still Chilean to the core. In selecting the poems for the Anthology, we tried to pick those that would show the widest range possible of themes, images, styles and techniques, to cover as far as we could the main concerns of women's lives as revealed in their poetry. We found that certain motifs tended to recur over and over like a hell tolling as women grapple with their destiny as women. Here is Rosario Castellanos in ‘Destiny: Someone hurled me onto this hard ground,! Someone said: Let's drink her blood! and make a banquet of her hones. And here is Alaide Foppa in ‘Woman': A being! who has not yet become.,,! Not the remote! angelical rose! that the poets elegized.! Not the evil witch! that the inquisitors burned, Another ye important element that appears in these poems is evidence of a search for an authentic language, a personal language with images that reflect the lives of women, their bodies, their duties, and beyond the words and images, we mean a special use of the language. For example, in ‘The Supplicant' by the Uruguayan poet, Cristina Peri Rossi, the erotic, sensual quality of the poet comes out when she says: ‘Undress me! Speak me,' Within this search for a new language, we find some radical experimentation as in the poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik, Consider the example, her poem ‘Signs': Everything makes love with silence.! They had promised me a silence! like fire, a house of silence,! Suddenly the temple is a circus and! the light, a drum. There is also an audacious and rebellious kind of experimentation in the poems of Cecilia Vicuña, as in ‘Solitude': We would lose more than half! of our Union! if I stop being! your friend! Do you want to make me see the sky?! Touch that white! space! between my thighs. These few examples show some of the variation of themes and ways of expressing present to this volume, but there is never any doubt that we are listening to women's voices: women speaking out as independent persons, no longer condemned to the role of virginal poetress writing sentimental scribbles in a back room. The women in this anthology are creative, original, each one determined to write her own text that will be true to her own life, and to all her interests and concerns. These women are not writing as self-absorbed creatures; they have not forgotten others who are oppressed, as we see most clearly in the poems of Violeta Parra and Ana Castillo. Here are real women, strong women, women being themselves, not witches, no longer appendages, no longer shadows. They are no longer exiles from the realm of words; like any good artisan, they carry the words they need with them. CONTENTS: INDEX; Introduction to the Anthology of Latin American Women Poets by Marjorie Agosin and Cola Franzen; Julia Alvarez; Alicia Borinsky; Cecilia Bustamante; Rosario Castellanos; Ana Castillo; Belkis Cuza Male; Myriam Diaz-Diocaretz; Delia Dominguez; Rosario Ferro; Alaide Foppa; Isabel Fraire; Luisa Futoransky; Rosita Kalina; Rosario Morales; Nancy Morejon; Eunice Odio; Violeta Parra; Cristina Pen Rossi; Elejandra Pizarnik; AdElia Prado; Luz Maria Umpierre; Blanca Varela; Cecilia Vicuña; Contributors.
Marjorie Agosín (born June 15, 1955) is an award-winning poet, essayist, fiction writer, activist, and professor. She is a prolific author: her published books, including those she has written as well as those she has edited, number over eighty. Two of her recent books are both poetry collections, The Light of Desire / La Luz del Deseo, translated by Lori Marie Carlson (Swan Isle Press, 2009), and Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juárez, translated by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman (White Pine Press, 2006), about the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez. She teaches Spanish language and Latin American literature at Wellesley College. She has won notability for her outspokenness for women's rights in Chile. The United Nations has honored her for her work on human rights. She also won many important literary awards. The Chilean government awarded her with the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor for Life Achievement in 2002. Agosín was born in 1955 to Moises and Frida Agosín in Chile, where she lived her childhood in a German community. Cola Franzen (February 4, 1923 - April 5, 2018) was an American writer and translator. She published more than twenty books of translations, by notable Spanish and Latin American authors. She was a member of ALTA (American Literary Translators Association) and vice-president of Language Research, Inc., founded by I.A. Richards, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Two Lines, Puerto del sol, Temblor, New American Writing.
Translations of 12 contemporary poets, with emphasis on the works of Carlos German Belli and Antonio Cisneros. The edition includes a short introduction, by Tipton, prose statements (by Antonio Cisneros, Rodolfo Hinostrosa, Washington Delgado, and Sebastian Salazar Bondy) about the poetic climate of Peru, and biographical notes. Poets: Sebastian Salazar Bondy, Francisco Carrillo, Washington Delgado, Carlos German Belli, Juan Gonzalo Rose, Pablo Guevara, Rodolfo Hinostrosa, Antonio Cisneros, Javier Heraud, Marco Martos, Julio Ortega, Mirko Lauer.
Professor Maureen Ahern (July 14, 1936 - June 20, 2012) was a 1958 magna cum laude graduate of the University of New Hampshire. She earned a Bachelor's and Doctorate degrees, both in Literature, from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, Peru in 1960 and 1961, respectively. After many years of work and travel throughout Mexico and Peru, Professor Ahern returned to the United States in 1972 and became a Professor of Spanish at Arizona State University. From 1990 until shortly before her death, she was Professor of Spanish, Latin American Literature and Culture at The Ohio State University. David Tipton began translating Peruvian poetry while living in Lima (1964-70). He is a full time writer and apart from translations has published poetry, fiction, and biography. Recent stories have been published in the Arts Council Anthology, New Stories 1, Ambit, and the Yorkshire Review. He is at work on a second novel. His first novel, set in Peru, will be published in 1977.
An anthology of 15 contemporary Peruvian poets, the oldest born in 1922, the youngest in 1947. The poems themselves were written between 1959 and 1971. Three poets most influenced the growth of modern Peruvian poetry: Vallejo who was born a Catholic in the Andes and became a Marxist; Eguren who was a purist and strongly influenced by European poetry; and Adan who is a surrealist. The poems of the sixties while showing earlier influences are distinctively original. Statements and Comment from the book by three of the poets: Cisneros (born 1942) ‘ Peru has a fabulous past, but that ‘past' doesn't belong to me, . . . I know we're distinct, but how? Vallejo . . . has given a pre-eminence to poetry here, . . . the possibility of establishing the validity of Peruvian poetry in an international context. Surrealism fed our poets for nearly two generations but is no longer much of an influence. Conflicts between ‘Social', ‘Pure' and ‘Elitist' groups have become of far less importance. The actual work of a writer is the same as it's always been: to be a witness of reality . . . Hinostroza (born 1941) ‘Our hearts are to the Left, in some cases our whole body, with others, the head only. How much does each poet lose on his book? I lost something like 6000 soles ($150) which is to say I pay the public to read me. ‘A nude Greek is very different to a nude Peruvian,' it's said. If I lean on the Puente de Piedra gazing at the Rio Rimac and meditate I'm a naked Peruvian, but if T. S. Eliot gazes t the Thames flowing and meditates he's a nude Greek . . . Bondy (born 1924) ‘I was born in Calle Corazon de Jesus near the Church of the Orphans, the heart of Lima. I was descended from French immigrants and a Jewish family from the ghettoes of Prague. [My father's] business underwent a crisis that led to it's break-up and his death in 1933. My father had been surrounded by powerful and important friends. He was gone and those friendships disappeared too. It was during the first journey I made to Buenos Aires that I discovered Peru, not the Peru of the hymns and symbols, but the reality. It was there I found statistics telling me Peru was one of the hungriest nations in the World. . . one of the most exploited . . . one of the saddest. But there too I found I couldn't live without it.' CONTENTS: Introduction; JAVIER SOLOGUREN - Nazca Poetry; Poem; Snow; SEBASTIAN SALAZAR BONDY - Testament; Shades of Origin; Without Knowing Why; Exiled from the Light; Interior Patio; FRANCISCO CARRILLO - I love my Country; The Tannery; Procession; Composition I; Provincia 1 and 2; All Souls Day; WASHINGTON DELGADO - Imperfect Times; History of Peru; Human Wisdom; Good Manners; Life Explains and Death Spies Out; Plurality of Worlds; Foreign Land; Pure Thoughts; Monologue of the Inhabitant; Globetrotter; CARLOS GERMAN BELLI - Segregation; 0 Hada Cibernetica; Tongue-tied; JUAN GONZALO ROSE - The Beak of the Dove; From the Liturgy; A Confidence; Nata Natal; Faith, Hope and Charity; PABLO GUEVARA - My Father; Guita Bruner; An Attack, 1940; Babylon, 0 Babylon; Heaven and Hell; The Bourgeois are Beasts; From ‘Civil Marriage'; CECILIA BUSTAMANTE - Civil Marriage; Resonances; Notes; Facts; Birth; RODOLFO HINOSTROZA - To a Dead Childhood; Othello's Report; The Night; ANTONIO CISNEROS - Paracas; Pachacamac; Workers of the Sun's Land; Ancient Peru; The Dead Conquerors; Question of Time; Prayers of a Repentant Gentleman; Tupac Amaru Relegated; Tarma; Three Testimonies of Ayacucho; Description of a Plaza, a Monument and Allegories in Bronze; Karl Marx, died 1883, aged 65; Chronicle of Lima; Between the Quay of San Nicolas and the Sea; Loneliness 2; I'm getting out and going some 30 kilometers towards the coast; In 62 the starving seabirds reached the center of Lima; A sonnet in which I say my son is a long way off and has been for more than a year; JAVIER HERAUD - A Guerrilla's Word; A Guerrilla's Goodbye; Summer; From ‘Earth Poems'; A New Journey; MARCO MARTOS - Our House; Quijote; From ‘Casa Nuestra'; Politics; JULIO ORTEGA - Fishermen; Memory of Light and Dust; October; Sound of Water; Report for Isolda; My Country; Cecilia; Avenida Abancay; End of Autumn; The Catastrophe (Chimbote); MIRKO LAUER - The Angels; Cruel Photograph without Light at Daybreak; The Classics Revisited; Tanks; 1916; Finger-print; To the Memory of a Pre-Incaic Wiseman; Leit-Motif: Oh Great City of Lima; Notes on the moving of a corpse; Lynx; The Amphibians; Patios of Ithaca; ABELARDO SANCHEZ LEON - Poems 1,2,3, and 4; Statements and Comment; On the Situation of the Writer in Peru; ANTONIO CISNEROS; RODOLFO HINOSTROZA; On the Death of Javier Heraud by WASHINGTON DELGADO; Autobiographical Comment by SEBASTIAN SALAZAR BONDY; Biographical Notes.
Professor Maureen Ahern (July 14, 1936 - June 20, 2012) was a 1958 magna cum laude graduate of the University of New Hampshire. She earned a Bachelor's and Doctorate degrees, both in Literature, from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, Peru in 1960 and 1961, respectively. After many years of work and travel throughout Mexico and Peru, Professor Ahern returned to the United States in 1972 and became a Professor of Spanish at Arizona State University. From 1990 until shortly before her death, she was Professor of Spanish, Latin American Literature and Culture at The Ohio State University. David Tipton began translating Peruvian poetry while living in Lima (1964-70). He is a full time writer and apart from translations has published poetry, fiction, and biography. Recent stories have been published in the Arts Council Anthology, New Stories 1, Ambit, and the Yorkshire Review. He is at work on a second novel. His first novel, set in Peru, will be published in 1977. Ena Hollis, 1934-1970, was also a poet and published two collections: The Lemon Tree and Strange Landfalls. She was married to David Tipton. She died in 1970.
This book is a collection of poems by Salvadoran revolutionists on the different fighting fronts of the FMLN who have from time to time put aside their rifles and taken up the pen to express the feelings evoked by the cruel, bloody struggle in which they are engaged. Some of them have fallen in the course of the Struggle. Others were established poets before they took up arms in the revolutionary cause. ON THE FRONT LINE contains poems by fine and committed poets, some well known and others not so well known, poems not by exalted individuals but by people like Julio, Jacobo, Hayde, Carmela and Ruth, all working to forge a richer collective future in a world which seeks to destroy collective action and hope.' - Marc Zimmerman, author of EL SALVADOR AT WAR: A COLLAGE EPIC. CONTENTS; Introduction; Una Historia/A Story; A Vos/To You; Usted/You; A Vos Que Te Fuiste Al Frente/For You Who Went To The Front; A Las Sombra De Una Muchacha En Flor/Shadowed By A Blossoming Girl; Al Amor/To Love; Con Gusto MorirE/Fll Die Gladly; Hijos De America/Sons Of America; 9 De Nobiembre/November 9th; Que Es Poesia?/What Is Poetry?; Siempre Tuve/I Always Had; Compa Guerrillera/Compa Guerrillera; Hoy Estoy Aqui/Now I'm Here; Poema/Poem; Si La Muerte/If Death; Para Que Lo Entiendas De Una Vez/So You Understand Once And For All; Herencia/Bequeathment; Companera/Companera; Poema/Poem; Alfabetizar/To Alphabetize; Quienes Quedaron A Mitad Del Camino/Those Who Stopped Halfway; Acabo De Partir De Mi Mismo/I Just Walked Away Prom Myself; Tu Voz En Mi Mente/Your Voice In My Mind; Cumpleanos/Birthday; Embarazo/Pregnancy; Hay Dias/There Are Days; De Nuevo Usted Señor/And You Again, Good Sir; Porque Cuando Estoy Triste No Me Importa El Tiempo/Because When I'm Sad The Weather Doesn't Bother Me; Las Calles De San Salvador/The Streets Of San Salvador. . .
Clara Isabel Alegría Vides (born May 12, 1924) is a Nicaraguan poet, essayist, novelist, and journalist who is a major voice in the literature of contemporary Central America. She writes under the pseudonym Claribel Alegría. She was awarded the 2006 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Alegría was born in Estelí, Nicaragua and grew up in the Santa Ana area in western El Salvador. In 1943, she moved to the United States and in 1948 received a B.A. in Philosophy and Letters from George Washington University. Alegría was committed to nonviolent resistance. She had a close association with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle and took control of the Nicaraguan government in 1979. Alegría returned to Nicaragua in 1985 to aid in the reconstruction of Nicaragua. Alegría now lives in Managua, Nicaragua. Alegría's works of literature reflect the style of the popular literary current in Central America during the 1950s and 1960s, ‘la generacion comprometida' (the committed generation). Her works follow the practice of several poets of her generation who are critical of their societies and make claims for rights using a language which is often counter-literary. Alegría has published many books of poetry: Casting Off (2003), Sorrow (1999), Umbrales (1996), Fuga de Canto Grande (1992) and La Mujer del Río (1989). Alegría has published novels and children's stories.
After the military coup that overthrew the constitutional government of President Salvador Allende on September 11,1973, a brutal repression began in Chile against all forms of democratic expression. The consequences of this ruthless onslaught have been devastating. Thousands of university professors, intellectuals, artists, and professionals went into exile . . . Chilean culture in exile is very much alive and productive. This anthology is the expression of a group of writers who, in spite of all hardships, are producing vigorous statements on behalf of the Chilean people.' - from the Foreword by Fernando Alegria. CONTENTS: THE FIRST DAYS by Alfonso Gonzalez Dagnino; OF FLIGHTS AND ABIDINGS by Juan A. Epple; BARBED WIRE FENCE by Anibal Quijada; WAR CHORALE by Fernando Alegria; LIKE THE HYENA by Poli Delano; ST. ELIZABETH by Claudio Giaconi; MY BEAUTIFUL BUENOS AIRES by Leandro Urbina; PUTAMADRE by Ariel Dorfman. . Fernando Alegria, the editor, is a Chilean novelist, poet and critic. He has won many prizes for his literary works, among them the Latin American Prize for Literature, the Municipal Prize in Chile and others. In 1980 the Hispanic Caucus of the U.S. Congress awarded him a diploma for his contribution in the field of Hispanic Culture in the U.S. Between 1970-1973 he was the cultural attache to the Chilean Embassy in Washington, D.C. Currently he is Professor of Latin American Literature at Stanford University. His latest novel, Chilean Spring, was published by the Latin American Literary Review Press. The N.Y. Times Book Review, May 11, 1980, said that CHILEAN SPRING is ‘a poignant elegy to a nation whose future has been taken from it. That Mr. Alegria accomplishes so much so effectively in so few pages is a remarkable achievement.' . .
Fernando Alegría (Santiago de Chile, 26 September, 1918 - Walnut Creek, California, October 29, 2005) was a Chilean poet, writer, literary critic and scholar. Alegría grew up in the Independencia barrio of the city. Poets from this barrio include Pablo Neruda, Violeta Parra and Volodia Teitelboim. He received an M.A. from Bowling Green State University in 1941 and a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, in 1947. From 1964-1967, Alegría was a professor at the University of California in Berkeley. From 1967 to 1998 he was a professor at Stanford University and for many years he was Chair of the Spanish and Portuguese Language Departments there. He sat on the Board of Trustees at the Western Institute for Social Research (WISR) for about twenty years beginning with its inception in 1975. Alegría served as cultural attachE from the government of Salvador Allende to the United States from 1970 to 1973. He was the representative of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language in the United States for many years. Among the many awards he received is the Latin American Prize of Literature. A documentary film about the life of Chile's revolutionary poet Alegría, ¡Viva Chile Mierda!, was produced in 2004. The documentary is a humanistic portrayal of one of the most influential figures from Chile and a key figure in the advancement of Latino culture in the United States of America. Alegría's ‘Viva Chile Mierda', the most recited poem of the Allende era, was written in the 1960s.
The publication of NUYORICAN POETRY marks an important literary and cultural event. Here for the first time is heard the voice of the transplanted Puerto Ricans, a people uprooted from their culture and resettled in a country full of contradictions: frightening and inhospitable in its strangeness, while at the same time offering hope and new opportunities to these most recent immigrants. Nuyorican was forged out of the collision between Spanish and American cultures-and to the writers represented in this exciting collection of poetry and poetic prose, Nuyorican has a twofold meaning. In specific terms, Nuyorican is a new American language, one uniquely suited to express the rawness, beauty, and passion of the new Puerto Ricans; and more generally, Nuyorican describes a people and their experience. Young, old, vibrant, hip, streetwise, touching-the writers here range from a nine-year-old schoolboy to prizewinning playwright Miguel Piñero. The scope of the anthology is equally broad and is divided into three sections. In the first, we hear the voice of the Outlaw Poet: his effort is to communicate the immediate need for open aggression against his condition. In the second part the Evolutionary Poet speaks: he teaches how ‘to live' in an environment that is constantly stifling his will to live. And finally in section three the ‘Dusmic' Poet tells of his struggle to convert the aggressions and hate of others into passions that can be used to construct a new self and a new world. Professor Miguel Algarin of Rutgers University and prizewinning playwright Miguel Piñero have compiled this volume whose emotional integrity and veracity of detail will appeal to readers of all backgrounds. Professor Algarin's introductions and Gil Mendez's photographic essay illuminate the text of this ground-breaking, revolutionary, and stunning collection. CONTENTS: Introduction: Nuyorican Language; Part I OUTLAW POETRY - PEDRO PIETRI - Underground Poetry; A Prayer Backwards; before and after graduation day; Song Without Words; SANDRA MARIA ESTEVES - Ode to a Tequila Head; JOSE-ANGEL FIGUEROA - Felipa-La Filosofa Del Rincon; JORGE LOPEZ - About los Ratones; Pesetas de Embuste; ARCHIE MARTINEZ - Viet-Nam; MARTITA MORALES - The Sounds of Sixth Street; MIGUEL ALGARIN - A Mongo Affair; Inside Control: my tongue; LUCKY CIENFUEGOS - Lolita Lebron, Recuerdos Te Mandamos; MIGUEL PINERO - The Book of Genesis According to Saint Miguelito; La Metadona Está Cabrona; No Hay Nada Nuevo en Nueva York; Runnin' Scared; A Poem For Joey's Mami's Struggle; Seekin' the Cause; T C. GARCIA - Message of My People; ANGEL BERROCALES - Situation Heavy; The Teacher of Life; AMERICO CASIANO - A day when clinkers, sparrows and canaries jitterbugged down the street with a latin accent; SHORTY BON BON - A junkie's Heaven; DADI PINERO - Puerto Rico's Reply; Life Now; Part II EVOLUTIONARY POETRY - BIMBO - A Job; MIGUEL ALGARIN - Biological; Posed Release; Tangiers; MARTITA MORALES - Teatro; CARLOS CONDE - Asi Era Yo; AMINA MUNOZ - puerto rican graffiti; 149th St. winter; ‘welcome to san juan, oldest city in the u.s.'; a chant; JESUS PAPOLETO MELENDEZ - sister, para nuestras hermanas; T. C. GARCIA - Puerto Rican Epitaph; Under an Apple Tree; AMERICO CASIANO - When was the last time you saw mami smile?; MIGUEL PINERO - Twice a Month Is Mother's Day; PEDRO PIETRI - Love Story; Part III DUSMIC POETRY - SANDRA MARIA ESTEVES - for tito; Blanket Weaver; i look for peace great Graveyard; MIGUEL ALGARIN - Sunday, August 11, 1974; San Juan/an arrest/Maguayo/a vision of Malo dancing; LUZ RODRIGUEZ - i feel the eve; Holding You; PEDRO PIETRI - do not let; Voodoo; LUCKY CIENFUEGOS - The Influence of Don Quixote; High heel, silver shoes; Dedicada a Maria Rodriguez Martinez February 24,l975; The Nerve of Time; My In of Me; CARLOS CONDE - Nocturnos en una Noche Perdida; T. C. GARCIA - Prison Love; ISIDRO GARCIA - Water Figure; JESUS PAPOLETO MELENDEZ - Bruja; MIGUEL PINERO - Una Lágrima en un Cristal; The Records of Time; Afterword; Biographies.
Miguel Algarin, four-time American Book Award winner and Obie-winning founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, is a highly acclaimed poet and an associate professor of writing at Rutgers University. Miguel Piñero (December 19, 1946 - June 16, 1988) was a playwright, actor and co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets CafE. He was a leading member of the Nuyorican literary movement.
At once a moving personal memoir and a colorful portrait of life in New York's Lower East Side (Loisaida), this masterly collection of poems captures the whirlwind of sights, sounds, celebrations and sorrows of urban life. As father of the contemporary Latino literary movement and founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Miguel Algarin has brought the diverse voices and talents of the downtown New York scene to audiences throughout the world. In these poetic renderings of the lives and deaths of numerous friends, Algarin the poet celebrates both the well known and the obscure - and brings to life private loves, nurtured in both pain and joy, and public collaborations, born in the turbulent excitement of Algarin's cafe. In the centerpiece of the book, the poet offers a searing, unsentimental look at himself and his life. A celebration of the beautiful, the grotesque, the comic and the tragic, these poems resound with honesty, passion and grace - a testament to the extraordinary talent and keen eye of Miguel Algarin.
Miguel Algarin is associate professor of English at Rutgers University and founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. He has received many awards and honors for both his poetry and his work in the theater, including the Bessie Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement, an OBIE, three consecutive Audelco Awards for Dramatic Production of the Year and four American Book Awards. He is the coeditor of ALOUD: THE NUYORICAN POETS CAFE ANTHOLOGY and ACTION: THE NUYORICAN POETS CAFE THEATER FESTIVAL, published by Touchstone in September 1997. His previous works include Time's Now, Body Bee Callin from the Twenty-First Century and Song of Protest, a translation of Pablo Neruda.
Appropriately called a 'miscellany,' for it includes selections from the colonial era, romanticism, modernism, and the post-modernist period. Prose selections by: Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Jose Eustasio Rivera (Colombia), Rufino Blanco Fombona (Venezuela), Ricardo Palma (Peru), Jose Enrique Rodo (Uruguay), Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (Argentina). Poetry selections by: Fabio Fiallo (Dominican Republic), Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (Mexico), Amado Nervo (Mexico), Enrique Gonzalez Martinez (Mexico), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Aquileo J. Echeverria (Costa Rica), Jose Asuncion Silva (Colombia), Emilio Gallegos del Campo (Ecuador), Jose Santos Chocano (Peru), Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay), Enrique Banchs (Argentina), Jose Hernández (Argentina). Also included are poems by Gutierre de Cetina (Spain) and Jose-Maria de HErEdia (Cuba, from French), and an excerpt of a chronicle by Spanish conquistador Bernardino Vásquez de Tapia.
Poems by minor nineteenth-century poets. Of little interest today. Spanish Americans included are: Francisco Javier Amy (Puerto Rico), Jose Gautier Benitez (Puerto Rico), Jose Maria Heredia (Cuba), Rafael Maria de Mendive (Cuba), Jose Jacinto Milanes y Fuentes (Cuba), Francisco Sellen (Cuba), Juan Clemente Zenea (Cuba).
Francisco J. Amy (1837-1912) was born on August 2, 1837, in Arroyo. He attended the Episcopal Academy in Cheshire, Connecticut. At only seventeen years of age, he taught English and Spanish and contributed to the Waverly Magazine and other New England newspapers and magazines, which were well-known productions in the intellectual circles of that place. In 1858, he returned to Puerto Rico, but did not tolerate the Spanish colonial regime on the Island. This was because he had already lived and known the freedom of the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen of that country. Amy then returned to Puerto Rico, and settled in Ponce. There he founded, together with Zeno Gandía, a literary and scientific magazine: El Estudio. He also published Ecos y notas, a collection of her poems, which includes some of his translations from this period. In 1888, he returned to the United States and worked as a journalist. He published La Gaceta Ilustrada in New York and also contributed to several newspapers, in which he wrote in both English and Spanish. After the American invasion, he served as an official government translator. In New York, he published Letras de molde , a book of verse and prose. He also translated El sombrero de tres picos, under the title The Cocked Hat , into English. His book Preaching in the Desert , which was written at the end of the 19th century, is composed of articles and verses of literary and political criticism. His style is neoclassical, without many lyrical flights. His work is bilingual, and he received great recognition from literary critics. Bilingual Muse is his most important work, according to Puerto Rican critics. It is a very original text, in which he collects translations, in anthological form, of Ibero-American poems; without a doubt, a great contribution to literature throughout the world. He also did it the other way around: he took Anglo-Saxon poems and translated them into Spanish. He translated renowned figures, such as Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Whitman and Stedman. In addition, he translated the English Moore and Hood, among others. He died in San Juan on November 30, 1912.
SONGS FROM THE QUECHUA are translated from Spanish versions of the folk poetry of the Quechua Indians of South America, collected and transcribed in the nineteenth century by priests and, more recently, by anthropologists. Through their directness and simplicity, they convey a degree of tenderness that is unusual in any poetry. . CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE, one of the most revered Brazilian poets of the twentieth century, was born in 1902 in a small mining town; he died in Rio de Janeiro in 1987. His poems are, for the most part, bittersweet evocations of a small-town childhood, or, more emblematically, remorseful accounts of a lost world or simply discreet and sometimes ironic views of the way things are. His intelligence, his humor, and his gift for narrative give his poems a deep and resonant charm.
RAFAEL ALBERTI was born in 1902 in Spain and was in exile in Argentina during the Spanish Civil War. He moved to Italy in 1964 and from there he returned to Spain. He died in 1999. Astonishingly inventive, he is among the most effortless of poets. These fifty poems-elegies, remembrances, and poems of loss and exile-provide an ample introduction to one of the twentieth century's great poets. MARK STRAND is the author of nine books of poems, INCLUDING BLIZZARD OF ONE, which was awarded the 1999 Pulitzer Prize, and the translator of several volumes of poems. He currently teaches at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
Humor, sadness, lyricism, and strength are effectively, even compellingly combined in this book of 63 poems in both Portuguese and English, introducing a great Brazilian contemporary to the English-speaking world. At times meditatively gentle, at other times applying the knife-edge of irony, the poet always evidences concern, not only for his compatriots, bit for the entire human condition. Whether he is writing of the ox, the elephant, the wrestler, love, chastity, or science fiction, Carlos Drummond de Andrade avoid clichE and applies fresh realism to profound social awareness as in the long poem, ‘Charlie Chaplin', where he speaks of the lives of the poor. ‘There are not many dinners in the world . . . the best chickens are protected by thick glass over china platters, And there are entire armies protecting that chicken, And there is a hunger that comes from Canada, a wind, a glacial voice, a breath of winter.'
CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE, born in Itabira in 1902, is recognized as the founder of literary Brazilian Modernism. His ancestry combines Scottish and Latin American strains, and many readers find traits of both cultures in his work. A retired Minister of Education, he is known for his friendship and encouragement of many of Brazil's younger writers and artist. JOHN NIST, who complied and translated these poems, collected the poetry of modern Brazil for an anthology published in 1962 at Indiana University Press, and widely acclaimed both here and abroad. A poet and novelist in his own right, Professor Nist has had several books published in Brazil and holds the Machado de Assis medal from the Brazilian Academy of Letters and Arts. At the time of this publication he is the chairman of the English Department at Austin College, Sherman, Texas.
‘A poet, a poet like Carlos Drummond, works out his relationships with the world, the other, and with himself, through poems. His writing, hour by hour and over the years, is a deliberate process by which he arrives at decisions. As in the spiritual purification of a religious novice, the perfect state is realized through a gradual elimination of needs that are one after another recognized as illusory so purification in other areas-in writing, for example, or in loving-can come about by steadily reducing the margin of error, the areas in which errors can be made. However, in the case of an individual who, unlike the religious novice, has no community on whom he can call for correction and reassurance, the process of such purification will be lonely and protracted. There comes a time, Drummond says, ‘to know that some errors fall, but the stalk of life grows stronger.' The emphasis lies on life, on resiliency. A perfect death is not the end in view; life is.' - from the Introduction. Selected and translated by Virginia de Araiijo, this collection of poems presents a spectrum of the prolific creativity of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Brazil's finest living poet, long a proponent of modernist literature and several times suggested for the Nobel Prize. ‘This is translation all the way -not of Portuguese words into English words, but of one whole culture (Brazilian) into another (North American). The essential and precious foreign-ness of the Brazilian sensibility is scrupulously preserved; and yet, uncannily, we experience these poems as if we read them in the language in which they were originally composed.' - DONALD DAVIE.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade (October 31, 1902 - August 17, 1987) was perhaps the most influential Brazilian poet of the 20th century. He has become something of a national poet; his poem ‘Canção Amiga' (‘Friendly Song') was printed on the 50 cruzados bill. He is considered to be among the greatest Brazilian poets of all time. Drummond was born in Itabira, a mining village in Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil. His parents were farmers belonging to old Brazilian families of mainly Portuguese origin. He went to a school of pharmacy in Belo Horizonte, but never worked as a pharmacist after graduation. He worked in government service for most of his life, eventually becoming director of history for the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service of Brazil. Though his earliest poems are formal and satirical, Drummond quickly adopted the new forms of Brazilian modernism that were evolving in the 1920s, incited by the work of Mário de Andrade (to whom he was not related). He would mingle speech fluent in elegance and truth about the surrounding, many times quotidian, world, with a fluidity of thought. Drummond's popularity has been credited because a great part of his poetry (especially after lyrical maturity) has acquired an impressive capacity for the translation of ideas, transforming his particular troubles into a tool for universal communication. One of Drummond's best-known poems is his hymn to an ordinary man, ‘Jose.' It is a poem of desolation The work of Carlos Drummond is generally divided into several segments, which appear very markedly in each of his books. But this is somewhat misleading, since even in the midst of his everyday poems or his socialist, politicized poems, there appear creations which can be easily incorporated into his later metaphysical canon, and none of these styles is completely free of the others. There is surely much metaphysical content in even his most political poems. The most prominent of these later metaphysical poems is A Máquina do Mundo (The World's Machine). The poem deals with an anti-Faust referred to in the first person, who receives the visit of the aforementioned Machine, which stands for all possible knowledge, and the sum of the answers for all the questions which afflict men; in highly dramatic and baroque versification the poem develops only for the anonymous subject to decline the offer of endless knowledge and proceed his gloomy path in the solitary road. It takes the renaissance allegory of the Machine of the World from Portugal's most esteemed poet, Luís de Camões, more precisely, from a canto at the end of his epic masterpiece Os Lusíadas. One of those said segments have been found only after his death: deliberately erotic poetry. Drummond is a favorite of American poets, a number of whom, including Mark Strand and Lloyd Schwartz, have translated him. Later writers and critics have sometimes credited his relationship with Elizabeth Bishop, his first English language translator, as influential for his American reception, but though she admired him Bishop claimed she barely knew him. In an interview with George Starbuck in 1977, she said, ‘I didn't know him at all. He's supposed to be very shy. I'm supposed to be very shy. We've met once - on the sidewalk at night. We had just come out of the same restaurant, and he kissed my hand politely when we were introduced.' Drummond, as a modernist, follows the style proposed by Mário and Oswald de Andrade; making use of free verse, and not depending on a fixed meter. If modernism was to be divided into lyrical and subjective or objective and concrete, Drummond would be part of the latter, similar to Oswald de Andrade. Drummond was the first great poet to assert himself after the premiere modernist of Brazil and created a unique style dominated by his beautiful writing. His work displays linguistic freedom and free verse. But it goes beyond that: ‘The work of Drummond reaches - as Fernando Pessoa and Jorge de Lima and Murilo Mendes Herberto Helder - a coefficient of loneliness that detached from the soil of history, leading the reader to an attitude free of references, trademarks or ideological or prospective, ‘said Alfredo Bosi (1994).
This, the first full-scale presentation in English of his work, spans his career as a poet while concentrating on his most fruitful period-the 1930s and 1940s. Many of these poems, which helped to define the tenor of modernism in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America, are already familiar to poetry lovers through Elizabeth Bishop's and Mark Strand's now classic translations. They appear in this book, together with other translations by Thomas Colchie and Gregory Rabassa. Colchie has also contributed an introduction evaluating Drummond's place in modern Brazilian literature.
CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE is universally recognized as the most important living Brazilian writer and the most important poet alive today who writes in Portuguese.
The Week of Modern Art, the celebrated gathering of musicians, artists, and writer which took place in Sao Paulo in February 1922, heralded the beginning of the Brazilian Modernist Movement - Brazil's most significant literary event of this century. Mario de Andrade's HALLUCINATED CITY was the first book to come out of the movement - a milestone in Brazilian intelectual history and literature. After the appearance of his book of poems, with its ‘Extremely Interesting Preface'. Andrade was variously hailed as prophet, pope, and lawgiver of the movement. Andrade had crammed into his poems all that was vividly Brazil and specifically all that was Sao Paulo. The immediate influence on other Brazilian poets of the twenties was salutary. His poetry squelched their slavish imitation of then current European literary schools. It freed them from the shackles of meter and rhyme and the strictures of a formal Portuguese grammar. It brought them back to Brazilian themes and lively, idiomatic language. Professor Tomlins has provided what Raymond S. Sayers calls ‘a splendid translation of a very important book' for students of Brazilian literary history and for poetry-lovers alike.
Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (October 9, 1893 - February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his PaulicEia Desvairada (Hallucinated City) in 1922. He has had an enormous influence on modern Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist - he was a pioneer of the field of ethnomusicology - his influence has reached far beyond Brazil. Andrade was the central figure in the avant-garde movement of São Paulo for twenty years. Trained as a musician and best known as a poet and novelist, Andrade was personally involved in virtually every discipline that was connected with São Paulo modernism, and became Brazil's national polymath. His photography and essays on a wide variety of subjects, from history to literature and music, were widely published. He was the driving force behind the Week of Modern Art, the 1922 event that reshaped both literature and the visual arts in Brazil, and a member of the avant-garde ‘Group of Five.' The ideas behind the Week were further explored in the preface to his poetry collection Pauliceia Desvairada, and in the poems themselves. After working as a music professor and newspaper columnist he published his great novel, Macunaíma, in 1928. Work on Brazilian folk music, poetry, and other concerns followed unevenly, often interrupted by Andrade's shifting relationship with the Brazilian government. At the end of his life, he became the founding director of São Paulo's Department of Culture, formalizing a role he had long held as the catalyst of the city's - and the nation's - entry into artistic modernity.
The title in Mayan means ‘women going forward with love without bitterness'. This first bilingual anthology of Central American women's poetry includes poems by over fifty women, featuring the work of Claribel Alegria, El Salvador; Gioconda Belli and Daisy Zamora, Nicaragua; Clementina Suárez, Honduras; Carmen Naranjo and Diana Avila, Costa Rica; Ana Maria Rodas, Guatemala; and Bessy Reyna and Bertalicia Peralta, Panama. The list of translators includes Magda Bogin, Zoë Anglesey, Denise Levertov, Alicia Partnoy, Patricia Jones and Patricia Goedicke. PRAISE for IXOK AMAR-GO - ‘Reading this collection is something like going to a party to which all your friends who are far away have been invited and also all the strangers you've been waiting to meet. And they speak to you and sing to you in three languages-English and Spanish and the third is the common language of poetry.' - GRACE PALEY. . . ‘Many thanks to Granite Press for this new world anthology! From countries hitherto represented by heads of state or soldiers, or photographs of cane fields and mountains, at last we may listen to the poems of the truly various women of Central America: Spanish speaking women who must choose the words of their own first poetry with as much courage, with as much care, as many of them must learn to assemble, and load, a machine gun, blindfolded. These new women poets give to us the rising, powerful new lyrics of a multi-faceted First World revolution that is, at its deepening heart, a movement into justice that will make tenderness everywhere more possible.' - JUNE JORDAN. . . ‘IXOK AMAR GO is not just another collection of Central American poets but an extraordinary celebration of women's voices sharing a rich history of struggles and victories and also a multicultural and multilingual experience. The poems and poets speak to us with impassioned honesty and lyricism. They also speak of love and torture, disappearances and grief. Yet, their words are no longer the vestiges of a colonized people. Their words are alive. This collection must be cherished and read slowly because we must never forget all the pain and love these words carry. BRAVO.' - MARJORIE AGOSIN, Chilean Poet and Professor at Wellesley College. POETAS / COLABORADORAS (Poets/Collaborators) - Luz Marina Acosta; Claribel Alegria; Diana Avila; Margarita Azurdia; Alba Barrios; June Beer; Gioconda Belli; Alenka Bermüdez; Yolanda Blanco; Anaima CafE; Caly Domitila Cane'k; Margarita Carrera; Bernardina Guevara Corvera; Argentina Daley; Julieta Dobles; Mercedes Durand; Jacinta Escudos; Julia EsquivEl; Janina Fernández; Martivon Galindo; Mia Galiegos; Celina Garcia; Leonor Garnier; Virginia Grütter; Reyna Hernández; Ana Ilce; Ana Istaru; Liliam JimEnez; Mayra Jimenez; Loxa JimEnez Lopez; Mirna Martinez; Sara Martinez; Carmen Matute; Waldina Medina; Vidaluz Meneses; Marianella Corriols Molina; Diana Moran; Rosario Murillo; MichEle Najlis; Carmen Naranjo; Moravia Ochoa; Esther Maria Osses; Bertalicia Peralta; Eva Margarita Ortiz Platero; Delia QuinOnez; Debora Elizabet Ramos; Margaret Randall; Bessy Reyna; Ana Maria Rodas; Christian Santos; Clementina Suárez; Consuelo Tomás; Maria Perez Tzu; Helen Umaña; Ana del Carmen de Vazquez; Luz MEndez de la Vega; Mariana Yonusg; Daisy Zamora; TRADUCTORAS (Translators) - Miriam Adelman; Amina Muñoz-Ali; Zoë Anglesey; Electa Arenal; Lynne Byer; Yolanda Blanco; Magda Bogin; Ellen Calmus; Pamela Carmell; Gina Caruso; Barbara Dagg; Argentina Daley; Carmen G. Delgado; Sharon Doubiago; Miriam Ellis; Nancy Esposito; Jean Franco; Celina Garcia; Jane Glazer; Patricia Goedicke; Melinda Goodman; Isabella Halsted; Sally Hanlon; Iraida Iturralde; Patricia Jones; Lisa Maya Knauer; Jere Knight; Amparo Leon; Denise Levertov; Suzanne Jill Levine; Elizabeth Linder; Elizabeth Mackiln; Susan Matobo; Ma~ McAnally; Nelly MelEndez; Sara Miles; Barbara la Morticella; Alicia Partnoy; Barbara Paschke; Ambar Past; Elinor Randall; Victoria Redel; Mary Lou Reker; Bessy Reyna; Judith Roche; Janet Rodney; Susan Sherman; Julia Stein; Susana Stettri; Ana Maria Toro; Janine Pommy Vega; Lisa Vives; Anna Kirwan-Vogel; Anne Waldman; Ellen Watson; Kathleen Weaver; C.D. Wright; Janelle Yates.
ZOE ANGLESEY has been a political- literary activist on behalf of the people and the literature of Central America since 1968. Her book SOMETHING MORE THAN FORCE, POEMS FOR GUATEMALA 1971-83 (Adastra), now in its second edition, received honorable mention from the Before Columbus Foundation, sharing honors with other American poets and with Ernesto Cardenal. Her recent poems appear in Ploughshares, Open Places, and IN OUR HEARTS AND MINDS: CENTRAL AMERICAN AND NORTHWEST WRITING (Dalmo'ma). Her more recent translations have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Bloomsbury Review, and Conditions. She has translated the poems of Carmen Naranjo, Ana Istarü, Roberto Sosa (Honduras), Ruben Vela (Argentina), Mirna Martinez, and Ana Maria Rodas. She has three unpublished manuscripts: CLIMATE OF DEEP WATERS, IS IT DANGEROUS and CENTRAL TO AMERICA.
Includes a variety of selections from important novels, short stories, historical, and literary essays from the first half of the twentieth century. Selections by: Ciro Alegria (Peru), Alcides Arguedas (Bolivia), Benjamin Carrion (Ecuador), Gregorio Castañeda Aragon (Colombia), Augusto CEspedes (Bolivia), Genaro Estrada (Mexico), Romulo Gallegos (Venezuela), Martin Luis Guzmán (Mexico), Flavio Herrera (Guatemala), Mariano Latorre (Chile), Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina), Jorge Mañach (Cuba), Juan MelEndez (Peru), Jules Mancini (Colombia), Juan Mann (Chile), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Jose Nucete Sardi (Venezuela), Victoria Ocampo (Argentina), Juan E. O'Leary (Paraguay), Raol Porras Barrenechea (Peru), Alfonso Reyes (Mexico), Julio Rinaldini (Argentina), Ricardo Rojas (Argentina), Jose Enrique Rodo (Uruguay), Jose Eustasio Rivera (Colombia), Baldomero Sanin Cano (Colombia), Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (Argentina), Armando Solano (Colombia), Jose Vasconcelos (Mexico). (reprint London: Editions Poetry, 1947. 483 p.).
Germán Arciniegas Angueyra (December 6, 1900 - November 30, 1999) was a Colombian historian, author and journalist who was known for his advocacy of educational and cultural issues, as well as his outspoken opposition to dictatorship. He also served as a college professor and held positions in the government, including Minister of Education and several ambassadorships. Arciniegas was the son of Rafael Arciniegas Tavera, a farmer, and his wife Aurora Angueyra Figueredo. He had three brothers and four sisters. His father died young, leaving his mother struggling to support the family. His maternal great-grandfather was Perucho Figueredo, an early Cuban freedom fighter who wrote La Bayamesa, Cuba's national anthem. Both of Perucho's daughters fled the country when he was executed. Luz, the younger daughter, was married to a Cuban engineer who went to Colombia to help build a railroad line. It was there, amid the dangers of the jungle, that Germán's mother was born. At the age of eighteen, he began studying law at the National University of Colombia. At that time he had already created two journals: Año Quinto (1916) and Voz de la Juventud (1917). While a student he founded and managed the magazine Universidad (1921). He collaborated with many well-known figures at all three periodicals, including Luis Lopez de Mesa, Jose Vasconcelos, Leon de Greiff and Jose Juan Tablada, who introduced the haiku into Spanish literature via Universidad. His love of journalism led him to establish and manage numerous cultural magazines throughout his life. In 1928, he joined El Tiempo, a daily newspaper in Bogotá, where he managed the editorial section, put together the Sunday Literary Supplement and wrote a weekly column, becoming the general manager in 1937. He would continue to contribute articles and opinion pieces to El Tiempo for the rest of his life, speaking out against drug trafficking, Marxist guerrillas and restrictive immigration policies. With the assistance of Carlos Pellicer, he established the Federation of Colombian Students. The group opposed Jesuit influence in the nation's universities and held student carnivals which verged on riots. He narrowly missed being killed when a bullet grazed his head at one student rally. Their activism eventually helped to end the Conservative Party's grip on the government and, in 1933, led to the passage of university reforms, which gave students the right to elect their own rectors and have a representative in the legislature to act as their advocate; a position Arciniegas held for a time. For him, students were the axis around which all political and intellectual movements had turned throughout history. This gave rise to his first book El Estudiante de la Mesa Redonda (The Student of the Round Table, 1932), in which he speaks of history as a "tavern" with the students sitting at a single table, drinking, recounting their deeds and laughing at everybody else. He continued his fight for students' rights during his brief tenures as Minister of Education in 1942 and 1945-46. During this time, he founded the Caro and Cuervo Institute and moved the Colombian National Museum to its current home in a former prison building. During World War II, he supported giving aid and asylum to refugees. This was in opposition to Luis Lopez de Mesa, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who prohibited the entry of Jews into Colombia. Due to this resurgence of Conservative ideology in the 1940s, Arciniegas felt that he and his family were in danger and moved to the United States, taking advantage of an offer to teach at Columbia University. He lived in New York for ten years (1947–57). At this time, he wrote his most important and most often banned book, Entre la Libertad y el Miedo (Between Freedom and Fear, 1952). The work analyzes a critical period in Latin-America, when seven dictators were in power at the same time. He also criticized the U.S. State Department for its conciliatory behavior towards these regimes and, as a result, was detained for questioning several times after returning from trips abroad. The publication and translation of the book was prohibited in at least ten countries. General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, the President of Colombia, accused Arciniegas of being a Communist and ordered all of his books to be burnt. Rafael Trujillo, the dictator of the Dominican Republic, put Arciniegas on his hit list. In terms of culture, Arciniegas strove to achieve and maintain a synthesis between the indigenous and the European. This approach was the driving force behind all of his diplomatic and political activities. He served as vice consul in London (1929), chancellor at the Colombian embassy in Argentina (1940) and as Ambassador to Italy (1959), Israel (1962), Venezuela (1966) and the Holy See (1976). In all of these positions, he acted as an advocate for the art and culture of America, which he perceived as extending from Alaska to Patagonia. In 1992, he was appointed President of the National Commission for the Celebration of the Five-Hundredeth Anniversary of the Discovery of America. He was summarily dismissed by then First-Lady Ana Milena Muñoz de Gaviria, who took over the commission herself; an action that generated much controversy.
For this anthology texts have been selected from only eleven poets. That is, in order to prevent the selection from becoming the pretense for a catalog, it was limited to poets who, in spite of a well defined if not definitive work, are not sufficiently known in the United States. Of course many names are missing. The version of Latin American poetry that is becoming established in the United States corresponds to provisional, circumstantial criteria, only in this way is it possible to understand the partiality and/or mediocrity with which our poetry is (re)presented. Couldn't there be a bit of colonialism here, as if reading were an additional act of tourism? CONTENTS: Introduction; Jose Lezama Lima/Translated by Willis Barnstone; Enrique Molina/Translated by Naomi Lindstrom; Juan Liscano/Translated by Thomas Hoeksema; Gonzalo Rojas/Translated by Christopher Maurer; Alberto Girri/Translated by Christopher Maurer; Javier Sologuren/Translated by Mary Barnard & Willis Barnstone; Juan Sanchez Peláez/Translated by Naomi Lindstrom; Alvaro Mutis I Translated by Luis Harss; Lorenzo Garcia Vega/Translated by Thomas Koeksema; Marco Antonio Montes de Oca/Translated by Mary Barnard & Willis Barnstone;Alejandra Pizarnik/Translated by Lynne Alvarez.
Octavio Armand (b. 1946, Guantánamo) is a critic, poet, translator and founder and director of the literary magazine Escandalar. Armand's books include the poetry collections Biografía para reacios, Cosas pasan, Superficies, Oregami, El pez folado and Son de ausencia. Refractions, published in 1994, includes essays as well as poems. (Cintas for literature, 1977-78).
An anthology of five centuries of Puerto Rican writing. Includes translations and selections from recent works written in English. Of interest is the section 'Notes about contributors'. Selections of prose fiction by: Ricardo F. Alegria, Cayetano Coll y Toste, Ramon Emetrio Betances, Manuel Zeno Gandia, Miguel Melendez Muñoz, Jose Padin, Cesar Audreu Iglesias, Jose I. de Diego Padro, Julio Marrero Nunez, Enrique A. Laguerre, Antonio Oliver Frau, Wilfredo Braschi, Abelardo Diaz Alfaro, Jose Luis Gonzalez, Luis Quero Chiesa, Jesus Colon, Piri Thomas, Victor Hernández Cruz (prose poems). Essays by: Eugenio Maria de Hostos, Nemesio R. Canales, Antonio S. Pedreira, Maria Teresa Babin, Concha MelEndez, Tomás Blanco, Nilita Vientos Gaston, Luis Muñoz Rivera, Luis Muñoz Marin, Jose de Diego, Gilberto Concepcion de Gracia, Pedro Albizu Campos, Samuel Betances. Selections from plays by: Luis Llorens Torres, Francisco Arrivi, Manuel Mendez Ballester. Poems by: Damián Lopez de Haro, Juan Rodriguez Calderon, Santiago Vidarte, Luis Lorens Torres, Manuel A. Alonso, Lola Rodriguez de Tio, Jose Gautier Benitez, Francisco Alvarez Marrero, Pachin Marin, Jose Mercado, Luis Pales Matos, Jose A. Balseiro, Jose de Diego, Virgilio Dávila, Jose Antonio Dávila, Felix Franco Oppenheimer, Francisco Matos Paoli, Francisco Lluch Mora, Evanisto Ribera Chevremont, Julia de Burgos, Luis Hernández Aquino, Gustavo Agrait, Francisco Manrique Cabrera, Juan Aviles, Olga Ramirez de Arellano Nolla, Jose P. H. Hernández, Manuel Joglar Cacho, Juan Antonio Corretjer, Juan Martinez Capo, Jorge Luis Morales, Violeta Lopez Suria, Diana Ramirez de Arellano, Clemente Soto Velez, Andres Castro Rios, Roy Brown, Edwin Claudio, Jack Agueros, Migdalia Rivera, Pedro Pietri, Father David Garcia (with selections from a folk mass composed by the priest and his parishioners). (reprint New York: Vintage, 1974. paper).
María Teresa Babín Cortés (May 30, 1910- December 19, 1989) was a Puerto Rican educator, literary critic, and essayist. She also wrote poetry and plays. Among her best-known works is Panorama de la Cultura Puertorriqueña and several essays on Federico García Lorca. Stan Steiner (1925–1987) was an American historian and teacher who authored works generally focusing on American minority communities and their relationship to the broader U.S. society as well as the mythology of the American frontier. Born in the Coney Island area of New York, New York, he wrote a number of books touching upon various subjects from the 1960s to 1980s. He expressed particular interest in indigenous American peoples and their complex history into the 20th century. As an instructor, he lectured at a variety of U.S. institutions, including the University of New Mexico.
The forty poets that make up this book belong to the four active generations that constitute contemporary Cuban Poetry: the generation that emerged in the 20' around the Revista de Avance magazine; the generation that merged about Origenes magazine in the 40's; the generation which came of age within the Revolution; and the second generation of the Revolution, which has begun to arouse notice, almost entirely, since 1966. Over and above the criteria of generations, of the different ways and means of poetic expression, there is a common denominator which unifies these forty poets: the Revolution, its tasks, its life. It is this condition, Perhaps, that puts these so diverse poets in a relationship of unusual alliance; a shared atmosphere of tensions and emergent problems which finds its reflection in a range of Poetry, running from those of most careful structure and the strictest vocabulary to those interspersed with fragments of dialogue, loose and disarrayed. But after all, didn't Valery propose the compilation of a history of Poetry with no name attached to any poem, so that it could be real as the work of one poet? INDEX OF AUTHORS - Manuel Navarro Luna; Nicolas Guillen; Felix Pita Rodriguez; Angel Augier; Adolfo Menendez Alberdi; Jose Lezama Lima; Samuel Feijoo; Aldo Menendez; Oscar Hurtado; Alcides Iznaga; Eliseo Diego; Cintio Vitier; Jests Orta Ruiz (Indio Naborf); Rolando Escardo; Luis Marre; Francisco de Oraa; Roberto Branly; Roberto Fernandez Retamar; Pablo Armando Fernandez; Fayad Jamis; Jose Martinez Matos; Luis Pavon; Pedro de Oraa; Jose Alvarez Baragano; Heberto Padilla; Rafael Alcides; Cesar Lopez; Raul Luis; Domingo Alfonso; Anton Arrufat; Manuel Diaz Martinez; Luis Suardiaz; Armando Alvarez Bravo; Joaquin Gonzalez Santana; Miguel Barnet; David Fernandez; Belkis Cuza Male; Guillermo Rodriguez Rivera; Victor Casaus; Nancy Morejon.
A collection of literature from Costa Rica. CONTENTS: MAP OF COSTA RICA; JEZER GONZALEZ-The Current Literature of Costa Rica; POETRY - JULIAN MARCHENA-El toro/The Bull; JOSE B. ACUNA-from Simple Nothings; ISAAC F. AZOFEIFA-Edificas costumbres/You Establish; Hijo, vienes/My Son, You Are Coming; MARIO PICADO-Dane vuelta/The Requital, Arte poetico/Poetic Art; ALFONSO CHASE-Pequena agonia de mi padre/Little Deaths, Cartago/Cartago; CARLOS F. MONGE-Semillas/Seeds, Senderos/Paths; RONALD BONILLA-La luz entera/The Whole of Light Itself, Herramienta futura/How the Future Works; FICTION - CARMEN NARANJO/Olo; QUINCE DUNCAN/The Legend of Joe Gordon; JOSE LEON SANCHEZ/The Same Thing Happened to Me; DRAMA - TIERRANEGRA EXPERIMENTAL GROUP/The Invasion.
Ervin Beck and Wilbur Birky were associate professors of English at Goshen College.
Opening a window onto a fascinating new world for English-speaking readers, this anthology offers popular and influential stories from over ten countries, chronologically ranging from 1862 to the present. Latin American and Spanish science fiction shares many thematic and stylistic elements with anglophone science fiction, but there are important differences: many downplay scientific plausibility, and others show the influence of the region's celebrated literary fantastic. In the 27 stories included in this anthology, a 16th-century conquistador is re-envisioned as a cosmonaut, Mexican factory workers receive pleasure-giving bio-implants, and warring bands of terrorists travel through time attempting to reverse the outcome of historical events. The introduction examines the ways the genre has developed in Latin America and Spain since the 1700s and studies science fiction as a means of defamiliarizing, and then critiquing, regional culture, history and politics-especially in times of censorship and political repression. The volume also includes a brief introduction to each story and its author, and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary works. Cosmos Latinos is a critical contribution to Latin American, Spanish, popular culture and science fiction studies and will be stimulating reading for anyone who likes a good story. CONTENTS: IN THE BEGINNING - Juan Nepomuceno Adorno - ‘The Distant Future' (Mexico, 1862); Nilo Maria Fabra - ‘On the Planet Mars' (Spain, 1890); SPECULATING ON A NEW GENRE: SF FROM 1900 THROUGH THE - 1950s; Miguel de Unamuno - ‘Mechanopolis' (Spain, 1013); Ernesto Silva Roman - ‘The Death Star' (Chile, 1929); Juan Jose Arreola - ‘Baby H.P' (Mexico, 1052); THE FIRST WAVE: THE 1960s TO THE MID-1980s; Angel Arango - ‘The Cosmonaut' (Cuba, 1964); Jeronimo Monteiro - ‘The Crystal Goblet' (Brazil, 1964); Alvaro Menen Desleal - ‘A Cord Made of Nylon and Gold' (El Salvador, 1965); Pablo Capanna - ‘Scronia' (Argentina, 1967); Magdalena Moujan Otano - ‘Gu TA Gutarrack (We and Our Own) (Argentina, 1968); Luis Britto Garcia - ‘Future' (Venezuela, 1970); Hugo Correa - ‘When Pilate Said No' (Chile, 1971); Jose B. Adolph - ‘The Falsifier' (Peru, 1972); Angelica Gorodischer - ‘The Violet's Embryo's' (Argentina, 1973); Andre Carneiro - ‘Brain Transplant' (Brazil, 1978); Daina Chaviano - ‘The Annunciation' (Cuba, 1983); Federico Schaffler - ‘A Miscalculation' (Mexico, 1983); RIDING THE CREST: THE LATE 1980s INTO THE NEW MILLENIUM - Braulio Tavares - ‘Stuntmind' (Brazil 1989); Guillermo Lavin ‘ - Reaching the Shore' (Mexico, 1994); Elia Barrcelo - ‘First Time' (Spain, 1994); Pepe Rojo - ‘Gray Noise' (Mexico, 1996); Mauricio-Jose Schwarz - ‘Glimmerings on Blue Glass' (Mexico, 1996); Ricard de la Casa and Pedro Jorge Romero - ‘The Day We Went through the Transition' (Spain, 1998); Pablo Castro - ‘Exeriom' (Chile, 2000); Michel Encinosa - ‘Like the Roses Had to Die' (Cuba, 2001).
ANDREA L. BELL is Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Hamline University in Minnesota. YOLANDA MOLINA-GAVILÀN is Associate Professor of Spanish at Eckerd College in Florida and the translator of Rosa Montero's The Delta Function (1992).
This anthology of Latin-American poets, beginning with Ruben Dario, born in 1867, includes such renowned names as Mistral, Vallejo, and Neruda, as well as younger poets. The period covered by their work was a crucial one for those countries just emerging from centuries of colonialism, and one senses the ferment of those vast lands in the poetry selected for this collection by a noted Uruguayan writer. Whatever the individual poet-Argentinian, Chilean, Mexican, Peruvian -each is essentially Latin American in his passions, his expressive force, and the sources of his poetic concerns. With Mr. Benedetti's thoughtful introduction to the subject and his biographical and critical notes that precede each poet's work, this book-containing the poems both in their original Spanish and in splendid translation-is a valuable introduction for young people to an insufficiently known area of poetry. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION; RUBEN DARIO (Nicaragua, (1867-1916) - Letanfa de nuestro señor Don Quijote/Litany of Our Sire, Don Quixote; BALDOMERO FERNANDEZ MORENO (Argentina, 1886-1950) - Setenta balcones y ninguna flor/Seventy Balconies and Not a Single Flower; GABRIELA MISTRAL (Chile, 1889-1957) - Balada/Ballad; ALFONSINA STORNI (Argentina, 1892-1938) - El adolescente del osito/Adolescent with Bear; CESAR VALLEJO (Peru, 1892-1938) - La colera que quiebra al hombre en ninos/The Rage That Shatters a Man into Children; VICENTE HUIDOBRO (Chile, 1893-1948) - Naturaleza viva/Unstill Life; JUANA DE IBARBOUROU (Uruguay, 1895- ) - El nido/The Nest; NICOLAS GUILLEN (Cuba, 1904- ) - Balada de los dos abuelos/Ballad of the Two Grandfathers; PABLO NERUDA (Chile, 1904- ) - Poema 20/Poem 20; JUAN CUNHA (Uruguay, 1910- ) - Paisaje/Landscape; OCTAVIO PAZ (Mexico, 1914- ) - Nocturno/Nocturne; NICANOR PARRA (Chile, 1914- ) - Oda a unas palomas/Ode to Some Pigeons; JOAQUIN PASOS (Nicaragua, 1915-1947) - Elegia de la pájara/Elegy of the Bird; IDEA VILARINO (Uruguay, 1920- ) - Volver/Return; SEBASTIAN SALAZAR BONDY (Peru, 1924-1965) - Testamento olôgrafo/Holographic Testament; CLARIBEL ALEGRIA (El Salvador, 1924- ) - Aunque dure un instante/Though It Only Last an Instant; ERNESTO CARDENAL (Nicaragua, 1925- ) - Oracidn por Marilyn Monroe/Prayer for Marilyn Monroe; JAIME SABINES (Mexico, 1925- ) - Los amorosos/The Lovers; JORGE ENRIQUE ADOUM (Ecuador, 1926- ) - Despedida y no/Farewell and No; CARLOS GERMAN BUll (Peru, 1927- ) - Papa, Mama/Papa, Mama; ROBERTO FERNANDEZ RETAMAR (Cuba, 1930- ) - Ninas y ninos, muchachas y muchachos/Girls and Boys, Young Ladies and Gentlemen; JUAN GELMAN (Argentina, 1930- ) - La Victoria/The Victory; MARCO ANTONIO MONTES DE OCA (Mexico, 1932- ) - Atrás de la memoria/Behind Memory; Translated by Darwin I. Flakoll and Claribel Alegria. . .
Mario Benedetti (in full: Mario Orlando Hamlet Hardy Brenno Benedetti Farrugia - September 14, 1920 - May 17, 2009) was an Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet, and writer. He was not well known in the English-speaking world, but in the Spanish-speaking world he was considered one of Latin America's most important 20th-century writers. Benedetti was born in Paso de los Toros in the department of Tacuarembo in a family of Italian descent. In 1946 he married Luz Lopez Alegre. He was a member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, Juan Carlos Onetti, among others. He also wrote in the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. From 1973 to 1985, when a military dictatorship ruled Uruguay, Benedetti lived in exile in Buenos Aires, Lima, Havana and Spain. Following the restoration of democracy, he divided his time between Montevideo and Madrid. He was granted Honoris Causa doctorates by the Universidad de la República, Uruguay, the Universidad de Alicante, Spain and the Universidad de Valladolid, Spain. In 1986 he was awarded Laureate Of The International Botev Prize. On June 7, 2005, he was named the recipient of the Premio MenEndez y Pelayo. His poetry was also used in the 1992 Argentine movie The Dark Side of the Heart (El lado oscuro del corazon) in which he read some of his poems in German. In 2006, Mario Benedetti signed a petition in support of the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States of America. He died in Montevideo on 17 May 2009. He had suffered from respiratory and intestinal problems for more than a year. Before dying, he dictated to his personal secretary, Ariel Silva what would become his last poem. For his poetry and novels Benedetti had won numerous international awards. The Truce, first published in 1960, has since been translated into 19 languages and made into two motion pictures.
The 9 poets are Pablo Neruda, Luis Pales Matos, Alfonsina Storni, Jose Gorostiza, Vicente Huidobro, Cesar Vallejo, Octavio Paz, Carlos Pellicer and Xavier Villaurrutia. Each poem is presented with the English translation on the facing page. A collection of poems from nine Latin American poets. All are good; some are great. Some have scarcely been heard of by the English-speaking public; the works of others have been translated into English many times before. CONTENTS: Preface; JOSE GOROSTIZA - Quien me compra una naranja?/Who Will Buy Me an Orange?; Se alegra el mar/The Sea Rejoices; Pescador de luna/Moon Fisher; Nocturno/Nocturne; Mujeres/Women; Elegia/Elegy; Acuario/Aquarium; LuciErnagas/Fireflies; Preludio/Prelude; de Muerte sin fin/from Death Without End; de Muerte sin fin/from Death Without End; VICENTE HUIDOBRO - Ecuatorial/Equatorial; PABLO NERUDA - Farewell; Barcarola/Barcarolle; El fantasma del buque de cargo/The Phantom of the Cargo Ship; Las alturas de Macchu Picchu, VI/The Heights of Macchu Picchu, VI; A pesar de la ira/In Spite of Anger; Jose Miguel Carrera; Toqui Caupolicán; Oda al olor de la lena/Ode to the Smell of Firewood; Oda a la gaviota/Ode to a Seagull; Oda a la jardinera/Ode to a Girl Gardening; Los animales interiores, I/The Animals Within, I; Las torres blancas/The White Towers; Kalahari; Nam-Nam; Elegia del Duque de la Mermelada/Elegy for the Duke of Marmelade; Falsa cancion de baquinE/Spurious Song for a BaquinE; Cancion festiva para ser llorada/Festival Song to be Wept; Puerta al tiempo en tres voces/Doorway to Time in Three Voices; OCTAVIO PAZ - Lago/Lake; Noche de verano/Summer Night; Agua Nocturna/Night Water; Relampago en reposo/Lightning in Repose; Manantial/Well-Spring; Piedra nativa/Native Stone; Aunque la nieve caiga/Although the Snow May Fall; Estrella interior/Interior Star; Semilas para un himno/Seeds for a Hymn; Himno entre ruinas/Hymn among Ruins; CARLOS PELLICER - Estudios/Studies; No hay tiempo para el tiempo/There Is No Time for Time; Esquemas para una oda tropical/Sketches for a Tropical; Tü eres mas que mis ojos/You Are More Than My Sight; Nocturno a mi madre/Nocturne to My Mother; Tema para un nocturno/Theme for a Nocturne; Estudio/Study; Nocturno, III/Nocturne, III; Flora solar/Solar Flora; Aria de fuego/Fire Song; ALFONSINA STORNI - Tu me quieres blanca/You Would Have Me White; La garra blanca/The White Talon; Mi hermana/My Sister; Sierra; Uno/One; Yo en el fondo del mar/Me at the Bottom of the Sea; Vientos marinos/Sea Winds; Hombres en la ciudad/Men in the City; Llovizna/Drizzle; Voy a dormir/I Am Going to Sleep; CESAR VALLEJO - Aldeana/Village Poem; Ausente/Absent; Los dados eternos/The Eternal Dice; Los heraldos negros/The Black Messengers; A mi hermano Miguel/To My Brother Michael; Enereida/Januariad; Trilce XVIII; TRILCE XLV; Trilce LXIII; TraspiE entre dos estrellas/Stumble between Two Stars; Boy me gusta la vida mucho menos/Today I Like Life Much Less; Intensidad y altura/Intensity and Elevation; De puro calor tengo frio/I Am Cold from Sheer Heat; XAVIER VILLAURRUTIA - Amplificaciones/Amplifications; Cuadro/Painting; Soledad/Solitude; Calles/Streets; Nostalgia de la nieve/A Longing for Snow; Nocturno sueno/Sleep Nocturne; Nocturno de los angeles/Los Angeles Nocturne; Nocturno eterno/Eternal Nocturne; Amor condusse noi ad una Morte; Epigramas de Boston/Boston Epigrams; Decima Muerte/Ten Stanzas to Death.
Collages (Tokyo: Mushinsha Ltd., 1972). A beautifully illustrated edition of 50 short poems and songs. Translations based generally on Spanish translations by Angel Maria Garibay K. (Poesia nahuatl).
Well-annotated edition which includes 18 Aztec, 6 Maya, and other poems of Indian cultures from Latin America.
John Bierhorst's books on Latin American lore include The Mythology of South America and The Mythology of Mexico and Central America. He currently serves as an editor of The Norton Anthology of World Literature.
Includes: Silverio Manco, Juan Moreira (Juan Moreira); Luis Bayon Herrera (born in Spain), Santos Vega (Santos Vega, 1913); Julio Sanchez Gardel, The witches' mountain (La montana de las brujas, 1912). Santos Vega is actually a dramatized poem based on the poetic character of Obligado. Juan Moreira is based on an earlier prose work of the same title. Four appendices include notes, excerpts from the original Spanish versions of Juan Moreira and Santos Vega, and an essay by Spanish playwright Jacinto Benavente. (pp.142-147).
Edward Hale Bierstadt (1891-1970) was a criminologist, author and drama critic. During the Great War he enlisted in the American Expeditionary Force and served on the staff of hospitals in both England and France. He was also Executive Secretary of the Emergency Committee for Near East Refugees in 1923, one of the bodies that assisted survivors of the Greek Genocide. When Bierstadt returned to New York, he began defending free speech and radicalism against repression by government agencies. In 1924 he published his memoires under the title The Great Betrayal. In the book he describes the destruction of Greek communities by the Turks, and the failure of America to act due to business interests with Turkey. His service to Ottoman Greeks was recognized by the Greek Government who decorated him with the Silver Cross of the Order of the Redeemer.
This bilingual anthology, published under the sponsorship of The Academy of American Poets, presents representative poems, with English translations en face, from the work of fourteen Brazilian poets of the ‘Modern Generation' and of the ‘Post-War Generation' of 1945: Manuel Bandeira, Oswald de Andrade, Jorge de Lima, Mario de Andrade, Cassiano Ricardo, Joaquim Cardozo, Cecilia Meireles, Murilo Mendes, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Vinicius de Moraes, Mauro Mota, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Marcos Konder Reis, and Ferreira Gullar. ‘Brazil has long been discovered, but its spiritual cartography is only being begun, and this anthology is a powerful atlas.' - Helen Vendler, The New York Times Book Review. ‘The editors, Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil, provide proofs of the translator's art. Their bilingual collection, English flanking Portuguese, has the extrinsic merit of making more accessible the still generally unknown yet increasingly important and vital literature of Brazil, which like American literature has assumed its truly distinctive voice only in this century. The anthology also has the intrinsic merit of matching the best of the Brazilians with some outstanding American poets as their translators; hence while it encompasses Brazilian poetry for the past fifty years, it catches the state of American poetry within the past ten years or so, a decade of similar poetic impulses. The anthology, beyond its titular function, then, helps to give perspective to American poetry.' - J. S. Dean, Jr., Luso-Brazilian Review. ‘Notable for the original and interesting choice of poems and for the accuracy and poetic quality of the translations.' - Raymond Sayers, The Modern Language Journal. This book is also available in a clothbound edition.
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 - October 6, 1979) was an American poet, short-story writer, and recipient of the 1976 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956 and the National Book Award winner in 1970. EMANUEL BRASIL, himself a Brazilian, recently completed his first novel Pedra Fantasma, for which he received in 1969 a grant from The Ingram-Merrill Foundation. Since 1965 he has lived in New York City, where he is a staff member of the translation service of the United Nations.
THE BOOK OF FANTASY began one night when three friends fell to talking about fantasies and ghost stories. The place was Buenos Aires, 1937, and the people were Jorge Luis gorges, Adolfo Bioy Casares and his wife Silvina Ocampo. ‘We debated which stories were best,' wrote Bioy Casares later, ‘and someone suggested that if we brought together the tales and the fragments that we had listed in our notebooks we would have a good book.' The result is an astonishing collection of stories drawn from all the literatures of the world from Ancient China to Modern America, mingling the obscure and the neglected with the already famous and showing a splendid disdain for conventional literary opinion. Among the authors included are Leonid Andreyev. Leon Bloy, Lewis Carroll, Jean Cocteau, G.K. Chesterton, James Joyce, Giovanni Papini, Carlos Peralta, Rabelais and Villiers de L'lsle Adam, some of whom have never been translated before. ‘It is sometimes said,' wrote Bruce Chatwin. ‘that all the elements of civilization end up eventually in Argentina. and most of it ends up in gorges' head. his values are those of high Western civilization . . . They say Borges lives in a world of imagination and dreams, but he's central to life.' Now considerably expanded and published for the first time in English, The Book of fantasy has a specially-written introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin twice winner of both the hugo and Nebula awards. She writes: ‘It is an idiosyncratic selection, and completely eclectic. Some of the stories will be familiar to anyone who reads, others are exotic discoveries. A very well-known piece., seems less predictable set among works and fragments from the Orient and South America and distant centuries, by Kafka. Swedenborg, Cortázar, Akutagawa, Niu Chiao; its own essential strangeness is restored to it.' This is, quite simply, the finest anthology of its kind. ‘I think it is marvellous.' - CARLOS FUENTES.
JORGE LUIS BORGES was born in Buenos Aires, educated in Europe, and was for many years Director of the National Library of Argentina. his stories, poems and essays, collected in flcciones, Labyrinths, Other Inquisitions and The Book of Sand (amongst others) gained him worldwide recognition as one of the major writers of the twentieth century. lie shared the International Publishers' Prize with Samuel Beckett in 1961, was granted the Annual Literary Award of the Ingram Merrill foundation in 1966 for his ‘outstanding contribution to literature', and in 1970 was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by both Columbia and Oxford Universities, lie died in 1986. ADOLFO BIOY CASARES has been called Argentina's greatest living writer'. Several of his novels have been translated into English, including The Invention of Morel, Asleep in the Sun, The Diary of the War of the Pig and Dream of Heroes. lie collaborated with Borges on many projects, including those written under the joint pseudonym ‘hi. Bustos Domecq'. tie lives in Buenos Aires. SILVINA OCAMPO was a member of one of Argentina's most aristocratic and literary families, the sister of Victoria Ocampo (founder of the influential magazine Sur), and wife of Adolfo Bioy Casares. She was a poet and painter as well as a writer of fiction; her poetry was collected in Forgotten Journey, Poems of Desperate Love and Yellow Blue, while her short stories appeared in books like The Fury and The Days of Night. She collaborated with Bioy Casares on a crime novel, and with J. R. Wilcock on a verse-play, The Traitors.
MEXICO . . . a country so astonishing that only fiction can plumb its reality. In these pages, twenty-seven of Mexico's outstanding writers open doors that have been closed to us. From the world's most crowded metropolis to the Mayan villages of Chiapas, from Baja California to the Yucatan, PYRAMIDS OF GLASS reflects the heart and mind of a country that tourists and journalists rarely see - and a whole new galaxy of literary talents. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION by Ilan Stavans; Emilio Carballido/THE DICE BOX; Angeles Mastretta/WHITE LIES; Carlos Fuentes/THE MANDARIN; Guadalupe Duenas/MARIQUITA AND ME; Juan Villoro/REAR-VIEW MIRROR; Rafael Perez Gay/BIG TEARS; Severino Salazar/'JESUS, MAY MY JOY BE EVERLASTING'; Silvia Molina/AN ORANGE IS AN ORANGE; Jose Agustin/MOURNING; Agustin Monsreal/THE ORIGIN OF MIRACLES; Sergio Pitol/THE PANTHER; David Martin del Campo/LITTLE MISTER CHAIR-MAN; Marco Antonio Campos/WINTER WILL NEVER END; Jorge Ibarguengoitia/PIOUS FRAUD; Jesus Gardea/ONE FOR THE ROAD; Enrique Serna/EUFEMIA AND THE CURSE OF WORDS; Paco Ignacio Taibo II/APACHES IN ‘LA GRANJA'; Maria Luisa Puga/THE TRIP; Ines Arredondo/PUZZLES; Jose Emilio Pacheco/CASTLE IN THE EYE OF A NEEDLE; Hernan Lara Zavala/LITTLE SISTER; Eraclio Zepeda/THE TRUTH; Marta Cerda/MIRROR OF A MAN; Luis Arturo Ramos/DOCTOR'S PRESCRIPTION; Elena Poniatowski/LITTLE HOUSE OF CELLULOID; Daniel Sada/THE GREAT CARPENTRY HEIST; Edmondo Valades/PERMISSION GRANTED. TRANSLATORS - In the order of their appearance in this volume: MARGARET SAYERS PEDEN is among the best-known translators of Mexican writers, from Sor Juana InEs de la Cruz to Juan Rulfo, Octavio Paz, and Carlos Fuentes, including the latter's Old Gringo. Her series of interviews with 49 Mexican artists was published recently under the title Out of the Volcano. Having been raised in a very small, Bible-belt Missouri town, she recognized the jockeying and games of influence just beneath the surface of Carballid6s story. ‘It is always the translator's hope that these universals will be conveyed as universals, yet maintain their cultural integrity.' JOHN INCLEDON has translated, among other works, Salvador Elizondo's complex Farabeuf and Day of the Winged Lion by Mario Luis Rodriguez. He teaches at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania. He points to Pacheco's stylistic idiosyncracies in this story- abrupt paragraph breaks, unusual punctuation-as a strong clue to the central character's confusion and alienation as he attempts to move in social circles not his own. Mastretta's subtle dialogue in ‘White Lies' (an untitled story from the collection Mujeres de Ojos Grandes) he compares to the work of masters of fiction from Henry James to Manuel Puig. CYNTHIA STEELE teaches at the University of Washington and is the author of Politics, Gender and the Mexican Novel 1968-88. She has published translations of fiction and poetry by Elena Garro, InEs Arredondo, and Jose Emilio Pacheco, among others. She describes Zepeda's story ‘The Truth' as a ‘chronicle of a death foretold, couched in the curiously indirect and somewhat formal speech of the Mayan people . . . . Some subtleties, like the use of the archaic ‘vos' (a substitute for the familiar ‘tü', used by Mayans in addressing one another by ladinos in addressing Mayans, and sometimes also subversively by Mayans with ladinos) are lost in translation. DAVID BOWEN is the founder and publisher of Corona After several years as a freelance journalist in Latin America during the early 1960s, he took a master's degree in Latin American history at City College of New York and continues to travel widely in Mexico. He recently edited Columbus and the Crowns (1992) from the work of historian William H. Prescott. JAMES HOGGARD is a poet, essayist, and writer of fiction, a professor of English at Midwestern State University (Wichita Falls, Texas), and president of the Texas Institute of Letters. He recently produced two volumes from work by the acclaimed Chilean poet Oscar Hahn. He points out the ‘cartoon-like' effects of Perez Gay's story which moved him to render its original title (‘Para Llorar') as ‘Big Tears?' MARK SCHAFER lives in Boston and has published translations of Alberto Ruy Sanchez and Virgilio Pinera, and collaborated (with Cedric Belfrage) on a translation of Eduardo Galeano's The Book of Embraces. He is also a collage-maker - perhaps a provocative metaphor for translation? He is currently at work on a collection of short fiction by Jesus Gardea, whom he describes as ‘a masterful writer' who grew up in the sun baked desert of Chihuahua, ‘an extreme and desolate environment favorable only to that curious mixture of fatalism and hope expressed in ‘One for the Road?' The Salazar story, he points out, is told ‘in a brilliantly conceived chorus of overlapping voices' that poses intricate problems for translator and reader. PAUL PINES is a poet and translator and author of a novel, The Tin Angel (Morrow). His most recent book Hotel Mad den Poems, appeared in 1992. His work has appeared in Prairie Schoonet Pequod, and New Directions Annual and in Nicanor Parra, Antipoems. He lives in Glens Falls, NY ‘An Orange Is an Orange,' like most of the stories in Silvia Molina's book Un Hombre Cerca, has a ‘dreamlike construction,' he tells us ‘Her stories resonate with what has gone unsaid?' ASA ZATZ has been a translator for the Organization of American States and for many international agreements, conferences, and official messages of the President of Mexico. He has translated important Mexican writers in economics, art, and anthropology as well as novels and plays by Ramon del Valle-Inclán, Alejo Carpentier, Arturo Arias, Jorge Ibarguengoitia, and many others. He lives in New York City. He considers Ibarguengoitia a Mexican Maupassant and says, ‘This light short story carries deceptively heavy artillery?' Agustin's hues are darker; but both are a translator's delight ‘for their attainment of maximum effect with minimum verbiage?'. EDITH GROSSMAN is a familiar name to readers of Latin American literature, as translator and critic. Her most recent publications include translations of Magroll (three novelas by Alvaro Mutis) and Strange Pilgrims (twelve stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez). She lives in New York City Ms. Grossman describes Monsreal as a ‘proto-Joycean stand-up comic with an unusual gift for reshaping colloquial language into an eccentric, incisive medium for irony and humor?' JO ANN ENGELBERT, a Kentucky native, attended Adelphi University Middlebury College, and New York University and teaches Latin American literature at Montclair State University in New Jersey She has translated work by Macedonio Fernández, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Carmen Naranjo, Isabel Allende, and Roberto Sosa, among others. She compares translating a text to crawling under a car to see how it works. Translating Pitol, she reports, is ‘like crawling under a Rolls?' JOAN LINDGREN is a teacher and writer in the San Diego/Tijuana area. Her own poetry and essays on border poetry have been published in anthologies, as well as translations of the Argentine poet Juan Gelman and Costa Rican artist/poet Magda Santonostasio. She taught a Cross-border Literary Translation Workshop at the University of Baja California The story by Martin del Campo she places in the tradition of Juan Rulfo, and likens it to a glass of water reminding us ‘how thirsty we always are for transparency and simplicity in describing our shared human condition. She points out that the story by Daniel Sada is in large part the ‘doggedly self-defeating interior monologue of Juventino, the central character ‘His attitudes and his language are shaped by the harshness of the Coahuilan landscape, a deep-seated distrust of authority (even the authority of his own experience), and the whine of the Mexican ballad or corridor.' IMERA PUSATERI, born in Mexico of Italian parents, was a member of Joan Lindgren's translation workshop at UABC; she is currently translating into Spanish a book of poems by Margaret Gibson, and does simultaneous interpreting in the San Diego! Tijuana area Regarding the story by Martin del Campo, she adds that Sentadito (the original title of the story we have rendered as ‘Little Mister Chair-Man?') is typical of the Mexican practice of giving affectionate and accepting nicknames descriptive of physical or personality traits, (The literal meaning of Sentadito is ‘little seated one: '). CHARLES D. BROWN was raised in Havana and lived in Mexico City and Guayaquil. He studied sociology and film at New York University before moving to San Diego where he works as a staff Certified Court Interpreter in the California State Court. DAVID UNGER was born in Guatemala, grew up in Florida, and is now associated with the City University of New York and serves as U.S co-ordinator for the Guadalajara International Book Fair He is a published poet, and the translator and editor of Nicanor Parra's Antipoems: New and Selected. Taibo's uproar ious story, like his detective novels well known to U.S. readers, shows the author's strong social concerns but does so ‘with straight-forward humor and earthy dialogue: ' NICK CAISTOR, a producer in the BBC World Service and translator of novels by Argentine, Nicaraguan, and Uruguayan authors, was born in Lancashire, England. He edited The Faber Book of Contemporary Latin American Short Stories (1989) from which Puga's ‘The Trip' was taken, as well as a book of short stories, Columbus' Egg (Serpent's Tail, 1992). The challenge of translating ‘The Trip'; he says, lay in maintaining the ambiguity and suspense, so that only at the very end is it clear just what kind of trip this is-not the drugs trips so popular in much Mexican writing of La Onda in the 1960s and 70s. ALLISON B. PEERY is an architect with a master's degree in Counseling Psychology, and a long-time student of Latin American literature He lives in San Antonio, Texas. He describes ‘Puzzles' (original title ‘La Que No se Comprende') as characteristic of Arredondo, with its ‘authoritative female perspective and haunting sensuality: ' NAOMI LINDSTROM is professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas (Austin) and Director of Publications for the Institute of Latin American Studies. Her most recent books are a study of Borges' short fiction, and Twentieth Century Spanish-American Fiction, appearing in 1994. Lara Zavala is remarkably successful, she says, in writing ‘Little Sister' from the point of view of the chronically overshadowed younger sibling. Conversely, we have Marta Cerda writing about puberty and the search for sexual initiation from a lower-class, male perspective typical of Mexican machismo. TIM RICHARDS is an associate professor of Spanish at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, where he teaches Latin American literature and history His research focuses on Mexican and Central American narrative, and he has translated short fiction from Nicaragua and Mexico. He recognizes a strain of ‘conflict, ambiguity and obsession' in Ramos' stories and points out that while ‘Doctor's Prescription?' was written a dozen years ago it deals with the currently fashionable topic of repressed memory, using a unique and ironic second-person narrative voice. IRENE MATTHEWS is a graduate of University College in London, with a doctorate in comparative literature from University of California (Davis), and has written widely on gender race, and war. She has published studies on Gabriela Mistral and Rigoberta Menchü and translated Nellie Campobello and Elena Poniatowska, among others. She presently teaches at Northern Arizona University, including a course on Mexican women writers. Poniatowska's story in this volume she finds ‘wonderfully representative of one of the author's most significant recurrent themes: the urban married woman caught up in the manic tension between banal domesticity and romantic dreams?' ADRIANA VALADËS is the daughter of Edmundo ValadEs and serves as cultural attachE with the Embassy of Mexico in Bonn. JUAN ANTONIO ASCENCIO (Leon 1937), co-editor has conducted writing workshops for the past 15 years and is a member of the editorial board of the magazine El Cuento since 1984. His biography of Juan Rulfo will appear in 1995. .
David Bowen is the founder and publisher of Corona. After several years as a freelance journalist in Latin America during the early 1960s, he took a master's degree in Latin American history at City College of New York, and continues to travel widely in Mexico. He recently edited Columbus and the Crowns (1992) from the work of historian William H. Prescott. Juan Antonio Ascencio (Leon 1937), co-editor, has conducted writing workshops for the past 15 years and is a member of the editorial board of the magazine El Cuento since 1984. His biography of Juan Rulfo will appear in 1995.
Readers generally agree with Coleridge that what is essential in a poem is the untranslatable. It would seem that that this group of translations is an exception: Vallejo, Alberti, CrEmer, Guillen and the others have been put into the American idiom. Why this particular selection of poets and not others, say, Hernandez, Machado, Neruda, Mistral and so forth? The poems are linked by an essential unity. Across the time and space separating the twelve poets, an emotional texture is sustained that brings to mind Artaud's observation that ‘no one ever wrote, painted, sculpted, designed, built or invented except to get out of hell.' The book is especially valuable in what it does for Vallejo-the contemporary and friend of Picasso and Aragon. For many, this poet has become one of those legendary names (like Pushkin) whose work doesn't make it too readily across the language barrier. Here an important selection of his later work can be read-in context with other poets of Spain and Latin America-and the reader will be able to find for himself the ‘solitary, silent wisdom' Vallejo left us in the poems he wrote, sometimes two or three a day, as he lay dying of starvation in Paris.
Latin American short stories of the sixties and seventies were considered to be among the best in the world. Writers such as Borges, Rulfo, Carpentier, and Garcia Marquez produced remarkable and exhilarating work that found a receptive audience in Britain and North America. In FABER BOOK OF CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN SHORT STORIES Nick Caistor sets out to explore the wealth of fiction produced since this so-called boom. With stories from Isabel Allende, Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro and other, as yet unfamiliar names, this exciting and diverse collection demonstrates that the creative upsurge continues to flourish. The twenty stories represent work from the whole continent, including the United States. Many are published here in English for the firs time. They are exciting proof of the enduring vitality of a literature that continues to defy categorization and to enjoy a worldwide appeal. CONTENTS: Acknowledgements; Introduction; ARGENTINA - Uncle Facundo/ISIDORO BLAISTEN; Aunt Lila/DANIEL MOYANO; Up Among the Eagles/LUISA VALENZUELA; BRAZIL - Alaindelon de la Patrie/JOAO UBALDO RIBEIRO; Peace and War/MOACYR SCLIAR; CHILE - The Judge's Wife/ISABEL ALLENDE; CUBA - Goodbye Mother/REINALDO ARENAS; GUATEMALA - Woman in the Middle/ARTURO ARIAS; The Proof/RODRIGO REY ROSA; MEXICO - Martina's Wardrobe/JESUS GARDEA; The Trip/MARIA LUISA PUGA; NICARAGUA - Saint Nikolaus/SERGIO RAMIREZ; Chicken for Three/FERNANDO SILVA; PARAGUAY - Under Orders/HELIO VERA; PERU - Anorexia with Scissors/ALFREDO BRYCE ECHENIQUE; UNITED STATES - The Rites/ROLANDO HINOJOSA; URUGUAY - The Rest is Lies/EDUARDO GALEANO; Presence/JUAN CARLOS ONETTI; The Museum of Vain Endeavours/CRISTINA PEN ROSSI; VENEZUELA - The Game/LUIS BRITTO GARCIA; Notes on Authors.
Nick Caistor (born 15 July 1946) is a British translator and journalist, best known for his translations of Spanish and Portuguese literature. He is a past winner of the Valle-Inclán Prize for translation. He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4, the BBC World Service, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Guardian. He lives in Norwich, and is married to fellow translator Amanda Hopkinson.
This unique anthology of eight Latin American novellas by major modern writers demonstrates the richness and variety of Latin American literature with selections of sufficient length for a real appreciation of each writer unlike most anthologies where the selections are short. The writers included are: Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Ana Lydia Vega, C. Cabrera Infante, Alvaro Mutis, Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortázar, Joao Guimarães Rosa, Felisberto Hernández. An Introduction to the novella in Latin American literature by llan Stavans and biographical summaries of the authors are included.
CASS CANFIELD, JR., is a Senior Editor at HarperCollins who has published numerous Latin American authors over the years. ILAN STAVANS teaches at Amherst College and is the author of The Hispanic Condition, BANDIDO, THE ONE-HANDED PIANIST AND OTHER STORIES, and other works. He is also coeditor of Growing Up Latino. He has contributed articles and reviews to the Nation, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Miami Herald, Bloomsbury Review, Commonweal, and other media.
This anthology of Latin American verse includes poems from thirteen countries in which the literary language is Spanish and from one, Brazil, in which it is Portuguese. Plain prose translations by various translators. Introductory essay. This volume also includes an appendix, 'An explanatory guide to movements in Latin-American poetry'. Selections arranged alphabetically by country. Argentina: Esteban Echeverria, Jose Hernández, Leopoldo Lugones, Baldomero Fernández Moreno, Enrique Banchs, Oliverio Girondo, Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, Ricardo B. Molinari, Jorge Luis Borges, Enrique Molina, Edgar Bayley, Alberto Girri, Raül Gustavo Aguirre. Bolivia: Ricardo Jaimes Freyre. Brazil: Chile: Vicente Huidobro, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra, Enrique Lihn. Colombia: Gregorio GutiErrez Gonzalez, Jose Asuncion Silva, Guillermo Valencia, Porfirio Barba Jacob, Leon de Greiff, Alvaro Mutis. Cuba: Jose Marti, Julián del Casal, Nicolás GuillEn, Eugenio Florit, Emilio Ballagas, Jose Lezama Lima, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Pablo Armando Fernández. Ecuador: Jose Joaquin de Olmedo, Jorge Carrera Andrade. Guatemala: Luis Cardoza y Aragon. Mexico: Salvador Diaz Miron, Manuel Jose Othon, Manuel GutiErrez Nájera, Enrique Gonzalez Martinez, Jose Juan Tablada, Ramon Lopez Velarde, Alfonso Reyes, Carlos Pellicer, Jose Gorostiza, Xavier Villaurrutia, Salvador Novo, Octavio Paz, Jaime Sabines, Marco Antonio Montes de Oca, Jose Emilio Pacheco. Nicaragua: Ruben Dario, Ernesto Cardenal. Peru: Manuel Gonzalez Prada, Jose Santos Chocano, Jose Maria Eguren, CEsar Vallejo, Martin Adán, Carlos German Belli. Puerto Rico: Luis LlorEns Torres, Luis Pales Matos. Uruguay: Julio Herrera y Reissig, Emilio Frugoni, Delmira Agustini, Carlos Sabat Ercasty, Emilio Oribe, Idea Vilarino. Venezuela: AndrEs Bello, AndrEs Eloy Blanco, Rafael Cadenas.
Traces the historical context of Paraguayan poetry, and a chronological summary of themes and poets. Brief biobibliographical section for each poet. Poets included: Alejandro Guanes (2), Juan E. O'Leary, Eloy Farina Nunez, Guillermo Molinas Rolon, Heriberto Fernandez, Herib Campos Cervera, Josefina Pla (4), Hugo Rodriguez- Alcala (4), Augusto Roa Bastos (3), Jose Antonio Bilbao (2), Oscar Ferreiro (3), Elvio Romero (5), Elsa Weizell (5), Jose-Luis Appleyard (5), Ramiro Dominguez (2), RubEn Bareiro Saguer (2), Francisco PErez-Maricevich, Esteban Cabanas (3), Miguel Angel Fernandez (3), J. A. Rauskin (5), RenE Davalos (2), Guido Rodriguez-Alcala (3), Adolfo Ferreiro (2), Emilio PErez-Chavez (2), Juan Manuel Marcos, Lourdes Espinola (3) bibliog. The introduction.
Like Latin America itself, these stories contain a wide range of moods and characters: the hi-jinks of millionaires, five mobsters, and a musical elephant in Mexico City: the sweet sadness of a clown who has nothing left but his smile during El Salvador's endless civil war: the eeriness of a Panamanian storeroom in which a child's cat becomes a monster: the sly cleverness of magical rabbits who cannot be ignored, even by the fiercest and most determined would-be Wolf, in a tale from Chile. Mixing together the real sights and sounds of many lands with humor, poetry, politics, and especially imagination, these modern stories translated into English invite the reader to explore both the people and the literature of Latin America. Includes Stories by Agosin, Arenas, Bencastro, Cortazar, Dorfman, Fort, Ibarguengoitia, Levi, Mujica, & Villanueva-Collado. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION By Isabel Allende; THE BEAR'S SPEECH By Julio Cortázar; THE REBELLION OF THE MAGICAL RABBITS By Ariel Dorfman; THE DAY WE WENT TO SEE SNOW By Alfredo Villanueva-Collado; W1TH MY EYES CLOSED By Reinaldo Arenas; THE CAVE By Enrique Jaramillo Levi; PALETON AND THE MUSICAL ELEPHANT By Jorge Ibargüengoitia; A CLOWN'S STORY By Mario Bencastro; TARMA By Maria Rosa Fort; FAIRY TALE By Barbara Mujica; A HUGE BLACK UMBRELLA By Marjorie Agosin; GLOSSARY; ABOUT THE AUTHORS; ABOUT THE EDITORS; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
Lori Marie Carlson is the author of two novels, two landmark bilingual poetry anthologies, and many other young adult and children's books. Cynthia L. Ventura is a Spanish-language translator and legal interpreter in New York City's court system. She grew up in San Juan Puerto Rico, where she began her career translating the works of prominent Latin American authors.
Readers in the United States are acquainted only with the most renowned Spanish American writers of this century, literary figures like Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Julio Cortázar, and Octavio Paz. Few realize, however, that this quartet merely leads an orchestra of tremendous depth and strength. The twentieth-century literature of Spanish America is the greatest in its history, and among the greatest in the world-for it is only lately that Spanish-speaking Americans have sent abroad a body of works stamped with creative autonomy instead of works derived solely from European models. This powerful, prophetic, and authentic literature has now been skillfully gathered into an anthology unique in its scope and its quality. Twenty-one writers of prose fiction are represented, including Borges and Cortazar, as well as Alejo Carpentier, Juan Rulfo, Jose Lezama Lima, and Roberto Arlt. In addition to Paz and Neruda, the twenty-three poets, whose work is presented bilingually, include Nicolas Guillen, Cesar Vallejo, Nicanor Parra, and Vincente Huidobro. Almost none of the writings in Doors and Mirrors has appeared in English before, and no anthology has gathered such a distinguished and varied roster of translators, among whom are W. S. Merwin, Norman Thomas di Giovanni, Jerome Rothenberg, Robert Bly, Clayton Eshleman, Alastair Reid, Nathaniel Tarn, and the late Paul Blackburn. CONTENTS: PREFACE BY THE EDITORS; INTRODUCTION: TO READERS, FRIENDS AND STRANGERS BY ANGEL RAMA; EPILOGUE: LITERATURE IS FIRE BY MARIO VARGAS LLOSA; FICTION - Felisberto Hernández-The Crocodile; Roberto Arlt-Esther Primavera; Miguel Angel Asturias-The Mirror of Lida Sal; Jorge Luis Borges-Delia Elena San Marco; The Dead Man; Augusto Roa Bastos-The Living Tomb; Alejo Carpentier-The Fugitives; Jose Maria Arguedas-The Ayla; Juan Carlos Onetti-A Dream Come True; Juan Rulfo-The Day of the Landslide; Rene Marques-There's a Body Reclining on the Stern; Gabriel Garcia Márquez-Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon; Adriano Gonzalez Leon-The Rainbow; Ricardo Ocampo-The Indian Paulino; Daniel Moyano-Vaudeville Artists; Salvador Elizondo-Bridge of Stone; Enrique Lihn-Rice Water; Jose Lezama Lima-FROM Paradiso (a novel); Julio Cortázar-Silvia; Jaime Espinal-Migraines and Phantoms; Norberto Fuentes-Captain Descalzo; For the Night; Order #13; Antonio Skármeta-The Cartwheel; POETRY - Vicente Huidobro-De Altazor de Canto I/FROM Altazor, fragment of Canto I; Tenemos un Cataclismo Adentro/There is a Cataclysm Inside Us; La Poesia es un Atentado Celeste/ Poetry is a Heavenly Crime; Monumento al Mar/Monument to the Sea; Cesar Vallejo-Agape/Agape; Voy a Hablar de la Esperanza/I Am Going to Speak of Hope; Traspie entre Dos Estrellas/Stumble between Two Stars; Palmas y Guitarra/Palms and Guitar; Los Desgraciados/The Wretched of the Earth; Luis Pales Matos-De Los Animales Interiores/from The Animals Within; Falsa Cancion de BaquinE/Spurious Song for a Baquine; Jorge Luis Borges-Despedida/Parting; Pagina Para Recordar al Coronel Sudrez/Page to Commemorate Colonel Sudrez; A un Poeta Sajon/ To a Saxon Poet; Pablo Neruda-Oda Con un Lamento/Ode With a Lament; Solo La Muerte/Nothing but Death; De Las Furias y Las Penas/from Furies and Sufferings; DE Alturas de Macchu Picchu, VI/from Summits of Macchu Picchu, VI; Nicolás Guillen-El Apellido/The Name; Jose Coronel Urtecho-Autoretrato/Self-Portrait; Barberia/Barbershop; Final de Oda a Ruben Dario/Finale FROM Ode to Ruben Dario; Luna de Palo/Wooden Moon; San Carlos/San Carlos; Carlos Oquendo de Amat-Poema del Manicomio/Madhouse Poem; Film de los Paisajes/Movie of the Countryside; Poema/Poem; Octavio Paz-Lectura de John Cage/On reading John Cage; Blanco/ Blanco; Cintio Vitier-La Palabra/The Word; La Noticia/The Notice; Nicanor Parra-Yo Jehova Decreto/I Jehovah Decree; La Trampa/The Trap; Antes Me Parecia Todo Bien/Everything Used to Look Good to Me; Esto Tiene Que Ser un Cementerio/This Has To Be a Cemetery; Alvaro Mutis-Cada Poema/Every Poem; La Muerte de Matias Aldecoa/The Death of Matias Aldecoa; Ernesto Cardenal-Uno se despierta con canonazos/ Waking up to cannon shots; Epitafio para la Tumba de Adolfo Báez Bone/Epitaph for the Tomb of Adolfo Báez Bone; 2 AM./2 AM.; Detras del monasterio/Behind the monastery; Ha venido la primavera/Spring has come; Me contaron/Someone told me; Los insectos acuaticos/Long legged aquatic insects; Sebastian Salazar Bondy-Testamento Olografo/Olographic Testament; Pregunto por la Tierra Perdida/Question for the Lost Land; Roberto Juarroz-Una mosca anda cabeza abajo/A fly is walking head downward; En alguna parte hay un hombre/Somewhere there's a man; Llueve sobre el pensamiento/It's raining onto thought; Jaime Sabines-De La Senal/from The Signal; De Diario Semanario/from Weekly Journal; Tengo ojos para ver/I have eyes to see; Desde los cuerpos/From the bodies; Enrique Lihn-Cementerio de Punta Arenas/Graveyard at Punta Arenas; Gallo/Rooster; Roberto Fernández Retamar-Sonata para Pasar Esos Dias y Piano/Sonata for Surviving Those Days & Piano; Los Feos/The Uglies; Usted Tenia Razon, Tallet: Somos Hombres de Transicion/ You Were Right, Tallet: We Are Transitional People; Ranion Paloinares-El Noche/Night; Eduardo Escobar-Para contar/Just to say; Como las gotas de agua resbalan/Like waterdrops that skid; Juan Gelman-El Juego en que Andamos/The Game We Play; Costumbres/Customs; La Victoria/Victory; Hechos/Deeds; Roque Dalton-De nuevo la carcel/Jail again; Algunas Nostalgias/Some Nostalgias; El Gran Des pecho/At the Bottom Javier Heraud- Arte Poetical/The Art of Poetry; Palabra de Guerrillero/ Word of the Guerrilla Fighter; BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES; INDEX OF TRANSLATORS.
This book of short stories is a sampling of the most dissimilar examples of different literary trends that have emerged in Cuba since 1959. It is not, strictly speaking, an anthology. It might better be called a collection where the diverse schools of current Cuban literature converge - schools wherein all forms and styles are cultivated without prejudice or premise. The reader, however, will be aware of a coherence within this diversity: the will to reflect the human and universal characteristics of this universal, human age represented by the Revolution. CONTENTS: FELIX PITA RODRIGUEZ/The seed (Illustrated by Jorge Rigol); VIRGILIO PINERA/The philanthropist (Illustrated by E. Muñoz Bachs); SAMUEL FEIJOO/Soldier Eloy (Illustrated by Posada); VICTOR AGOSTINI/Rebirth (Illustrated by Lesbia Vent Dumois); ONELIO JORGE CARDOSO/The peacock (Illustrated by Posada); RAUL APARICIO/There were four of us (Illustrated by Chago); OSCAR HURTADO/Letter from a judge (Illustrated by Carmelo Gonzalez); DORA ALONSO/The rat (Illustration by Rafael Morante); HUMBERTO ARENAL/Mister Charles (Illustrated by Felix Beltran); JOSE LORENZO FUENTES/Señor Garcia (Illustrated by Raimundo Garcia); JESUS DIAZ/Who the hell can stand this? (Illustrated by Tony Evora); ANGEL ARANGO/The day New York reached Heaven (Illustrated by R. Martinez Sopeña); MIGUEL COLLAZO/The man who worshipped the Saturnians (Illustrated by Paco Sierra); EZEQUIEL VIETA/My friend Victor (Illustrated by Felix Beltran); ANTON ARRUFAT/The discovery (Illustrated by Raul Martinez); RAUL GONZALEZ DE CASCORRO/The return of the pimp (Illustrated by Manolo Vidal); LUIS AGUERO/One Friday the thirteenth (Illustrated by Antonia Eiriz); MARIA ELENA LLANA/The two of us (Illustrated by Paco Sierra); ROGELIO LLOPIS/Lycanthropy (Illustrated by E. Muñoz Bachs); EVORA TAMAYO/Sylvia (Illustrated by Abelalonso); ARNALDO CORREA/Gunners (Illustrated by Roberto Quintana); ANA MARIA SIMO/Aunt Albertina's last party (Illustrated by Umberto Pena); REINALDO GONZALEZ/Honey for New Year's (Illustrated by Aldo Amador); DAVID CAMPS/The mouse (Illustrated by Hector Villaverde); GLOSSARY. . .
The material herein presented has been selected as a first reading text in Portuguese, and presupposes on the part of the student some acquaintance with the grammatical structure of the language. The pronunciation of Portuguese, " sans doute la plus delicate et la plus compliquEe de n'importe quelle langue romane (Goncalves Viana), must, of course, be learned from the lips of the teacher.
Henry Hare Carter (28 June 1905 - 2001) was an American linguistics professor, commander in the US Naval Reserve, translator, and a Spanish or Portuguese writer of textbooks and research. Henry Hare Carter was born on June 28, 1905, in Staten Island, New York, to John Hanford and Elizabeth Carter (nEe Ensminger). He married Gloria Maria Castello Branco de Gouveia (deceased May 16, 2015) in Recife, Brazil in 1946. Professor Carter received his B.S., A.M. & Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in years 1928, 1931 and 1937. Dr. Carter was a professor of romance languages for almost 40 years at several colleges and universities, including the University of Pennsylvania; Northwestern University, Evanston; the Naval Academy; DePaul University; Colorado College; and for the last 24 years of teaching (from 1956) at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, where he retired as Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages and Literatures. Among his teaching specialities were Spanish literature; the history of the Spanish language; and Spanish poetry, drama, and prose. He spoke seven languages. During his student days, he would often travel and study abroad during the summers in Europe with foreign studies, including Madrid in 1931, the Sorbonne (Paris) in 1933, Corsi Roma (Rome) 1937, and Coimbra, Portugal in 1939. For most of his professional life he was interested in the translation of 12th- and 13th-century manuscripts, written by monks, about the stories of Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail, and the legend of El Cid. He also was a scout on his travels in South America and Spain for new Spanish words to be included in the Williams' Spanish-English Dictionary. His endorsement of the book was included on the front cover of the paperback edition. Henry Carter was elected to numerous academies, both in the United States and abroad, including: the Brazilian Academy of Philology (1971), the Academy of Sciences, Lisbon (1975), and AcadEmico de MErito, in the Portuguese Academy of History (1989). During World War II, he was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence; serving in Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and Brazil, where he was the liaison officer between the American and Brazilian navies. He retired from the US Naval Reserve with the rank of commander. During his Navy years, he wrote Paleographical Edition and Study of the Language of a Portion of Codex Alcobacensis 200 and Cancioneiro da Ajuda: A Diplomatic Edition (1941). In retirement, Professor Carter resided with the Congregation of Holy Cross at Moreau Seminary, where he regularly shared stories of the obscure origins of words and delighted generations of seminarians. He died in 2001.
A bilingual edition with plain prose translations. Superseded by No. 44 as far as Latin American poetry is concerned. The majority of poets represented are Spanish. Spanish American poets included are: Jorge Carrera Andrade (Ecuador), Ali Chumacero (Mexico), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Salvador Diaz MirOn (Mexico), Enrique González Martinez (Mexico), Nicolás GuillEn (Cuba), Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay), Sor Juana InEs de la Cruz (Mexico), Ramon Lopez Velarde (Mexico), Ricardo E. Molinari (Argentina), Pablo Neruda (Chile), Salvador Novo (Mexico), Silvina Ocampo (Argentina), Manuel Jose Othon (Mexico), Octavio Paz (Mexico),Alberto Quintero Alvarez (Mexico), Alfonso Reyes (Mexico), CEsar Vallejo (Peru), Xavier Villaurrutia (Mexico).
J. M. (John Michael) Cohen (5 February 1903 - 19 July 1989) was a prolific translator of European literature into English. Born in London, he was educated at St. Paul's School and Queen's College of Cambridge University.After working in his father's manufacturing business from 1925 until 1940, he was moved by a wartime shortage of teachers to become a schoolmaster. In addition to teaching young people, he spent the war years teaching himself Spanish and Russian, and he launched his translation career with the first English translation of poems by Boris Pasternak, then unknown outside the Soviet Union. His translation of Pasternak garnered praise from American poet John Ashbery, in his book Other Traditions. In 1946, on the strength of a commission from Penguin Books for a major translation of Don Quixote, Cohen quit his teaching job to dedicate himself full-time to writing and translation. His workmanlike and accurate translation of Don Quixote, published in 1950, has been highly praised, and remained in print until 2000. However, some critics have compared it unfavorably to the translation by Samuel Putnam on the basis of Cohen being "too faithful to the original." In addition to his translations of major works of Spanish and French literature for Penguin, Cohen also edited several important anthologies of Spanish and Latin American literature, as well as many of the Penguin Classics (alongside E. V. Rieu). He played an instrumental role in the Latin Boom of the 1960s by translating works by Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, and Carlos Fuentes, and by bringing the works of Gabriel García Márquez to the attention of his future English publisher. He also wrote a number of works of literary criticism and biography. In its obituary, The Times described him as "the translator of foreign prose classics for our times." The Guardian declared that he "did perhaps more than anyone else in his generation to introduce British readers to the classics of world literature by making them available in good modern English translations."
This new Penguin series is designed to break this sound- barrier of inertia, language, culture, and tradition. The unity of Latin America is one only of name. Latin American Writing Today, with its translations of recent prose and poetry in Spanish and Portuguese, is evidence of the social and literary differences between the countries it covers. CONTENTS: Introduction; Gabriela Mistral/The Liana; Jorge Luis Borges/The Handwriting of God; CEsar Vallejo/Four Poems from Trilce; Ricardo E. Molinari/Ode; Pablo Neruda/Some Animals; Ode to the Magnolia; Juan Carlos Onetti/Dreaded Hell; Carlos Pellicer/Sketches for a Tropical Ode; Alejo Carpentier/Journey to the Seed; Carlos Drummond de Andrade/Travelling in the Family; Don't Kill Yourself; Julio Cortázar/Bestiary; Octavio Paz/Hymn Among Ruins; Ustica; Wind from All Compass Points; Joäo Guimaräes Rosa/The Third Bank of the River; Rosario Castellanos/Foreign Woman; Alf Chumacero/Epitaph for a Virgin; Carlos Fuentes/Aura; Nicanor Parra/Portrait of the Author; Piano Solo; The Pilgrim; Alberto Girri/Epistle to Hieronymus Bosch; Mario Benedetti/The Iriartes; Vinicius de Moraes/Christmas Poem; Sonnet on Separation; Jose Donoso/Ana Maria; Joao Cabral de Melo Neto/From ‘The Death and Life of a Severino'; Juan Rulfo/They Gave Us the Land; Jaime Sabines/Like Crabs; I Have Seen Them in the Pictures; Gabriel Garcia Marquez/The Day after Saturday; G. Cabrera Infante/At the Great ‘Ecbo'; Marco Antonio Montes de Oca/The Fool's Farewell; The Lip Cracks; C. Vasconcelos Maia/Sun; Pablo Armando Fernández/ Origin of Eggo; Abel Reflects; Denunciation; Breno Accioly/Joäo Urso; Enrique Lihn/The Tree-Clump in the Garden; The Invasion; The Friends of the House; Jonah; Onelio Jorge Cardoso/It's a Long Time Ago; Jose Emilio Pacheco/The Elements of Night; Biographical Notes on Authors.
J. M. (John Michael) Cohen (5 February 1903 - 19 July 1989) was a prolific translator of European literature into English. Born in London, he was educated at St. Paul's School and Queen's College of Cambridge University.After working in his father's manufacturing business from 1925 until 1940, he was moved by a wartime shortage of teachers to become a schoolmaster. In addition to teaching young people, he spent the war years teaching himself Spanish and Russian, and he launched his translation career with the first English translation of poems by Boris Pasternak, then unknown outside the Soviet Union. His translation of Pasternak garnered praise from American poet John Ashbery, in his book Other Traditions. In 1946, on the strength of a commission from Penguin Books for a major translation of Don Quixote, Cohen quit his teaching job to dedicate himself full-time to writing and translation. His workmanlike and accurate translation of Don Quixote, published in 1950, has been highly praised, and remained in print until 2000. However, some critics have compared it unfavorably to the translation by Samuel Putnam on the basis of Cohen being "too faithful to the original." In addition to his translations of major works of Spanish and French literature for Penguin, Cohen also edited several important anthologies of Spanish and Latin American literature, as well as many of the Penguin Classics (alongside E. V. Rieu). He played an instrumental role in the Latin Boom of the 1960s by translating works by Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, and Carlos Fuentes, and by bringing the works of Gabriel García Márquez to the attention of his future English publisher. He also wrote a number of works of literary criticism and biography. In its obituary, The Times described him as "the translator of foreign prose classics for our times." The Guardian declared that he "did perhaps more than anyone else in his generation to introduce British readers to the classics of world literature by making them available in good modern English translations."
This lively selection of contemporary Cuban writing shows many influences - Kafka, Eliot and Apollinaire among them - but, above all, it introduces us to a new generation of writers who - irrespective of political coloration - are, in their new-found sense of nationhood, as exciting as any in the world. CONTENTS: Introduction; CALVERT CASEY The Execution; ROBERTO FERNANDEZ RETAMAR Two Poems; ONELIO JORGE CARDOSO The Cat's Second Death; HERBERTO PADILLA The Childhood of William Blake; CALVERT CASEY The Lucky Chance; FAYAD JAMIS Two Poems; VIRGILIO PINERA The DragEe; PABLO ARMANDO FERNANDEZ Three Poems from ‘The Book of Heroes'; HUMBERTO ARENAL Mister Charles; LUIS MARRE Your Name; ANTÔN ARRUFAT The Discovery; ABELARDO ESTORINO Cain's Mangoes, A Play in One Act; ANA MARI A SIMO A Deathly Sameness; JOSH ALVAREZ BARAGANO Illumination; ROGELIO LLOPIS A Horrible Man; GUILLERMO CABRERA INFANTE A Sparrows' Nest In The Awning; ROLANDO RIGALI Likeness; JESUS DIAZ RODRIGUEZ The Cripple; DOMINGO ALFONSO ArtepoEtica; LUIS AGUERO Santa Rita's Holy Water; REYNALDO GONZALEZ Fourina Jeep; ANA MARIA SIMO Growth of the Plant; FIDEL CASTRO Extracts from ‘Words to the Intellectuals', June 1961; Index of Authors.
J. M. (John Michael) Cohen (5 February 1903 - 19 July 1989) was a prolific translator of European literature into English. Born in London, he was educated at St. Paul's School and Queen's College of Cambridge University.After working in his father's manufacturing business from 1925 until 1940, he was moved by a wartime shortage of teachers to become a schoolmaster. In addition to teaching young people, he spent the war years teaching himself Spanish and Russian, and he launched his translation career with the first English translation of poems by Boris Pasternak, then unknown outside the Soviet Union. His translation of Pasternak garnered praise from American poet John Ashbery, in his book Other Traditions. In 1946, on the strength of a commission from Penguin Books for a major translation of Don Quixote, Cohen quit his teaching job to dedicate himself full-time to writing and translation. His workmanlike and accurate translation of Don Quixote, published in 1950, has been highly praised, and remained in print until 2000. However, some critics have compared it unfavorably to the translation by Samuel Putnam on the basis of Cohen being "too faithful to the original." In addition to his translations of major works of Spanish and French literature for Penguin, Cohen also edited several important anthologies of Spanish and Latin American literature, as well as many of the Penguin Classics (alongside E. V. Rieu). He played an instrumental role in the Latin Boom of the 1960s by translating works by Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, and Carlos Fuentes, and by bringing the works of Gabriel García Márquez to the attention of his future English publisher. He also wrote a number of works of literary criticism and biography. In its obituary, The Times described him as "the translator of foreign prose classics for our times." The Guardian declared that he "did perhaps more than anyone else in his generation to introduce British readers to the classics of world literature by making them available in good modern English translations."
This splendid collection of stories by 26 Latin American authors features the new voices and celebrate masters of one of the world's foremost literatures. Explore the gothic sexual ambiguitites of Carlos Fuentes' 'The Doll Queen,' the psychological compression of Clarice Lispector's 'Love,' or the baroque pyrotechnics of Machado de Assis and Adolfo Bioy Casares. Discover the paradically 'hard-boiled' detectice fiction of Ana Lydia Vega and some decidedly 'soft-boiled' criminals in Rubem Fonseca's 'Lonelyhearts.' From erotic comedies by Isabel Allende and Jorge Amado to the playful labyrinths of Guillermo Cabrera Infante's London streets or Armonia Somers' roomful of elocks. A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes reveals the virtuosity of Latin American literature at its finest, and provides an illuminaing journey into dreamlike and unexpected worlds.
Thomas Colchie is an acclaimed translator, editor, and literary agent for international authors. He is the editor of A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes. He has written for the Village Voice and The Washington Post. His translations include Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman and (with Elizabeth Bishop, Gregory Rabassa, and Mark Strand) Carlos Drummond de Andrade's Travelling in the Family.
This splendid collection of stories by 26 Latin American authors features the new voices and celebrated masters of one of the world's foremost literatures. Included are Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rosario Ferre, Juan Carlos Onetti, Manuel Puig, Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro, and others. From the erotic comedies by Isabel Allende and Jorge Amado to the playful labyrinths of Guillermo Cabrera Infante's London streets or Armonia Somers' roomful of clocks. A HAMMOCK BENEATH THE MANGOES offers abundant reading pleasure for those simply curious about, or already captivated by the magic of Latin America's fiction. Organized geographically, this innovative anthology includes a number of stories never before published in English, and captures the extraordinary variety of themes and styles embodying that peculiarly Latin American vision of the world. Also included are short biographies of the authors that place their works in context. Explores the gothic sexual ambiguities of Carlos Fuentes' ‘The Doll Queen', the psychological compression of Clarice Lispector's ‘Love', or the baroque pyrotechnics of Machado de Assis and Adofo Bioy Casares. Discover the parodically ‘hard-boiled' detective fiction of Ana Lydia Vega and some decidedly ‘soft-boiled' criminals in Rubem Fonseca's ‘Lonelyhearts'. From Horacio Quiroga's ‘The Dead Man', who is disturbingly alive, to the quintessential feat of magical realism found in Alejo Carpentier's ‘Journey Back to the Source'. A HAMMOCK BENEATH THE MANGOES reveals the virtuosity of Latin American literature at it finest, and provides an illuminating journey into dreamlike and unexpected worlds. CONTENTS/ Introduction; 1. THE RIVER PLATE - Horacio Quiroga/ THE DEAD MAN; Julio Cortázar/ Axolotl; Armonia Somers/ WAITING FOR POLIDORO; Jorge Luis Borges/ THE CIRCULAR RUINS; Juan Carlos Onetti/ THE DOG WILL HAVE ITS DAY; Adolfo Bioy Casares/ THE IDOL; Manuel Puig/ RELATIVE HUMIDITY 95%; 2. CHILE - Isabel Allende/TOAD'S MOUTH; 3. BRAZIL - Jorge Amado/ THE MIRACLE OF THE BIRDS; Murilo Rubião/ THE EX-MAGICIAN FROM THE MINHOTA TAVERN; Clarice Lispector/ LOVE; Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis/ THE PSYCHIATRIST; Moacyr Scliar/ THE PLAGUES; Joao Guimarães Rosa/ THE THIRD BANK OF THE RIVER; Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro/ IT WAS A DIFFERENT DAY WHEN THEY KILLED THE PIG; Lygia Fagundes Telles/ THE CORSET; Rubem Fonseca/ LONELYHEARTS; Paulo Emilio Salles Gomes/ TWICE WITH HELENA; 4. MEXICO - Carlos Fuentes/ THE DOLL QUEEN; Juan Rulfo/ LUVINA; 5. THE CARIBBEAN - Rosario FerrE/ THE GIFT; Reinaldo Arenas/ BESTIAL AMONG THE FLOWERS; Ana Lydia Vega/ STORY-BOUND; Gabriel Garcia Marquez/ THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE GHOST SHIP; Guillermo Cabrera Infante/ THE PHANTOM OF THE ESSOLDO; Alejo Carpentier/ JOURNEY BACK TO THE SOURCE. . Thomas Colchie is a noted translator and literary agent for writers from Latin America, Portugal, Spain, and Portuguese Africa. His translations include Manuel Puig's KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, Marcio Souza's EMPEROR OF THE AMAZON, and Murilo Rubiao's THE EX-MAGICIAN AND OTHER STORIES. He has co-edited THE BORZOI ANTHOLOGY OF LATIN AMERICA LITERATURE (with Emir Rodriguez Monegal) and TRAVELLING IN THE FAMILY/ SELECTED POEMS BY CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE (with Mark Strand). He has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to translate THE DEVIL IN THE BACKLANDS by Joao Guimaraes Rosa.
Thomas Colchie is an acclaimed translator, editor, and literary agent for international authors. He is the editor of A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes. He has written for the Village Voice and The Washington Post. His translations include Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman and (with Elizabeth Bishop, Gregory Rabassa, and Mark Strand) Carlos Drummond de Andrade's Travelling in the Family.
The variety of styles, settings, and intrigues in this anthology are wildly unpredictable, from Santos -Febres's edgy depiction of the literally murderous pace of media living (‘Flight'), to the Chekhovian delicacy in Laura Restrepo's rendering of an elderly couple's adulterous reunion (‘The Scent of Invisible Roses'), to the hallucinatory precision of Ignacio Padilla's tale of British Colonial nostalgia and ruin (‘The Antipodes and the Century'). So much has changed in the geography of Latin American literature since the ‘boom' of the sixties and the decade that followed. If the ‘boom' writers were less than comfortable with the very notion of a homogeneous cultural landscape called Latin America, the new Latin American authors have exploded it entirely. CONTENTS - Acknowledgments; Introduction; Mayra Santos-Febres - FLIGHT; Pedro Juan GutiErrez - NOTHING TO DO; Laura Restrepo - THE SCENT OF INVISIBLE ROSES; Carlos Franz - CIRCLE; Anna Kazumi Stahl - NATURAL DISASTERS; Federico Andahazi - THE SLEEP OF THE JUST; Ernesto Mestre -Reed - AFTER ELIAN; Angeles Mastretta - AUNT CONCHA ESPARZA; Edgardo Vega YunquE - EIGHT MORENOS; Ignacio Padilla - THE ANTIPODES AND THE CENTURY; Carmen Posadas - THE NUBIAN LOVER; Edgard Telles Ribeiro - THE TURN IN THE RIVER; Laura Esquivel - BLESSED REALITY; Jaime Manrique - THE DOCUMENTARY ARTIST; Julia Alvarez - THE BLOOD OF THE CONQUISTADORS; Mayra Montero - THAT MAN, POLLACK; Javier ValdEs - PEOPLE LIKE US; Edmundo Paz-Soldán - DOCHENY; Rafael Franco Steeves - THE COUPLE AND THE STRANGER; Junot Diaz - EDISON, NEW JERSEY; Jorge Volpi - ARS POETICA. . THOMAS COLCHIE is an acclaimed translator, editor, and literary agent for international authors. He is the editor of A HAMMOCK BENEATH THE MANGOES (available from Plume) and has written for The Village Voice and The Washington Post. His translations include Manuel Puig's KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN and (with Elizabeth Bishop, Gregory Rabassa, and Mark Strand) Carlos Drummond de Andrade's TRAVELLING IN THE FAMILY. . .
Thomas Colchie is an acclaimed translator, editor, and literary agent for international authors. He is the editor of A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes. He has written for the Village Voice and The Washington Post. His translations include Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman and (with Elizabeth Bishop, Gregory Rabassa, and Mark Strand) Carlos Drummond de Andrade's Travelling in the Family.
Works by 10 Spanish American dramatists from 7 countries. They include: Xavier Villaurrutia (Mexico), Incredible though it seems (Parece men tira, 1934); Osvaldo Dragun (Argentina), The man who turned into a dog (from Historias para ser contadas, 1956); Elena Garro (Mexico), A solid home (Un hogar solido, 1957); Carlos Solorzano (Guatemala), Crossroads (Cruce de vias, 1958); Gustavo Andrade Rivera (Colombia), Remington 22 (Remington 22, 1961); Matias Montes Huidobro (Cuba), The guillotine (La madre y la guillotina, 1961); Luisa Josefina Hernández (Mexico), Dialogues (3 of 19 from La calle de la gran ocasion, 1961); Ramon Chalbaud (Venezuela), The forceps (Las pinzas, 1962), Julio Matas (Cuba), Ladies at play (Juego de damas); Jorge Diaz (Chile), Love yourselves above all others (Amaos los unos sobre los otros [originally La pancarta], 1971).
Francesca Colecchia, former chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Duquesne University, has written or edited several books including a two-volume annotated bibliography on Lorca. A former Fulbright grantee to Colombia, she has published articles of literary criticism in journals in this country as well as abroad. She has also served in various capacities on the editorial board of a number of journals and completed a term as a member of the MLA Delegate Assembly. Julio Matas, born 1931 in Havana, Cuba, is a writer and theater artist. He was an actor by vocation and a writer by inspiration. He is a playwright, novelist, actor, theater director and professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. He received the ICRA Award from the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami. He founded the group "Arena" (1954), where he introduced E. Ionesco's works in Cuba: The Bald Soprano and The Lesson. He also directed works by T. Williams, V. Piñera and A. Arrufat and acted in some of them.
All the authors in this anthology are twentieth-century writers, though many - of course - were born in the nineteenth. The subject-matter of the stories covers a wide range: soldiers in colonial Peru and in nineteenth-century Mexico, present-day miners and railroad workers in the snow-covered Andes, missionaries in the steaming jungles of Venezuela, stevedores in coastal Chile, sugar workers and revolutionaries in Cuba, horsemen of the Argentine pampa, Indians in lofty Bolivia, city dwellers in several contemporary cities. They are here translated, and collected for the first time in a volume expressly prepared for students of Comparative Literature. CONTENTS: MANUEL ROJAS - The Cub; The Glass of Milk; EDUARDO BARRIOS - Like Sisters; BALDOMERO LILLO - The Abyss; RICARDO JAIMES FREYRE - Indian Justice; RICARDO PALMA - The Magistrate's Ears; Margarita's Nightgown; HECTOR VELARDE - Father's Day; LEOPOLDO LUGONES - Yzur; ALBERTO GERCHUNOFF - The Owl; JAVIER DE VIANA - The Horse-Breaker; HORACIO QUIROGA - The Contract Workers; ARTURO USLAR PIETRI - The Voice; RUBEN DARIO - The Death of the Empress of China; AMADO NERVO - One Hope; GREGORIO LOPEZ Y FUENTES - A Letter to God; RAFAEL BERNAL - Natural Causes; GONZALO MAZAS GARBAYO - The Valley; ENRIQUE SERPA - Against Regulations; CAYETANO COLL Y TOSTE - The Pirate's Treasure; ABELARDO DIAZ ALFARO - ‘Santo Clo' Comes to La Cuchilla.
Dr. William E. Colford was a professor of Romance languages at City College of New York and former assistant dean of its College of Liberal Arts and Science. He was on the faculty of City College for 42 years and. had served as head of his department. A 1929 graduate of City College, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, he received a Ph.D.. degree from Columbia in 1942. Dr. Colford taught Spanish and Portuguese at City College, and was Fulbright and foreign?study adviser for many years. He directed the summer sessions of the college from 1952 to 1957.
A collection of stories by thirty of the most important women writers of Latin America and cast into English by such renowned translators as Gregory Rabassa and Margaret Sayers Peden. CONTENTS: Foreword by Isabel Allende; Introduction; Isabel Allende (Chile) An Act of Vengeance; Dora Alonso (Cuba) Sophie and the Angel; Helena Araujo (Colombia) Asthmatic; Maria Luisa Bombal (Chile) The Tree; Rosario Castellanos (Mexico) Culinary Lesson; Amparo Dávila (Mexico) The End of a Struggle; Guadalupe Dueñas (Mexico) In Heaven & Shoes for the Rest of my Life; Maria Virginia Estenssoro (Bolivia) The Child That Never Was; Rosario FerrE (Puerto Rico) The Poisoned Tale; Elena Garro (Mexico) Blame the Tlaxcaltecs; Nora Glickmann (Argentina) The Last Emigrant; Lucia Guerra (Chile) The Virgin Passion; Liliana Heker (Argentina) Berkley or Mariana of the Universe; Vlady Kociancich (Argentina) Knight, Death and the Devil; Luisa Mercedes Levinson (Argentina) The Cove; Clarice Lispector (Brazil) Looking For Some Dignity; Maria Elena Llano (Cuba) In the Family; Carmen Naranjo (Costa Rica) Symbiotic Encounter; Olga Orozco (Argentina) The Midgets; Antonia Palacios (Venezuela) A Gentleman on the Train; Cristina Pen Rossi (Uruguay) Breaking the Speed Record; NElida Piñon (Brazil) Big-bellied Cow; Josefina Pla (Paraguay) To Seize the Earth; Elena Poniatowska (Mexico) Park Cinema; Teresa Porzencanski (Uruguay) The Story of a Cat; Maria Teresa Solari (Peru) Death and Transfiguration of a Teacher; Marta Traba (Argentina/Colombia) The Tale of the Velvet Pillows; Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina) Up Among the Eagles; Rima de Vallbona (Costa Rica) Penelope's Silver Wedding Anniversary; Ana Lydia Vega (Puerto Rico) Cloud Cover Caribbean; Alicia Yáñez Cossio (Ecuador) The IWM 1000; Biographies; Translators.
Celia Correas de Zapata (born 9 October 1935 in Mendoza, Argentina) is an academic, poet, and author, and a leading scholar of the history of Latin American women writers. She is a professor of literature at San Jose State University, and was director of the 1976 Conference of Inter-American Women Writers, one of the earliest U.S. conferences in this field. Born in Argentina, she now resides in California. She edited the anthology Short Stories by Latin America Women: The Magic and the Real with introduction by Isabel Allende.
A bilingual edition, parallel texts. Used as a textbook at the university level for many years. Poets included are: Enrique Banchs (Argentina), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina) Jose Santos Chocano (Peru), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Enrique Gonzalez Martinez (Mexico), Juan Guzmân Cruchaga (Chile), Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay), Vicente Huidobro (Chile), Ricardo Jaimes Freyre (Bolivia), Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Pablo Neruda (Chile), Amado Nervo (Mexico), Carlos Pezoa Veliz (Chile), Pedro Prado (Chile), Jose Asuncion Silva (Colombia), Victor Domingo Silva (Chile), Alfonsina Storni (Argentina), Arturo Torres-Rioseco (Chile), Guillermo Valeiicia (Colombia).
George Dundas Craig (1874-1952) was an Assistant Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley. Dr. Craig was born in Arbroath, Scotland, January 6, 1874. His formal education was at Harris Academy in Dundee, and at the University of Edinburgh, from which he won his bachelor's degree, with First Class Honours in English Language, Literature, and History, and subsequently an M.A. He was George Saintsbury's first honors student at that institution. He taught for more than a quarter of a century in the secondary schools of Scotland: in Glasgow, Stanraer, Dundee, in his native town of Arbroath (where he was English Master and head of his department), and last at Dollar Academy, near Edinburgh, where he remained from 1910 to 1924. During these earlier years, he traveled widely in Europe, especially Spain, and in northern Africa. When in Madrid he studied for a time under Tomás. In 1924 reasons of family health caused him to move, first to Switzerland for a brief period, and then to California. For a year he was tutor to the sons of William Randolph Hearst. In the summer of 1925 he became a member of the Department of English at the University of California, in Berkeley, where his family joined him and where he spent the rest of his career. He became a citizen of the United States on June 6, 1930. In 1934 the degree of D.Litt. was conferred upon him by his old university, Edinburgh, in recognition of his book, The Modernist Trend in Spanish-American Poetry, which was published in 1934 by the University of California Press. He continued his distinguished and useful activity in the field of Latin-American poetry during the remaining years of his life. He was also coauthor with Arthur E. Hutson and Guy Montgomery of a useful textbook, Essentials of English Grammar, published in 1941 by F. S. Crofts and Company. Professor Craig was deeply attached to music throughout his life, both as an ardent concert-goer and as a performer. His interest in the musical activities of the communities in which he lived was matched only by his love of playing himself. As a young man (and before he came to the United States), his chief enthusiasm was the piano and the organ, and to a lesser extent the violin. But it was the latter instrument and especially the viola with which musicians in Berkeley associated him. His joy in playing string quartets can be appreciated best by those who have shared similar experiences. For about fifteen years Mr. Craig was one of the most faithful members of the University Symphony Orchestra, playing first under Professor Modeste Alloo and later under Professor Albert Elkus. Late in the 1940's, however, the onset of arthritis compelled him to lay aside his instruments. Modest and unassuming, Professor Craig had an infectious enthusiasm for music that transmitted itself to those about him. He was a musical amateur in the true sense of the word.
Issued as a supplement to Texas Quarterly, II, No. 1, but a book in itself. Various translators. Translations edited by George D. Schade. Includes photographs of 16 creative artists of Mexico, by Hans Beachan. A nice introduction to Mexican art and letters of the period. Prose fiction selections by: Juan de la Cabada, Juan Jose Arreola (2), Juan Rulfo (2), Guadalupe Amor, Jose Vasconcelos, Emilio Carballido, Guadalupe Duenas, Julio Torri. Poetry selections include 3 Aztec poems, 3 Nahuatl poems. Poets represented: Rosario Castellanos, Juan Jose Tablada, Enrique Rivas, Francisco Gonzalez Guerrero, Ali Chumacero, Manuel Durãn, Neftali Beltrán, Ruben Bonifaz Nuno, Jaime Sabines, Tomàs Segovia, Carlos Pellicer, Octavio Paz. Unpaged section includes 61 drawings by Siqueiros, Orozco, Tamayo, Rivera, Castro Pacheco, Dr. Atl. Photographs.
For the first time in English translation, an exciting variety of short stories and poems by younger Peruvian writers today. Diverse and dynamic, these younger authors are united by their conviction that literature is an essential cultural tool for the society in which they live. Their work is situated between the passionate fire of specific injustice and that broader love for humanity which endows the immediate, personal moment with a significance we all can share. An Introduction for North American readers and profiles of the twenty-four authors are provided by the editor, who gathered the material in Peru in 1978-1979. The translations are by twenty-two North American professional and university writers, translators and scholars. Printed on high-quality paper and stitched and glued in a multi-color, soft cover volume of 117 pages, this collection is handsomely illustrated by original drawings and fourteen photographs as well as reproductions of pre-Columbian textile and ceramic motifs. CONTENTS: Lynn A. Darroch - Introduction; SECTION ONE - Jose Antonio Bravo - Neighborhood Of Strife; Efrain Miranda - E.C.; E.L.; M.E.; SECTION TWO - Antonio Gálvez - October; I'm Hoarse; Black Burra; Edgardo Rivera - Phoenix; SECTION THREE - Blanca Varela - Curriculum Vitae; Villainous Song; Cruci-fiction; Slight Hint; Lady's Journal; Antonio Cisneros - Last Rite Of The Day (Anthropology); Fatigue Of The Bum On The Beach (Arithmetic); On The ClichE; Prayer; Helicopters In The Kingdom Of Peru; SECTION FOUR - Omar Ames - La Negra; If You Could Remember; Juan Cristöbal - Number Six; Augusto Higa - Mogollon; Cesar Toro - Coconut I; Coconut II; Christmas; Passion Fruit I; Passion Fruit II; Luis Fernando Vidal - Against The Light; SECTION FIVE - Enrique Verástegui - Datzibao; Poem Written On An Impression Caused By ‘The Lovers' Whirlpool'-A Painting By William Blake; Nicolas Yerovi - Poem; Poem; Mario Montalbetti - Poem About Small Cars; Dan-ce; And At The Time Of The South American Games; After Of Course My Wife I; SECTION SIX - Roger Santiváñez - Statement; Lima; Homage To Ernesto Che Guevara; Those About To Be; Guillermo Niño de Guzmán - After The Darkness; Edgar O'Hara - Thus; Arica; Cafeteria 15/5/74 1 p.m.; Data; To Give Mountain & Also Sea; Ernesto Mora - The Broken Doll Ballad; Dalmacia Ruiz-Rosas - Samahod; Homage To Cuba And Borges; Turned Upside Down; Poem; Poem; Poem; Luis Rebaza - I Always Wanted To Split You In A Poem; Meanwhile You Smiled At The Man Who Took Up Your Time; Guillermo Nino de Guzmán - The End Of Something; SECTION SEVEN - Luis Urteaga - A Voice In The Wind; Roberto Reyes - A Letter; Juan Bullitta - Salaverry Avenue (every block of it); Tailor From Lima; Gregorio Martinez - How To Kill The Wolf; TRANSLATORS; CONSULTING EDITORS; PHOTOGRAPHERS.
LYNN A. DARROCH is the editor of this collection. He received a MA English from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and has in the English departments of the University of Wyoming and Lewis Clark College. He is a published fiction writer and lives in Portland, Oregon.
This bilingual anthology will introduce American audiences to the rich poetries of modern Mexico. Not since the 1950s, when Samuel Beckett and Octavio Paz edited Mexican Poetry, has there been a volume as extensive as this. The contributors include both major and emerging poets and translators-poets like imagist and Buddhist Alberto Blanco and translators like Margaret Sayers Peden (trans. Isabelle Allende, Pablo Neruda). Introduced by Elliot Weinberger, this volume includes an extensive bibliography of suggested readings, bios of the poets, and over 200 poems by more than two dozen poets.
Monica de la Torre is a poet and translator. She edited and translated a volume of selected poems by Gerardo Deniz published by Lost Roads and Ditoria in 2000. With artist Terence Gower she is co-author of Appendices, Illustrations & Notes (Smart Art Press, 1999). She was brought up in Mexico City and moved to New York in 1993, when she received a Fulbright grant to study an MFA in Poetry at Columbia University. She's currently pursuing a doctorate in Comparative Literature at the same university. Her writings about art, poems, and translations have appeared in American Poetry Review, ArtNews, BOMB, Boston Review, Fence, Lit, Mandorla, Pierogi Press, Review: Latin American Literature and Arts, TRANS,and Verse. For the past decade Michael Wiegers has worked in independent publishing as an editor, and is currently the Executive Editor of Copper Canyon Press. His reviews and criticism have appeared in American Poetry Review, Publishers Weekly, Rain Taxi, The City Pages, The St. Paul Pioneer Press, Portlandia, among other publications. He has edited three anthologies: Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry, The Poet's Child, and This Art: Poems on Poetry.
Pleasurable reading was the criterion by which this book of short Spanish fiction was edited and created. It is not a historical survey or a tendentious selection-but quite simply a collection of good reading. The longest and most impressive stories in this volume are Ramôn del Valle-Inclan's ‘My Sister Antonia,' Miguel de Cervantes's ‘The Call of the Blood,' Miguel de Unamuno's ‘Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr,' Lino Novas Calvo's ‘The Dark Night of Ramôn Yendia,' Eduardo Mallea's ‘The Heart's Reason,' Armando Palacio Valdes's ‘1 Puritani,' and Benjamin Subercaseaux's ‘The Salt Sea.' In addition to these seven long stories, there are sixteen other narratives by Jorge Luis Borges, Leopoldo Alas (‘Clarin'), Carlos Wyld Ospina, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Arturo Cancela, Horacio Quiroga, Don Juan Manuel, Ricardo Güiraldes, Pio Baroja, Ricardo Palma, Pedro Antonio de Alarcon, Romulo Gallegos, Arturo Souto Alabarce, and Hernando TEllez, and selections from Calila y Ditnna and the Book oj Sendebar. In a geographic sense, then, the selection was not limited to Spain, but includes as well Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Harriet de Onis, well known as a translator and as the editor of The Golden Land, has added an Editor's Note and brief biographical information on each of the writers represented. SPANISH STORIES AND TALES is the second book in a Borzoi series. It was preceded by GERMAN STORIES AND TALES, edited by Robed Pick, and will be succeeded by FRENCH STORIES AND TALES, edited by Stanley Geist. From Harriet de Onis's ‘Editor's Note' - ‘The larger part of the work in this volume has been selected from the writers of our own century. Even though choosing from the work of living or recently deceased authors is difficult because criticism has not yet wholly defined and evaluated them, nevertheless theirs is the artistic idiom we best understand. The wealth of material has been so great that in order to comply with the limitations of space I had to omit a number of writers who have every right to be included; often a single writer must represent a group or tendency. For all their diversity, a common thread runs through them all, The Spanish ideal of beauty has in it less of the purely aesthetic, the finished and exquisite; it is more integral, more humane, of wider appeal. It is characterized by a large-hearted sympathy, understanding, and humor; it achieves its effects by the combination of deep human interest and an absorbing love of life, bowing, with Fray Luis de Leon, that ‘this is the true beauty, that everything should act according to its own nature,' which is the definition of artistic honesty.' CONTENTS: Introduction: The Spanish Short Story; MY SISTER ANTONIA, by Ramon del Valle-Inclan; THE SECRET MIRACLE, by Jorge Luis Borges; THE CALL OF THE BLOOD, by Miguel de Cervantes; THE COCK OF SOCRATES, by Leopoldo Alas (‘Clarln'); SAINT MANUEL BUENO, MARTYR, by Miguel de Unamuno; THE THIEF AND THE LADDER OF MOONBEAMS, from Calila y Dimna; THE HONOR OF HIS HOUSE, by Carlos Wyld Ospina; SISTER APARICION, by Emilio Pardo Bazan; THE TATTLETALE PARROT, from Book of Sendebar; LIFE AND DEATH OF A HERO, by Arturo Cancela; THE FATHERLAND, by Horacio Quiroga; THE MAN WHO MARRIED AN ILL-TEMPERED WIFE, by Don Juan Manuel; THE DARK NIGHT OF RAM ON YENDIA, by Lino Novas Cahlo; THE OLD RANCH, by Ricardo Guiraldes; THE CABBAGES OF THE CEMETERY, by Pio Baroja; THE HEART'S REASON, by Eduardo Mallea; TWO COOING DOVES, by Ricardo Palma; THE PROPHECY, by Pedro Antonio de Alarcon; I PURITANI, by Armando Palacio ValdEs; A MAN OF CHARACTER, by Romulo Gallegos; COYOTE 13, by Arturo Souto Alabarce; ASHES FOR THE WIND, by Hernando TEllez; THE SALT SEA, by Benjamin Subercaseaux.
Harriet de Onis was born in Sheldon, Illinois, on June 1, 1899. She received her B.A. degree from Barnard College, and has (lone postgraduate work at Columbia University and Oxford University. She has been connected with Doubleday, Page & Company and the Houston Publishing Company, and since 1924 has been a free-lance writer and translator. Her translations include the works of Martin Luis Guzman, Ricardo Güiraldes, Ciro Alegria, German Arciniegas, and Fernando Ortiz. She has traveled widely in Latin America, and is married to Federico de Onis, professor at Columbia University.
From the great literary heritage of Spain, Harriet de Onis has selected twenty-three magnificent short stories. They have been chosen not only for their classic stature, but for their lively qualities of reading pleasure. This book provides the reader with the opportunity to become acquainted with the delights of Spanish literature, as varied and dramatic as the rich culture that produced it. ommon thread runs through them all, The Spanish ideal of beauty has in it less of the purely aesthetic, the finished and exquisite; it is more integral, more humane, of wider appeal. It is characterized by a large-hearted sympathy, understanding, and humor; it achieves its effects by the combination of deep human interest and an absorbing love of life, bowing, with Fray Luis de Leon, that ‘this is the true beauty, that everything should act according to its own nature,' which is the definition of artistic honesty.' CONTENTS: Introduction: The Spanish Short Story; MY SISTER ANTONIA, by Ramon del Valle-Inclan; THE SECRET MIRACLE, by Jorge Luis Borges; THE CALL OF THE BLOOD, by Miguel de Cervantes; THE COCK OF SOCRATES, by Leopoldo Alas (‘Clarln'); SAINT MANUEL BUENO, MARTYR, by Miguel de Unamuno; THE THIEF AND THE LADDER OF MOONBEAMS, from Calila y Dimna; THE HONOR OF HIS HOUSE, by Carlos Wyld Ospina; SISTER APARICION, by Emilio Pardo Bazan; THE TATTLETALE PARROT, from Book of Sendebar; LIFE AND DEATH OF A HERO, by Arturo Cancela; THE FATHERLAND, by Horacio Quiroga; THE MAN WHO MARRIED AN ILL-TEMPERED WIFE, by Don Juan Manuel; THE DARK NIGHT OF RAM ON YENDIA, by Lino Novas Cahlo; THE OLD RANCH, by Ricardo Guiraldes; THE CABBAGES OF THE CEMETERY, by Pio Baroja; THE HEART'S REASON, by Eduardo Mallea; TWO COOING DOVES, by Ricardo Palma; THE PROPHECY, by Pedro Antonio de Alarcon; I PURITANI, by Armando Palacio ValdEs; A MAN OF CHARACTER, by Romulo Gallegos; COYOTE 13, by Arturo Souto Alabarce; ASHES FOR THE WIND, by Hernando TEllez; THE SALT SEA, by Benjamin Subercaseaux.
Harriet de Onis was born in Sheldon, Illinois, on June 1, 1899. She received her B.A. degree from Barnard College, and has (lone postgraduate work at Columbia University and Oxford University. She has been connected with Doubleday, Page & Company and the Houston Publishing Company, and since 1924 has been a free-lance writer and translator. Her translations include the works of Martin Luis Guzman, Ricardo Güiraldes, Ciro Alegria, German Arciniegas, and Fernando Ortiz. She has traveled widely in Latin America, and is married to Federico de Onis, professor at Columbia University.
This panoramic view of the culture and beliefs of Spanish America and Brazil is designed primarily for pleasurable reading. From the works of distinguished Latin American writers Harriet de Onis has selected and translated stories, narratives, and telling excerpts in which they have made creative use of folk materials. No mere anthology of folkloric field-notes, then, this is a storehouse of fine writing. It supplies a vastly entertaining display of the imaginations of some of the most imaginative peoples of the world - from the period of the Spanish and Portuguese explorers and conquerors to the present day. THE GOLDEN LAND is made up of fifty-four selections and represents forty-four writers. It is divided into sections, each with a critical, historical, and explanatory introduction by Harriet de Onis, who has likewise supplied short critical and biographical sketches of all the writers included. The total result is a 1)00k to set beside German Arciniegas's The Green Continent on the most select shelf of Latin Americana. At once readable and highly informative, it presents a condensed and thought-provoking portrait of the minds and attitudes that have built the Latin American republics of our time.
Harriet de Onis was born in Sheldon, Illinois, on June 1, 1899. She received her B.A. degree from Barnard College, and has (lone postgraduate work at Columbia University and Oxford University. She has been connected with Doubleday, Page & Company and the Houston Publishing Company, and since 1924 has been a free-lance writer and translator. Her translations include the works of Martin Luis Guzman, Ricardo Güiraldes, Ciro Alegria, German Arciniegas, and Fernando Ortiz. She has traveled widely in Latin America, and is married to Federico de Onis, professor at Columbia University.
This exciting collection of stories from the 1980s by fourteen of Argentina's finest living writers shows how far the story has evolved under the brilliant influence of Borges. In a variety of settings and styles these fantastical stories expose the tenuous nature of identity, some through the unexpected appearances of doubles. In Silvina Ocampo's story, an artist meets her younger self; Adolfo Bioy-Casares's Argentine tourist finds himself trapped in a labyrinth in East Berlin. In a beautifully haunting story by Jorge Asis, a salesman of religious artifacts visits a remote village, learns that he bears an uncanny resemblance to the recently deceased village hero, Mule, and daringly assumes the dead man's persona. Fernando Sorrentino renders an age-old tale: in his version a young man witnesses the appearance of a dybbuk in suburban Buenos Aires. Each an accomplished work on its own, together these stories form a magnificent collection introducing to English readers startling voices from Argentina's literary landscape. Di Giovanni's choice of living writers whose stories have been first published in the eighties makes this volume the first of its kind to appear in the English-speaking world. ‘In Argentina a story tends to take upon itself all the untrammelled freedom of the imagination.' - Jorge Luis Borges. CONTENTS include: Acknowledgements, Introduction, THE DRAWING LESSON by Silvina Ocampo, THE WINDOWLESS ROOM by Adolfo Bioy-Casares, LOTZ MAKES NO REPLY by Isidoro Blaisten, JAVIER WICONDA'S SISTERS by Fernando Sánchez-Sorondo, CELESTE GOES DANCING by Estela dos Santos, NEITHER SAINTS NOR SINNERS by Alberto Vanasco, SHORT STORY CONTEST by Marcos Aguinis, YOU'VE GOT A NIPPER, DON'T YOU? by Eduardo Gudiño-Kieffer, THE LETTER TO RICARDO by Liliana Heer, THE VISITATION by Fernando Sorrentino, A MEMORY OF PUNKAL by Angel Bonomini, MULE by Jorge Asis, FOR SERVICES RENDERED by Abelardo Castillo, and COUSINS by Santiago Sylvester. Also included are Notes on Contributors.
Norman Thomas di Giovanni (1933 - 16 February 2017, Bournemouth, UK) was an American-born editor and translator known for his collaboration with Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.
‘Spanish-American literature is an enterprise of the imagination. We are resolved to invent our own reality. Our dreams are waiting for us around the corner.' So Octavio Paz introduces this epochal collection of poetry, fiction, and critical essays by the leading writers in Latin America today. Included are short stories and extracts from novels by Ernesto Sabato, Juan Jose Arreola, Jorge Luis forges, Dalton Trevisan, Miguel Asturias, Carlos Morena, Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes, Clarice Lispector, and Joao Guimaraes Rosa, as well as pieces by young writers whose work is just beginning to be known. The poets represented are Cesar Vallejo, Javier Heraud, Octavio Paz, Carlos German Belli, Pablo Neruda, Enrique Lihn, Jorge Luis Borges, Nicanor Parra, Carlos Saavedra, Rafael Pineda, Enrique Molina, Marco Antonio Montes de Oca, and Jose Emilio Pacheco. In addition, there are short anthologies of Cuban, Peruvian, Argentine, Paraguayan, Mexican, and Chilean poetry. This is an indispensable anthology for anyone interested in Latin America and its rich and unpredictable literature. Contributors include: Jose-Luis Appleyard, Homero Aridjis, Juan Jose Arreola, Miguel Arteche, Miguel Angel Asturias, Juan Banuelos, Miguel Barnet, Efrain Barquero, Edgar Bayley, Carlos German Belli, Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Angel Bustos, Esteban Cabanas, Alfonso Calderon, Cesar Calvo, Antonio Cisneros, Julio Cortazar, Rene Davalos, Washington Delgado, Marco Antonio, Montes de Oca, Eliseo Diego, Ramiro Dominguez, Clayton Eshleman, Pablo Armando Fernandez, Aldofo Ferriero, Isabel Fraire, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Gelman, Armando Tejada Gomez, Miguel Grinberg, Oscar Hahn, Javier Heraud, Juan Jose Hernandez, Fayad Jamis, Vincente Lenero, Enrique Lihn, Jose Lezama Lima, Clarice Lispector, Joaquin Sanchez Macgregor, Leopoldo Marechal, Francisco Perez Maricevich, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gonzalo Millan, Sergio Mondragon, Enrique Molina, Rodriguez Monegal, Carlos J. Moneta, Carlos Martinez Moreno, Pablo Neruda, Julio Ortega, Jose Emilio Pacheco, Herberto Padilla, Basilia Papastamatiu, Nicanor Parra, Octavio Paz, Rafael Pineda, Nelida Pinon, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Gonzalo Rojas, Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Juan Gonzalo Rose, Alberto Rubio, Carlos Castro Saavedra, Ernesto Sabato, Ruben Bareiro Saguier, Gustavo Sainz, Horacio Salas, Jose Maria Gomez, Sanj urjo, Maximo Simpson, Jorge Teillier, Dalton Trevisan, Cesar Vallejo, Roque Vallejos, and Maria Vargas Llosa. ‘ . . . a treasure house of all that is new and best in Latin America' - JOHN MURCHISON, translator . . . ‘an extraordinary job of translation' - RAFAEL PINEDA.
About the Editors - Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile. CHARLES NEWMAN was a novelist, critic and founding editor of TriQuarterly, Newman transformed what had been a student and faculty publication at Northwestern University into a literary journal with international reach. As editor from 1964 to 1975, he championed writers as diverse as Sylvia Plath and John Barth and introduced the vanguard of Latin American and Eastern European authors, including Jorge Luis Borges and Czeslaw Milosz, to TriQuarterly’s discerning readership of American writers and intellectuals.
‘Spanish-American literature is an enterprise of the imagination. We are resolved to invent our own reality. Our dreams are waiting for us around the corner.' So Octavio Paz introduces this epochal collection of poetry, fiction, and critical essays by the leading writers in Latin America today. Included are short stories and extracts from novels by Ernesto Sabato, Juan Jose Arreola, Jorge Luis forges, Dalton Trevisan, Miguel Asturias, Carlos Morena, Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes, Clarice Lispector, and Joao Guimaraes Rosa, as well as pieces by young writers whose work is just beginning to be known. The poets represented are Cesar Vallejo, Javier Heraud, Octavio Paz, Carlos German Belli, Pablo Neruda, Enrique Lihn, Jorge Luis Borges, Nicanor Parra, Carlos Saavedra, Rafael Pineda, Enrique Molina, Marco Antonio Montes de Oca, and Jose Emilio Pacheco. In addition, there are short anthologies of Cuban, Peruvian, Argentine, Paraguayan, Mexican, and Chilean poetry. This is an indispensable anthology for anyone interested in Latin America and its rich and unpredictable literature. Contributors include: Jose-Luis Appleyard, Homero Aridjis, Juan Jose Arreola, Miguel Arteche, Miguel Angel Asturias, Juan Banuelos, Miguel Barnet, Efrain Barquero, Edgar Bayley, Carlos German Belli, Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Angel Bustos, Esteban Cabanas, Alfonso Calderon, Cesar Calvo, Antonio Cisneros, Julio Cortazar, Rene Davalos, Washington Delgado, Marco Antonio, Montes de Oca, Eliseo Diego, Ramiro Dominguez, Clayton Eshleman, Pablo Armando Fernandez, Aldofo Ferriero, Isabel Fraire, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Gelman, Armando Tejada Gomez, Miguel Grinberg, Oscar Hahn, Javier Heraud, Juan Jose Hernandez, Fayad Jamis, Vincente Lenero, Enrique Lihn, Jose Lezama Lima, Clarice Lispector, Joaquin Sanchez Macgregor, Leopoldo Marechal, Francisco Perez Maricevich, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gonzalo Millan, Sergio Mondragon, Enrique Molina, Rodriguez Monegal, Carlos J. Moneta, Carlos Martinez Moreno, Pablo Neruda, Julio Ortega, Jose Emilio Pacheco, Herberto Padilla, Basilia Papastamatiu, Nicanor Parra, Octavio Paz, Rafael Pineda, Nelida Pinon, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Gonzalo Rojas, Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Juan Gonzalo Rose, Alberto Rubio, Carlos Castro Saavedra, Ernesto Sabato, Ruben Bareiro Saguier, Gustavo Sainz, Horacio Salas, Jose Maria Gomez, Sanj urjo, Maximo Simpson, Jorge Teillier, Dalton Trevisan, Cesar Vallejo, Roque Vallejos, and Maria Vargas Llosa. ‘ . . . a treasure house of all that is new and best in Latin America' - JOHN MURCHISON, translator . . . ‘an extraordinary job of translation' - RAFAEL PINEDA.
About the Editors - Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile. WILLIAM A. HENKIN was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944. He received a B.A. and an M.A. (1967) from Northwestern University. Mr. Henkin was managing editor of Tri-Quarterly from 1966-69. He is the author of a book of poems, Towards Skiles. He lives in New York with his wife.
A collection of guerrilla poetry from Latin America. Many of the poems are published here for the first time. The collection is meant to be fairly specifically of poems by and about guerrillas, and is not intended in any way to rival the many good collections of revolutionary poetry in general which have appeared in Latin America in recent years.
Ed Dorn (April 2, 1929 - December 10, 1999) was an American poet and teacher often associated with the Black Mountain poets. His most famous work is Gunslinger. Gordon Brotherston came to Essex in 1965. His main publications have dealt with Hispanic, Latin American and Native American literatures, as well as literary translation. They include Manuel Machado (1968); Latin American Poetry (1976); The Emergence of the Latin American Novel (1977); and Image of the New World (1979). He has published volumes on native script and chronology: A Key to the Mesoamerican Reckoning of Time (1982) and Calendars in Mesoamerica and Peru (1983; with A. Aveni); also Voices of the First America (1986); these were followed by numerous further publications on Latin American literature and Mexican themes. Gordon organised the exhibition of Mexican Painted Books at the British Museum in 1992 and has published a number of studies of Mexican iconography and native American literature, including Book of the Fourth World: Reading the Native Americas through their Literature (1992), and Painted Books from Mexico: Codices in the United Kingdom Collections and the World they Represent (1995).
Latin America, colored by extremes of climate and temperament, scarred by conquest and revolution, has inspired more than four hundred years of poetry that is among the most powerful and imaginative ever written. This bilingual anthology offers a rich sampling of the poetry of Spanish-speaking Latin America from pre-Columbian cultures to the present. The selections, newly translated in verse by Cheli Duran, include folk poetry as well as works by famous (Ruben Dario, Gabriela Mistral, Cesar Vallejo, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda) and lesser-known poets from South and Central America and the Caribbean. The poems reflect the striking imagery, the concern with life and death, the sense of social injustice, and the continued search for identity that run throughout Latin American literature, and provide a deeply affecting introduction to the poetic voice of an extraordinary region. CONTENTS: NAHUATL - Yo, el poeta/I, the Poet; Solo venimos a dormir/We Only Come to Sleep; Abro mis alas/Opening My Wings; Cantos de Cacamatzin/The Song of Cacamatzin; QUECHUA/QUECHUAN - Me dio el ser mi madre/My Mother Gave Me Life; Apu Inka Atawallpaman/Lament for the Inca Atahualpa; LUIS DE SANDOVAL Y ZAPATA - A una comica difunta/On the Death of an Actress; JUANA DE ASBAJE - Redondillas/Verses; VICENTE RIVA PALACIO - Al viento, en la prision de Tlatelolco/To the Wind, from Tlatelolco Prison; ANoNIMO/ANONYMOUS - Santo Tomes/St. Thomas; JOSE HERNÁNDEZ - de Martin Fierro/from Martin Fierro; MANUEL GONZALEZ PRADA - El Mitayo/The Mitayo; JOSE MARTI - de Versos sencillos/from Simple Verses; Dos patrias/Two Motherlands; MANUEL JOSE OTHoN - Mira el paisaje/Look at the View; JULIÁN DEL CASAL - Crepuscular/Twilight; JOSE ASUNCIoN SILVA - Avant propos/Avant-Propos; Ars/Ars; RUBEN DARIO - Torres de Dios!/Towers of God! Poets!; A Roosevelt/To Roosevelt; Lo fatal/Fate; El gallo/The Fighting Cock; JOSE JUAN TABLADA - Haikais/Haikus; LEOPOLDO LUGONES - de Los infimos/from The Humble; La blanca soledad/White Solitude; JOSE MARIA EGUREN - El caballo/The Horse; ANoNIMO/ANONYMOUS - Cuatro villancicos/Four Christmas Carols; RAMoN LOPEZ VELARDE - Mi prima Agueda/My Cousin Agatha; GABRIELA MISTRAL - Cancion del maizal/Song of the Corn; La medianoche/Midnight; Todas ibamos a ser reinas/We Were Going to Be Queens; ALFONSO REYES - Sol de Monterrey/Monterrey Sun; MARIANO BRULL - Verdehalago/Greencaress; CESAR VALLEJO - Los nueve monstrous/The Nine Monsters; Considerando en frio/Considering Coldly; Va corriendo, andando, huyendo/He Goes Running, Walking, Fleeing; De puro calor tengo frio/I'm Frozen from Heat; Los desgraciados/The Wretched; Traspie entre dos estrellas/Stumbling Between Two Stars; Un hombre pasa/A Man Walks By; Masa/The Masses; ANoNIMO/ANONYMOUS - Cuando sali de mi tierra/When I Left My Country; Las niñas de Tucuman/Young Ladies of Tucuman; Un mosquito/The Mosquito; Receta contra el amor/Medicine to Cure Love; VICENTE HUIDOBRO - Alerta/Alert; Hortzonte/Horizon; de Altazor/from Altazor; LUIS PALES MATOS - Topografia/Topography; RICARDO E. MOLINARI - Cancionero de Principe de Vergara/Songbook of the Prince of Vergara; JORGE LUIS BORGES - Poema conjeturai/Conjectual Poem; JOSE GOROSTIZA - Acuario/Aquarium; NICOLÁS GUILLEN - Cana/Cane; Sensemayá/Sensemaya; Madrigal/Madrigal; Calor/Heat; JORGE CARRERA ANDRADE - Cone de cebada/Reaping the Barley; El hombre del Ecuador baja la Torre Eiffel/The Man of Ecuador Under the Eiffel Tower; XAVIER VILLAURRUTIA - Nocturno rosa/Rose Nocturne; PABLO NERUDA - de Alturas de Macchu Picchu/from The Heights of Macchu Picchu; Oda a la alcachofa/Ode to an Artichoke; El padre/Father; MANUEL DEL CABRAL - de Mon dice cosas/from Mon Steaks Out; SARA DE IBÁNEZ - Isla en la luz/island in the Light; ANoNIMO/ANONYMOUS - La fiesta de la Candelaria/The Candlemas Feast; OCTAVIO PAZ - Himno entre ruinas/Hymn Among Ruins; Madrugada/Dawn; Agua nocturna/Night Water; Piedra nativa/Native Stone; Aqui/Here; Pares y nones/Odds or Evens; NICANOR PARRA - Recuerdos de juventud/Memories of Adolescence; JUAN JOSE ARREOLA - Metamorfosis/Metamorphosis; CINTIO VITIER - La luz del Cayo/Key West Light; ERNESTO CARDENAL - Epiggrama/Epigram; de La hora O/from Zero Hour; JAIME SABINES - Alga sobre la muerte del mayor Sabines/Words on the Death of Sabines Senior; BLANCA VARELA - Las cosas que digo son ciertas/What I Say Is True; CARLOS GERMAN BELLI - En vez de humanos dulces/Instead of Gentle Human Beings; Papa, mama/Papa, Mama; ENRIQUE LIHN - Recuerdos de matrimonio/Souvenirs of Marriage; ROBERTO FERNÁNDEZ RETAMAR - Ninas y niños, muchcahas y muchachos/Girls and Boys, Young Men and Women; FAYAD JAMIS - Que es para usted la poesia?/What's Poetry for You?; ANTONIO CISNEROS - Poema sobre Jonas y los desalienados/Poem on Jonas and Others Out of Line; JAVIER HERAUD - Las moscas/Flies; Arte poetica/The Art of Poetry; INDICE DE POETAS/INDEX TO POETS; INDICE DE TITULOS/INDEX TO TITLES; INDIEE DE PRIMEROS VERSOS/INDEX TO FIRST LINES; BIBLIOGRAFIA ESEOGIDA/SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Cheli Duran was born in New York. She is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where she majored in English and Spanish literature. She has worked as a children's book editor in New York City and as a free-lance writer. Among her books for younger children is the much-honored HILDILID'S NIGHT, which was a 1972 Caldecott Honor Book and National Book Award Finalist, a 1971 ALA Notable Book, and a Children's Book Council Showcase and AIGA Children's Book Show selection. Ms. Duran lived in Cuba as a child and later in Chile and Spain.
A collection of poems in homage to the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda by Fernando Alegria, Efrain Barquero, Oscar Hahn, Osvaldo Rodriguez, Omar Lara, Sergio Macias and Miguel Moreno Monroy. Also contains a poem by Neruda entitled "Ode to the Popular Poets."
Contains a collection of Chilean poetry in translation. Poets included are: Julio Vicuna Cifuentes, Carlos Pezoa Veliz, Luis . Contardo, D. Duble Urrutia, Manuel Magallanes Moure, Francisco Contreras, Victor Domingo Silva, Gabriela Mistral.
Agustín Edwards (June 17, 1878 - 1941) was a Chilean politician, financier, and writer. At age twenty-two, Edwards became one of the youngest members in Chile's House of Representatives. At the same time he became active in the Edwards Bank of Valparaíso. Elected vice president of the House and president of the Ministry of Finance in 1902, he negotiated a peace treaty with Bolivia and initiated the construction of a railroad from Arica to La Paz. In 1906 he began his diplomatic career, serving successively in Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. Upon his return to Chile, he served as finance minister under President Pedro Montt. During World War I he was named envoy to Great Britain in charge of diplomatic and financial affairs and, in 1920, became special envoy to the Court of St. James. In 1921 he was named representative to the League of Nations. He received many honors in Chile and Europe. While living abroad Edwards studied newspaper and magazine production, then utilized this knowledge in Chile, where he founded the newspaper El Mercurio and several magazines, including Zig-Zag. In the financial domain, he reorganized the Edwards Bank, founded several companies, and was involved in nitrate mining. In 1925 he resolved a conflict with Bolivia and reestablished peace. Among his writings are his Memoria sobre el plebiscito tacneño (1926), in which he opposes a plan to allow Tacna and Arica to determine their nationality; My Native Land (1928), a cultural history of Chile; Peoples of Old (1929), on the Araucanian Indians; The Dawn (1931), on Chilean history from Independence (1810) to the first elected president (1841); and Cuatro presidentes de Chile (1932), on the period from 1841 to 1932.
Reprint. Originally published 1929. Contains selections of poetry.
Agustín Edwards (June 17, 1878 - 1941) was a Chilean politician, financier, and writer. At age twenty-two, Edwards became one of the youngest members in Chile's House of Representatives. At the same time he became active in the Edwards Bank of Valparaíso. Elected vice president of the House and president of the Ministry of Finance in 1902, he negotiated a peace treaty with Bolivia and initiated the construction of a railroad from Arica to La Paz. In 1906 he began his diplomatic career, serving successively in Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. Upon his return to Chile, he served as finance minister under President Pedro Montt. During World War I he was named envoy to Great Britain in charge of diplomatic and financial affairs and, in 1920, became special envoy to the Court of St. James. In 1921 he was named representative to the League of Nations. He received many honors in Chile and Europe. While living abroad Edwards studied newspaper and magazine production, then utilized this knowledge in Chile, where he founded the newspaper El Mercurio and several magazines, including Zig-Zag. In the financial domain, he reorganized the Edwards Bank, founded several companies, and was involved in nitrate mining. In 1925 he resolved a conflict with Bolivia and reestablished peace. Among his writings are his Memoria sobre el plebiscito tacneño (1926), in which he opposes a plan to allow Tacna and Arica to determine their nationality; My Native Land (1928), a cultural history of Chile; Peoples of Old (1929), on the Araucanian Indians; The Dawn (1931), on Chilean history from Independence (1810) to the first elected president (1841); and Cuatro presidentes de Chile (1932), on the period from 1841 to 1932.
A bilingual selection of poems, 'Hispanic-American lyrics' (pp. 21. 69) is included. Selections of uneven quality by nineteenth and early twentieth. century poets. One or two poems by each poet. Poets are: Jose Joaquin Pesado (Mexico), Joaquin Arcadio Pagaza (Mexico), Jose Maria Bustillos (Mexico), Rafael Obligado (Argentina), Luis G. Urbina (Mexico), Alfonsina Storni (Argentina), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Luis Carlos Lopez (Colombia), Luis L. Franco (Argentina), Gabriela Mistral (Chile).
Reprint. Originally published 1942.
Dudley Fitts (April 28, 1903 - July 10, 1968) was an American teacher, critic, poet, and translator. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and attended Harvard University, where he edited the Harvard Advocate. He taught at The Choate School 1926–1941 and at Phillips Academy at Andover 1941–1968. He and his former student at Choate, Robert Fitzgerald, published translations of Alcestis of Euripides (1936), Antigone of Sophocles (1939), Oedipus Rex (1949), and The Oedipus Cycle (1949). Their translations were praised for their clarity and poetic quality. He died in Andover, Massachusetts.
This is a representative anthology of contemporary poetry in the Latin American countries. It is New Directions' contribution to a quickened cultural understanding in what, with all-inclusive pride, we are learning to call The Continent - which is to say, this hemisphere. Prepared by Dudley Fitts, an outstanding poet and literary critic, and translated by authorities in the several literatures, this anthology presents the best poets of today. The Spanish, Portuguese and French texts are printed opposite the English versions, so that the reader may have access to the original and acquire familiarity with the language by parallel reading. The Brazilian section was chosen and translated by Dudley Poore; H. R. Hays contributes a biographical and critical note on each poet. It is fortunate for readers of poetry in the United States that recent events have awakened interest in the literature of our neighbors in the other American Republics at a time when it is so remarkably vigorous and varied. Traditional force, combining with native talents, gives us here a poetry that North American writers may profitably consider and North American readers abundantly enjoy. In making his selection for this volume, the editor has aimed at presenting a picture of the most important poetic activity of the past quarter-century - approximately since the death of Ruben Dario. While a few of the older poets are included as forerunners, this is a Latin American anthology of today and for today.
Dudley Fitts (April 28, 1903 - July 10, 1968) was an American teacher, critic, poet, and translator. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and attended Harvard University where he edited the Harvard Advocate. He taught at The Choate School 1926–1941 and at Phillips Academy at Andover 1941–1968. He and his former student at Choate, Robert Fitzgerald, published translations of Alcestis of Euripides (1936), Antigone of Sophocles (1939), Oedipus Rex (1949), and The Oedipus Cycle (1949). Their translations were praised for their clarity and poetic quality. He died in Andover, Massachusetts.
Darwin J. Flakoll and Claribel Alegria New voices are heard today all over Latin America. From Tierra del Fuego to the Rio Grande, new talents reflect a ferment of growth and activity in the arts, as in every aspect of public life. This book introduces over thirty of the best modern writers from the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Argentina; many of them appear in English for the first time. Their short stories and poems capture the distinctive flavor of the Hispanic-American temperament, heritage and environment, and convey a spirit of eager adventure and self-awareness paced with Latin America's growing political prominence. The variations in themes from the regional writings to the psychological story - not only bespeak Hispanic America's unique style and tempo, but also touch upon the shared experiences of all men. The result of a careful process of selection, this anthology represents the choice fruits of the fresh literary talents from ‘south of the border.' The introduction affords the reader a frame of reference by illustrating the contrasts in standards of value and ways of life in the two Americas; in addition, the particular problems and preoccupations of the new generation of Spanish-American writers are discussed. With poems in both English and Spanish, this volume offers the student a valuable source book on modern Hispanic America. For those who delight in discovering vigorous new fiction and poetry, here is a vital art making its bid for a place in world literature. And all who read this book will gain fresh insight into the mind and emotions, the problems and aspirations of our Latin American neighbors. Darwin J. Flakoll and Claribel Alegria (Mrs. Flakoll) are both steeped in Spanish-American writing. Mr. Flakoll, a former newspaperman, editor and free-lance writer, is now serving as Second Secretary in the U.S. Embassy at Buenos Aires, Argentina; his previous assignments have taken him to many Spanish-American countries. Miss Alegria, a Salvadorean writer, has published five books of poetry and one of children's stories. While living in Mexico, the Flakolls came to know many young writers and conceived the idea of compiling an anthology of modern Hispanic American literature for a North American audience. Their project was accepted by The Catherwood Foun- dation which extended them a grant to undertake the work while they were residing in Santiago, Chile. The Flakolls polled numerous leading literary critics, editors, writers and teachers of Latin-American literature for their nominations of the best new writers. From several thousand manuscripts and books of poetry and short stories, they culled the stories and poems that appear in New Voices of Hispanic America. . .
Darwin J. Flakoll (1923-1995) was born on February 20, 1923 in Wendte, South Dakota. His parents, Arthur and Alma, both of Norwegian descent, ran one of the small rural schools in the Dakota plains. There he met the grandson of the Chief of the Lakota Sioux, Sitting Bull, with whom he formed a close friendship. This friendship gave him a different point of view of the mythical Wild West on which he would write stories later. His family emigrated to San Diego, California during the depression. He graduated from San Diego State University at the age of 19 and practiced journalism. That same year he enlisted in the Navy during World War II. He served both in the Atlantic and in the Pacific aboard destroyers. At the end of the war he enrolled in the University of George Washington to pursue his Masters in History and met Claribel Alegría. Claribel Alegría was born on May 12, 1924 in Estelí, Nicaragua, daughter of Ana María Vides, Salvadoran and Dr. Daniel Alegría, Nicaraguan. When Claribel was only nine months old, his parents, for being against the North American occupation of Nicaragua and facing threats, emigrated to the city of Santa Ana, El Salvador. Claribel spent his childhood and adolescence there but since then he was aware of having "Homeland and Matria" and is considered to this day "SlavaNica". During the thirties in San Salvador, when he was only seven years old, he remembers the massacre of the peasants and indigenous people of El Salvador, at the hands of the dictator Martínez. It was an indelible milestone that marked her forever and from there comes her social commitment to human rights. In 1943, she left a scholarship to the University of Loyola (New Orleans, United States) and completed her Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Letters at the University of George Washington. While there he met Juan Ramon JimEnez, the Spanish Nobel Prize winner, who was his mentor and who gathered his first poems that are in "Anillo de Silencio", his first book.
paper. The early twentieth-century selections from Latin America are over-shadowed by the wider range of Spanish peninsular stories. Includes works by Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes (Mexico), Ricardo Palma (Peru), and Hernando TEllez (Colombia), with selections by Spanish authors.
Angel Flores was born October 2, 1900 in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. He left Puerto Rico at age 18 or 19 for New York. He received his B.A. from New York University (1923), his M.A. from Lafayette College (1925), and his PhD from Cornell University (1947). Flores' career was as literary critic, pundit, teacher, translator, and publisher. He navigated both the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking worlds of literature. He was one of the early translators of Pablo Neruda into English; he was the original Spanish translator for T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. He was a friend of Federico Garcia Lorca. Flores is credited with being the first person to apply the term "magical realism" to literature. Flores was on the faculty of Cornell University during the late 1930s, and with the support of Cornell, he founded Dragon Press, in order to provide a publishing venue for modern poets without wide public appeal. Flores spent the 1940s in Washington D.C. working for the Pan American Union (later, the Organization of American States). His work there led to the establishment of Latin American Studies as an academic discipline. Flores retired as Professor Emeritus from Queens College, New York City. He died on January 3, 1992 in Guadalajara, Mexico. During his lifetime, Angel Flores wrote more than 80 books.
This BANTAM DUAL-LANGUAGE BOOK gives you - thirteen great, representative stories in the Spanish language with vivid, accurate English translations, printed in corresponding paragraphs on facing pages; an informative essay on Spanish literature; biographical-critical introductions to each story; notes on obscure references and idioms; Spanish-to-English vocabulary; teaching and practice aids; a helpful introduction on the uses of this volume. Bantam Dual-Language Books are designed for everyone who wants to read good stories - everyone interested in a foreign language.
Angel Flores was born October 2, 1900 in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. He left Puerto Rico at age 18 or 19 for New York. He received his B.A. from New York University (1923), his M.A. from Lafayette College (1925), and his PhD from Cornell University (1947). Flores' career was as literary critic, pundit, teacher, translator, and publisher. He navigated both the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking worlds of literature. He was one of the early translators of Pablo Neruda into English; he was the original Spanish translator for T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. He was a friend of Federico Garcia Lorca. Flores is credited with being the first person to apply the term "magical realism" to literature. Flores was on the faculty of Cornell University during the late 1930s, and with the support of Cornell, he founded Dragon Press, in order to provide a publishing venue for modern poets without wide public appeal. Flores spent the 1940s in Washington D.C. working for the Pan American Union (later, the Organization of American States). His work there led to the establishment of Latin American Studies as an academic discipline. Flores retired as Professor Emeritus from Queens College, New York City. He died on January 3, 1992 in Guadalajara, Mexico. During his lifetime, Angel Flores wrote more than 80 books.
Here, in one handsome volume, is the best of Latin American fiction - novels, novelettes, and short stories - selected by two specialists in the field for the enjoyment of North American readers. In the Introduction, Katherine Anne Porter says: ‘These stories are wonderfully interesting to me because they give a view of South American life and people that I never found anywhere else. . . . The world of most of these stories is an outside world, full of weather. Men live on horseback, on foot, in carts, in boats. They travel in the fields, over mountains, through jungles, on water, facing heat, flood, snow, rain, bitter cold. The themes are flight, pursuit, the search for adventure, and the struggle for survival. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION, by Katherine Anne Porter; ARGENTINA - FIESTA IN NOVEMBER, by Eduardo Mallea; ECUADOR - Don Goyo, by Demetrio Aguilera Malta; PERU - GAVIOTA, by Jose Diez-Canseco; COLOMBIA - COUNTRY GIRL, by Luis Tablanca; VENEZUELA - THE SLOOP ‘ISABEL' ARRIVED THIS EVENING, by Guillermo Meneses; MEXICO - THE FUTILE LIFE OF PIT0 PEREZ, by Jose RubEn Romero; ARGENTINA - DANGEROUS MEN, by Hector I. Eandi; BRAZIL - SEA OF THE DEAD, by Jorge Amado; URUGUAY - THE FUGITIVES, by Horacio Quiroga; PANAMA - THEY CAME TO A RIVER, by Rogelia Sinan; ARGENTINA - THE WHITE WIND, by Juan Carlos Davalos; VENEZUELA - RAIN, by Arturo Uslar Pietri; PERU - THE GOOD KNIGHT CARMELO, by Abraham Valdelomar; BOLIVIA - LA MISQUI-SIMI, by Adolfo Costa du Rels; CHILE - VAGABONDS' CHRISTMAS EVE, by Salvador Reyes; CHILE - ESCAPE, by Rafael Maluenda Labarca; CHILE - PILGRIMAGE, by Armando Arriaza; CHILE - BROTHER ASS, by Eduardo Barrios.
Angel Flores was born October 2, 1900 in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. He left Puerto Rico at age 18 or 19 for New York. He received his B.A. from New York University (1923), his M.A. from Lafayette College (1925), and his PhD from Cornell University (1947). Flores' career was as literary critic, pundit, teacher, translator, and publisher. He navigated both the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking worlds of literature. He was one of the early translators of Pablo Neruda into English; he was the original Spanish translator for T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. He was a friend of Federico Garcia Lorca. Flores is credited with being the first person to apply the term "magical realism" to literature. Flores was on the faculty of Cornell University during the late 1930s, and with the support of Cornell, he founded Dragon Press, in order to provide a publishing venue for modern poets without wide public appeal. Flores spent the 1940s in Washington D.C. working for the Pan American Union (later, the Organization of American States). His work there led to the establishment of Latin American Studies as an academic discipline. Flores retired as Professor Emeritus from Queens College, New York City. He died on January 3, 1992 in Guadalajara, Mexico. During his lifetime, Angel Flores wrote more than 80 books. Dudley Poore (September 6, 1893 – 1981) was an American poet, author, and translator. He was renowned for his translations of notable works from Spanish and Portuguese into English, including Our Daily Bread (1943) by Ecuador’s Enrique Gil Gilbert, which received honorable mention at Farrar Rinehart’s Latin-American Prize Novel Contest. Poore’s translation of The Bonfire (1944) by Cecilio J. Carneiro of Brazil also garnered critical acclaim. Apart from translation, Poore co-edited Fiesta in November: Stories from Latin America (1942) and North American Storytellers (1946). His poetry was featured in Eight Harvard Poets (1917). The Dudley Poore papers, which document both his personal and professional life, are housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. This collection includes his correspondence, writings, photographs, notebooks, and other materials.
A noteworthy collection of outstanding stories by leading contemporary authors. Bilingual edition, parallel texts. Of interest are the 'Biographical notes on authors,' pp. 191-195, and 'Notes on Spanish texts,' pp. 197-204. Various translators. Of eight writers, only one is Spanish (Camilo Jose Cela). Spanish American authors are: Mario Benedetti (Uruguay), Jorge Luis Horges (Argentina), Gabriel Garcia Márquez (Colombia), Carlos Martinez Moreno (Uruguay), Juan Carlos Onetti (Uruguay), Juan Rulfo (Mexico), and H. A. Murena (Argentina).
Jean Franco, born in 1924 in Dukinfield, Cheshire, was educated at Hyde Grammar School and at Manchester and London Universities. She lived for four years in Guatemala and Mexico, from 1953 to 1957, and in 1960 took up an appointment as Lecturer in Spanish at Queen Mary College, London University. In 1964 she was appointed Reader in Latin American Literature at King's College, London University, and in 1968 became Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of Essex. She is a founder-member of the Society for Latin American Studies of Great Britain and has served as Chairman since 1967. She has published many articles and translations in British periodicals and has contributed to Latin American periodicals. She is the editor of Short Stories in Spanish (Penguin, 1966), the author of An Introduction to Spanish American Literature (1969), and a contributor to the Latin American section in the Penguin Companion to Literature, Volume 3.
Reprint. Originally published 1930. Works from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Stories by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Lucio Vicente Lopez, Roberto J. Payro, Leopoldo Lugones, Ricardo Güiraldes, and Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay)
Waldo David Frank (1889-1967) was a prolific American novelist, historian, political activist, and literary critic, who wrote extensively for The New Yorker and The New Republic during the 1920s and 1930s. Frank is best known for his studies of Spanish and Latin American literature and culture and his work is regarded as an intellectual bridge between the two continents. A radical political activist during the years of the Great Depression, Frank delivered a keynote speech to the first congress of the League of American Writers and was the first chair of that organization. Frank broke with the Communist Party, USA in 1937 over its treatment of exiled Soviet leader Leon Trotsky, whom Frank met in Mexico in January of that year.
A robust, virile picture of the Argentine in all its picaresque and languorous detail. There are ribald love stories, quaint pictures of Buenos Aires, the twanging guitars of happy gauchos, wild fighting in the hills, man-eating tigers in the wilderness, the story of the great Anaconda lifting her coiled body in the jungle. A fascinating panorama. TALES FROM THE ARGENTINE is the first of many books from South America to be published by Farrar & Rinehart under the general editorship of Mr. Frank, who is an authority on things Latin-American. He is a shrewd editor. This fascinating volume is not only emotionally exciting but informative and in his Introduction and notes, Mr. Frank gives us a colorful picture of the Argentine and a background of its history and politics as well as its writing. Includes the stories: LAUCHA'S MARRIAGE by Roberto J. Payro; DEATH OF A GAUCHO by Leopoldo Lugones; HOLIDAY IN BUENOS AIRES by Lucia V. Lopez; THE PRIVATE LIFE OF FACUNDO by Domingo F. Sarmiento; THE DEVIL IN PAGO CHICO by Roberto J. Payrol ROSAURA by Ricardo Güiraldes; THE RETURN OF ANACONDA by Horacio Quiroga.
Waldo David Frank (1889-1967) was a prolific American novelist, historian, political activist, and literary critic, who wrote extensively for The New Yorker and The New Republic during the 1920s and 1930s. Frank is best known for his studies of Spanish and Latin American literature and culture and his work is regarded as an intellectual bridge between the two continents. A radical political activist during the years of the Great Depression, Frank delivered a keynote speech to the first congress of the League of American Writers and was the first chair of that organization. Frank broke with the Communist Party, USA in 1937 over its treatment of exiled Soviet leader Leon Trotsky, whom Frank met in Mexico in January of that year.
A literary movement which began in Spanish America toward the last thirty years of the Nineteenth Century was called modernism. It was started by one Mexican, Manuel Gutierrez Najera, one Colombian, Jose Asuncion Silva, and two Cubans, Jose Marti and Julian del Casal. Some critics also include in this group two other poets, Salvador Diaz Miron, a Mexican, and Manuel Gonzalez Prada, a Peruvian. A Nicaraguan, Ruben Dario, spread and consolidated this autochthonous literary movement of Spanish America. It produced profound changes in the literature of the Hispanic world, There was also a revival of the Spanish language. quality, sincerity, and independence of the writers, besides beauty, were the main goals of modernism. Its principal outcome was the literary unification of all Spanish-American countries. In modernism were merged literary schools that were antagonistic in France, the Parnassian School and the Symbolist School, and elements of other literary movements such as romanticism, realism, and naturalism. CONTENTS: PREFACE; INTRODUCTION; JOSE MARTI - My Poetry/Mi poesia; MANUEL GUTIERREZ NAJERA - For That Moment/Para entonces, Dead Waves/Ondas muertas; JULIAN DEL CASAL - The Greatest Sadness/La mayor tristeza, Nihilism/Nihilismo; JOSE ASUNCION SILVA - Tropical Landscape/Paisaje tropical; ?;?; RUBEN DARIO - Melancholy/Melancolia, Nocturne/Nocturno. . .
Claudio Freixas is a Cuban-American translator.
EXCITING NEW FRONTIERS OF THE MODERN LITERARY WORLD - During our century, the many currents of Latin-American literature have come to form one of the most powerful and richly textured literary movements in the world. This anthology brings together representative fiction, essays, and poetry by the outstanding figures who have played and continue to play vital roles in this great outpouring of native sensibility and universal genius. The writers in this volume range from world-famous names like Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Pablo Neruda to brilliant new talents whose works have been translated here for the first time. Complete with biographical notes on all the authors, LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE TODAY invites us to explore a brilliant world of reading pleasure, and to fully appreciate the scope and significance of a literature rooted in a vast social, economic, and historical landscape. Here is a collection alive with writing that masterfully and magically fuses the old with the new. CONTENTS; CIRO ALEGRIA - The Puma of Shadows; JUAN JOSE ARREOLA - Prologue/Felines/ The Monkeys/The Trap/ You and I/The Interview; MIGUEL ANGEL ASTURIAS - Tecun-Uman; MANUEL BANDEIRA - New Poetic/Apple/A Light Supper/Poem Taken from a Newspaper Article/Moment in a CafE/Poem of the Dead/ I'm Leaving for Pasárgada/The Art of Loving; JORGE LUIS BORGES - Inferno, I/Paradiso, XXXI/ Ragnarok/ Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote/The Witness/A Problem/Borges and I/Everything and Nothing/The Cyclical Night; SILVINA BULLRICH - The Bridge; ERNESTO CARDENAL - Spring Has Come/Love; ALEJO CARPENTIER - The Fugitives; JORGE CARRERA ANDRADE - Epilogue/Each Thing Is a World in Itself/There Isn't/I Am the One Who Dwells Among Stones; ROSARIO CASTELLANOS - from Office of Tenebrae; AUGUSTO CESPEDES - The Well; JULIO CORTAZAR - The Island at Noon; JOSE DONOSO - The Guero; SALVADOR ELIZONDO - The Butterfly; CARLOS FUENTES - The Hight Cost of Living/Central and Eccentric Writing; GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ - Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo; KITZIA HOFFMAN - Old Adelina; JORGE IBARGUENGOITIA - Herod's Law; CLARICE LISPECTOR - The Man Who Appeared/Better than to Burn; GERARDO MARIA - Matusalen, the Village Without Time; RENE MARQUES - A Body Abaft; CECELIA MEIRELES - The Bath of the Buffaloes/Improvisation/Song/ Song of the Afternoon in the Field/Swimmer/Fine Rain/Portrait; GABRIELA MISTRAL - Notes on Pablo Neruda/Castile (An Imaginary Encounter with Saint Theresa); CARLOS MONTEMAYOR - Dearest/Ramadan; AUGUSTO MONTERROSO - Mr. Taylor; PABLO NERUDA - Lord Cochrane de Chile/from Memoirs; RUBEN BONIFAZ NUNO - from La flama en el espejo; VICTORIA OCAMPO - The Lakes of the South; JUAN CARLOS ONETTI - Santa Rosa; JOSE EMILIO PACHECO - The Pleasure Principle; OCTAVIO PAZ - from Alternating Current; AUGUSTO ROA BASTOS - from Hijo de hombre; JUAN RULFO - Tell Them Not to Kill Me!; DALTON TREVISAN - The White Butterfly; ARTURO USLAR PIETRI - Simeon Calamaris; MARIO VARGAS LLOSA - Interview with Carlo Meneses; LUIZ VILELA - Daring/God Knows What He's Doing; RAMoN XIRAU - fom Palabra y sllencio.
Anne Fremantle, who has taught at both New York University and the United Nations, is a widely known author and critic whose fiction, articles, and reviews have been published in Harper's Bazaar, Saturday Review, Commonweal, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and many other publications. She is the editor of Mao Tse Tung: An Anthology of His Writings and The Age of Belief: The Medieval Philosophers.
In this expansive anthology, Carlos Fuentes and Julio Ortega present the most compelling short fiction from Mexico to Chile. Surreal, poetic, naturalistic, urbane, peasant-born; all styles intersect and play, often within a single piece. CONTENTS: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS; THE STORYTELLER Carlos Fuentes; INTRODUCTION Julio Ortega; JORGE LUIS BORGES The Aleph; FILISBERTO HERNANDEZ The Balcony; JOAO GUIMARAES ROSA The Third Bank of the River; VIRGILIO PINERA The One Who Came to Save Me; JUAN CARLOS ONETTI Hell Most Feared; JUAN RULFO Luvina; JULIO CORTAZAR Blow-up; CLARICE LISPECTOR Love; JOSE DONOSO Ana Maria; GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World; SALVADOR GARMENDIA The Melancholic Pedestrian; JULIO RAMON RIBEYRO The Wardrobe, the Old Man and Death; INES ARREDONDO Subterranean River; ANTONIO BENITEZ ROJO The Scissors; ALEJANDRO ROSSI Orion's Glow; LUIS LOAYZA ANew Man; SERGIO PITOL Bukhara Nocturne; LUIS RAFAEL SANCHEZ Getting Even; NELIDA PINON House of Passion; LUISA VALENZUELA Panther Eyes; JOSE EMILIO PACHECO The Queen; ALFREDO BRYCE ECHENIQUE A Brief Reappearance by Florence, This Autumn; JOSE BALZA The Stroke of Midnight; MOACYR SCLIAR Van Gogh's Ear; ANTONIO SKARMETA The Cyclist of San Cristobal Hill; MARIO LEVRERO Notes from Buenos Aires; POLICARPO VARON The Feast; RODOLFO HINOSTROZA The Benefactor; SERGIO RAMIREZ The Centerfielder; MARIA LUISA PUGA Naturally; HERNAN LARA ZAVALA Mirror Images; ANGELES MASTRETTA from Big-Eyed Women; FERNANDO AMPUERO Taxi Driver, Minus Robert De Niro; SENEL PAZ Don't Tell Her You Love Her; ALBERTO RUY SANCHEZ Voices of the Water; ANTONIO LOPEZ ORTEGA from Naturalezas menores; JUAN VILLORO Coyote; RODRIGO FRESAN National Sovereignty; PABLO SOLER FROST Clamour; AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES; COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won. A native of Peru, Professor Julio Ortega is an accomplished scholar, poet, playwright, and novelist, with 15 books as well as several critical editions to his credit. After six years of teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, and two years as professor and chairperson at Brandeis University, Professor Ortega joined Brown's Department of Hispanic Studies in 1989. He has also been a visiting professor at numerous universities both in the United States and abroad, including recent terms as Simon Bolivar Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge (1995-96) and Catedra de Estudios Avanzados at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (Summer 1995).
An embarrassment of riches describes the appearance in one volume of three superlative works by these giants of contemporary Latin American literature. In ‘Holy Place,' Carlos Fuentes, Mexico's most important novelist, uses movie techniques - close-ups, longshots, flashbacks, dissolves-to tell the story of the son of a famous movie star. ‘Holy Place' is by turns comic and terrifying as it follows Guillermo's obsessive need to possess his mother and unite with her. In critic Leonard Michaels' words, ‘a dazzling salad of traditional and contemporary myth,' Fuentes' novel is, he says, ‘a virtuoso performance in paradox.' ‘Hell Has No Limits' by Jose Donoso covers one day in the affairs of La Manuela, an old queen and ‘madam' of a ramshackle whorehouse. Manuela, reluctant husband of the former madam, now dead, and father of Japonesita, has an irresistible desire to don a tattered red silk dress and dance for one particular customer who she knows will end by beating her. Like the other short novels in Triple Cross, Donoso's story deals with shifting identities, terror, and redemption. The final novella marks the first appearance in English of the Cuban writer Severo Sarduy. Unmistakably a tour de force of style, ‘From Cuba with a Song' consists of three fables which share in common three characters: a blond Spaniard named Mortal, and Help and Mercy, also called the Flower Girls. In the first fable, Mortal is a lecherous old general who pursues the image of Lotus Flower, a soprano at the Chinatown Opera House. In the second fable, Mortal is a politician whose rise and fall parallels the rise and fall of Dolores Rondon, immortalized in a ten-line poem of Christ in Havana,' Mortal is an absent young on her tombstone. In the third fable, ‘The Entry lover who will become a metaphor for Christ. All three short novels, in their technical mastery, insight and bravado, are works of unforgettable power. No one interested in contemporary writing can fail to be impressed. CONTENTS: Carlos Fuentes/Holy Place; Jose Donoso/Hell Has No Limits; Severo Sarduy/From Cuba with a Song.
CARLOS FUENTES was born in Mexico in 1928. His published works include WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR (1958), THE GOOD CONSCIENCE (1959), AURA (1962), THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ (1962), and A CHANGE OF SKIN (1967). His works have been translated into many languages. He lives in Mexico. JOSE DONOSO was born in 1924 in Santiago, Chile. He received his A.B. from Princeton in 1951. He has taught English literature at the University of Chile and has been a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa. His books include THIS SUNDAY and CORONATION, which won the William Faulkner Foundation Prize for Chile in 1962. He lives in Spain. SEVERO SARDUY was born in Camaguey, Cuba, in 1937. His works in French translation have established him as a leading avant-garde writer. FROM CUBA WITH A SONG is his first book publication in English. He lives in Paris.
Poems of the early and mid-century. Poems by: Rafael Alberto Arrieta, Enrique Banchs, Francisco Luis Bernárdez, Jorge Luis Borges, Baldomero Fernández Moreno, Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, Enrique Larreta, Roberto Ledesma, Leopoldo Lugones, Leopoldo Marechal, Ricardo F. Molinari, Conrado Nale Roxlo, Pedro Miguel Obligado, Jose Pedroni, Alfonsina Storni.
Hugo Manning, poet, journalist, and mystic, has been described as a major poet with a minor reputation. Unfortunately, there is little extant biographical material written about Manning. Standard reference tools are silent and biographers have not been forthcoming. The information gathered here has been derived from personal papers, eulogies, and obituaries found in this collection. Of particular interest is a document that records the origin of Hugo Manning's name. On April 3, 1943, a "Deed Poll on Change of Name" was registered at the Central Office of the Supreme Court of Judicature whereby Lazarus Perkoff, also known as Hugh Leslie Perkoff, legally assumed the name Hugo Manning. Lazarus Perkoff was born on July 15, 1913 at 123 Oxford Street in Mile End Road, London, to Jewish parents, Myer Perkoff, a tailor's machinist, and Rosa Perkoff (formerly Green), both born in Russian Poland. In time, Manning's father operated a sweet and tobacco shop in the East End and Manning attended the Stepney Jewish School until he was 14. Under the name Leslie Perkoff, Manning studied violin, viola, and theory from 1926 to 1931 at the Trinity College of Music, London, securing a scholarship in his last three years. In 1929, Manning pursued his violin study with the renowned European teacher Otakar Sevcik in Pisek, Czechoslovakia. For unknown reasons, Manning chose not to pursue a career in music; indeed, he appears to have been reticent about his musical talent, even with his friends. In the early 1930s, Manning (then known as Hugh Leslie Perkoff) returned to London where he wrote weekly newspaper articles for the Sunday Referee and was a member of its editorial staff during 1935-36, among other freelance assignments. By May 1937, Manning was working in Vienna as a correspondent for the Jewish Chronicle and World Film News. From 1939 to 1942, Manning lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he was employed in various capacities by several newspapers and magazines including La Nacion, Argentina Libre, Sur, Agonía, The Buenos Aires Herald, and The Times of Argentina. During his stay in Argentina, Manning was acquainted with leading South American literary figures such as Victoria Ocampo, Patricio Gannon with whom he edited the Argentine Anthology of Modern Verse (1942), and Jorge Luis Borges, who became his lifelong friend. In November 1943, Manning volunteered for service in the British Army Intelligence Corps. While stationed in North Africa he suffered a leg injury and was subsequently discharged in August 1944. His injury caused him to walk with a cane for the remainder of his life. In 1946 Manning joined the staff of Reuters, where he served for 19 years on the South American desk, working nights so he could devote his daytime hours to writing. In his last few years with Reuters, Manning became the senior sub-editor and features writer for the UK desk. He retired in 1968 and devoted the remainder of his life to literary pursuits. Although Manning's career as a journalist began in the early 1930s, it wasn't until 1942 that his verse and prose was published privately and by small publishers including Villiers, Enitharmon Press, Village Press, and Trigram Press. Titles include The Secret Sea, Dylan Thomas, Dear Little Prince, Woman At the Window, This Room Before Sunrise, Madame Lola, Modigliani, Ishmael, and The It and the Odyssey of Henry Miller. Manning counted among his friends Denis ApIvor, Roy Campbell, Lawrence Durrell, John Cowper Powys, William Oxley, Suzan Rapoport, Derek Stanford, Phil Coram, Henry Miller, Paul Peter Piech, Alfred Perlès, Rosamond Lehmann, Jack Hammond, Muriel Spark, Alan Clodd, Kathleen Raine, David McFall, Mauricio Lasansky, and Jorge Luis Borges. Manning's belief in a spiritual afterlife permeates much of his writing, as does the "discovery of man's role in the cosmic design." Manning believed in a purposeful existence wherein the proliferation of isolated, unique natures combine to form a transcendent wholeness guided and sustained by a "Life Force." In a letter to J. B. Priestley in 1969, Manning wrote "I consider myself to be a deeply religious person but find all systems of belief insufficient unless the question of man's immortality is looked at fearlessly …. I have had extra-sensory experiences of a revealing nature quite a number of times in my life; this has led me to undertake psychic research and the truth of man's immortality has become more than apparent to me …. Surely the acceptance of this immense truth could and would alter the pattern of most lives."
What does it take for a woman to succeed as a writer? In these revealing interviews, first published in 1988 as Historias intimas, ten of Latin America's most important women writers explore this question with scholar Magdalena Garcia Pinto, discussing the personal, social, and political factors that have shaped their writing careers. The authors interviewed are Isabel Allende, Albalucia Angel, Rosario Ferre, Margo Glantz, Sylvia Molloy, Elvira Orphee, Elena Poniatowska, Marta Traba, Luisa Valenzuela, and Ida Vitale. In intimate dialogues with each author, Garcia Pinto draws out the formative experiences of her youth, tracing the pilgrimage that led each to a distinguished writing career. The writers also reflect on their published writings, discussing the creative process in general and the motivating force behind individual works. They candidly discuss the problems they have faced in writing and the strategies that enabled them to reach their goals. While obviously of interest to readers of Latin American literature, this book has important insights for students of women's literature and cultural studies, as well as for aspiring writers.
Magdalena García Pinto is Associate Professor Emerita of Spanish at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Trudy Balch (1956–2010) was a translator specializing in Spanish and Ladino.
A novel of love and loss set against the rapidly-changing backdrop of 1950s Puerto RicoJuan Martínez Capo called it a "novel that is a joyful chronicle of Puerto Rican solidarity," and Efraín Barradas stated that its "combination of traditional mythical structure and contemporary realism gives García Ramis' novel a very special appeal, a present-day ambiguity."
Magali García Ramis (born 1946) is a Puerto Rican writer. Magali García Ramis was born in 1946 in Santurce, Puerto Rico. She lived all her childhood in this borough of San Juan, with her mother, father and brothers, near her mother's family, with close relations with uncles, cousins and her maternal grandmother. Her father worked as a civil servant in Fort Buchanan; her mother worked for a while in her sister's laboratory and later stayed home with her children. Her eldest aunt, María Luisa Ramis, was the first woman in Puerto Rico to open a laboratory and all the aunts worked there. García Ramis spent many hours of her childhood in her grandmother's house and in the laboratory. When García Ramis was a teenager, her family moved to the upscale Miramar section and she and her elder brother had to change schools. She enrolled at the Academia del Perpetuo Socorro (Academy of Our Lady of Perpetual Help), where she graduated from high school. That school emphasized American culture and history, and García Ramis and many classmates, comparing the U.S. and Puerto Rico interpreted all things American as being better than those of the island. García Ramis always struggled with this idea and in college she learned more about Puerto Rican culture. These themes can be found in her literary work. In 1964 she enrolled at the University of Puerto Rico where she majored in History. After graduating, she worked for the newspaper El Mundo. In 1968 she received a scholarship and moved to New York City to study journalism at Columbia University. It is in New York that she writes her first story, 'Todos los domingos' ('Every Sunday'). With this story she won first prize in the literary contest of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño (Puerto Rican Athenaeum). She returned to Puerto Rico in 1971 and started to work for the newspaper El Imparcial. She worked for the newspaper until 1972. She also worked for a literary magazine called Avance until 1973. During this period she continued to write short stories. García Ramis sent a book composed of 4 short stories to a contest sponsored by the Casa de las AmEricas in Cuba. She received an honorary mention for one of the stories 'La viuda de Chencho el Loco' ('The Widow of Chencho, the Mad Man') which was published in 1974. That same year she moved to Mexico. She returned to Puerto Rico in 1977 and published another book of short stories called La familia de todos nosotros. She also started to work for the School of Communications at the University of Puerto Rico. She routinely collaborated in several Puerto Rican newspapers. She finished her famous semi-autographical novel Felices días, tío Sergio (Happy Days, Uncle Sergio) in 1985; it was published in 1986. In 1988, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her second novel, Las horas del Sur (The Hours of the South). In 1993, García Ramis published La ciudad que me habita (The City that Inhabits Me), a collection of journalistic essays that she wrote while she worked for El Mundo, El Imparcial, Avance, Claridad and La Hora. García Ramis's stories are depictions of Puerto Rican culture, family and politics. She writes about interactions within a family, Puerto Rican identity and women's identity. In her best known novel Happy Days, Uncle Sergio, she explores the relationship between a young Puerto Rican tomboy and her uncle, who is rumored to be a homosexual.
¡Cubanísimo! is the first book to gather Cuban stories, essays, poems and novel excerpts in one volume that summarizes the richness and depth of a great national literature. From the turn of the century to the present, from Havana to Miami, New York, Mexico City, Madrid and beyond, the spirit and diversity of Cuban culture converge in one vibrant literary jam session. Cristina García has ingeniously grouped her selections according to ‘the music of their sentences' into five sections named for Cuban dance styles. ¡Cubanísimo! begins with an elegant classical danzon section that includes poems and diaries from the father of Cuban literature, Jose Martí, and Antonio Benítez-Rojo's hallucinatory story A View from the Mangrove. As it moves to more contemporary dances, the book offers, among other delights, the essay by Alejo Carpentier that was the first to define magical realism; the scandalously sensual eighth chapter from Jose Lezama Lima's controversial 1966 novel Paradiso; Ana Menendez's Little Havana-inspired story, In Cuba I was a German Shepherd; a passage from Reinaldo Arenas's acclaimed memoir Before Night Falls and six witty musings - or mambos - on language from Gustavo PErez Firmat's Life on the Hyphen. A brilliant introduction for readers who want to explore Cuban literature, as well as a collectible volume for those who love Cuba, ¡Cubanísimo! is a celebration of Cuban culture, from the island to its farthest flung voices.
Cristina García (born July 4, 1958) is a Cuban-born American journalist and novelist. After working for Time Magazine as a researcher, reporter, and Miami bureau chief, she turned to writing fiction. Her first novel, Dreaming in Cuban (1992), received critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has since published her novels The Agüero Sisters (1997) and Monkey Hunting (2003), and has edited books of Cuban and other Latin American literature. Her fourth novel, A Handbook to Luck, was released in hardcover in 2007 and came out in paperback in April 2008.
AN ANTHOLOGY of literature is by nature selective. When dealing with such a large geographic area as Latin America and with a century as fertile as the twentieth, you have two basic choices: to try to include as many authors as possible with the briefest selections in order to ‘cover the continents,' or to limit the number of authors and represent them more fully by including more than one text or longer works, In either case, omissions would be obvious; a global representation from Latin America would be impossible; and personal preferences would inevitably prevail. The editor of this volume has chosen the latter option of presenting fiction by twelve authors from seven countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, and Uruguay. Although some of these authors have also written poetry, literary criticism, art history, or cultural studies, in this anthology the concentration is on prose, including nineteen short stories, a one-act play, and four excerpts from novels. CONTENTS: Introduction; Acknowledgments; Lydia Cabrera (Cuba) - The Mire of Almendares; Tatabisako; Armonia Somers (Uruguay) - The Tunnel; The Burial; Plunder; Elena Garro (Mexico) - The Tree; Clarice Lispector (Brazil) - Love; Family Ties; Griselda Gambaro (Argentina) - Bitter Blood; Elvira OrphEe (Argentina) - Angel's Last Conquest [Selection from the novel]; The Silken Whale; Carmen Naranjo (Costa Rica) - Ondina; Why Kill the Countess?; Marta Traba (Argentina) - Mothers and Shadows [Selection from the novel]; Conformity; All in a Lifetime; Julieta Campos (Cuba/Mexico) - A Redhead Named Sabina [Selections from the novel]; All the Roses; Nelida Piñon (Brazil) - Bird of Paradise; The New Kingdom; Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina) - Blue Water-Man; Other Weapons; I'm Your Horse in the Night; Isabel Allende (Chile) - Rosa the Beautiful [Selection from the novel The House of the Spirits]; Bibliographies.
Evelyn Picon Garfield was professor of Spanish at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaaign. She received her Ph.D from Rutgers University and was the author of Es Julio Cortazar un Surrealista?, Julio Cortazar, and Cortazar por Cortazar.
A bilingual collection of selections reprinted from issues of Americas. Various translators. Poems, with brief introductions, are arranged by country in short anthologies. They are: 'Seven Argentine poets' (edited Manuel Grinberg and Juan Carlos Martelli):Alberto Couste, Alejandro Vignati, Leopoldo Jose Bartolome, Alejandra Pizarnik, Ignacio Beola, Marcelo Pichon Riviere, Juan Gelman; 'Five Chilean poets' (edited Jose Donoso): Nicanor Parra, Efrain Barquero, Alberto Rubio, Enrique Lihn, Miguel Arteche; 'Eight Costa Rican poets': Jorg Debravo, Jorge Ibãñez, Laurean Albán, Julieta Doblez Yzaguirte Marco Aguilar, Rodrigo Quiros Alfonso Chase, Arabella Salaverry; 'Six Ecuadorian poets' (edited Gal Rene Perez and Ulises Estrella): An Maria Ixa, Francisco Araujo Sánchez, Manuel Zabala Ruiz, Carl Manuel Arizaga, Euler Grand Simon Corral; 'Four Salvadorian poets' (edited Eunice Odio): Dora Guerra, Claud Lars, Hugo Lindo, Pedro Geoffr Rivas; 'Five Mexican poets' (edited Ser Mondragon): Octavio Paz, Joaq Sanchez MacGregor, Homero Arjis, Jose Emilio Pacheco, Jai Augusto Shelley; 'Avant-garde poetry in Panama' (edited Aristides Martinez Ortega): Carlos Francisco Chan-Marin, Tristan Solarte, Homero Icaza Sanchez, Jose de Jesus Martinez, Guillerma Ross Zanet, Jose Franco, Demetrio Fábrega; 'Six Uruguayan poets' (edited Saul Ibargoxen Islas): Mario Benedetti, Carlos Brandy, Juan Cunha, Milton Schinca, Jorge Medina Vidal, Idea Vilariño.
A TriQuarterly collection of newly translated prose and poetry. CONTENTS: Reginald Gibbons/Intorduction: Borders; Raül Aceves/[Where the conch of] (poem); Luis Miguel Aguilar/The Huapango (poem); Aurelio Asiain/After Everything; Life (poems); Raül Banuelos/A Life (poem); Efrain Bartolomeo/Monkey House (poem); Alberto Blanco/Paper Roads, Settling Accounts (poems); Oscar de la Borbolla/The Emancipation of the Lunatics (fiction); Carmen Boullosa/Letter to the Wolf (poem), Storms of Torment (prose); Coral Bracho/In This Warm Dark Mosque; Refracted in Your Life Like an Enigma (poems); Hector Carreto/The House at 5 Allende Street (poem); Ricardo Castillo/Ode to Feeling Like It (poem); Carlos Chimal/Brine (fiction); Elsa Cross/The Cenote at Zaq-qui (poem); Luis Humberto Crosthwaite/Marcela and the King Together at Last on the Boardwalk (fiction); Antonio Deltoro/Thursday; Sunken Landscapes (poems); Ricardo Elizondo/The Canary House (fiction); Jorge Esquinca/Episode in Al-Qayrawan (poem); Jesus Gardea/The Guitar (fiction); Francisco Hernandez/From ‘How Robert Schumann Was Defeated by Demons' (poem); David Huerta/Tea Blues (poem); Barbara Jacobs/The Time I Got Drunk (fiction); Ethel Krauze/The Mule Going Round the Well (fiction); Eduardo Langagne/Discoveries (poem); Hernán Lara Zavala/In the Darkness (fiction); Monica Lavin/The Lizard (fiction); Carmen Lenero/Kaleidoscope; The Slippery Soul; From Magic (prose); Elva Macias/On Capricorn; For Aries; Open House: Tulijá River (poems); Hector Manjarrez/Nicaragua (fiction); Lucia Manriquez Montoya/Virgins (poem); Monica Mansour/[the street doesn't understand what I say]; [there are lovers who appear]; [women - for example, three women -](poems), In Secret (fiction); Angeles Mastretta/From Big-Eyed Women (fiction); Dante Medina/Forget Uruapan, Hermano (fiction); Ruben Medina/Priam; Poets Don't Go to Paris Anymore (poems); Victor Manuel Mendiola/The Room, Like the Ocean (poems); Silvia Molina/Starting Over (fiction); Carlos Montemayor/The Memory of Silver (poem), The Dawn (fiction); Fabio Morábito/The Last of the Tribe (poem), The Vetriccioli (fiction); Jesus Morales Bermüdez/Toward the Horizon (fiction); Myriam Moscona/Naturalization Papers (poem); Maria Luisa Puga/The Natural Thing To Do (fiction), From The Hidden Language (essay excerpt); Vicente Quirarte/A Woman and a Man (poem); Luis Arturo Ramos/Sunday (fiction); Jose Luis Rivas/A Season of Paradise (poem); Silvia Tomasa Rivera/ I Saw You in the Park; What I Wouldn't Give to Know (poems); Martha Robles/An Historical Adventure: Notes on Chicano Literature (essay); Alberto Ruy Sanchez/Voices of the Water (fiction); Severino Salazar/Jesus, May My Joy Be Everlasting (fiction); Guillermo Samperio/She Lived in a Story (fiction), Free Time (fiction); Enrique Serna/Man with Minotaur on Chest (fiction); Bernarda Solis/Art and Monsters (fiction); Manuel Ulacia/The Stone at the Bottom (poem); Alvaro Uribe/The Never-Ending Story (fiction); Roberto Vallarino/Dogs (poem); Gloria Velazquez/Temptress of the Torch-Pines (fiction); Juan Villoro/The Navigable Night (fiction); Veronica Volkow/#1 and #9 from The Beginning, Popocatepetl; Quito (poems); Luis Zapata/Red Slippers (fiction).
Reginald Gibbons is an American poet, fiction writer, translator, literary critic, and Professor of English and Classics at Northwestern University and Director of the Center for the Writing Arts there.
A bilingual edition which includes notes and introductory material in Spanish and English. One of the earliest comprehensive anthologies which contains work by long forgotten poets. Provides a panorama of the poetry from the colonial period to the post-modernists, with emphasis on nineteenth and early twentieth-century poets. The poets are: Manuel Acuña, (Mexico), Almafuerte (Argentina), Enrique Alvarez Henao (Colombia), Olegario Victor Andrade (Argentina), Rafael Arevalo Martinez (Guatemala), Santiago Argiiello (Nicaragua), Andres Bello (Venezuela), Rufino Blanco Fombona (Venezuela), Dulce Maria Borrero de Luján (Cuba), Mario Bravo (Argentina), Roberto Brenes Mesen (Costa Rica), Bonifacio Byrne (Cuba), Rafael Cabrera (Mexico), Jose A. Calcaño (Venezuela), Jose Eusebio Caro (Colombia), Joaquin Castellanos (Argentina), Jose Santos Chocano (Peru), Luis F. Contardo (Chile), Francisco Contreras (Chile), Agustin F. Cuenca (Mexico), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Balbino Dávalos (Mexico), Juan B. Delgado (Mexico), Salvador Diaz Miron (Mexico), Luis L. Dominguez (Argentina), Manuel Duque (Bolivia), Maria Enriqueta Camarillo y Roa de Pereyra (Mexico), Demetrio Fábrega (Panama), Enrique Fernández Granados (Mexico), Fabio Fiallo (Dominican Republic), Julio Flores (Colombia), Manuel Maria Flores (Mexico), Jose Gautier Benitez (Puerto Rico), Alberto Ghiraldo (Argentina), Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda (Cuba), Alfredo Gomez Jaime (Colombia), Joaquin Gomez Vergara (Mexico, Jorge Gonzalez B. (Chile), Enrique Gonzalez Martinez (Mexico), Alejandro Guanes (Paraguay), Ricardo Gutierrez (Argentina), Manuel GutiErrez Nájera (Mexico), Jose Maria Heredia (Cuba), Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay), David Hine (Costa Rica), Jorge Hubner (Chile), Juana de Ibar bourou (Uruguay), Francisco A. d Icaza (Mexico), Ricardo Jaime Freyre (Bolivia), Sor Juana lnes de la Cruz (Mexico), Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina), Luisa Luisi (Uruguay), Magallanes Moure (Chile), Mercedes Mann del Solar (Chile), Roman Mayorga Rivas (El Salvador), Concha Melendez (Puerto Rico), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Bartolome Mitre (Argentina), Amado Nervo (Mexico), Rafael Obligado (Argentina), Jose Joaquin de Olmedo (Ecuador), Luis Ortiz (Mexico), Manuel Jose Othon (Mexico), Benigno Palma (Panama), Ricardo Palma (Peru), Ramon de Palma y Romay (Cuba), Ignacio A. Pane (Paraguay), S. Jose M. Pino (Mexico), Rafael Pombo (Colombia), Pedro Prado (Chile), Carlos Augusto Salaverry (Peru), Justo Sierra (Mexico), Jose Asuncion Silva (Colombia), Victor Domingo Silva (Chile), Francisco Sosa (Mexico), Alfonsina Storni (Argentina) Jaime Torres Bodet (Mexico), Froylan Turcios (Honduras), Luis G. Urbina (Mexico), Salome Urena de Henriquez (Dominican Republic), Diego Uribe (Colombia), Guillermo Valencia Colombia), Jesus E. Valenzuela (Mexico), Jose Leon del Valle (Mexico), Daniel de la Vega (Chile), Juan Zorrilla de San Martin (Uruguay). Reprinted numerous times - Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1937; London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1937; New York: Greenwood Press, 1968; New York; Biblo and Tannen, 1968).
Isaac Goldberg (Boston, 1887 - July 14, 1938 ) was an American Romanist , Hispanist, Lusitanist, Americanist, literary scholar, music writer, journalist, translator and polygraph. Goldberg studied at Harvard University . He did his doctorate there in 1912 with Jeremiah Denis Matthias Ford on Don Jose Echegaray, a study in modern Spanish drama. In addition to his work as a a journalist, and translator from the Romance languages ??and from Yiddish, Goldberg published numerous works, scientific as well as popular science, many in the Little Blue Books paperback series published by Haldeman-Julius in Girard (Kansas). Alice Stone Blackwell (September 14, 1857 – March 15, 1950) was an American feminist, suffragist, journalist, radical socialist, and human rights advocate. Blackwell was born in East Orange, New Jersey to Henry Browne Blackwell and Lucy Stone, both of whom were suffrage leaders and helped establish the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). She was also the niece of Elizabeth Blackwell, America's first female physician. Her mother introduced Susan B. Anthony to the women's rights movement and was the first woman to earn a college degree in Massachusetts, the first to keep her own last name after getting married, and the first to speak about women's rights full-time. Blackwell was educated at the Harris Grammar School in Dorchester, the Chauncy School in Boston and Abbot Academy in Andover. She attended Boston University, where she was president of her class, and graduated in 1881, at age 24. She belonged to Phi Beta Kappa Society. Blackwell is well known for her work towards women's rights. At first resisting the cause of her mother and father, she later became a prominent reformer. After graduating from Boston University, Alice began working for the Woman's Journal, the paper started by her parents. By 1884, her name was alongside her parents on the paper's masthead. After her mother's death in 1893, Alice assumed almost sole editing responsibility of the paper. Susan B. Anthony and Alice Stone Blackwell signed NAWSA check, written by the group's treasurer Harriet Taylor Upton. In 1890, she helped reconcile the American Woman Suffrage Association and National Woman Suffrage Association, two competing organizations in the women's suffrage movement, into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). The movement had become split in 1869 over disputes over the degree to which women's suffrage should be tied to African-American male suffrage. This split created the AWSA, which her parents helped organize, and the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), headed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. From 1890 to 1908, Alice Stone Blackwell was NAWSA's recording secretary and in 1909 and 1910 one of the national auditors. She was prominent in Woman's Christian Temperance Union activities. In 1903, she reorganized the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom in Boston. She was also president of the New England and Massachusetts Woman Suffrage associations and honorary president of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters. In later life, Blackwell went blind. She died March 15, 1950, at the age of ninety-two.
Dr. Isaac Goldberg, noted authority on Latin American literature, selected for this volume half a dozen of the best-known short stories in Brazilian literature, and acompanied them with an extensive essay on Brazilian fiction. This volume gives an opportunity to know some of the outstanding authors of the great nation in the Southern Hemisphere.
Isaac Goldberg (1887 - July 14, 1938) was an American journalist, author, critic, translator, editor, publisher, and lecturer. Born in Boston to Jewish parents, he studied at Harvard University and received a BA degree in 1910, a MA degree in 1911 and a PhD in 1912. He traveled to Europe as a journalist during World War I writing for the Boston Evening Transcript. He wrote biographies of H. L. Mencken, Havelock Ellis, W. S. Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, and George Gershwin, books on theatrical and musical appreciation, and contributed articles for many magazines. He also founded, published, and edited a monthly news magazine called Panorama. He was fluent in Yiddish, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese and translated a variety of literary works into English. He received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation in 1932 to write a history of Spanish and Portuguese literature in America.
A brief selection of poems by poets from colonial times to the post-modernists. Poets are: Manuel Acuña, Rafael Cabrera, Maria Enriqueta Camarillo y Roa, Agustin F. Cuenca, Balbino Dávalos, Salvador Diaz Miron, Enrique Fernández Granados, Manuel M. Flores, Enrique Gonzalez Martinez, Manuel Gutierrez Nájera, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Amado Nervo, Manuel Jose Othon, Jose M. Pino, Jose Rosas Moreno, Jose Juan Tablada, Luis G.Urbina, Jesus E. Valenzuela.
Isaac Goldberg (Boston, 1887 - July 14, 1938 ) was an American Romanist , Hispanist, Lusitanist, Americanist, literary scholar, music writer, journalist, translator and polygraph. Goldberg studied at Harvard University . He did his doctorate there in 1912 with Jeremiah Denis Matthias Ford on Don Jose Echegaray, a study in modern Spanish drama. In addition to his work as a a journalist, and translator from the Romance languages ??and from Yiddish, Goldberg published numerous works, scientific as well as popular science, many in the Little Blue Books paperback series published by Haldeman-Julius in Girard (Kansas).
In THE OXFORD BOOK OF LATIN AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, editor Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria brings together fifty-three stories that span the history of Latin American literature and represent the most dazzling achievements in the form. In his fascinating introduction, Gonzalez Echevarria traces the evolution of the short story in Latin American literature, explaining why the genre has flourished there with such brilliance, and illuminating the various cultural and literary tensions that resolve themselves in ‘magical realism.' The stories themselves exhibit all the inventiveness, the luxuriousness of language, the wild metaphoric leaps and uncanny conjunctions of the ordinary with the fantastic that have given the Latin American short story its distinctive and unforgettable flavor: From the Joycean subtlety of Machado de Assis's ‘Midnight Mass,' to the brutal parable of Julio Ramon Ribeyro's ‘The Featherless Buzzards,' to the startling disorientation of Alejo Carpentier's ‘Journey Back to the Source' (which is told backward, because a sorcerer has waved his wand and made time flow in reverse), to the haunting reveries of Maria Luisa Bombal's ‘The Tree.' Readers familiar with only the most popular Latin American writers will be delighted to discover many exciting new voices here, including Catalina de Erauso, Ricardo Palma, Ruben Dario, Augusto Roa Bastos, Cristina Pen Rossi, along with Borges, Garcia Márquez, Fuentes, Cortázar, Vargas Llosa, and many others. Gonzalez Echevarria also provides brief and extremely helpful headnotes for each selection, discussing the author's influences, major works, and central themes.
Roberto González Echevarría (born 28 November 1943, Sagua La Grande, Cuba) is a Cuban-born critic of Latin American literature and culture. He is the Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale University. He received his bachelor's from the University of South Florida (1964), masters from Indiana University (1966) and doctorate from Yale (1970). He also holds honorary doctorates from Colgate University (1987), the University of South Florida (2000), and Columbia University (2002). In 1999 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. After receiving his doctorate, González Echevarría taught at Yale and then at Cornell (1971-1977), where he was one of the first editors of the journal Diacritics. Since 1977 he has taught at Yale, where he was awarded the first endowed chair in Spanish (R. Selden Rose). In 1991, he was named Bass Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature, and in 1995, Sterling Professor, the highest-ranking university chair at Yale. His Myth and Archive won the 1989-90 MLA's Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize and the Latin American Studies Association's 1992 Bryce Wood Book Award, and The Pride of Havana received the Dave Moore Award for the Best Baseball Book of 2002. His Love and the Law in Cervantes (2005) had its origin in his 2002 DeVane Lectures at Yale. His Lecturas y relecturas won the 2014 Premio Anual de la Crítica (Book Prize in Criticism) in Cuba. An international symposium was held in his honor at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Arecibo (2002) and an issue (no. 33, 2004) of Encuentro de la cultura cubana was published in his honor. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In March 2011, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal of 2010 by President Obama. He has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and, among others, grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Social Science Research Council. His undergraduate course on Cervantes's Don Quixote is available on the web through Open Yale Courses and was made into a book in 2015.
Reprint. Originally published 1892.
A collection of 19th-century Latin American poetry, also including selected works of Spaniard Nuñez de Arce. Brief notes on each poet. Among the many poets represented are: Manuel Acuna (Mexico), Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda (Cuba), Esteban Echeverria (Argentina), Jose Maria Heredia (Cuba), Jose Mármol (Argentina), and others.
The seventeen stories in this anthology have been carefully chosen to provide a wide, representative range of recent and contemporary Brazilian themes and styles. The scenes vary from a nearly abandoned village or a ranch in the northeastern backlands to the streets of Rio and Sao Paulo. The characters equally diverse, embrace wealthy landowners, middle-class merchants, cowboys, thieves, and prostitutes. There is diversity too in mood. Especially striking is the irony found in most of these stories. Characteristic of much of the best Brazilian fiction from Machado de Assis to Guimaraes Rosa, this irony tempers the underlying warmth of the stories with a certain wryness. Incidentally, Guimaraes Rosa, the giant of contemporary Brazilian fiction, is represented in this collection by an unconventional and unforgettable little masterpiece, ‘The Third Bank of The River.' Brazilian humor is said to be much like North American humor. In any case, it is here in abundance, variously mordant, hilarious, casual, homely, nostalgic, and in Graciliano Ramos's story of an inept thief, almost Chaplinesque. But there is also a certain voluptuous melancholy, the much bruited tristeza brasileira. In such stories as ‘My Father's Hat', it blends with the humor to produce an enchantment profoundly Brazilian in tone and feeling. ‘The Crime of the Mathematics Professor' is a strange plunge into the mystery of a man's sense of guilt. With this sole exception, the stories in the present anthology are thoroughly Brazilian and yet, by a sort of mass literary miracle, universal. The reader may find the setting and the manners exotic at times, but he will understand the people. For there is a pervasive humanity in Brazil's best writers and, even when the ‘local color' is striking, they are never merely parochial. When their settings are provincial it is because the provinces are where they can see the human comedy most vividly.
WILLIAM L. GROSSMAN was a professor of airline economics at Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA) between 1948 and 1952 and Head of the Departments of Economics and Transportation at ITA . He held a degree in economics from Harvard University and a law degree from New York University. He was a professor at the New York University School of Commerce, where he taught transportation economics and inspection for many years He came to ITA together with other founding professors invited by the Brazilian Air Force Ministry. Before coming to Brazil, he published several books on transportation, such as Air Passenger Traffic (1947), Ocean Freight Rates (1956) and Fundamentals of Transportation (1959). He published in several international journals and was a member of the Transportation Research Forum in New York. He fell in love with Brazilian literature and translated several books by Machado de Assis and Jorge Amado into English. While at ITA, he made the first translation of Machado de Assis's Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas into English. In the preface to the first edition he thanks Arnaldo Pessoa , who "went over the text with me" and Joseph Morgan Stokes , "whose annotated comments on my first draft are reflected in this final version." He died in 1980.
In order to understand the poetry of the Spanish American peoples of that huge area embracing Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean islands, one must realize what fundamental differences separate this Culture from that of the United States. Although Latin America had universities and the beginning of a literature almost a hundred years before North America had them, its economic and social development, as a result of geographical and political obstacles, has been retarded and today the industrial revolution is still going on. As a result, the population is clustered here and there in a few urban centers while vast areas are hardly settled at all, and between these population centers there is often very limited communication. On the other hand national boundaries are sometimes artificial, and whole sections which are divided into separate nations are racially, economically, and culturally similar. The present anthology makes no pretension to comprehensiveness. No attempt has been made to represent all the Spanish American republics since political boundaries are of geographical but not poetic importance. A dozen leading poets have been selected in order to give the reader a bird's-eye view of contemporary Spanish American poetry. The number has been rigorously limited so as to make possible the inclusion of a fair sample of each poet's work. In each case poems have been chosen to give an idea of the writer's development. There are many other poets of equal or nearly equal stature. The twelve included have been picked, first, because of their intrinsic poetic interest and, secondly, in order to represent the most important contemporary trends, They are also, in most cases, poets whose influence has been strongly felt. The Mexican, Ramon Lopez Velarde, though not a contemporary in time, has qualities which relate him to the present. He also represents the postmodernist movement at its best. Symbolist or modernist elements are also present in the work of Jose Gorostiza, Jorge Carrera Andrade, the early work of Neruda; in fact, as has been said, almost every writer included has sewed his apprenticeship in the symbolist style. Vicente Huidobro is one of the earliest links with the European vanguardist movement. Vallejo is also related to it. Borges was actually associated with the Spanish ultraists. Surrealism appears as an influence on Neruda, Fombona Pachano, and Pablo de Rokha. Some of Carrera Andrade's poems are indigenist. Nicolás GuillEn represents the Afro- Cuban school. Both he and Pablo de Rokha are influenced by Marxism. Gorostiza and Eugenio Florit are in feeling close to contemporary Spanish poetry. L. C. Lopez and Borges are both poets of local color. The translator has not attempted to rhyme poems which rhyme in the Spanish or to reproduce the original meters syllable by syllable since this inevitably results in padding and distortion. He has, however, tried to render the images faithfully and to preserve in every case the character of the original meter and to add nothing of his own. Translating into ‘equivalent meters' is often no better than a paraphrase. Even though the octosyllabic line is not common in English, turning it into anything else changes the character of the poem. It is hoped that the English versions preserve the spirit Of the originals. CONTENTS: RAMON LOPEZ VELARDE (Mexico) - My Cousin Agueda (Mi prima Agueda); Our Lives Are Pendulums (Nuestras vidas son pEndulos); Ants (Hormigas); The Sound of the Heart (El son del corazon); The Ascension and the Assumption (La Ascension y la Asuncion); Gentle Fatherland (Suave patria); LUIS CARLOS LOPEZ (DE ESCUARIZA) (Colombia) - The Mayor (El alcalde); Old Maids (Muchachas solteranas); To My Native City (A mi ciudad nativa); Rubbish, IV (Despilfarros, IV); Rubbish, VII (Despilfarros, VII); To a Dog (A un perro); To Satan (A Satan); VICENTE HUIDOBRO (Chile) - Emigrant to America (Emigrante a America); Prelude to Hope (Preludio de esperanza); Time of Waiting (Tiempo de espera); Nature Vive (Naturaleza viva); In (En); Serenade of Laughing Life (Ronda de la vida riendo); EUGENIO FLORIT (Cuba) - Nocturne (Nocturno); Elegy for Your Absence (Elegia para tu ausencia); The Dead Nereid (La nereida muerta); Atlantic (Atlantico); Aquarium (Aquarium); The Signal (La senal); The Present Evening (Tarde presente); Death in the Sun (La muerte en el sol); JORGE LUIS BORGES (Argentina) - A Patio (Un patio); Butcher Shop (Carniceria); Benares (Benares); The Recoleta (La Recoleta); A Day's Run (Singladura); General Quiroga Bides to Death in a Carriage (El General Quiroga va en coche al muere); July Avenue (El Paseo de Julio); Natural Flow of Memory (Fluencia natural del recuerdo); JORGE CARRERA ANDRADE (Ecuador) - Windy Weather (Tiempo ventoso), Biography (Biografía), Dining-room Mirror (Espejo de comedor), Election Handbill of Green (Cartel electoral del verde), Bulletin of Bad Weather (Boletin del mal tiempo); Indian Rebellion (Indiada), Anonymous Speech (Discurso anonimo), Hydrographic Poem (Poema hidrogrdfico), The Stranger (El extranjero), Nothing Belongs to us (Nada nor pertenece), Dust, Corpse of Time (Polvo, cadaver del tiempo), Nameless Islands (Islas sin nombre); JOSE GOROSTIZA (Mexico) - Who Will Buy Me an Orange? (QuiEn me compra una naranja?), Fisherman of the Moon (Pescador de luna), Pauses II (Pausas II), Autumn (Otoño), The Bloom Hoists Its Banner (Iza la flor su enseña), Who Is It? (Tan-tan! Quien es? Es el diablo), Prelude (Preludio); PABLO DE ROKHA (Cantos Diaz Loyola) (Chile) - Seafaring Towns (Los pueblos marinos); Lament (Treno); The Pale Conquerors (Los palidos conquistadores); Tribal Lay (Canto de tribu); Elegy for All Ages (Elegia de todos los tiempos); Subterranean Days and Nights (Los dias y las noches subterraneas); NICOLAS GUILLEN (Cuba) - Yellow Girl (Mulata); Big-lipped Negro (Negro bembon); Ballad of the Two Grandfathers (Balada de los dos abuelos); Sensemayá (Sensemaya); Ballad of the Guije (Balada del Guije); Reveille at Daybreak (Diana); PABLO NERUDA (Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basualto) (Chile) - Lightless Suburb (Barrio sin luz); No, XVIL (No. XVII); Savor (Sabor); Ode with a Lament (Ode con un lamento); Sexual Water (Agua sexual); Alberta Rojas Jimenez Comes Flying (Alberto Rojas JimEnez viene volando); Ode of the Sun to the People's Army (Oda solar al ejErcito del pueblo); CESAR VALLEJO (Peru) - The Black Messengers (Los heraldos negros); The Spider (La Arana), Distant Footsteps (Los pasos lejanos); XVIII (XVIII); XXVIII (XXVIII); XLIV (XLIV); The Miners (Los mineros); Anger (La colera); The Nine Monsters (Los nueve monstruos); Pedro Rojas (Pedro Rojas); Little Responsory for a Republican Hero (Pequeno resportso a un hEroe de la republica); Masses (Masa); JACINTO FOMBONA PACHANO (Venezuela) - The Coca Tree (La Coca); The Puddle (El pozo); Since Tomorrow Is Sunday (Mañana, como es domingo); The Complaint (La queja); America, My Sweet (Mi America, la dulce); The Clouds Have Already Told Me (Ya las nubes me lo tenian dicho); Dance of the Lost Key (Danza de la llave perdida); I Announce the Kingdom of the Star (Anuncio el reino de la estrella); BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX OF ENGLISH TITLES; INDEX OF SPANISH TITLES. . .
Hoffman Reynolds Hays (March 25, 1904, New York City, NY - October 10, 1980) was a poet, translator, novelist and playwright, an historian of anthropology and zoology, and a teacher. Some of his twenty-two books, reflecting the diversity of his interests, were the pioneering works in their fields. His The Dangerous Sex: the Myth of Feminine Evil, served as respected source material for Feminist writers. Sir Julian Huxley regarded Hays' popular history of zoology, Birds, Beasts and Men, as a classic of its genre. His translations of the poetry of Brecht, Vallejo, Borges, Neruda, and many others were among the first to bring these major twentieth century writers to the attention of the English-speaking world. His plays, such as The Ballad of Davy Crockett, with music by Kurt Weill, were performed on Broadway. More than twenty of his shorter works appeared on television during its early days. The groundbreaking significance of Hays' translations of Latin American poets is immense. Today, most readers are familiar with Neruda, Borges, and Cesar Vallejo. But in 1943, when his Twelve Spanish American Poets was published, the huge area embracing Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean islands was barely known to North Americans, except pejoratively, as banana republics, the home of bearded, gun-toting, cigar-smoking banditos, and illiterate peasants. That such a seemingly primitive, under-developed region should also be the birthplace of a sophisticated literary culture, something the educated North Americans could be interested in and even respect, was a new idea to many English speakers. Hays was one of the first to reveal this, and the effect of his translations on young poets was profound.
In order to understand the poetry of the Spanish American peoples of that huge area embracing Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean islands, one must realize what fundamental differences separate this Culture from that of the United States. Although Latin America had universities and the beginning of a literature almost a hundred years before North America had them, its economic and social development, as a result of geographical and political obstacles, has been retarded and today the industrial revolution is still going on. As a result, the population is clustered here and there in a few urban centers while vast areas are hardly settled at all, and between these population centers there is often very limited communication. On the other hand national boundaries are sometimes artificial, and whole sections which are divided into separate nations are racially, economically, and culturally similar. The present anthology makes no pretension to comprehensiveness. No attempt has been made to represent all the Spanish American republics since political boundaries are of geographical but not poetic importance. A dozen leading poets have been selected in order to give the reader a bird's-eye view of contemporary Spanish American poetry. The number has been rigorously limited so as to make possible the inclusion of a fair sample of each poet's work. In each case poems have been chosen to give an idea of the writer's development. There are many other poets of equal or nearly equal stature. The twelve included have been picked, first, because of their intrinsic poetic interest and, secondly, in order to represent the most important contemporary trends, They are also, in most cases, poets whose influence has been strongly felt. The Mexican, Ramon Lopez Velarde, though not a contemporary in time, has qualities which relate him to the present. He also represents the postmodernist movement at its best. Symbolist or modernist elements are also present in the work of Jose Gorostiza, Jorge Carrera Andrade, the early work of Neruda; in fact, as has been said, almost every writer included has sewed his apprenticeship in the symbolist style. Vicente Huidobro is one of the earliest links with the European vanguardist movement. Vallejo is also related to it. Borges was actually associated with the Spanish ultraists. Surrealism appears as an influence on Neruda, Fombona Pachano, and Pablo de Rokha. Some of Carrera Andrade's poems are indigenist. Nicolás GuillEn represents the Afro- Cuban school. Both he and Pablo de Rokha are influenced by Marxism. Gorostiza and Eugenio Florit are in feeling close to contemporary Spanish poetry. L. C. Lopez and Borges are both poets of local color. The translator has not attempted to rhyme poems which rhyme in the Spanish or to reproduce the original meters syllable by syllable since this inevitably results in padding and distortion. He has, however, tried to render the images faithfully and to preserve in every case the character of the original meter and to add nothing of his own. Translating into ‘equivalent meters' is often no better than a paraphrase. Even though the octosyllabic line is not common in English, turning it into anything else changes the character of the poem. It is hoped that the English versions preserve the spirit Of the originals. CONTENTS: RAMON LOPEZ VELARDE (Mexico) - My Cousin Agueda (Mi prima Agueda); Our Lives Are Pendulums (Nuestras vidas son pEndulos); Ants (Hormigas); The Sound of the Heart (El son del corazon); The Ascension and the Assumption (La Ascension y la Asuncion); Gentle Fatherland (Suave patria); LUIS CARLOS LOPEZ (DE ESCUARIZA) (Colombia) - The Mayor (El alcalde); Old Maids (Muchachas solteranas); To My Native City (A mi ciudad nativa); Rubbish, IV (Despilfarros, IV); Rubbish, VII (Despilfarros, VII); To a Dog (A un perro); To Satan (A Satan); VICENTE HUIDOBRO (Chile) - Emigrant to America (Emigrante a America); Prelude to Hope (Preludio de esperanza); Time of Waiting (Tiempo de espera); Nature Vive (Naturaleza viva); In (En); Serenade of Laughing Life (Ronda de la vida riendo); EUGENIO FLORIT (Cuba) - Nocturne (Nocturno); Elegy for Your Absence (Elegia para tu ausencia); The Dead Nereid (La nereida muerta); Atlantic (Atlantico); Aquarium (Aquarium); The Signal (La senal); The Present Evening (Tarde presente); Death in the Sun (La muerte en el sol); JORGE LUIS BORGES (Argentina) - A Patio (Un patio); Butcher Shop (Carniceria); Benares (Benares); The Recoleta (La Recoleta); A Day's Run (Singladura); General Quiroga Bides to Death in a Carriage (El General Quiroga va en coche al muere); July Avenue (El Paseo de Julio); Natural Flow of Memory (Fluencia natural del recuerdo); JORGE CARRERA ANDRADE (Ecuador) - Windy Weather (Tiempo ventoso), Biography (Biografía), Dining-room Mirror (Espejo de comedor), Election Handbill of Green (Cartel electoral del verde), Bulletin of Bad Weather (Boletin del mal tiempo); Indian Rebellion (Indiada), Anonymous Speech (Discurso anonimo), Hydrographic Poem (Poema hidrogrdfico), The Stranger (El extranjero), Nothing Belongs to us (Nada nor pertenece), Dust, Corpse of Time (Polvo, cadaver del tiempo), Nameless Islands (Islas sin nombre); JOSE GOROSTIZA (Mexico) - Who Will Buy Me an Orange? (QuiEn me compra una naranja?), Fisherman of the Moon (Pescador de luna), Pauses II (Pausas II), Autumn (Otoño), The Bloom Hoists Its Banner (Iza la flor su enseña), Who Is It? (Tan-tan! Quien es? Es el diablo), Prelude (Preludio); PABLO DE ROKHA (Cantos Diaz Loyola) (Chile) - Seafaring Towns (Los pueblos marinos); Lament (Treno); The Pale Conquerors (Los palidos conquistadores); Tribal Lay (Canto de tribu); Elegy for All Ages (Elegia de todos los tiempos); Subterranean Days and Nights (Los dias y las noches subterraneas); NICOLAS GUILLEN (Cuba) - Yellow Girl (Mulata); Big-lipped Negro (Negro bembon); Ballad of the Two Grandfathers (Balada de los dos abuelos); Sensemayá (Sensemaya); Ballad of the Guije (Balada del Guije); Reveille at Daybreak (Diana); PABLO NERUDA (Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basualto) (Chile) - Lightless Suburb (Barrio sin luz); No, XVIL (No. XVII); Savor (Sabor); Ode with a Lament (Ode con un lamento); Sexual Water (Agua sexual); Alberta Rojas Jimenez Comes Flying (Alberto Rojas JimEnez viene volando); Ode of the Sun to the People's Army (Oda solar al ejErcito del pueblo); CESAR VALLEJO (Peru) - The Black Messengers (Los heraldos negros); The Spider (La Arana), Distant Footsteps (Los pasos lejanos); XVIII (XVIII); XXVIII (XXVIII); XLIV (XLIV); The Miners (Los mineros); Anger (La colera); The Nine Monsters (Los nueve monstruos); Pedro Rojas (Pedro Rojas); Little Responsory for a Republican Hero (Pequeno resportso a un hEroe de la republica); Masses (Masa); JACINTO FOMBONA PACHANO (Venezuela) - The Coca Tree (La Coca); The Puddle (El pozo); Since Tomorrow Is Sunday (Mañana, como es domingo); The Complaint (La queja); America, My Sweet (Mi America, la dulce); The Clouds Have Already Told Me (Ya las nubes me lo tenian dicho); Dance of the Lost Key (Danza de la llave perdida); I Announce the Kingdom of the Star (Anuncio el reino de la estrella); BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX OF ENGLISH TITLES; INDEX OF SPANISH TITLES. . .
Hoffman Reynolds Hays (1939-1980) was a poet, translator, novelist and playwright, an historian of anthropology and zoology, and a teacher. Some of his twenty-two books, reflecting the diversity of his interests, were the pioneering works in their fields. His The Dangerous Sex: the Myth of Feminine Evil, served as respected source material for Feminist writers. Sir Julian Huxley regarded Hays' popular history of zoology, Birds, Beasts and Men, as a classic of its genre. His translations of the poetry of Brecht, Vallejo, Borges, Neruda, and many others were among the first to bring these major twentieth century writers to the attention of the English-speaking world. His plays, such as The Ballad of Davy Crockett, with music by Kurt Weill, were performed on Broadway. More than twenty of his shorter works appeared on television during its early days. The groundbreaking significance of Hays' translations of Latin American poets is immense. Today, most readers are familiar with Neruda, Borges, and Cesar Vallejo. But in 1943, when his Twelve Spanish American Poets was published, the huge area embracing Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean islands was barely known to North Americans, except pejoratively, as banana republics, the home of bearded, gun-toting, cigar-smoking banditos, and illiterate peasants. That such a seemingly primitive, under-developed region should also be the birthplace of a sophisticated literary culture, something the educated North Americans could be interested in and even respect, was a new idea to many English speakers. Hays was one of the first to reveal this, and the effect of his translations on young poets was profound.
CONTENTS: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL: THIRTEENTH CENTURY - PAYO GOMEZ CHARINO (ca. 1223-1295?) - Song/Song; FOURTEENTH CENTURY - PEDRO LOPEZ DE AYALA (1332-1407) - I H S; JUAN RUIZ (fl. 1343) - Song of a Mountain Girl; Dona Cuaresma Prepares for a Pilgrimage; FIFTEENTH CENTURY - ANONYMOUS - Song; AUZIAS MARCH (ca. 1397-ca. 1458) - Hours of Delight, Now Gone, to Memory Cling; INIGO LOPEZ DE MENDOZA MARQUIS OF SANTILLANA (1398-1458) - Sonnet XVIII; GOMEZ MANRIQUE (1412?-1490?) - To a Lady Well Wrapped; JUAN DEL ENCINA (1468-1529?) - Chorus; Mingo's Discourse; GIL VICENTE (1465?-ca. 1536) - Song; Ballad of FlErida; BALLADS - Love Than Death More Strong; Ballad of the Lovely Infanta; The Prisoner; Reduan; Mass of Love; Flowing Water, Flowing Water; Rose Unravished, Rose Unravished; Beware, Beware, O King Don Sancho; SIXTEENTH CENTURY - ANONYMOUS - Lullaby; COMENDADOR ESCRIVA (fl. 1500) - Song; GARCILASO DE LA VEGA (ca. 1501-1536) - Song III; JUAN BOSCAN (d. 1542) - Sonnet LVIII; SANTA TERESA DE JESUS (1515-1582) - On the Words ‘Dilectus Meus Mihi'; GUTIERRE DE CETINA, (ca. l520-ca. 1560) - Madrigal; LUIZ DE CAMOES (1524?-1580) - Song IV; LUIS DE LEON (1527?-1591) - Ascension Day; FERNANDO DE HERRERA (1534-1597) - Sonnet LXV; JUAN DE LA CRUZ, SAN (1542-1591) - Spiritual Canticle between the Soul and Christ, Her Spouse; LUIS DE GONGORA Y ARGOTE (1561-1627) - Roundelay; Song; When Don Luis Was in Cuenca; LOPE FELIX DE VEGA CARPIO (1562-1635) - Clover; Song; Stanzas to His Love; Echo Song; SEVENTEENTH CENTURY - FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO VILLEGAS (1580-1645) - To a Nose; To Sedan Chairs Accompanied by Many Lackeys; FRANCISCO DE BORJA, PRINCE OF ESQUILACHE (1581-1658) - Ballad XXXIV; EIGHTEENTH CENTURY - NICOLAS FERNÁNDEZ DE MORATIN (1737-1780) - Apology for an Error; TOMAS DE IRIARTE (1750-1791) - Fable XLIV; NINETEENTH CENTURY - JOSE DE ESPRONCEDA (1808-1842) - To a nightingale; THE AXE of the King; The Beggar; Pirate's Song; RAMON DE CAMPOAMOR Y CAMPOOSORIO (1817-1901) - Boredom; Roses and Strawberries; JOSE ZORRILLA, (1817-1893) - from Don Juan Tenorio; Oriental; GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER (1836-1870) - II; IX; X; XIII: LXVII; ROSALIA DE CASTRO (1837-1885) - Padron, Padron!; JACINTO VERDAGUER (1845-1902) - To the Bees; JOAN MARAGALL (1860-1911) - Iberian Anthem; MANUEL MACHADO (b. 1874) - Abel; Adelphos; Figurines; Charles the Fifth; Philip the Fourth; ANTONIO MACHADO (b. 1875) - Autumn Dawn; Iberian God; Songs of Several Lands; Sonnet; FRANCISCO VILLAESPESA (1877-1936) - Worn Gold; RICARDO DE MONTIS Y ROMERO - The Custodia of Enrique de Arfe; ENRIQUE DE MESA (1879-1929) - Sing me a Song, Jimena; Song of the Mountain Brook; EDUARDO MARQUINA (b. 1879) - The Little White Goat; The Woodcutters; JUAN RAMON JIMINEZ (b. 1881) - Autumnal Aria XVIII; I Want to Sleep This Night; Pastoral; The Distant Sea; The Shepherd's Star; Watch; FERNANDO VILLALON (1881?- 1930) - Ballad of The Nineteenth Century, 1825; PEDRO SALINAS (b. 1891) - It Might be Avila; Escorial II; JORGE GUILLEN (b. 1893) - Slender Spring; The Swan; FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA (1899-1930) - Oil Lamp; Idyl; The Guitar; The Quarrel; Capture of Antonio el Camborio on the Road to Sevilla; Ballad of the Summoned One; EMILIO PRADOS (b. 1899) - Tranquillity; RAFAEL ALBERTI (b. 1903) - Elegy of the Fisher Boy; My Funeral; Day of the Hunt; Belorado; Hungarian Gypsy; MANUEL ALTOLAGUIRRE (b. 1905) - I; ADRIANO DEL VALLE - Bullfight at Sevilla; CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA - ARGENTINA - BARTOLOME MITRE (1821-1906) - The Gaucho's Horse; MARTINIANO LEGUIZAMON (1858-1935) - Trisste; LEOPOLDO LUGONES (1874-1938) - Drops of Gold; Morning Song; ENRIQUE BANCHS (b. 1888) - Tiger; RAFAEL ALBERTO ARRIETA (b. 1889) - Rain; ALFONSINA STORNI (b. 1892) - Inheritance; Your Arrows; OSCAR BIETTI (b. 1913?) - Ballad of The Dead Love; BRAZIL - JORGE DE LIMA (b. 1895) - Songs; CHILE - CARLOS PEZOA VELIS (1879-1908) - Afternoon in the Hospital; GABRIELA MISTRAL (b. 1889) - Ballad of the Star; Night; COLOMBIA - JORGE ISAACS (1837-1895) - The Nima; JOSE ASUNCIÔN SILVA (1865-1896) - Nocturne; A Poem; GUILLERMO VALENCIA (b. 1873) - The Camels; LUIS CARLOS LOPEZ (b. 1885) - From My Farm; COSTA RICA - CARLOS LUIS SAENZ (b. 1899) - As a Petal; FERNANDO LUJAN (b. 1912) - Song of the Long Drouth; CUBA - GETRUDIS GOMEZ DE AVELLANEDA (1814-1873) - On the Betis; JOSE MARTI (1853-1895) - Simple Stanzas XXXIX; JULIAN DEL CASAL (1863-1893) - Scene in the Tropics; MEXICO - JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ (1651-1695) - Sonnet; JOAQUIN ARCADIO PAGAZA (1839-1918) - Evensong; SALVADOR DIAZ MIRON (1853-1928) - The Vision; MANUEL GUTIERREZ NAJERA (1859-1895) - When I Die; Schubert's Serenade; FRANCISCO A. DE ICAZA, (1863-1925) - Landscape Colours; AMADO NERVO (1870-1919) - Not All; The Hail; Purity; ENRIQUE GONZALEZ MARTINEZ (b. 1871) - In a Stately Garden; MARIA ENRIQUETA (b. 1875) - Landscape; JAIME TORRES BODET (b. 1902) - Song; Voyage; NICARAGUA - RUBEN DARIO (1867-1916) - Autumnal Sonnet to the Marquis of Bradomin; The Grandmother's Clavichord; Leda; Symphony in Gray Major; To Marguerite Debayle: PERU - MANUEL GONZALEZ PRADA (1844-1918) - Triolet; JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO (1875-1934) - Horses of the Conquerors; URUGUAY - FERNAN SILVA VALDES (b. 1887) - Ballad of the White Colt; EMILIO ORIBE (b. 1893) - Music; JUANA DE IBARBOUROU (b. 1895) - The Smith; The Shepherdess; Fleeting Restlessness; VENEZUELA - RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA (b. 1874) - The Horse on the Shield; INDEX OF AUTHORS; TRANSLATORS - Ruth Matilda Anderson; Jean Willard Burnham; Grace Hardendorff Burr; Dorothy Dartt; Anne Sawyer Durand; Helen Eldredge Fish; Alice Wilson Frothingham; Ada Marshall Johnson; Jean Rogers Longland; Florence Lewis May; Alice Jane McVan; Adelaide M. Meyer; Beatrice Gilman Proske; Anna Pursche; Eleanor E. Sherman; Elizabeth Du Gue Trapier; Jessie Read Wendell. . .
For well over two decades Latin American authors have gained international recognition for the passion, innovation, and magic of their fiction. Many of these same writers have written plays - a sampling of them is collected for the first time in Drama Contemporary Latin America, the fourth in a PAJ series of collections of foreign plays in translation. Now the dramatic works can be read alongside the novels, and considered, too, in the context of Latin American films which have attracted more and more attention. This volume is comprised of four novelist-playwrights who have successfully bridged the genre gap. Manuel Puig's The Kiss of the Spider Woman (English adaptation by Michael Feingold) is the theatrical version of the encounter between a revolutionary and a homosexual in a Latin American jail that was turned into the film of the same name. Mario Vargas Llosa, author of the celebrated novel The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, is represented by Kathie and the Hippopotamus (translated by Kerry McKenny and Anthony Oliver-Smith), a comic study of playacting and reality. Orchids in the Moonlight by Carlos Fuentes, author of the recent The Old Gringo, is a voluptuous fantasy of myth, cinema, and imagination which premiered at the American Repertory Theatre (Cambridge) in 1982. Burning Patience by Antonio Skarmeta (translated by Marion Peter Molt) offers a lyrical portrait of Chilean poet and Nobel Prize-winner Pablo Neruda, a play highly praised in its 1986 INTAR premiere. As the editors of the volume, George W. Woodyard and Marion Peter Molt point out, ‘the theatre of the vast area we know as Latin America is only beginning to be translated and performed abroad-despite a large repertoire of viable plays and the remarkable number of new ones that appear each year.' Drama Contemporary: Latin America is an introduction to this special theatrical geography. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION by George W. Woodyard and Marion Peter Holt; THE KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN by Manuel Puig; BURNING PATIENCE by Antonio Skármeta; KATHIE AND THE HIPPOPOTAMUS by Mario Vargas Llosa; ORCHIDS IN THE MOONLIGHT by Carlos Fuentes. A PAJ PUBLICATIONS TITLE DramaContemporary is a series devoted to foreign piays in translation, organized by country or region. This volume includes significant work of four Latin American authors writing today: Manuel Puig (The Kiss of the Spider Woman); Antonio Skármeta (Burning Patience); Mario Vargas Llosa (Kathie and the Hippopotamul) Carlos Fuentes (Orchids in the Moonlight). The editors of the volume set the novelist, playwrights and their work against the framework of social and artistic upheavals in Latin American politics of recent years.
George W. Woodyard is professor of Spanish at the University of Kansas and editor of Latin American Theatre Review. He has traveled extensively to observe first-hand the work of groups most active in creating new theatrical modes in Latin America. His publications include Dramatists in Revolt: The New Latin American Theatre, edited with Leon Lyday, and The Modern Stage in Latin America: Six Plays. Marion Peter Holt teaches in the Ph.D program in Theatre of the City University of New York and at the College of Staten Island. His translations of contemporary Spanish plays have been staged in New York and in leading regional theatres. He is the editor of DramaContemporary: Spain and his articles and reviews have appeared in Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, Performing Arts Journal, and Estreno.
For well over two decades Latin American authors have gained international recognition for the passion, innovation, and magic of their fiction. Many of these same writers have written plays - a sampling of them is collected for the first time in Drama Contemporary Latin America, the fourth in a PAJ series of collections of foreign plays in translation. Now the dramatic works can be read alongside the novels, and considered, too, in the context of Latin American films which have attracted more and more attention. This volume is comprised of four novelist-playwrights who have successfully bridged the genre gap. Manuel Puig's The Kiss of the Spider Woman (English adaptation by Michael Feingold) is the theatrical version of the encounter between a revolutionary and a homosexual in a Latin American jail that was turned into the film of the same name. Mario Vargas Llosa, author of the celebrated novel The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, is represented by Kathie and the Hippopotamus (translated by Kerry McKenny and Anthony Oliver-Smith), a comic study of playacting and reality. Orchids in the Moonlight by Carlos Fuentes, author of the recent The Old Gringo, is a voluptuous fantasy of myth, cinema, and imagination which premiered at the American Repertory Theatre (Cambridge) in 1982. Burning Patience by Antonio Skarmeta (translated by Marion Peter Molt) offers a lyrical portrait of Chilean poet and Nobel Prize-winner Pablo Neruda, a play highly praised in its 1986 INTAR premiere. As the editors of the volume, George W. Woodyard and Marion Peter Molt point out, ‘the theatre of the vast area we know as Latin America is only beginning to be translated and performed abroad-despite a large repertoire of viable plays and the remarkable number of new ones that appear each year.' Drama Contemporary: Latin America is an introduction to this special theatrical geography. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION by George W. Woodyard and Marion Peter Holt; THE KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN by Manuel Puig; BURNING PATIENCE by Antonio Skármeta; KATHIE AND THE HIPPOPOTAMUS by Mario Vargas Llosa; ORCHIDS IN THE MOONLIGHT by Carlos Fuentes. A PAJ PUBLICATIONS TITLE DramaContemporary is a series devoted to foreign piays in translation, organized by country or region. This volume includes significant work of four Latin American authors writing today: Manuel Puig (The Kiss of the Spider Woman); Antonio Skármeta (Burning Patience); Mario Vargas Llosa (Kathie and the Hippopotamul) Carlos Fuentes (Orchids in the Moonlight). The editors of the volume set the novelist.playwrights and their work against the framework of social and artistic upheavals in Latin American politics of recent years. . .
George W. Woodyard is professor of Spanish at the University of Kansas and editor of Latin American Theatre Review. He has traveled extensively to observe first-hand the work of groups most active in creating new theatrical modes in Latin America. His publications include Dramatists in Revolt: The New Latin American Theatre, edited with Leon Lyday, and The Modern Stage in Latin America: Six Plays. Marion Peter Holt teaches in the Ph.D program in Theatre of the City University of New York and at the College of Staten Island. His translations of contemporary Spanish plays have been staged in New York and in leading regional theatres. He is the editor of DramaContemporary: Spain and his articles and reviews have appeared in Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, Performing Arts Journal, and Estreno.
Here in a single volume are forty-two short stories from the finest writers in Latin American literature. The contributors include not only highly respected names (Neruda, Borges, Cortazar, Mistral, Fuentes, Asturias, Amado, Paz) but also the most controversial and experimental storytellers, some of whom have emerged only in the last few years (Donoso, de Assis, Novas-Calvo, Bosch, Reyes, and dozens more). The Minneapolis Tribune describes THE EYE OF THE HEART as ‘a substantial sampling . . . gifts of truth. Their authors saw with the heart.' And Jorge Luis Borges calls this book ‘quite impressive. All of the important writers are there and the stories are all good . . . I know nothing like it now.'
Barbara Howes (May 1, 1914 New York City - February 24, 1996 Bennington, Vermont) was an American poet. She was adopted by well-to-do Massachusetts family, and reared chiefly in Chestnut Hill, where she attended Beaver Country Day School. She graduated from Bennington College in 1937. She worked briefly for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Mississippi, and then edited the literary magazine, Chimera, from 1943 to 1947 and lived in Greenwich Village. In 1947 she married the poet William Jay Smith, and they lived for a time in England and Italy. They had two sons, David Smith, and Gregory. They divorced in the mid-1960s, and she lived in Pownal, Vermont. In 1971, she signed a letter protesting proposed cuts to the School of the Arts, Columbia University. Her work was published in, Atlantic, Chicago Review, New Directions, New Republic, New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Saturday Review, Southern Review, University of Kansas Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Yale Review.
Here in a single volume are forty-two short stories from the finest writers in Latin American literature. The contributors include not only highly respected names (Neruda, Borges, Cortazar, Mistral, Fuentes, Asturias, Amado, Paz) but also the most controversial and experimental storytellers, some of whom have emerged only in the last few years (Donoso, de Assis, Novas-Calvo, Bosch, Reyes, and dozens more). The Minneapolis Tribune describes THE EYE OF THE HEART as ‘a substantial sampling . . . gifts of truth. Their authors saw with the heart.' And Jorge Luis Borges calls this book ‘quite impressive. All of the important writers are there and the stories are all good . . . I know nothing like it now.'
Barbara Howes (May 1, 1914 New York City - February 24, 1996 Bennington, Vermont) was an American poet. She was adopted by well-to-do Massachusetts family, and reared chiefly in Chestnut Hill, where she attended Beaver Country Day School. She graduated from Bennington College in 1937. She worked briefly for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Mississippi, and then edited the literary magazine, Chimera, from 1943 to 1947 and lived in Greenwich Village. In 1947 she married the poet William Jay Smith, and they lived for a time in England and Italy. They had two sons, David Smith, and Gregory. They divorced in the mid-1960s, and she lived in Pownal, Vermont. In 1971, she signed a letter protesting proposed cuts to the School of the Arts, Columbia University. Her work was published in, Atlantic, Chicago Review, New Directions, New Republic, New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Saturday Review, Southern Review, University of Kansas Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Yale Review.
Inside covers: map by Deborah Small . Keywords: Literature Translated Central America Anthology Latin America. An issue devoted to the writing of Central America. Contents: foreword; CENTRAL AMERICAN WRITING - Leonel Rugama/I am RenE Espronceda de la Barca; Carmen Naranjo/Ondina; Margaret Randall/from Sandino's Daughters; Arturo Ambrogi/The Village; Claribel Alegria/The Last 48 Hours: 15-17 July 1979; Victor Montejo/The World Needs You; Margaret Randall/Talking with Ernesto Cardenal; Leonel Rugama/Six Poems; Benjamin Ramon/Two Fictions; Alejandro Bravo/Two Short Stories; Octavio Armand/Birth Certificates as Fiction; Patricia Eakins/Death in My Country; Argueles Morales/Over the Walls; Manlio Argueta/Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Zone; Blase Bonpane/Liberation Theology: Guatemala; Arturo Arias/Guatemala 1954-Funeral for a Bird; Mario Benedetti/An Hour with Roque Dalton; Lisa Shipley/Mortar; Roque Dalton/Miguel Mármol; Victor Perera/Kindergarten; Claribel Alegria and D.J. Flakoll/They'll Never Take Me Alive: The Salvadoran Woman in the Revolution; Harold Jaffe/Mussel; REVIEWS - Five Books on Guatemala reviewed by Jean Franco; Nicaragua in Revolution and Nicaragua Under Siege reviewed by Dianne Walta Hart; Class Poetry: Five Books from Curbstone Press reviewed by Dale Jacobson; Magic Realism in Nicaragua: Sergio Ramirez reviewed by Prescott Nichols; Reelpolitik: Invention and Intervention in Three U.S. Films on Central America reviewed by Julianne Burton; ART - Central American Revolutionary Posters; Four Photographs by Mel Rosenthal; Five Cuban Photographs; Photographs by Janet Delaney, Margaret Randall, and Susan Meiselas; Contributors.
Harold Jaffe (born July 8, 1942) is an American writer of novels, short fiction, drama and essays. He is the author of 26 books, including 14 collections of fiction, four novels and two volumes of essays. He is also the editor of the literary-cultural journal Fiction International. His works have been translated into 15 languages, including German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French, Turkish, Dutch, Czech, and Serbo-Croatian. Jaffe is also a Professor of Creative Writing, English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. Jaffe's fiction has appeared in such journals as Mississippi Review; City Lights Review; Paris Review; New Directions in Prose and Poetry; Chicago Review; Chelsea; Fiction;Central Park; Witness; Black Ice; Minnesota Review;Boundary 2; ACM; Black Warrior Review; Cream City Review; Two Girls'Review; and New Novel Review. His fictions have also been anthologized in Pushcart Prize; Best American Stories; Best of American Humor; Storming the Reality Studio; American Made; Avant Pop: Fiction for a Daydreaming Nation; After Yesterday's Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology; Bateria and Am Lit (Germany);Borderlands (Mexico); Praz (Italy); Positive (Japan); and elsewhere. The 2004 issue of The Journal of Experimental Fiction called The Literary Terrorism of Harold Jaffe was devoted to his writings.
This is more a practical guide for tourists of Mexican prose fiction than a catalogue for specialists in the subject. The principal reader is he or she who desires an ongoing relation with Mexican fiction, who wonders: What does Mexican literature offer? Which narrative trends predominate? Which themes have fallen into oblivion, and which have emerged into the national literary consciousness? What are the motivations of current writers who place themselves in a position to tell us their stories? What do these stories say, and how do they say it? What do they conceal, and how do they conceal it? CONTENTS: Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz/Mexican Narrative at the End of the Century: A Tourist Guide; Federico Campbell/Los Brothers; Acela Bernal/The Taste of Good Fortune; Luis Zapata/The Articles of Faith of a Good Rable-Rouser; Rosina Conde/Sonatina; Jorge Raül Lopez Hidalgo/The Knots Are Unconnected; Josefina Estrada/Women in Captivity; Francisco Luna/With a Flower in Her Hand; Dante Medina/Shopping in New York; Jorge Ruiz Dueflas/The Island Kingdom' (excerpt); Alberto Ruy Sanchez/A Hand on the Sand; (excerpt); Daniel Sada/The Opportunist; Ana Clavel/Dark Tears of a Mere Sleeper; Mauricio-Jose Schwarz/Glimmerings in Blue Glass; Raül Acevedo Savin/Momo Camacho's Message; Jose Joaquin Blanco/The Lady-Killer (excerpts); Juan Antonio Di Bella/Nanoroutines (excerpt); Sergio Gomez Montero/The Children of God (excerpts); Jesus Guerra/The Universe is Named Julia; Alberto Blanco/The Scribe's Dream and Adventures in an Inkwell; Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz I Border Hotel and Pancho Villainies; Hernán GutiErrez/The Third Hobby or Conical Life (excerpts); Regina Swain/The Devil Also Dances in the Aloha and Señorita Superman and the Instant Soup Generation; Patricia Laurent Kullick/Crazy Cuts; Luz Mercedes Barrera/Molding You; Ignacio Betancourt/The Omen; Cristina Ibarra/The Little Eastern Star; Carlos Adolfo GutiErrez Vidal/The Festive Years, Calm, and Bedouin Rap; Paco Ignacio Taibo II/Tlaloc; Monica Lavin/Nicolasa's Lace; Hugo ValdEs Manriquez/The Crime on Aramberri Street (excerpt); Silvia Castillejos Peral/Tomorrow the World Ends; Regina Cohen/Jazzbluesing; Jose Manuel Di Bella/For Our Daily Bread; Art Bibiana Padilla Maltos/two images I mixed media; Raül Romano Osuna/two photographs. . .
Harold Jaffe (born July 8, 1942) is an American writer of novels, short fiction, drama and essays. He is the author of 26 books, including 14 collections of fiction, four novels and two volumes of essays. He is also the editor of the literary-cultural journal Fiction International. His works have been translated into 15 languages, including German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French, Turkish, Dutch, Czech, and Serbo-Croatian. Jaffe is also a Professor of Creative Writing, English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. Jaffe's fiction has appeared in such journals as Mississippi Review; City Lights Review; Paris Review; New Directions in Prose and Poetry; Chicago Review; Chelsea; Fiction;Central Park; Witness; Black Ice; Minnesota Review;Boundary 2; ACM; Black Warrior Review; Cream City Review; Two Girls'Review; and New Novel Review. His fictions have also been anthologized in Pushcart Prize; Best American Stories; Best of American Humor; Storming the Reality Studio; American Made; Avant Pop: Fiction for a Daydreaming Nation; After Yesterday's Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology; Bateria and Am Lit (Germany);Borderlands (Mexico); Praz (Italy); Positive (Japan); and elsewhere. The 2004 issue of The Journal of Experimental Fiction called The Literary Terrorism of Harold Jaffe was devoted to his writings.
A bilingual selection of poems written between 1885 and about 1956. Divided into three sections: 'Precursors,' 'the Modernists,' and 'the Post-Modernists.' Each section is preceded by short biographical sketches of the poets. Two to five poems for each poet. Brushwood's essay, 'An introductory essay on Modernism,' is a full-length article (pp. 1-33). Poets: Delmira Agustini (Uruguay), Rafael Arevalo Martinez (Guatemala), Rafael Alberto Arrieta (Argentina), Enrique Banchs (Argentina), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Julián del Casal (Cuba), Jose Santos Chocano (Peru), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Enrique Gonzalez Martinez (Mexico), Manuel Gonzalez Prada (Peru), Manuel Gutierrez Nájera (Mexico), Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay), Juana de Ibarbourou (Uruguay), Ricardo Jaimes Freyre (Bolivia), Ramon Lopez Velarde (Mexico), Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina), Jose Marti (Cuba), Pablo Neruda (Chile), Amado Nervo (Mexico), Jose Asuncion Silva (Colombia), Alfonsina Storni (Argentina), Jaime Torres Bodet (Mexico).
bibliog. Various translators. The volume includes a bibliography ('A reading list') and an index. A comprehensive selection up to but not including the new generation of writers. Stresses the modernist and post-modernist periods. Prose selections by: Eduardo Acevedo Diaz (Uruguay), Demetrio Aguilera Malta (Ecuador), Ciro Alegria (Peru), Rafael ArEvalo Martinez (Guatemala), Alcides Arguedas (Bolivia), Mariano Azuela (Mexico), Eduardo Barrios (Chile), Rufino Blanco Fombona (Venezuela), Alberto Blest Gana (Chile), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Marta Brunet (Chile), Jose Antonio Campos (Ecuador), Romulo Gallegos (Venezuela), Ricardo Guiraldes (Argentina), Martin Luis Guzmán (Mexico), Jorge Icaza (Ecuador), Enrique Larreta (Argentina), Carmen Lyra (Costa Rica), Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes (Mexico), Eduardo Mallea (Argentina), Rafael Maluenda Labarca (Chile), Enrique MEndez Calzada (Argentina), Amado Nervo (Mexico), Angel Pino (Chile), Pedro Prado (Chile), Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay), Jose Eustasio Rivera (Colombia), Jose Enrique Rodo (Uruguay), Froylán Turcios (Honduras), CEsar Uribe Piedrahita (Colombia), Hugo Wast (Argentina). Selections of poetry by: Lino Arguello (Nicaragua), Santiago Arguello Barreto (Nicaragua), Enrique Banchs (Argentina), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Herib Campos Cervera (Paraguay), Jorge Carrera Andrade (Ecuador), Julián del Casal (Cuba), Jose Santos Chocano (Peru), Stella Corvalán (Chile), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Salvador Diaz Miron (Mexico), Jorge Escobar Uribe (Argentina), Jacinto Fombona Pachano (Venezuela), Eloy Farina Nuñez (Paraguay), Fabio Fiallo (Dominican Republic), Gaston Figueira (Uruguay), Enrique González Martinez (Mexico), Manuel Gonzalez Prada (Peru), Alejandro Guanes (Paraguay), Nicolâs GuillEn (Cuba), Manuel Gutierrez Nájera (Mexico), Juan Guzmân Cruchaga (Chile), Enrique Hernández Miyares (Cuba), Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay), Vicente Huidobro (Chile), Juana de Ibarbourou (Uruguay), Ricardo Jaimes Freyre (Bolivia), Claudia Lars (El Salvador), Luis LlorEns Torres (Puerto Rico), Luis Carlos Lopez (Colombia), Ramon Lopez Velarde (Mexico), Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina), Jose Marti (Cuba), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Guillermo Molinas Rolon (Paraguay), Pablo Neruda (Chile), Amado Nervo (Mexico), Juan B. O'Leary (Paraguay), Miguel Angel Osorio (Colombia), Luis Pales Matoa (Puerto Rico), Octavio Paz (Mexico), Regino Pedroso (Cuba), Josefina Pla (Paraguay), Alfonso Reyes (Mexico), Augusto Roa Bastos (Paraguay), Elvio Romero (Paraguay), Cesáreo Rosa-Nieves (Puerto Rico), Jose Asuncion Silva (Colombia), Medaro Angel Silva (Ecuador), Alfonsina Storni (Argentina), CEsar Tiempo (Argentina), Jaime Torres Bodet (Mexico), Froylán Turcios (Honduras), Guillermo Valencia (Colombia), CEsar Vallejo (Peru), Julio Vicuña Cifuentes (Chile). Drama selections by: Antonio Acevedo Hernández (Chile), Isidora Aguirre (Chile), Carlos S. Damel (Argentina), Camilo Darthes (Argentina), Samuel Eichelbaum (Argentina), Jose Joaquin Gamboa (Mexico), Eduardo GutiErrez (Argentina), RenE Marques (Puerto Rico), Armando Moock (Chile), Francisco Navarro (Mexico), Pedro E. Pico (Argentina), Jose J. Podestâ (Argentina), Jose Antonio Ramos (Cuba), Jose Maria Rivarola Matto (Paraguay), Florencio Sanchez (Uruguay), Rodolfo Usigli (Mexico).
WILLIS KNAPP JONES has been introducing the American public to the literature of Spanish America for many years. A prolific translator, especially of poetry and drama, he is the author of Breve historia del teatro latinoamericano, HIGH LIGHTS OF LATIN AMERICA, and other works in field. He has visited all the countries represented in the present volume and a was teacher at the Institute Ingles, Santiago. He is professor emeritus of Spanish, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
bibliog. The second of a two volume anthology of selected writings. The volume of modern literature was published first. See No. 11. Many translator. Provides a broad overview of the literature, with introductory material and notes. Selections include fragments from the Maya-Quiche Popol Vuh, Inca and Nahuatl poems, and selections from the writings of Cristobal Colon, CortEs, and BartolomE de Las Casas of Spain. Other Spanish writers who wrote and lived in America are listed according to the country described in their works. Prose selections are by: Jose de Acosta (Peru), Ignacio Manuel Altamirano (Mexico), Fray Bernardino de Sahagün (Mexico), Alberto Blest Gana (Chile), Simon Bolivar Venezuela), Pedro Cieza de Leon (Peru), Concolorcorvo [Alonso Carrio de la Vandera], Bernal Diaz del Castillo (Mexico), Ruiz Diaz de Guzmán (Paraguay), Esteban Echeverria (Argentina), Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi (Mexico), Manuel de Jesus Galvân (Dominican Republic), Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Peru), Jorge Isaacs (Colombia), Diego de Landa (Mexico), Jose Marmol (Argentina), Clorinda Matto de Turner (Peru), Juan Leon Mera (Ecuador), BartolomE Mitre (Argentina), Juan Montalvo (Ecuador), Motolinia [Fray Toribio de Benavente] (Mexico), Francisco Morazán (Honduras), Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca (Mexico), Francisco Nuñez de Pineda y Bascunan (Chile), Alonso de Ovalle (Chile), Ricardo Palma (Peru), Manuel Payno (Mexico), Vicente Perez Rosales (Chile), Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (Argentina), Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora (Mexico), Cirilo Villaverde (Cuba). Selections of poetry by: Manuel Acuna (Mexico), 'Amarilis' (Peru), Olegario Victor Andrade (Argentina), Bernardo de Balbuena (Mexico), AndrEs Bello (Venezuela), Estanislao del Campo (Argentina), Jose Eusebio Caro (Colombia), Juan Cruz Varela (Argentina), Esteban Echeverria (Argentina), Alonso de Ercilla y Züniga (Chile), Jose Gautier Benitez (Puerto Rico), Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda (Cuba), Jose Maria Heredia (Cuba), Sor Juana InEs de la Cruz (Mexico), Joaquin Lorenzo Luaces (Cuba), Jose Jacinto MilanEs y Fuentes (Cuba), Rafael Obligado (Argentina), Jose Joaquin de Olmedo (Ecuador), Pedro de Ona (Chile), Juan Gualberto Padilla (Puerto Rico), 'Plácido' (Cuba), Rafael Pombo (Colombia), Mariano Ramallo (Bolivia), Salvador Sanfuentes (Chile), Francisco de Terrazas (Mexico), Juan Zorrilla de San Martin (Uruguay). Selections of drama by: Carlos Bello (Chile), Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda (Cuba). Sor Juana InEs de la Cruz (Mexico), Camilo Henriquez (Chile), Jeronimo de Monforte y Vera (Peru), Jose Peon y Contreras (Mexico), Ramon Vial y Ureta (Chile). In addition, fragments from 3 Indian dramas from Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala, and one anonymous play (Argentina) are includedited The volume is completed by a bibliography of works in English translation (pp. 345-351) and an index.
WILLIS KNAPP JONES has been introducing the American public to the literature of Spanish America for many years. A prolific translator, especially of poetry and drama, he is the author of Breve historia del teatro latinoamericano, HIGH LIGHTS OF LATIN AMERICA, and other works in field. He has visited all the countries represented in the present volume and a was teacher at the Institute Ingles, Santiago. He is professor emeritus of Spanish, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
Reprint. Originally published 1963. Second of a two-volume set. ‘Tomorrow poets shall hold the world in thrall And war shall be no more. . . ‘ Thus the hope, perhaps even the prophecy, of Mexico's Enrique Gonzalez Martinez - physician, diplomat, poet, a combination by no means extraordinary in the lands to the south. For in Spanish America poetry is an admired, almost universal language, one that poured forth in magnificent abundance from the time of Modernism, which had its momentous birth in 1888 and which infused poetic language with new rhythm and color. Gonzalez Martinez was the last great poet of Modernism, as Ruben Dario of Nicaragua was its herald. Both are represented in this outstanding new anthology, along with other distinguished poets, novelists, short story writers, and dramatists of all the Spanish-American nations. Grouped chronologically by nationality, here are the best, or the most representative, or the most faithfully translated of the writers of Spanish America - too little known, unfortunately, to the average English reader, who is thus cut off from awareness of provocative literary currents. As Spanish America becomes more and more important on the international scene, the literature of this sprawling and varied area is of increasing interest not only in itself, but because it introduces the English reader to a world both mysterious and challenging. Here is a sampling of it - raw, bitter, graceful, exciting in turn. More than half of the volume comprises new translations never before published. Here are writers you will want to know better - and that is the real goal of any good anthology. Dip into it at leisure. And read the Introduction first to place your favorite selections in the over-all picture of a growing and lively literature.
WILLIS KNAPP JONES has been introducing the American public to the literature of Spanish America for many years. A prolific translator, especially of poetry and drama, he is the author of Breve historia del teatro latinoamericano, HIGH LIGHTS OF LATIN AMERICA, and other works in field. He has visited all the countries represented in the present volume and a was teacher at the Institute Ingles, Santiago. He is professor emeritus of Spanish, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
Includes the following works: Juan Fernando Camilo DarthEs and Carlos S. Damel (Argentina), The quack doctor (La hermana Josefina, 1938); Jose Maria Rivarola Matto (Paraguay), The fate of Chipi Conzález (El fin de Chipi Gonzalez, 1954); Miguel Frank (Chile), The man of the century (El hombre del siglo, 1958). The comedies are preceded by a long introduction. (pp. xiii-xlvi) and the volume is completed by a 'Checklist of translations of Latin American plays arranged alphabetically by countries and by names of dramatists' (pp. 181-191).
WILLIS KNAPP JONES has been introducing the American public to the literature of Spanish America for many years. A prolific translator, especially of poetry and drama, he is the author of Breve historia del teatro latinoamericano, HIGH LIGHTS OF LATIN AMERICA, and other works in field. He has visited all the countries represented in the present volume and a was teacher at the Institute Ingles, Santiago. He is professor emeritus of Spanish, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
Companion volume to Plays of the southern Americas. It includes the following selections: Florencio Sanchez (Uruguay), Midsummer day narents (CEdulas de San Juan, 1904); Pedro Pico (Argentina), Common clay (Del mismo barro, 1918); Eduardo Barrios (Chile), For the sake of a good reputation (Por el decoro, 1913); Jorge Zalamea (Colombia). The inn of Bethlehem (El meson de BelEn, 1941); Jose Antonio Ramos (Cuba), The traitor (El traidor); Victor Rendon (Ecuador), The lottery ticket (Billete de loteria, 1924); Jose Joaquin Gamboa (Mexico), An old yarn (Cuento viejo, 1930); Manuel Ascensio Segura (Peru), Sergeant Can uto (El sargento Canuto, 1839).
WILLIS KNAPP JONES has been introducing the American public to the literature of Spanish America for many years. A prolific translator, especially of poetry and drama, he is the author of Breve historia del teatro latinoamericano, HIGH LIGHTS OF LATIN AMERICA, and other works in field. He has visited all the countries represented in the present volume and a was teacher at the Institute Ingles, Santiago. He is professor emeritus of Spanish, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
AmErica invertida introduces twenty-two Uruguayan poets under the age of forty to English-speaking audiences for the first time. Kercheval paired poets and translators to produce a rich volume based on a multicultural dialogue about poetry and the written word. AmErica invertida presents Spanish poems and their English translations side by side to give readers an introduction to Uruguay's vibrant literary scene.
Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author, editor, and translator of thirteen books, including Cinema Muto, My Life as a Silent Movie: A Novel, and The Invisible Bridge / El puente invisible: Selected Poems of Circe Maia.
POETS INCLUDED: Luis Miguel Aguilar; Gaspar Aguilera Diaz; Homero Aridjis; Alejandro Aura; Jose Carlos Becerra; Coral Bracho; Ricardo Castillo; Elsa Cross; Mario del Valle; Raul Garduño; Orlando GuillEn; Francisco Hernández; David Huerta; Elizabeth Hulverson; Eduardo Langagne; Elva Maclas; Hector Manjárrez; Gilberto Meza; Jose Emilio Pacheco; Jaime Reyes; Jose Luis Rivas; Rafael Torres Sanchez; Ricardo Yañez.
Dr. Enrique R. Lamadrid teaches folklore, literature, and cultural history in the University of New Mexico's Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese. His research interests include ethnopoetics, folklore and music, Chicano literature, contemporary Mexican poetry, and literary translation. His field work centers in NM, but ranges as well into Mexico, Spain, the Andes and the Caribbean. His research on the IndoHispanic traditions of New Mexico charts the influence of indigenous cultures on the Spanish language and imagination. His literary writings explore the borderlands between cultures, their natural environments, and between popular traditions and literary expression. In 2006 and 2008 he organized an international research team working on the spiritual traditions of the Camino Real, with special focus on Durango, the role of penitential brotherhoods, and the Mexico experiences of Padre Antonio Jose Martínez. In 2009 and 2010 he organized expeditions to Aguascalientes, Mexico and Jinotepe, Nicaragua to document popular festivals on Santiago, the patron saint of Spain most associated with conquest and resistance to conquest. Author of numerous books and articles, Lamadrid's collaboration with renowned photographer Miguel Gandert is legendary. In 2009 they were jointly awarded the Gilberto Espinosa Prize by the New Mexico Historical Society for their work on the intangible cultural heritage of the Camino Real, Hermanitos Comanchitos: Indo-Hispano Rituals of Captivity and Redemption (UNM Press 2003), won the Chicago Folklore Prize in 2004, the oldest and most important in the nation for folklore and ethnography. Nuevo MExico Profundo: Rituals of an Indo-Hispano Homeland (Museum of NM 2000), a previous collaboration with Gandert won the prestigious Southwest Book Award in 2001. In 2005, Hermanitos Comanchitos also won the Southwest book award. The same year he was awarded the AmErico Paredes Prize by the American Folklore Society in 2005 to recognize his community based cultural work. Lamadrid is a scholar of the corrido ballad tradition of Greater Mexico and has several key articles on the subject, as well as a book co-authored with Jack Loeffler, La Música de los Viejitos: Hispano Folk Music of the Río Grande del Norte (UNM Press). He has produced a notable series of CDs. In the museum world, he led the design team and was co-curator of the permanent exhibit at the International Camino Real Heritage Center south of Socorro, NM. He was also a member of the curatorial team of the Smithsonian El Río exhibit on bio-regionalism and traditional culture in the Río Grande/Bravo basin. Lamadrid was sole curator of Nuevo MExico, ¿Hasta Cuándo?: Four Centuries of Hispanic Ballady, a component of the renown Smithsonian exhibit Corridos sin Fronteras / Ballads without Borders: A New World Ballad Tradition. Lamadrid is also an acequia activist and scholar of traditional water management. He and his students are preparing documentation for a UNESCO nomination for the Acequia cultures and systems of New Mexico and northern Mexico for world heritage status in the category of intangible cultural heritage. He is mayordomo of five sub-laterals of the Gallegos Lateral in Albuquerque's north valley, a district of 90 parciantes known as Acequia los Alamos de los Gallegos. His recent children's book is titled Juan the Bear and the Water of Life: La Acequia de Juan del Oso, and combines the history of the acequias in the beautiful Mora valley with the famous Juan del Oso cycle of traditional cuentos.
A bilingual edition, parallel texts. Companion volume to Short stories in Spanish. Cuentos hispánicos, with more selections from the most outstanding contemporary writers. Of 8 writers, 7 are Latin Americans. Includes representative stories by: Jorge Edwards (Chile), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), Juan Canlos Onetti (Uruguay), Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), Norberto Fuentes (Cuba), Gabriel Garcia Márquez (Colombia), Julio Cortázar (Argentina).
Editor and translator Kathy Leonard created this superb and diverse anthology to provide a literary outlet for the best of the new fiction by contemporary Latin American women authors. Through her work with the authors represented here, Leonard brings to these stories an uncompromised clarity of translation as well as useful biographical information about the authors. Contains work by - Gloria Artigas (Chile), Yolanda Bedregal (Bolivia), Velia Calvimontes (Bolivia), Nayla Chehade Durán (Colombia), Silvia Diez Fierro (Chile), InEs Fernández Moreno (Argentina), Gilda HoIst Molestina (Ecuador), Maria Eugenia Lorenzini (Chile), Andrea Maturana (Chile), Viviana Mellet (Pew), Ana Maria Shua (Argentina), and Mirta Toledo (Argentina). . . ‘A fine collection of 19 stories by 12 South American women. All the stories are linked . . . by the common theme of cruelty, and embattled womanhood is indeed given pride of place. But there's a refreshing range shown by portrayals of variously disturbed and endangered adolescence (Gilda Hoist Molestina's ‘The Competition,' Gloria Artigas's ‘Corners of Smoke') and political injustice (Nayla Chehade Durán's excellent ‘The Vigil'). Surrealism and black comedy are strikingly present, in InEs Fernández Moreno's deadpan ‘A Mother to Be Assembled,' and especially in the volume's standout story: Ana Maria Shua's hilarious cautionary tale about the perils of crossing one's dentist (‘A Profession Like Any Other'). A highly entertaining anthology.' - Kirkus Reviews.
Kathy S. Leonard is professor of Spanish and Hispanic Linguistics at Iowa State University, Ames. She is the author of Bibliographic Guide to Chicana and Latina Narrative (2003).
Women writers from the Central American nations of Costa Rica and Panama have distinguished themselves in the fields of short fiction and poetry during recent years. Their triumph mirrors their countries' struggles to overcome poverty and political violence. The quality and sheer number of their stories testify to their ongoing pursuit of artistic perfection. The women whose stories have been especially translated into English for this special issue have found the key to effective communication by searching their hearts and minds, and by exploring the intricately textured web of life that surrounds them. Costa Rica and Panama are linked by culture, geographical location and political history. A recent earthquake that struck sections of both countries at once underlined their similar vulnerability to natural disaster. A deep and continuous theme running through these writings is a note of hope for a calmer future. CONTENTS; Prologue by Enrique Jaramillo Levi; WOMEN WRITERS FROM COSTA RICA: DELFINA COLLADO - Garabito the Indomitable/The Indian Mummy; CARMEN LYRA - Ramona, Woman of the Ember/Estefania; EMILIA MACAYA - Alcestis/Eva; ROSIBEL MORERA - AndrEs Cejudo, Reader/Laura; CARMEN NARANJO - My Byzantine Grandmother's Two Medieval Saints/When New Flowers Bloomed; EUNICE ODIO - The Vestige of the Butterfly; YOLANDA OREAMUNO - Urban Wake/Of Their Obscure Family; JULIETA PINTO - The Country Schoolmaster/The Meeting; VICTORIA URBANO - Death in Mallorca; RIMA DE VALLBONA - The Good Guys/The Wall; WOMEN WRITERS FROM PANAMA: LILIA ALGANDONA - Nightmare at Deep River; GIOVANNA BENEDETTI - The Ramon the Fire/The Scent of Violets; ROSA MARIA BRITTON - The Wreck of the Enid Rose; GRISELDA LOPEZ - One Minute/I'll Eat the Land; MORAVIA OCHOA LOPEZ - A heavy Rain/The Date; BERTALICIA PERALTA - Elio; BESSY REYNA - And this Blue Surrounding me Again; GRACIELA ROJAS SUCRE - Wings; ISIS TEJEIRA - The Birth/The Piano of my Desire; About the Writers; About the Translators; About the Editor; Bibliography.
ENRIQUE JARAMILLO LEVI, one of the most distinguished writers of Central America, is a poet, fiction writer and founding editor of Maga: revista panameña de cultura, a literary magazine published in Panama City. His short stories have been translated into English, Polish, Hungarian and German. As editor of this anthology, Jaramillo Levi has selected these original short stories by women writers of Costa Rica and Panama. The skillful combination of language, imagination and narrative technique transforms their personal experiences into short fiction, expressing their past sorrows and their dreams of a better world.
‘An anthology in translation as well chosen as this one should be of great interest to the public. Practically all important Central American short story authors writing during the last quarter century are represented.' - Maria A. Salgado, professor of Spanish American literature, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill . . . This volume collects some of the best short fiction from the six Spanish-speaking countries of Central America-Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Selected from stories written between 1963 and 1988, it is the only collection currently available with such broad representation of active Central American writers. Many of the stories are quite sophisticated, dealing with middle-class concerns more often associated with the more developed countries of the world, and often utilize elements of the absurd or techniques of magical realism. In ‘The Circumstantial or the Ephemeral,' Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso depicts the strain on a couple's relationship when the husband, a distinctly mediocre writer, wins a literary contest. ‘Floral Caper' by Costa Rican Carmen Naranjo depicts a man who floods his house with flowers to bolster his failed sense of self-esteem, and, in ‘Love Is Spelled with a G,' Panamanian Rosa Maria Britton writes of a young mulatto city girl who attempts to escape the near-hopelessness of her racial and social situation by snagging an anglo U.S. military man for a husband. Some of the stories deal with war-the unending struggle against dictators and military power that is such a fact of life for Central Americans. In ‘To Tell the Story,' Salvadoran writer Alfonso Quijada Urias describes the welcome received by a group of revolutionaries from the citizens of a village they have just taken over - and the subsequent rain of destruction by the more powerful military forces. Several of the stories explore the realm of the writer's imagination. In ‘Metaphors,' Samuel Rovinski (Costa Rica) shows how a writer's superficial attempt to interpret experience metaphorically cripples him in social circumstances, while, in ‘Gloria Wouldn't Wait,' Panamanian Jaime Garcia Saucedo focuses on the egotism of the writer's imagination as it tries to convert the tragedies of everyday life into some kind of literary document whose artistic qualities would belie their actual reality. Human-and humane-values in the face of adversity are celebrated throughout, even when seemingly futile in the midst of overwhelming odds. CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORIES FROM CENTRAL AMERICA embraces every aspect of the human condition addressed by the literature of the Western world and demonstrates the cultural vitality of our Central American neighbors. CONTENTS: Acknowledgments; Introduction; GUATEMALA - Arturo Arias/Toward Patzün (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Jose Barnoya/Garcia Transito (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Franz Galich/The Rat Catcher (Pamela Carmell, trans.), Dante Liano/An Indolence of Feelings (Sylvia Schulter, trans.), Augusto Monterroso/The Circumstantial or the Ephemeral (Leland H. Chambers, trans.); HONDURAS - Eduardo Bähr/Tarzan of the Apes (Clark M. Zlotchew, trans.), Edilberto Borjas/The Last Act (Clark M. Zlotchew, trans.), Roberto Castillo/The Attack of the Man-Eating Paper (Clark M. Zlotchew, trans.), Julio Escoto/Reality before Noon (Clark M. Zlotchew, trans.), Jorge Luis Oviedo/The Final Flight of the Mischievous Bird (Sabina Lask-Spinac, trans.), Roberto Quesada/The Author (Sabina Lask-Spinac, trans.), Pompeyo del Valle/The Forbidden Street (Sabina Lask-Spinac, trans.); EL SALVADOR - Jose Roberto Cea/The Absent One Inside (Elizabeth Gamble Miller, trans.), David Escobar Galindo/Restless (Elizabeth Gamble Miller, trans.), Jorge Kattán Zablah/The Raccoons (Elizabeth Gamble Miller, trans.), Hugo Lindo/That Confounded Year . . .! (Elizabeth Gamble Miller, trans.), Ricardo Lindo/Cards (Elizabeth Gamble Miller, trans.), Jose Maria Mendez/The Circle (Elizabeth Gamble Miller, trans.), Alfonso Quijada Urias/To Tell the Story (Elizabeth Gamble Miller, trans.), Napoleon Rodriguez Ruiz/The Suicide of Chamiabak (Elizabeth Gamble Miller, trans.); NICARAGUA - Mario Cajina-Vega/Gloria Lara (Don D. Wilson, trans.), Lizandro Chavez Alfaro/Pregnant City (Don D. Wilson, trans.), Pablo Antonio Cuadra/August (Lynne Beyer, trans.); Horacio Pena/The House (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Sergio Ramirez/On the Stench of Corpses (Don D. Wilson, trans.), Mario Santos/In the Midst of the Downpour They Took Away My Cousin (Don D. Wilson, trans.), Fernando Silva/Francisco (Lynne Beyer, trans.); COSTA RICA - Luis Bolanos Ugalde/Rite (Charles Philip Thomas, trans.), Alfonso Chase/The Path of the Wind (Charles Philip Thomas, trans.), Jose Ricardo Chaves/Burned Soldiers (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Carlos CortEs/Funeral Rites in Summer (Pamela Carmell, trans.), Fabian Dobles/The Trunk (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Carmen Naranjo/Floral Caper (Charles Philip Thomas, trans.), Julieta Pinto/Disobedience (Charles Philip Thomas, trans.), Uriel Quesada/Behind the Door (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Marco Retana/The Back Rooms (Charles Philip Thomas, trans.), Samuel Rovinski/Metaphors (Charles Philip Thomas, trans.), Victoria Urbano/The Face (Sylvia Schulter, trans.); PANAMA - Lucas Bárcena/The Sweetheart of the Spirits (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Ricardo J. Bermüdez/The Horse in the Glassware Shop (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Rosa Maria Britton/Love Is Spelled with a ‘G' (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Enrique Chuez/The Woman (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Claudio de Castro/The Chameleon (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Ernesto Endara/Family Photograph (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Jaime Garcia Saucedo/Gloria Wouldn't Wait (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Enrique Jaramillo Levi/Duplications (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Raül Leis/Señor Noboa (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Bertalicia Peralta/The Village Virgin (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Dimas Lidio Pitty/Our Boss (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Pedro Rivera/Games (Leland H. Chambers, trans.), Jorge Turner/Carnival (Leland H. Chambers, trans.); Notes on the Authors; Notes on the Translators; Permissions Acknowledgments.
Enrique Jaramillo Levi is former director of the Editorial Universitaria of the Universidad de Panama and now teaches at the Instituto Technologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in QuerEtaro, Mexico. Leland H. Chambers is emeritus professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Denver.
Within the Hispanic world that embraces a continent and a half in the Americas, there coexists different levels of cultures-ranging from life in the rain forests to the Paris-like milieu of Greater Buenos Aires with its eight million people of European descent. With two exceptions the stories in this volume, translated from the Spanish, center around a big-city ambiance in which the dominant currents consist of female-male confrontations. Over the last three decades Argentine women writers especially have given us in ever-increasing numbers a very particular, even at times feminist, view of this urban confrontation. Over these years, tone, treatment and style have reflected the changing status of the portena, the women of Buenos Aires. Silvina Ocampo's female protagonists still employ hypocrisy and manipulation within their marriages, and Silvina Bullrich's airline stewardess tries to be an independent woman (only to confess at the end that she really longed for male understanding and protection). But in the prose of the younger writers (a Luisa Valenzuela, Cecilia Absatz or a Reina Roffe), we find an ironic detachment that allows the leading female characters to examine, condemn or ridicule the male ‘condition.' Though the two non-urban stories offer even harsher reactions to male dominance, it seems clear the main battleground of the future will be in the great cities. It will become an almost obligatory task for new Argentine women writers to further examine the psychological needs of women who, for their own purposes, accept the role of sex objects (personified by Marta Lynch's beauty queen), or to condemn continued male sexual hostility (as. displayed in Luisa Valenzuela's story). In this sense the Argentine women writers included in this volume clearly constitute precursors for a growing group of female interpreters of a dynamic cosmopolitan society that blends a long static European heritage with the fast evolving ‘American' attitudes of both men and women. CONTENTS: Introduction; Luisa Mercedes Levinson - The Clearing/Mistress Frances; Silvina Ocampo - The Prayer; Silvina Bullrich - The Lover/Self Denial; Maria Angelica Bosco - Letter from Ana Kareninia to Nora/Letter from Nora to Ana Karenina; Syria Poletti - The Final Siri; Beatriz Guido - Ten Times Around the Block/Takeover; Marta Lynch - Bedside Story/Latin Lover; Amalia Jamilis - Night Shift/Department Store!; Eugenia Calny - Siesta; Luisa Valenzuela - Change of Guard; Cecilia Absatz - A Ballet for Girls; Reina Roffe - Let's Hear What He Has to Say!; Biographic Note on Translator.
H. Ernest Lewald first became acquainted with River Plate culture while attending a high school in Montevideo and working for a newspaper m Buenos Aires. In the United States he studied French, German and American literature before finally deciding on a doctorate in Spanish. Although his dissertation dealt with Spanish nineteenth century naturalism, he began to publish articles and, later, books on Spanish American literature and culture. He is presently chairman of the Latin American Studies Department, The University of Tennessee.
This international anthology of prose and poetry pays tribute to the life of Pablo Neruda and to the legacy of the Popular Unity Government of Salvador Allende, overthrown by a military coup in September 1973. This chorus of voices, which includes more than 140 poets from 27 countries, honors the determination of the Chilean people and affirms the struggle of all people to be free. Neruda's voice will not be silenced by coups and guns. Nor will Allende's work be forgotten. Like the struggle for freedom, their inspiration lives on. CONTENTS: Rudolf Fabry/What About It, Brother World; Walter Lowenfels/From the Editor; Hortensia Bussi de Allende; I. GRIEF IS A LARGE SPACE - Margot de Silva/Don Pablo Neruda Eva Ban/In Memoriam Pablo Neruda Aragon/Elegie a Pablo Neruda; John Tagliabue/The Self Not Seen; Miguel Angel Asturias/Pablo Neruda Alive; Ramona Weeks/For Neruda; Michael Gizzi/For & After Pablo Neruda; Rafael Alberti/With Pablo Neruda in My Heart; David Ray/The Andes; Jean Brierre/Me Duele Chile; Leo Romero/For Pablo Neruda; Emily Paine/For the Spirit of Neruda; Volker Braun/Last Residence On Earth; Rafael Mendoza/This Pablo; Muriel Rukeyser/Neruda, The Wine; II. LIGHT THAT ARRIVES - Matilde Urrutia Neruda/Pablo's Death; Jose H. Llubien/Neruda: Light That Arrives; Ruth Lisa Schechter/Are We Saying All Your Verses?; Jack Curtis/The House; Thomas McGrath/A Warrant for Pablo Neruda; Joseph Bruchac/Pine Cone; Yusuf Al-Khal/For Neruda Upon His Death; Primno Castrillo/Pablo Neruda; Robert Rosenberg/To the Memory of Pablo Neruda; Allen Ginsberg/To a Dead Poet; Robert Zaller/Lament for Neftali ‘Reyes; Hugo Stanchi/A trilogy in memory of Pablo; Ed Ochester/For Neruda; Duane Locke/Kaivalya; Ida Gramcko/To Neruda Incommunicado; III. BLUES FOR SALVADOR - Salvador Allende/Farewell Speech over Radio Magallenes, September 11, 1973; Karl Vennberg/First Day of Autumn 1973; Geoffrey Rips/Resurrection: For Allende; Michael Szporer/elegy for allende; Tanure Ojaide/Chicho; A. Appercelle/To Chile-To Allende-; D. H. Melhem/Homage to Allende; Tobias Berggren/Poem From Gotland, September 1973; Gayl Jones/Más Alla; Gary Esolen/Dialectic: To the Victims of History; Antar Sudan Katara Mberi/Blues for Salvador; Lee Baxandall/Neruda's Last Poem; IV. TRACT FOR GENERAL PINOCHET - John Barnes; Alain Bosquet/Tract For General Pinochet; Tom Wayman/The Return; Gilbert Langevin/Anti-Cancer Concert; Christina Morris/Memo; Elena Wilkinson/Chile: Elegia de la Venganza; Carol Tinker/'Another Defenestration in Prague'; Nelson Estupinan Bass/A Candle for Pablo; Piero Santi/For Chile-Love; Harvey Mudd/The Near Sierra; Louise Gareau-Des-Bois/Dream of the Other America; Pedro Vera/Chile, the wretched beasts; V. THE CHILEAN SINGER - Miguel Cabezas/Victor Jara Died Singing; James Scully/Now Sing; Eamon Grennan/The Chilean Singer; Linda Lizut/Untitled; June Jordan/Poem: To my sister; Bob Arnold/Faraway, Like The Deer's Eye; Andrew Salkey/Victor; Hugo Loyacono/Victor Jara; Victor Jara/Chile Stadium; VI. BLOODYING THE TWILIGHT - Ricardo Garibay/Pablo Neruda's Funeral; Carlos Golibart/For Pablo Neruda; Christian Riondet/Words for Pablo; Serge Gavronsky/what was written in black; Lionel Ray/. . . it was from far away under the lantern that the shadows wiped out the dignity of questions; Pierre Gamarra/Ballad of Chilean Liberty; Hans Juergensen/Pablo Neruda; Quincy Troupe/Crossings, These Words; Neeli Cherry/For Neruda, For Chile; Nicolas Guillen/To Chile; James Scully/Toque de Queda; Bob Honig/Did you ask for me?; Michel Cahour/Now the night falls on Santiago; Zoe Best/Neruda; VII. ALIVE, ALIVE - William Wantling/Alive, Alive; Willis Barnstone/Pablo Neruda; Cecil Rajendra/For Pablo Neruda; Alan Britt/Pablo Neruda's Death; Pat Lowther/Anniversary Letter to Pablo; Charle Hayes/Pablo; Syl Cheney Coker/On the Death of Pablo Neruda; Lorenzo Thomas/Suicide Administration; Jose-Angel Figueroa/pablo neruda; Will Inman/Late Chant for Pablo Neruda; Robert Reinhold/On the Passing of Neruda; Luis Cardoza y Aragon/Pablo Neruda; Steve Kowit/'Neruda's remains were expelled this week'; VIII. DOOMSDAY IN SANTIAGO - Osman Turkay/Doomsday in Santiago; Eva Kovicovi/What's Theirs; Elias Hruska-Cortes/El Golpe; Mike Dobbie/you fell from the skies/the last days; Stuart McCarrell/For Chile; Kyoko Komori/Driving Nails with a Rock; Alejandro Murguia/Newsreport; Josë Kozer/Death Is Pitiless; Kemal Ozer/If Chile Is Bent Like a Dagger; Gyorgy Somlyo/'Chile, when shall. . .; IX. ONE CIRCLE OF LIGHT - Olga Cabral/Poem About Death; Ishmael Reed/Poem Delivered Before Assembly Of Colored People Held At Glide Memorial Church, Oct. 4, 1973 And Called To Protest Recent Events In The Sovereign Republic Of Chile; Anselm Hollo/Epitafio; Tom Wayman/the chilean elegies; Thomas McGrath/Lament for Pablo Neruda; Nina Serrano/Elegy for Pablo Neruda; Maria Rival/when he died; Stephen Kessler/Beyond Everything; Nico Suarez/To Pablo Neruda; Etel Adnan/A Candle for Pablo Neruda; John Robert Colombo/Proverbial Neruda; William Harrold/Musical Water; Eric Greinke/The Diplomat; X. THE SKY IS RED - Dominique Grandmont/An Example; W. S. Di Piero/Morning in Santiago; Clarke Wells/for pablo neruda 1904-1973; James R. Scrimgeour/Spotted off the Coast of Chile September 1973; Evgenii Yevtushenko/The Generals' Boots; L M. Jendrzejczyk/Migration; Ronald Lee Emmons/For Our Brothers in Chile; Charles Cantrell/The Unbound Voice; Harriet Zinnes/For Pablo Neruda; Orlin Orlinov/Chilean Fiesta; XI. CANTO - George Amabile/Canto; Steven Michael Gray/Return of Son of La Guardia; Jory Sherman/Poema Para Pablo Neruda; Chinweizu/The Return of the Flies; Sean Griffin/And Gather the Banners; Giannis Ritsos/Chile; Robert Hass/Elegy: Residence on Earth; Dick Kurie/today; Tom Schmidt/Vagando; XII. TOMORROW'S SUN - Walter Lowenfels/For Pablo Neruda; Nathaniel Tarn/At Gloucester,Mass., After Foreign Travel; Sharon Barba/For Pablo Neruda; Jose Rodeiro/The Cube-Root of Pablo; Vincius de Moraes/Natural History of Pablo Neruda; David Martinson/South Wind in October; Ann du Cille/For Your Preservation; Eduardo Escobar/Goodbye to Neruda Without Raising My Hand; Franz Douskey/Amorphous Water; Edwin Honig/Pablo Neruda; Darcy Gottlieb/Come, Neruda, Come; Barbara A. Holland/The Insane Pursuit of Tio Pablo; Susan Grathwohl/For Pablo Neruda; Gabriela Haringova/For Pablo Neruda; Henry Beissel/C'est la Mort Bernard Kelly/Tomorrow's Sun; Ray Smith/Neruda; Beatriz Allende; Appendix; Pablo Neruda: A Chronology; Some Dates in Chilean History; Other Books by Walter Lowenfels; Acknowledgments.
Walter Lowenfels (May 10, 1897 - July 7, 1976) was an American poet, journalist, and member of the Communist Party USA. He also edited the Pennsylvania Edition of The Worker, a weekend edition of the Communist-sponsored Daily Worker.
ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1960;1984 contains poetry and short stories in English translation by both prominent and newly emerging writers in the Spanish;speaking Americas. These translations of original works appear in this volume for the first time, and in some cases the English translation is also the first publication of an authors most recent prose or poetry. This principle of selection accounts for the omission of works by Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and others whose works have been widely translated. It also explains the inclusion of lesser;known works by famous writers, since their well;known pieces have been translated and widely anthologized. This collection comprises a cross;section of Latin American literature from 1960 to 1984. An introductory essay provides the reader with an overview of current literary and social trends in the authors respective countries and elucidates the major themes present in their writings. Three categories of writers are included. The first are well;versed in political theory, active politically, and totally aware of the reasons for their commitment. The second group has no specific political affiliations, may know very little of political philosophy, and speaks more of universal, themes. However, political problems are still felt by these authors and are at the very core of their expression. Adherence to either of these two groups is in no way incompatible with the artists role as creator. A writers work encompasses the historical and political realities of the times. This fact accounts for the perception that in Latin American literature today, most artists are actively engaged in the struggle for independence, whether their works treat openly of politics or have seemingly no political theme. The writers of the third group have totally divorced themselves from the political situations surrounding them and write in a highly personal or lyrical style. In this final stage of their coming of age, Spanish American writers have begun to speak of universal things. This anthology also includes poetry of certain well;known prose writers and the prose of other prominent and renowned poets, demonstrating that the ideas within each of the major groups mentioned are expressed in both genres. CONTENTS: JORGE ENRIQUE ADOUM: Ecuador; Fait Divers; LAUREANO ALBAN: Self;Portrait; It is the hour of the sea; GUSTAVO ALVAREZ GARDEAZABAL: Donaldo Arrieta; REINALDO ARENAS: Epigram; A Story; Marxs Contribution; Processional; Will to Live by Manifestation; HOMERO ARIDJIS: Chapultepec; Encounter; JUAN JOSE ARREOLA: The Switchman; CARLOS GERMAN BELLI: Segregation; Bah, Vitamin A; Antibiotic Miscellany; Sextain of Kid and Lulu; Looking at my little daughters; ADOLFO BIOY CASARES: The First Class Passenger; ALFREDO BRYCE ECHENIQUE: In Paracas with Jimmy; CECILIA BUSTAMANTE: Vocabulary; Dawn; JESUS CABEL: Last Vision of the Promised Land; CESAR EMILIO CANTONI: Absent Man; In Memoriam Dylan Thomas; ERNESTO CARDENAL: Psalm 36; The Heavy Drops; The Rains of May; Our Poems; The National Guard; Girl; You were alone; I have distributed clandestine leaflets; Epitaph for Joaquin Pasos; Epitaph for the Tomb of Adolfo Baez Bone; MAGOLO CARDENAS: But What If I Liked the Panchos; JORGE CARRERA ANDRADE: Final Invocation; HECTOR CARRETO: Sleeping Beautys Request; Vanity of Vanities; St. Georges Sword; St. Theresas Confession; AIDA CARTAGENA PORTALATIN: Colita; CARLOS CASTRO SAAVEDRA: Unemployed; ANTONIO CISNEROS: Your Head of an Italian Archangel; CafE on Martirok Utja; Sunday in St. Christinas of Budapest; JUAN GUSTAVO COBO BORDA: Errant Dwelling; In the Hotel of Your Soul; I Lost My Life?; HUMBERTO COSTANTINI: Immortality; Gardel; Algebra; PABLO ANTONIO CUADRA: The Calabash Tree; The Indian and the Violin; BELKIS CUZA MALE: Pandoras Box; Oh, My Rimbaud; Women Dont Die on the Front Lines; The Nature of Life; Order of the Day; ROQUE DALTON: Poet in Jail; The Art of Poetry; The Sea; MATILDE DAVIU: Ophelias Transfiguration; GERARDO DENIZ: Crisis; Tolerance; Infancies I; It was I; RODRIGO DIAZ;PEREZ: Edgar Allan Poes Room; Cycles; Fleeting Afternoon; Memories; JULIETA DOBLES: Caged Laurel; Music in the Caress; Thanatos in Stone; ROBERTO ECHAVARREN: For Tonight; Oyster Bar; DAVID ESCOBAR GALINDO: We; Myths and Flowers; Dawn; We Sprout Beneath the Soil; Oblivion; If I Walk; Suddenly Our life; In the Light; MAURICIO FERNANDEZ: Moon; PABLO ARMANDO FERNANDEZ: I Hope You Awaken; Mv Wife; In a Low Voice; ROSARIO FERRE: Catalina; To the Cavalier of the Rose; Epithalamium; HJALMAR FLAX: Our Father; In Tow; Advanced Course; Love or Cult; Carpe; Departed of Spring; BLANCA GARNICA: The Letter; I Do Not Know; FREDDY GATON ARCE: Monday, October 19; Sunday, July 31; JUAN GELMAN: Maria the Servant Girl; Medals; History; Poetic Art; Nun on the Bus; MEMPO GIARDINELLI: Revolution on a Bicycle; ALBERTO GIRRI: Lyric; Quartet in F Minor; Poem from Kierkegaard; MARGOT GLANTZ: Genealogies; ISAAC GOLDEMBERG: Body of Love; Origins; The Beehive and Its Roots; ; ALEXIS GOMEZ ROSA: High Quality, Ltd.; JORGE GUITART: Buffalo; The Book and the Child; The Fire; Something Neither Vivid Nor Concrete; OSCAR HAHN: Photograph; Doves of Peace; The Last Supper; Ocular Landscape; Canis Familiaris; Comet; Top Sheet; JAVIER HERAUD: I Do Not Laugh at Death; FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: #8; #ll; #17; #18; FRANCISCO HINOJOSA: The Green Lagoon; The Dandy; DAVID HUERTA: Nine Years Later; JORGE IBARGUENGOITIA: What Became of Pampa Hash?; ROBERTO JUARROZ: I Do Not Hold God; Life; There Are Few Whole Deaths; You Have No Name; Vertical Poetry I; Vertical Poetry II; Vertical Poetry XIII; Vertical Poetry XVII; Vertical Poetry LXXII; JOSE KOZER: You Remember, Sylvia; This Is the Book of Psalms; Reminiscences of Grandmother at Home; A Franz Kafka Triptych; St. Francis of Assisi; PEDRO LASTRA: Later We Will Talk of Our Youth; Drawbridges; Etude; The Dissolving of Memory; ENRIQUE LIHN: The Sewer; Elizabeth Rawsthorne; Old Woman in the Subway; Edward Hopper; Reality and Memory; Nineteenth Century Lions; ROBERT LIMA: Peripatetic; Persona; Lorca; Sillustani; Civil War-Spain; Child Ecology; JUAN LISCANO: III; IV; VIII; XIII; XVII; JOSE LOPEZ-HEREDUA: The Retiree; JAIME MANRIQUE: Ode to a Hummingbird; JUAN CARLOS MARTINEZ: Luis and Clara; I am by nature; My Country; The Plastic Flower; ARISTIDES MARTINEZ ORTEGA: Words Before the End; PEDRO MIR: The Hurricane Neruda; EDUARDO MITRE: You tread; From Dark to Light; For it is law; Twins; It was; In ter mit tenT; ALVARO MUTIS: Caravansary; Invocatiion; LUIS ROGELIO NOGUERAS: Poetic Material; Non Omnia Morior; There is a poem; Time Maude; Love the Wild Swan; JULIO ORTEGA: Syllables and Lines (excerpts); JOSE EMILIO PACHECO: First Degree Equation with One Variable; The & ; In Defense of Anonymity; JUANA ROSA PITA: Stroke the Back; The Height of Letters; Walls Like Tears; ALBERTO LUIS PONZO: History; Powers; Languages; Inscriptions; Tutmosis; According to a Native American; Eleven OClock; ULISES PRIETO: I come painting dreams; Red and Black; I'm on the Road to Varadero; Miami; Before the Coastline; LILLIANA RAM0S: The Islands Economy; The Golden Age; JULIO RAMoN RIBEYRO: The Double; Vultures Without Feathers; GONZALO ROJAS: Love Letter; Lost Port; The Farce; Sunday Daimon; Visiting Professor; JUAN SANCHEZ PELAEZ: The Circle Opens; Today; VI;VIII; XIII; SEVERO SARDUY: Entering you; The shiny greased piston; Neither voice preceded by echo; Though you oiled the threshold; JAVIER SOLOGUREN: love and bodies; in you; celebration; GUILLERMO SUCRE: Whitebodied Lady; Not Keeping Silent; Atlantic April; DAVID UNGER: The Limbo Bar; Hotel Canada; Insomnia; ARMANDO F. VALLADARES: Reality; CARMEN VALLE: With the Psychiatrist; Hide n Seek; Days; When We Live; ANIBAL YARYURA-TOBIAS: The Voyeur; SAUL YURKIEVICH: Spaces; RAÜL ZURITA: Pastorale; Pastorale of Chile; Splendor in the Wind; Utopias.
ABOUT THE EDITORS - BARRY J. LUBY, Professor of Spanish at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), received his Ph.D. at New York University. He is the author of Unamuno a la luz del empiricismo logico contemporáneo and Maimonides and Spinoza: Their Sources, Cosmological Metaphysics, and Impact on Modern Thought and Literature. His published works also include several anthologies and articles on Spanish and Latin American literature, as well as articles on Sephardic philosophy and culture. He edited The Literary Review Spanish issue, and coedited the Latin American issue. He is currently writing a book titled, Unamuno in the Light of Twentieth-Century Thought. WAYNE H. FINKE is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Baruch College (CUNY). His Ph.D. dissertation at New York University provided the first study of the pioneering medieval criticism of the Catalonian critic, Manuel Milá ya Fontanals, and will soon be published. He has written extensively on this important nineteenth-century critic, and has also done work on Garcia Lorca and on onomastics. Professor Finke coedited the Winter 1980 issue of The Literary Review, Latin;American Literature, The 60s and 70s, and was recently elected Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the American Name Society. . .
A well-balanced collection of 11 works by established playwrights and lesser-known writers. The plays are: Alberto Adellach (Argentina), March (Marcha) from Homo dramaticus (2nd edition, 1969); Enrique Buenaventura (Colombia), The orgy (La orgia) and The schoolteacher (La maestra) from Las papeles del infierno (1968); Marco Denevi (Argentina), Romeo before the corpse of Juliet (Romeo frente al cadaver de Julieta) and You don't have to complicate happiness (No hay que complicar la felicidad) from Falstficaciones; Jorge Diaz (Chile), The eve of the execution, or Genesis was tomorrow (La v(spera del deguello, 1967); Osvaldo Dragün (Argentina), The story of Panchito Gonzalez (Historia de Panchito González) and The story of the man who turned into a dog (Historia del hombre que se con virtio en perro) from Historias para ser con tadas (1957); Jose Martinez Queirolo (Ecuador), R. I. P. (Q. F. P. D., 1969); Alvaro MenEn Desleal (pseud. of Alvaro MenEndez Leal) (El Salvador), Black light (Luz negra, 1966); Carlos Solorzano (Guatemala), The crucifixion (El crucificado, 1958).
Gerardo Luzuriaga is Professor Emeritus in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA. Robert S. Rudder taught Spanish at the University of Minnesota during the 1960’s, where he met with Ana María Matute and translated some of her stories. Later, while teaching at UCLA and other universities, his translations of the Lazarillo de Tormes, and of such writers as Benito Pérez Galdós, Rosario Castellanos, and Cristina Peri Rossi were published. He has received writing grants from the Spanish Ministry of Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Reprint. Originally published 1942. Poems by twentieth-century poets Carlos Pellicer (Mexico). Translated by Mary and C. V. Wicker; Pablo Neruda (Chile), by J. L. Grucci, and Jorge Carrera Andrade (Ecuador), by Lloyd Mallan.
Poems by twentieth-century poets Carlos Pellicer (Mexico). Translated by Mary and C. V. Wicker; Pablo Neruda (Chile), by J. L. Grucci, and Jorge Carrera Andrade (Ecuador), by Lloyd Mallan.
Contemporary Latin America - South America, Central America, Mexico, and the West Indies - is producing many excellent and original writers, and the short stories in this anthology are proof that they have found their true voice after a long history of imitating European fiction. There is a variety of work ranging from the traditional Indian folktale to stories of social realism to more introspective and ironic writing about urban society. A number of the stories are newly translated. In some ways Latin American fiction has an exotic appeal: the mere landscape, the details of daily life, the cultural differences that are apparent in an America that is not only physically harsher than the United States but also was settled by Spanish Catholics rather than by Anglo-Saxon Protestants. At the same time there -are striking similarities: their gauchos and our cowboys; their oppressed Indians and ours; race problems; the frontier tradition and, most importantly, the creation of a new culture. The stories are placed in perspective by an informative introduction that also includes a brief history of Latin American fiction. In addition, there are biographical notes about the authors and a bibliography of recommended reading. CONTENTS: Introduction; JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS - Midnight Mass; RUBEN DARIO - The Case of Señorita Amelia; LEOPOLDO LUGONES - Yzur; HORACIO QUIROGA - How the Flamingoes Got Their Stockings; ROMULO GALLEGOS - Peace on High; MIGUEL ANGEL ASTURIAS - The Legend of ‘El Cadejo'; JORGE ICAZA - Big Precipice; JUAN BOSCH - Two Dollars Worth of Water; JORGE AMADO - Sweat; ROBERTO ARLT - Small-Time Property Owners; JORGE LUIS BORGES - Death and the Compass; ALEJO CARPENTIER - Journey Back to the Source; OCTAVIO PAZ - The Blue Bouquet; Letter to a Young Lady in Paris; JOAO GUIMARÃES ROSA - the Third Bank of the River; JUAN JOSE ARREOLA - I'm Telling You the Truth; AUGUSTO ROA BASTOS - The Vacant Lot; HERNANDO TELLEZ - Just Lather, That's All; ADOLFO BIOY CASARES - A Letter About Emilia; MARIA LUISA BOMBAL - The Tree; JUAN RULFO - Talpa; CARLOS FUENTES - The Doll Queen; GABRIEL GARCIA MÁRQUEZ - Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon; JOSE DONOSO - Paseo; CLARICE LISPECTOR - The Imitation of the Rose; RENE MARQUES - Island of Manhattan; JUAN CARLOS ONETTI - Welcome, Bob; MARIO BENEDETTI - Gloria's Saturday; PEDRO JUAN SOTO - The innocents; GUILLERINO CABRERA INFANTE - Nest, Door, Neighbors; NORBERTO FUENTES - Honor Cleaned; MARIO VARGAS LLOSA - Sunday; MANUEL PUIG - A Meeting; ABELARDO CASTILLO - Ernesto's Mother; JOSE AGUSTIN - Mourning; Further Readings.
Pat McNees Mancini was born on January 30, 1940, in Riverside, CA, the daughter of Glenn Harold (an ironworker) and Eleanor (a bank teller; maiden name, McCoskrie). She worked at Harper & Row, New York, NY, as an assistant editor from 1963-66; Fawcett Publications, New York, NY, editor of "Fawcett Premier Books," 1966-70; freelance editor and writer, 1970 - ; Resource Planning Associates, Washington, DC, editorial associate, 1979-80; currently consultant in writing, editing, and public relations. Editor and rewriter for various New York City publishers, Washington, DC consulting firms, particularly those specializing in energy and economics, and for think tanks. Mancini is a member of American Society of Journalists and Authors, Association of Personal Historians, Authors Guild, PEN, Washington Independent Writers, Society of Professional Journalists, Society of Technical Communicators, Women's National Book Association.
‘The lucky discoverers of these splendid stories by Brazilian, Argentinian, Mexican, Colombian, Cuban, and Uruguayan writers will be struck by the sense of falling into other colorations, other tones, other themes, into a quality of strangeness and intensity not common in our own literature. Alberto Manguel has once again opened an unfrequented door behind which new arid stirring voices call.' - CYNTHIA OZICK . . . ‘I congratulate Alberto Manguel on this selection of stories. It demonstrates that Latin American women have their own vision of the world and know how to express it in their own personal, irreverent, furious, fantastic, ironic, and poetic language.' - ISABEL ALLENDE. CONTENTS: Foreword by Isabel Allende; Introduction; ARMONIA SOMERS-The Fall; RACHEL DE QUEIROZ-Metonymy, or The Husband's Revenge; MARTA LYNCH-Latin Lover; CLARICE LISPECTOR-The Imitation of the Rose; DINAH SILVEIRA DE QUEIROZ-Guidance; ALEJANDIA PIZARNIK-The Bloody Countess; ANGELINA QGORODISCHER- Man's Dwelling Place; VLADY KOCIANCICH-Knight, Death and the Devil; INES ARREDONDO-The Shunanmnite; ALBALUCIA ANGEL-The Guerrillero; AMPARO DAVILLA-Haute Cuisine; ELENA PONIATOWSKA-The Night Visitor; SILVINA OCAMPO-Two Reports; LILIANA HEKER-The Stolen Party; ELENA GARRO-It's the Fault of the Tlaxcaltecas; LYDIA FAQUNDES TELLES-Tigrela; BEATRIZ GUIDO-The Usurper; LYDIA CABRERA-How the Monkey Lost the Fruit of His Labor; ROSARIO CASTELLANOS-Death of the Tiger; The Authors. . ALBERTO MANGUEL was born in Buenos Aires and now lives and teaches in Toronto, Canada. His previous anthology, Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature, was widely praised as ‘uncommonly satisfying,' ‘exciting,' ‘compulsively entertaining,' and ‘superb.'
Alberto Manguel (born 1948 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine Canadian anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist and editor. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (co-written with Gianni Guadalupi in 1980), A History of Reading (1996), The Library at Night (2007) and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (2008); and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came (1991). Though almost all of Manguel's books were written in English, two of his novels (El regreso and Todos los hombres son mentirosos) were written in Spanish, and El regreso has not yet been published in English. Manguel has also written film criticism such as Bride of Frankenstein (1997) and collections of essays such as Into the Looking Glass Wood (1998). In 2007, Manguel was selected to be that year's annual lecturer for the prestigious Massey Lectures. For over twenty years, Manguel has edited a number of literary anthologies on a variety of themes or genres ranging from erotica and gay stories to fantastic literature and mysteries.
An anthology of 28 poets from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean . . . all speaking their deep hatred of capitalism for the humiliating economic deprivation and cultural domination it has inflicted on people of the Third World. The themes of anger and revolt, underlined by the urgency and anguish excluded people feel, produce poems of an intensity that at times becomes fearsome. For many readers this will be a first encounter with the poetic expression of South American militancy; and, while they will be moved by its beauty and compassion, neither will they soon forget its threats. The poets' revolt has literary aspects too: they have rejected obscure, difficult poetry, and have chosen an accessible, unadorned style. The translations bring the reader near the feeling on the original. INDICE/ CONTENTS: ARGENTINA - ENRIQUE MOLINA - Hue/ Hue; Informacion/ Information; Hueco nocturno/ Night Watch; JUAN GELMAN - Los ojos/ Eyes; Epocas/ Epochs; Argelia/ Algiers; Historia/ History; VICTOR GARCIA ROBLES - Sepa lo que pasa a lagrirna viva y con malas palabras/ Know Ye What Happens Amidst Copious Tears and with Four-Letter Words; BOLIVIA - PEDRO SHIMOSE - Sueno de una noche de verano/ A Midsummer Night's Dream; Epigrama pequenoburgues superacademi-correalista/ A Petty-Bourgeois Suracademicrealistic Epigram; El conde Dracula sale de inspeccion/ Count Dracula on an Inspection Tour; BRASIL - THIAGO DE MELLO - Os estatutos do homem/ The Statutes of Man; Canção do amor armado/ Song of Armed Love; CHILE - ENRIQUE LIHN - Europeos/Europeans; ANONIMO/ANONYMOUS - Bandos marciales/ Proclamations; COLOMBIA - ANONIMO/ANONYMOUS - Colombia masacrada/ Colombia Massacred; CUBA - NICOLAS GUILLÊN - Crecen altas las flores/ The Flowers Grow High; Tengo/ I Have; Angela Davis/ Angela Davis; Lectura de Domingo/ Sunday Reading; ROBERTO FERNÁNDEZ RETAMAR - Epitafio de un invasor/ Epitaph for an Invader; Es bueno recorder/We Do Well to Remember; Es mejor encender un cirio que maldecir la oscuridad/ It's Better to Light a Candle than to Curse the Darkness; Seria bueno merecer este epitafio/ It Would Be Nice to Deserve This Epitaph; DAVID FERNÁNDEZ CHERICIÁN - Seccion de anuncios clasificados/ Classified Section; Respecto del Tercer Mundo/ On the Third World; Una cancion de paz/ A Song of Peace; NANCY MOREJON - Los Aqueos/ The Achaeans; Freedom Now/ Freedom Now; DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/LA REPÜBLICA DOMINICANA PEDRO MIR - Amen de mariposas/ Amen to Butterflies; ECUADOR - JORGE ENRIQUE ADOUM - Condecoracion y ascenso/ Medals and Promotion; Pasadologia/ Pastology; EL SALVADOR - ROQUE DALTON - Sobre dolores de cabeza/ On Headaches; OEA/ OAS; Karl Marx/ Karl Marx; Dos guerrilleros griegos: un viejo y un traidor/ Two Greek Guerrillas: An Old Man and a Traitor; GUATEMALA - OTTO RENE CASTILLO - Informe de una justicia/ Report of an Injustice; Revolucion/ Revolution; lntelectuales apoliticos/ Apolitical Intellectuals; Viudo del mundo/ Widowed of the World; MARCO ANTONIO FLORES - De la carcel/ On Jail; De la madre/ Mother; Habana 59/Havana 59; HAITI - RENE DEPESTRE - Minerai noir/ Black Ore; Confession/ Confession; MEXICO - JUAN BANUELOS - En Vietnam las püas gotean nubes de corderos/ In Vietnam the Thorns Drip Clouds of Lambs; Perros/ Dogs; Fusil, hoja que conmueve a todo el árbol/ A Gun, the Leaf That Moves the Entire Tree; NICARAGUA - ERNESTO CARDENAL - Salmo 48/ Psalm 48; Salmo 36/ Psalm 36; Salmo 5/ Psalm 5; La hora cero/Zero Hour; ANONIMO/ANONYMOUS - La cortina del pals natal/ The Curtain of the Native Land; PERU - ANTONIO CISNEROS - Karl Marx Died 1883 Aged 65/ Karl Marx Died 1883 Aged 65; In Memoriam/ In Memoriam; Cronica de Chapi, 1965/ Chronicle of Chapi, 1965; ARTURO CORCUERA - Fábula de Tom y Jerry/ Tom and Jerry: A Fable; Fabula del Lobo Feroz/ Fierce Wolf: A Fable; Cow-boy y fabula de Buffalo Bill/ Cowboy and Fable of Buffalo Bill; JAVIER HERAUD - Alabanza de los dias destruccion y elogio de las sombras/ In Praise of Days Destruction and Eulogy to Darkness; Palabra de guerrillero/ A Guerrilla's Word; Arte poEtica/ Ars Poetica; PUERTO RICO - PEDRO PIETRI - Obituario puertorriqueno/ Puerto Rican Obituary; IVAN SILEN - Los he mandado a llamar/ I sent for you; Voy a escriber un poema/ I am going to write a poem; A veces estoy aburrido/ I am sometimes bored; IRIS M. ZAVALA - Duelo I/ Lament I; Nunca conocerE tu rostro/ I'll never know your face; Palabras y palabras/ Words words; URUGUAY - MARIO BENEDETTI - Con permiso/ With Your Permission; Holocausto/ Holocaust; Quemar las naves/ Burning the Ships; Contra los puentes levadizos/ Against Drawbridges; CARLOS MARIA GUTIERREZ - Condiciones objetivas/ Objective Conditions; 03: 15 AM / 4 degrees/3: 15 A.M,/.4 degrees; Cartilla civica/ Voting Instructions; Piedra blanca sobre piedra blanca/ White Stone on White Stone; VENEZUELA - EDMUNDO ARAY - Sin titulo/ Untitled; Siete y cincuenta y cinco/ Seven Fifty-Five; Esto leo a nii hija/ I Read This to My Daughter.
Translator, editor, essayist, and literary critic Roberto Marquez is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Mount Holyoke College. A Puerto Rican born and raised in Spanish Harlem, Márquez has traveled, lived, studied, and worked in various parts of Spain, South America, and the Caribbean, including Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, Cuba, Brazil, and Nicaragua. An alumnus of Bronx Community College Operation Second Chance Program, Márquez received his B.A. from Brandeis University in 1966 and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship for study in Peru (1966), he has also received National Endowment for the Humanities (1978–1979) and Tinker Foundation (1980–1981) Postdoctoral Fellowships, a Coordinating Council on Literary Magazines (CCLM) Editor's Fellowship Award for his work as founder-editor of Caliban: A Journal of New World Thought and Writing, and the Dorothy Blumenfeld Moyer Prize "for creative work in Languages and Literature" (1966). Professor Márquez has served on the board of advisory editors of theAmerican Quarterly, the advisory board of the Curbstone Press, the board of directors of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) (1981–1991), and on the editorial board of NACLA's Report on the Americas (1991–1996). He has served as a member of the advisory committee of the Clarence L. Holte Literary Prize, on the international jury for the Premio Casa de Las Americas, as a member of the editorial board of the Massachusetts Review, and as area coordinator of the Migrant Education Program of Middlesex County, Massachusetts. A member of the board of trustees of Hampshire College from 1988 to 1996 and now trustee emeritus, from 1993 to 1995 he was also on the board of the Girls Club, Inc., in Holyoke. He has also served (1994–2000) on the board of directors of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and is an associate editor of the University of Virginia Press's New World Studies Series. Recognized for the caliber of his many translations from the work of a wide variety of Latin American poets and writers and for his work in the field of Caribbean literary and cultural history, Márquez is the editor of several volumes of the poetry of Nicolás GuillEn, includingMy Last Name and Other Poems, The Great Zoo, Patria o Muerte: The Great Zoo and Other Poems, and, with D. A. McMurray, Man-Making Words: Selected Poems. Márquez is also editor of the bilingual anthology Latin American Revolutionary Poetry. His essays, reviews, and commentaries have appeared in a variety of publications both in the U.S. and abroad, including Sin nombre (Puerto Rico), Casa de Las Americas (Havana), Escritura (Venezuela), Jamaica Journal(Kingstown), West Indian Guide (Baltimore and The Hague), Anales del Caribe (Havana), Ideologies and Literature, Latin American Research Review, the New York Times Book Review, the Village Voice Literary Supplement, the Latino Review of Books, and the Latino/a Research Review.
With this new Latino literary collection Erika M. Martínez has brought together twenty-four engaging narratives written by Dominican women and women of Dominican descent living in the United States. The first volume of its kind, Daring to Write's insightful works offer readers a wide array of content that touches on a range of topics: migration, history, religion, race, class, gender, and sexuality. The result is a moving and imaginative critique of how these factors intersect and affect daily lives. The volume opens with a foreword by Julia Alvarez and includes short stories, novel excerpts, memoirs, and personal essays and features work by established writers such as Angie Cruz and Nelly Rosario, alongside works by emerging writers. Narratives originally written in Spanish appear in English for the first time, translated by Achy Obejas. An important contribution to Latino/a studies, these writings will introduce readers to a new collection of rich literature.
Erika M. Martínez was born in New Jersey to Dominican parents and lived many of her childhood years in Santo Domingo. She is the editor of the anthology, Daring to Write: Contemporary Narratives by Dominican Women. Recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a Hedgebrook Writing Residency, she holds an MFA in English and Creative Writing from Mills College in Oakland, CA where she currently resides. Her writing was adapted for the stage and has been featured in the anthologies, Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education; Homelands: Women's Journeys Across Race, Place and Time andSecond Sense of Place: The Washington State Geospatial Poetry Anthology. Her work has also recently appeared in Muthamagazine.com, Consequence Magazine, and the Afro-Hispanic Review, among other publications. She has taught creative writing in the Dominican Republic and works with the National Writing Project . She lives in Oakland, California.
The history of twentieth-century Puerto Rican poetry is one of ongoing controversy between generations of poets over poetics, culture, and the political destiny of their nation. It is a poetry born of two distinct literary traditions: the lyrical Hispanist-reformist tradition with its strong ties to European culture, and the Puerto Rican-separatist tradition with its stark anti-poetic vision of the island's past and present. Fusing the best of these divergent traditions in the modern Puerto Rican identity, Inventing a Word showcases a vital poetic heritage that encompasses both political reality and the lyrical imagination. The twenty-three poets in this bilingual anthology are at the forefront of both traditions, and include the ‘pure' poet Evaristo Ribera Chevremont; the metaphysical and Afro-Antillean poet Luis Pales Matos; Julia de Burgos, whose passionate writings alternate between total rebellion and total surrender; the younger poets who crusade against the purist aesthetic; and the poets of the post-war immigration, who write of the immigrant Puerto Rican's subjugation to the dominant North American culture. In the title poem, Vicente Rodriguez Nietzche writes: ‘Let us invent! letter by letter! the word we shall say when it happens.! A tender word! that will define us! with perfect seriousness.' With the majority of the translations rendered by Julio Marzan, and with additional translations by Rachel Benson, Grace Schulman, Carmen Valle, and Donald Walsh, Inventing a Word gives voice to the unique poetic vision of contemporary Puerto Rican culture.
JULIO MARZÁN, a poet and translator, is a member of the Department of Modern Languages at Fordham University.
‘To our knowledge, it is the first book to cover the entire range of Puerto Rican poetry from Luis Llorens Torres to Hugo Margenat, from Evaristo Ribera Chevremont to Pedro Pietri. It is also the first book to include both the works of writers who have developed revolutionary concepts of language and reality and the works of the more ‘pure' writers dating from before 1955. It is also the first volume to include poems that express the full range of the Puerto Rican's experience in New York - their anger, their will for struggle, their vision of their particular world, their sense of themselves as victims of a universal process of displacement, driven from their homeland to a strange metropolis.' - from the Prologue. Contributors - Luis Llorens Torres, Evaristo Ribera Chevremont, Juan Antonio Corretjer, Francisco Matos Paoli, Luis Pales Matos, Julia do Burgos, Hugo Margenat, Juan Sáez Burgos, Jose Maria Lima, Alfredo Matilla, Luis A. Rosario Quiles, Iris M. Zavala, Marina Arzola, Pedro Pietri, Jorge Maria Ruscalleda Bercedoniz, Angela Maria Dávila, Billy Cajigas, Ivan Silen, Edwin Reyes Berrios, Angel Luis Mendez, Felipe Luciano, Victor Hernández Cruz, Etnairis Rivera.
Alfredo Matilla was a scholar, poet and novelist who for 23 years was a professor in the University of Buffalo Department of American Studies, A UB faculty member from 1972-95 and chair of the Department of American Studies from 1991-95, at the time of his death Matilla was a professor of English and Spanish at the University of Puerto Rico. He was the well-established and critically recognized Latin-American author of several books, including a historical/biographical chronicle, "El Espanolito y el espia," cited by literary critics as one of the most important books of 1999 by a Latin-American author. At the time of his death, he was writing a sequel. He also was a nationally known poet and short-fiction writer and served as a producer, writer, actor and consultant for 15 short independent films. Among his edited works was a collection of theater criticism by his father, Alfred Matilla Jimeno, a classical musician who, along with Picasso and Pablo Casals, was a leading exile from Spain after the Spanish Civil War. His father later became a member of the faculty of the University of Puerto Rico and was a leading theater critic in Puerto Rico. Matilla was the co-founder and sub-director of the National Center for the Arts in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and served on the editorial board of several Latino and Chicano- or Hispano-American literary publications. Matilla often said he was Spanish by birth, Puerto Rican by choice. He earned his doctorate in Spanish literature magna cum laude in 1967 from New York University and held a master's degree from NYU and a bachelor's degree from the University of Puerto Rico, both cum laude. He joined UB after teaching briefly at Long Island University, Vassar College, Goucher College and Brooklyn College.He served UB as director of the graduate program in Puerto Rican studies and the Overseas Academic Program in Puerto Rico, chair and director of the graduate program of the Department of American Studies and adjunct professor of the Bilingual Program in the Graduate School of Education. He had been a member of the Committee on Hispanic Affairs in the State of New York and Western New York Hispanic Arts Advisory Council, co-founder of the Latin Artists' Coalition, contributing writer for the Western New York Spanish-language weekly "El Hispano," director of the Latino Theater Workshop, a volunteer weekly lecturer at Attica State Correctional Facility and instructor in the American Studies Master of Arts Program at Auburn Correctional Facility. He died March 29, 2001 in Puerto Rico. He was 63. Iván Silén.is a poet, storyteller and essayist. He has approached philosophy and through a neo-baroque exercise, he has begun to shake the bourgeois pseudo-consciousness of postmodernity thanks to a new gap in thought: silenism."
Originally published in Mexico in 1964 in two volumes under the title of El cuento hispano-americana, this is the only anthology of the Spanish American short story in any language that traces critically the development of the genre from its Romantic beginnings in the 1830s to its mature exuberance in the 1970s. Although there have been, literally, hundreds of Spanish American short story anthologies, very few of these anthologies include any truly critical analyses of the stories. In this selection of stories four equally important criteria were used: (1) significance in the development of the genre; (2) reflection of the prevailing literary movement; (3) reflection of the development of distinct national characteristics; and (4) outstanding quality as a work of art with universal value. It is rare to find stories that exemplify all four criteria. This anthology is structured according to the different literary movements that have marked the evolution of Spanish American literature from the 1830s on: Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, criollismo, Cosmopolitanism (Surrealism, Cubism, Magic Realism, and Existentialism), Neorealism, and the boom literature of the 1960s. Each movement is defined in terms of its general characteristics, its international origins, and its Spanish American variants. Each story is preceded by a short biographical sketch and followed by a critical analysis. Thus, the two main purposes of this anthology are to present in an orderly historical way the best examples of the Latin American short story and to propose by example a method of analyzing short stories which, hopefully, will result in a clearer interpretation and fuller appreciation of short stories that the reader may read now and in the future.
Seymour Menton (March 6, 1927 - March 8, 2014) was Chairman of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Irvine, and a recipient of the UCI Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for 1980. He has been widely published with over seventy-five articles and reviews on the Latin American novel and short story.
Originally published in Mexico in 1964 in two volumes under the title of El cuento hispano-americana, this is the only anthology of the Spanish American short story in any language that traces critically the development of the genre from its Romantic beginnings in the 1830s to its mature exuberance in the 1970s. Although there have been, literally, hundreds of Spanish American short story anthologies, very few of these anthologies include any truly critical analyses of the stories. In this selection of stories four equally important criteria were used: (1) significance in the development of the genre; (2) reflection of the prevailing literary movement; (3) reflection of the development of distinct national characteristics; and (4) outstanding quality as a work of art with universal value. It is rare to find stories that exemplify all four criteria. This anthology is structured according to the different literary movements that have marked the evolution of Spanish American literature from the 1830s on: Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, criollismo, Cosmopolitanism (Surrealism, Cubism, Magic Realism, and Existentialism), Neorealism, and the boom literature of the 1960s. Each movement is defined in terms of its general characteristics, its international origins, and its Spanish American variants. Each story is preceded by a short biographical sketch and followed by a critical analysis. Thus, the two main purposes of this anthology are to present in an orderly historical way the best examples of the Latin American short story and to propose by example a method of analyzing short stories which, hopefully, will result in a clearer interpretation and fuller appreciation of short stories that the reader may read now and in the future. . .
Seymour Menton (March 6, 1927 - March 8, 2014) was Chairman of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Irvine, and a recipient of the UCI Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for 1980. He has been widely published with over seventy-five articles and reviews on the Latin American novel and short story.
Since the 1960s contemporary Latin American literature has enjoyed widespread popularity and critical acclaim. Today such names as Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among others, are known to countless readers throughout the world. For more than a century Latin American writers have been preoccupied with defining a Latin American identity, but since 1960 this concern has taken on greater urgency and richer texture. New voices, particularly those of women writers, have contributed to the ongoing dialogue. These thoughtfully assembled writings by many of Latin America's finest authors bear first-person witness to the personal, social, and political situation of the writer and of literature in Latin America. At different times ironic, impassioned, humorous, reflective, autobiographical, polemical, and always vivid and engaging, they acquaint us with the individual and collective experience of various writers, all of whom have sought a creative confrontation through writing with their history and the realities of daily life. This collection of writings is indispensable to a full appreciation of the achievement of twentieth-century Latin American literature. Some of the thirty pieces presented here were written expressly for this volume; others have been translated for the first time. The translations themselves, all done by accomplished hands, make this volume as easy as it is rewarding to read. ‘The authors in this collection run a broad gamut of the outstanding writers; it is a stellar gathering and what they have to say will be important if only because they are the ones saying it. Not only will it be of interest to those who have no Spanish, but even for those who could read these authors in the original it will be of great value because here they are all under one roof.' - GREGORY RABASSA, Queens College. CONTENTS: Acknowledgments; Doris Meyer INTRODUCTION; Jorge Luis Borges MATURITY; Alejo Carpentier LITERATURE AND POLITICAL AWARENESS IN LATIN AMERICA; Clarice Lispector SINCE ONE FEELS OBLIGED TO WRITE. . .; Pablo Neruda MY FIRST BOOKS; Miguel Angel Asturias QUESTIONS AND REALITIES; Victoria Ocampo WOMAN'S PAST AND PRESENT; Guillermo Cabrera Infante ENGLISH PROFANITIES; Julio Cortázar LETTER TO ROBERTO FERNANDEZ RETAMAR; Rosario Castellanos EARLY WRITINGS; Heberto Padilla AFTERWORD; Nicolás GuillEn WORDS OF GREETING; Carlos Fuentes CENTRAL AND ECCENTRIC WRITING; Mario Vargas Llosa SOCIAL COMMITMENT AND THE LATIN AMERICAN WRITER; Elena Poniatowska AND HERE'S TO YOU, JESUSA; LEdo Ivo To WRITE IS NOT TO LIVE; Octavio Paz THE TELLTALE MIRROR; Jose Donoso ITHACA: THE IMPOSSIBLE RETURN; NElida Piñon THE MYTH OF CREATION; Ernesto Cardenal CLOSING ADDRESS; Rosario FerrE THE WRITER'S KITCHEN; Gabriel Garcia Márquez THE SOLITUDE OF LATIN AMERICA; Isabel Allende THE SPIRITS WERE WILLING; Manuel Scorza LIST OF ERRATA; Antonio Skármeta A GENERATION ON THE MOVE; Lygia Fagundes Telles THE TRUTH OF INVENTION; Augusto Roa Bastos WRITING: A METAPHOR FOR EXILE; Pablo Antonio Cuadra POETRY AND THE TEMPTATIONS OF POWER; Luisa Valenzuela A LEGACY OF POETS AND CANNIBALS: LITERATURE REVIVES IN ARGENTINA; Isaac Goldemberg ON BEING A WRITER IN PERU AND OTHER PLACES; Claribel Alegria THE WRITER'S COMMITMENT; SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Doris Meyer is Professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College. She is the author of Victoria Ocampo: Against the Wind and Tide, and numerous articles on Hispanic literature. She is also the co-editor of the two-volume Contemporary Women Authors of Latin America: Introductory Essays and New Translations.
The introduction. (pp. 9-16) includes a reading list of works in English translation. Also included are biographical sketches of the authors (pp. 410-414) and indices of authors, titles, and translators. The text is designed for high school use, with discussion questions and ample notes. Book divided into Spanish and Spanish American sections. Short stories by: Ciro Alegria (Peru), Armando Arriaza (pseud. Hermes Nahuel] (Chile), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Jesus del Corral (Colombia), Juan Carlos Dávalos (Argentina), Marco Denevi (Argentina), Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), Gabriel Garcia Márquez (Colombia), Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay), Luis Tablanca [Enrique Pardo Farelo] (Colombia), Jose Vasconcelos (Mexico). Poems (2 to 6) by: Jorge Carrera Andrade (Ecuador), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Pablo Antonio Cuadra (Nicaragua), Gaston Figueira (Uruguay), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Pablo Neruda (Chile) (with one essay], Alfonsina Storni (Argentina), 'CEsar Tiempo' (Israel Zeitlin] (Argentina), Fernán Silva ValdEs (Uruguay), CEsar Vallejo (Peru). Includes short story by Brazilian Jose Bento Monteiro Lobato.
The most extensive (although dated) source of Panamanian short fiction. Selections by: Guillermo Andreve, Julio Arjona, Lucas Bárcena, M. Francisco Carrasco, R. E. J. Castilleros, MoisEs Castillo, Elida L. C. de Crespo, Jose Huerta, Samuel Lewis, Santiago McKay ('Fray Rodrigo'), Octavio MEndez Pereira, Salomôn Ponce Aguilera, Graciela Rojas Sucre, Nacho ValdEs.
A contact bomb, a volcano ready to erupt' describes not only Central America today but - in the conception of its editors - this anthology of contraband poetry. The poems themselves were often copied by hand and smuggled into Mexico, from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. In all those countries, except Nicaragua, this poetry is banned. The thirty -nine poets represented here give potent voice to the struggles of their peoples under the crushing oppression of life ‘under the volcano' in these war - stunned lands. Many of these women and men have been jailed, exiled, killed, or otherwise made to disappear. Still they here survive in these faithful and sensitive translations by a new literary underground in North America. CONTENTS - Notes on the Poets; Translators; Introduction; EL SALVADOR - Mercedes Durand - They Fell on the Stairway; Mercedes Durand - Requiem for the Sumpul; Jaime Suárez Quemain - The Dictators; Jaime Suárez Quemain - A Collective Shot; Lil Milagro Ramirez - Awakening; Ricardo Castorrivas - Bitter Sonnet to a Cup of Coffee; Ricardo Castorrivas - Consecration of the Corn Tortilla; Alfonso Quijada Urias - Before Death; Alfonso Quijada Urias - Chronicle; Claribel Alegria - Everything is Normal in Our Courtyard; Roberto Armijo - To Patrice Lumumba; Tirso Canales - City of San Salvador; Tirso Canales - Nocturne for Freedom; Roque Dalton - Towards a Better Love; Roque Dalton - Jubilant Poem; Roque Dalton - Poem of Love; Roque Dalton - Act; GUATEMALA - Otto RenE Castillo - Prayer for the Soul of My Country; Otto RenE Castillo - October; Mario Payeras - Tamborillo; Francisco Morales Santos - The Great Figure; Delia Quinonez - March, Vigilant Fire; Rafael Sosa - Guatemalan Huipil; Jose Luis Villatoro - Elegy for the Young Corpse; Marco Antonio Flores - Quiche Warrior; Maria de los Angeles Ruano - The Corpse; Roberto Obregon - The Fears; Roberto Obregon - That Sleepless Flame; Clementina Suárez - Combat; Rigoberto Paredes - Salon Chronicle; Rigoberto Paredes - Memorial; Jose Luis Quesada - The Incurable Love; Walter Martinez - Oil Painting; Roberto Sosa - Freehand Sketch; Roberto Sosa - The Poor; Roberto Sosa - The Other Death; NIGARAGUA - Ernesto Mejia Sanchez - The Death of Somoza; Carlos Martinez Rivas - Port Morazan; Leonel Rugama - The Houses Were Left Full of Smoke; Carlos Rigby - If I Were May; Fanor Tellez - Miss Babian Tending Bar on the Atlantic Coast; Ivan Uriarte - Rama; Ivan Uriarte - Pier; David Macfield - Black is Black; Gaspar Garcia Laviana - Meditations on the Lake; Gaspar Garcia Laviana - For the Land Barons; Vidaluz Meneses - Cachikel Woman; Carlos Jose Guadamuz - A Flower; Roberto Vargas - Chile; Daisy Zamora - When We Return; Daisy Zamora - Letter to a Sister Who Lives in a Distant Country; Giaconda Belli - Obligations of the Poet; Giaconda Belli - Strike; Giaconda Belli - Free Country, July 1979; Rosário Murillo - Christmas Carol; Rosário Murillo - Song of Wandering Times; Rosário Murillo - I'm Going to Plant a Heart on the Earth; Ernesto Cardenal - Ecology; Ernesto Cardenal - Vision from the Small Blue Window; Jose Coronel Urtecho - The Past Will Not Return. THE POETS: CLARIBEL ALEGRIA - recipient of Casa de las Americas prize for Sobrevivo (1978); other books - Via Unica and Aprendizaje; ROBERTO ARMIJO - belongs to Grupo de los Cinco; has published Seis Elegias y un Poema; GIACONDA BELLI - author of Linea de Fuego, (Casa de las AmEricas prize, 1978) and Truenos y Arco Iris; TIRSO CANALES - imprisoned fourteen times, wrote DespuEs de los Sentidos; ERNESTO CARDENAL - priest and former Nicaraguan Minister of Culture whose books have been translated into many languages; among them are Homenaje a los Indios Americanos and Nostalgia del Futuro; JOSE ADAN CASTELAR - (affiliated with El Dia in Tegucigalpa and a member of La Voz Convocada; OTTO-RENE CASTILLO - guerrilla poet; exiled in Eastern Europe, killed in Guatemala in 1967. Among his books - Vamonos Patria a Caminar and Tecun Uman; RICARDO CASTORRIVAS - member of Grupo de los Cinco; ROQUE DALTON - essayist, novelist, poet, and guerrilla, killed in 1975. His books include El Turno del Ofendido, Taberna y Otros Lugares, and Poemas Clandestinos; MERCEDES DURAND - exiled to Mexico, recently published Las Manos y los Siglos and A Sangre y Fuego; MARCO ANTONIO FLORES - poet, novelist and theater director; his books - Los Companeros, and Muros de Luz; CARLOS JOSE GUADAMUZ - guerrilla poet; was imprisoned for many years; GASPAR GARCIA LAVIANA - priest and guerrilla commander, killed in 1978; his Cantos de Amor y Guerra was published posthumously; WALTER MARTINEZ - published Ascencions in San Francisco, 1972; DAVID MACFIELD - was formerly the Nicaraguan Ambassador to several African nations; his books - En la Calle de en Medio and Poemas para el Alto del Elefante; VIDALUZ MENESES - Director of The Library and Archives, Nicaraguan Ministry of Culture; her books - Llama Guardada and El Aire Que Me Llama; ROSARIO MURILLO - Secretary-General of the Association of Sandinista Cultural Workers; her books - Gualtayan and Un Deber de Cantar; ROBERTO OBREGoN, author of five books, including El Fuego Perdido, was captured and disappeared along the Guatemala/El Salvador border in 1976; MARIO PAYERAS - his testimonial book on the guerrilla - Los Dias de la Selva -was awarded Casa de las Americas prize, 1968; JAIME SUÁREZ QUEMAIN -journalist and poet, kidnapped and assassinated in 1981; JOSE LUIS QUESADA - belongs to La Voz Convocada; DELIA QUINoNEZ - member of the group Nuevo Signo; her Barro Pleno recently published; LIL MILAGRO RAMIREZ - her poetry has appeared in Ventana; CARLOS RIGBY - works with the Center of Popular Culture in Bluefields; CARLOS MARTINEZ RIVAS - author of the classic La Insurrection Solitaria (1953); LEONEL RUGAMA - ex-seminarist guerrilla, killed at age twenty-one; his book Leonel Rugama Poemas published posthumously; MARIA DE LOS ANGELES RUANO - resident of Mexico, a student of Leon Felipe; she has recently published El Silencio Cerrado; FRANCISCO MORALES SANTOS - guerrilla and poet; ERNESTO MEJIA SANCHEZ -taught in Mexico for many years; his books - Ensalmos y Conjuros and La Carne Contigua; RAFAEL SOSA - author of Son de Pasos and Esbezo de Nidos, exiled from Guatemala since 1954; ROBERTO SOSA -received Casa de las Americas prize in 1976 for Un Mundo Para Todos Divido; CLEMENTINA SUÁREZ - grande dame of Honduran poetry; her books - Templo de Fuego and Iniciales; FANOR TELLEZ - author of Bluefields de la Vida Hurtada; ALFONSO QUIJADA URIAS - member of Grupo de los Cinco and author of Sagradas Escrituras; IVAN URIARTE - writes short stories as well as poems (Poemas Atlanticos and Este Que Habla). JOSE CORONEL URTECHO - one of the founders of the Vanguard Movement; among his books - Pol-la D'Anant a Katanta Paranta and Rapido Transito; ROBERTO VARGAS - Nicaragua's First Secretary in the Washington, D.C. Embassy; his books - Primeros Cantos, and Nicaragua Yo Te Canto Besos, Balas y Suenos de Libertad; JOSE LUIS VILLATORO - published Pedro a Secas and Canta Registrado; DAISY ZAMORA -a psychologist and poet -La Violenta Espuma. TRANSLATORS: Francisco K. Alarcon; Wilfredo Castano; Magaly Fernández; Cecilia Guidos; Juan Felipe Herrera; Jack Hirschman; Walter Martinez; Alejandro Murguia; Barbara Paschke; Tina Alvarez Robles; Toni Ryan; David Volpendesta.
Alejandro Murguía was born in California, but raised in Mexico City. His experiences as an international volunteer in the Nicaraguan Insurrection of 1979 are recounted in his second collection of short stories Southern Front (American Book Award,1991). He lives in San Francisco, where he teaches Latin American literature at San Francisco State University. He was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 2012.
Good selections from representative modern poets. Designed for the sophisticated and discerning reader. Includes introductions and bibliographical sketches of the poets. Selections by: Mario de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Menotti Del Picchia, Guilherme de Almeida, Sergio Milliet, Ronald de Carvalho, Manuel Bandeira, Cassiano Ricardo, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Augusto Meyer, Jorge de Lima, Cecilia Meireles, Vinicius de Moraes, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Pericles Eugenio de Silva Ramos, Máiro Faustino Lindolf Bell, Neide Archanjo, MariajosE de Carvalho.
José Menache Neistein, Ph. D (1934-2020) was born in São Paulo, Brazil in a Jewish immigrant family. He was an intellectual and appreciator of different artistic and cultural fields, performing throughout his life activities as a critic, teacher, curator, cultural attaché, lecturer and art collector. Residing in the United States from 1970 to 2020, Neistein was invited by the Itamaraty to occupy the position of Cultural Attaché at the Brazilian Embassy as Executive-Director of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute (BACI) in Washington D.C. During the same period, Prof. Neistein was also a Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a Contributing Editor for the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress.
This selection of poems was made from a number of published works and they have been selected to show the width of his vision and interests and the depth of his understanding; they have never appeared in English before. . Antonio Olinto, the Brazilian poet, novelist and literary critic, has already had one of his novels, The Water House, published in English and Spanish (a French version will be published in 1973). During the last fourteen years Senhor Olinto has published five volumes of literary criticism, studies ranging from the Victorian novelists to modern writers such as Lawrence, Orwell and Graham Greene.
Antônio Olinto Marques da Rocha (May 10, 1919 - September 12, 2009) was a Brazilian writer, essayist and translator. Among his work are included poetry, novels, literary criticism, political analysis, children's literature and dictionaries. He occupied the 8th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1997 until his death in 2009. The translator, Jean McQuillen, lived for some time in Brazil and has a thorough knowledge of contemporary Brazilian literature.
RARE AND COMMONPLACE FLOWERS (a Brazilian best-seller) tells the story of two women. Elizabeth Bishop, the Pulitzer Prize - winning American poet, sought artistic inspiration in Brazil. There she met and fell in love with Lota de Macedo Soares, a self-trained Brazilian architect. This dual biography - brilliantly researched, and written in a lively, novelistic style - follows their relationship from 1951 to 1967, the time when the two lived together in Brazil. The fact that these two women had an intimate relationship caused an uproar when it first came to public notice. The relationship started out happily, yet ended tragically In 1961, Soares became increasingly obsessed with building and administering Flamengo Park, Rio de Janeiro's equivalent to New York City's Central Park. Though she had been the driving force behind the park's inception, the ultimate credit that was due her was stripped away because of petty politics and chicanery As Soares's career declined and Bishop's flourished, their relationship crumbled. RARE AND COMMONPLACE FLOWERS is a tale of two artists and two cultures, offering unique perspectives on both women and their work. Carmen L. Oliveira provides an unparalleled level of detail and insight, due to both her familiarity with Brazil, as well as her access to the country's artistic elite, many of whom had a direct connection with Bishop and Soares. Rare pictures of the two artists and their home bring this unique story to life.
CARMEN L. OLIVEIRA is a Brazilian novelist. Neil K. Besner is a professor in the English department at the University of Winnipeg in Canada.
Well chosen and translated plays, with an introduction. on social conditions which influence contemporary Latin American dramatists. Included are: Emilio Carballido (Mexico), The day they let the lions loose (El dia que se soltaron los leones, 1957); Griselda Gambaro (Argentina), The camp (El campo, 1967); Carlos Maggi (Uruguay), The library (La biblioteca, 1959); Enrique Buenaventura (Colombia), In the right hand of God the Father (En la diestra de Dios Padre, 1960); Luisa Josefina Hernández (Mexico), The mulatto's orgy (1966); Sergio Vodânovic (Chile), Vina: Three beach plays (Viña, 1964).
William I. Oliver (1926-1995) was a Professor of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a scholar, director, playwright, and translator. Oliver was born in Panama City, Nov. 6, 1926, the son of Methodist teaching missionaries, Walter and Anna Skow Oliver. He was educated at Methodist schools in Panama City and the Canal Zone. During the second World War, since he was equally fluent in Spanish and English, he served there as a translator in the U.S. Navy. In 1946, he left the Canal Zone and entered the theatre department of the Carnegie Institute of Technology's School of Fine Arts in Pittsburgh to study acting. He played two summer seasons at Woodstock, N.Y., opposite such stars as Lillian Gish. In 1950, he married a fellow drama student, Barbara Marsh, and together they moved to North Dakota to head the Fargo/Moorhead Community Players. In 1953, the Olivers left North Dakota for Cornell University, where he studied for the Ph.D. For his doctoral dissertation he translated and wrote critical assessments of Federico Garcia Lorca and Lope de Vega. He joined the faculty of the Department of Dramatic Art at Berkeley in 1958 and served as a teacher, director and administrator until his retirement in 1991. He taught stage direction, dramatic literature and criticism in classes that were distinguished by his lively and inquiring mind. His work as a stage director with departmental students included many memorable productions, among them Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Faire, the Jacobean melodrama The Changeling (with a young Stacy Keach), Hamlet, Peer Gynt, Danton's Death, e. e. cummings' him, Sartre's The Devil and the Good Lord, O'Neill's Ah Wilderness!, and Giraudoux's Electra. The wide range of his play selection was increased as he worked in the popular UC summer theatre, The Old Chestnut Drama Guild, where he directed standard classics as Noel Coward's Fallen Angels, Clarence Day's Life with Father, Pinero's The Amazons, and Philip Barry's Holiday and The Animal-Kingdom. His directorial energies were often employed beyond the university theatre. He staged short plays for San Francisco's One-Act Theatre Company and for Berkeley's Aurora Theatre, where he also appeared as an actor, playing with Barbara Oliver in The Gin Game. In both Latin and South American companies, his talents as a critic and as a stage director are well-known. In 1966, he traveled to Santiago, Chile, where he taught at the University of Chile and directed ITUCH, the national theatre in the Chilean premiere of Peter Weiss' Marat-Sade. In Mexico City in 1974, in addition to classes at the School of Fine Arts, he directed Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde. He went three times to Costa Rica, where he both taught and staged productions, including Wilder's The Skin of our Teeth, Euripides' Orestes, and Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. During his fourth visit, he was preparing Albee's Seascape in his own translation. He was for several years a judge and critic at the prestigious El Paso Chamizal Festival of Golden Age Theatre, and in 1991, he was invited to present a paper in Cadiz at the first conference on educational theatre to be held in Spain. As a translator, he was prolific, moving plays and novels and works of criticism from and to Spanish with ease. As a dramatist, he was the author of a trilogy on Spanish themes, The Antifarce of Sir John and Leporello, The Masks of Barbara Blomberg, and Dumbshows of the King. The first two were premiered at Berkeley, the third was published in Spanish in a special edition, commemorative of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage.
These intensely personal and intimate reflections on human sexuality in all its variations - heterosexuality and homosexuality, homoeroticism and autoeroticism - trace the erotic thread back to the final decade of the I 7th century. The quest for power and control over ones sexuality and the freedom to explore erotic fantasies are themes which gradually progress from veiled allusions to frank expression in the candid and direct writing contemporary authors. Included in this anthology are Isabel Allende, Luisa Valenzuela, Cristina Peri Rossi, Silvina Ocampo, Elena Poniatowska, Alejandra Pizarnik, Ana Lydia Vega, Celicia Vicuna, and others. CONTENTS: Preface by MARJORIE AGOSIN; Song of the Chalco Women; Introduction; DELMIRA AGUSTINA (Uruguay) - Another Race; The Goblet of Love; Intimate; Defeating the Jungle; JULIA DE BURGOS (Puerto Rico) - Harmony of Word and Instinct; Rio Grande de Loiza; CLEMENTINA SUAREZ (Honduras) - Sex; VI; Conjugation; CARILDA OLIVER LABRA (Cuba) - I Can't Help It, My Love, I Can't Help It; Eve's Discourse; MARIA LUISA BOMBAL (Chile) - Excerpt from THE LAST MIST; BEATRIZ GUIDO (Argentina) - Excerpt from THE HOUSE OF THE ANGEL; SILVINA OCAMPO (Argentina) - Albino Orma; ROSARIO CASTELLANOS (Mexico) - On the Edge of Pleasure; Nymphomania; MARIA LUISA MENDOZA (Mexico) - Excerpt from AUSENCIA'S TALE; Alejandra Pizarnik (Argentina) - Words; The Lady Buccaneer of Pernambuco Or Hilda The Polygraph; The Bloody Countess; In This Night, In This World; Death and the Young Woman (Schubert); ELENA PONIATOWSKA (Mexico) - Happiness; ILKE BRUNHILDE LAURITO (Brazil) - Genetrix I; Genetrix III; Genetrix V; Genetrix VI; LUISA VALENZUELA (Argentina) - Dirty Words; Excerpt from THE EFFICACIOUS CAT: The Fucking Game; ROSARIO FERRE (Puerto Rico) - Rice and Milk; Fable of the Bled Heron; MARJORIE AGOSIN (United States/Chile) - My Stomach; What We Are; Penis; CRISTINA PERI ROSSI (Uruguay) - The Witness; Ca Foscari; RENATA PALIOTINI (Brazil) - Woman Sitting on the Sand; A Message from Summer; My Pleasure; Cruel Testimony No. 2; ALBALUCIA ANGEL (Colombia) - Excerpt from THE SPOTTED BIRD PERCHED HIGH ABOVE UPON THE TALL GREEN LEMON TREE; CECILIA VICUÑA (Chile) Beloved Friend; GIOCONDA BELLI (Nicaragua) - On This Sunday's Painful Loneliness; ISABEL ALLENDE (Chile) - Excerpt from THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS; EUNICE ARRUDA (Brazil) Theme II; Theme III; LEILA MICCOLIS (Brazil) - Third Poem For My Lover; Illusion; Beyond Death; ANA LYDIA VEGA (Puerto Rico) - Lyrics For a Salsa and Three Soneos By Request; ROSAMARIA ROFFIEL (Mexico) - Gioconda; Excerpt from AMORA; NEMIR MATOS (Puerto Rico) - I Soar On the Wings; MATILDE DAVIU (Venezuela) - The Woman Who Tore Up the World; CHELY LIMA (Cuba) - Carnal Inventory; ANA ISTARU (Costa Rica) - III; XI; XII; XVI; XVII; XIX; XX; DAINA CHAVIANO (Cuba) - Erotica I; Memo For Freud; Erotica IV; PIA BARROS (Chile) - Foreshadowing of a Trace; A Smell of Wood and of Silence; ANGELA HERNANDEZ (Dominican Republic) - How to Gather the Shadows of the Flowers; Biographical Notes; Bibliography of Original Works in Spanish and Portuguese. . Marguerite Fernandez Olmos is professor of Spanish at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship and a Post-doctoral Fellow of the National Research Council, she has lived and studied in Europe and Latin America. Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert is associate professor in the department of Hispanic Studies at Vassar College. She is the co-editor of GREEN CANE AND JUICY FLOTSAM: SHORT STORIES BY CARIBBEAN WOMEN. . .
Margarite Fernández Olmos is a professor of Spanish and Latin American literatures at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She is the author/coeditor of many books, including The Latino Reader: An American Literary Tradition from 1542 to the Present. Lisa Paravisini-Gebert works in the fields of literature and cultural studies, specializing in the multidisciplinary, comparative study of the Caribbean. Growing up in her native Puerto Rico, she became fascinated by the many cultural connections between Caribbean peoples despite our different histories and languages and has made that the subject of her research and teaching.
Twenty-five diverse stories, all written after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, reflect both the unique and colorful culture of the islands and the social changes that provided the impetus to search for the lost harmony of Caribbean and Latin American culture. Although the perception is that the Spanish-language islands are separated not only linguistically but culturally from their Antillean neighbors, their mutual histories - European colonialism, African Slavery, plantation economies, and massive migrations - reveal the error of that assumption. These imaginative stories paint a vivid picture of the Hispanic Caribbean and of its people - both those who remained there and those who left. CONTENTS: Introduction; Acknowledgements; Truffle Hunters - Humberto Arenal; Black Alleluia - Luis Rafael Sanchez; Now That I'm Back, Tom - RenE del Risco Bermudez; The Fire - Hilma Contreras; Mambru Did Not Go To War - Aida Cartagena Portalatin; The Path to the Ministry - Marcio Veloz Maggiolo; The Marked One - Norberto Fuentes; Delicatessen - Miguel Alfonseca; Sad Though Brief the Rituals - Tomás Lopez Ramirez; After the Hurricane - Edgardo Sanabria Santaliz; Lulu or the Metamorphosis - Jose Alcántara Almánzar; Colonel Bum Vivant - Rosario FerrE; This Noise Was Different - Olga Nolla; Requiem For A Wreathless Corpse - Pedro Peix; Emilio's Visitations - Reinaldo Montero; Lillianne's Sunday - Ana Lydia Vega; The Blind Buffalo - Mirta Yanez; Public Declaration of Love - Soledad Cruz; Fritters and Moons - Magali Garcia Ramis; Corinne, Amiable Girl - Mayra Montero; Under the Weeping Willow - Senel Paz; Gnawing On A Rose - Angela Hernandez; Silvia - Veronica Lopez Konina; How Do You Know, Vivian? - Luis Manuel Garcia; Tosca - Abilio Esteves; Biographical Notes.
Margarite Fernández Olmos is a professor of Spanish and Latin American literatures at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She is the author/coeditor of many books, including The Latino Reader: An American Literary Tradition from 1542 to the Present. Lisa Paravisini-Gebert works in the fields of literature and cultural studies, specializing in the multidisciplinary, comparative study of the Caribbean. Growing up in her native Puerto Rico, she became fascinated by the many cultural connections between Caribbean peoples despite our different histories and languages and has made that the subject of her research and teaching.
Brief selections of twentieth-century writers. The essays deal primarily with aspects of Latin American culture. Selections of prose fiction by: Juan Pablo Echaque (Argentina), Manuel Gonzalez Zeledon (Costa Rica), Virgilio Diaz Ordoñez (Dominican Republic), Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes (Mexico), Ricardo Palma (Peru), Julián Padron (Venezuela). Poetry selections by: Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina), Gabniela Mistral (Chile), Rafael Pombo (Colombia), Jose Asuncion Silva (Colombia), Guillermo Valencia (Colombia), Enrique Gonzalez Martinez (Mexico), Amado Nervo (Mexico), Justo Sierra (Mexico), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Jose Santos Chocano (Peru), Gaston Figueira (Uruguay), Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay), Juana de Ibarbourou (Uruguay), AndrEs Bello (Venezuela). Essays by: German Arciniegas (Colombia), Antonio Gomez Restrepo (Colombia), Jose Gabriel Navarro (Ecuador), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Ricardo Joaquin Alfaro (Peru), Jorge Basadre (Peru), Hector David Castro (El Salvador), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Carlos Acuna (Bolivia), F. Castillo Nájera (Mexico), Luisa Luisi (Uruguay).
Pan-American Union was an organization formed in 1890 to promote cooperation among the countries of Latin America and the U.S. It was established (as the International Union of American Republics) at the first Pan-American conference, which was called by U.S. secretary of state James Blaine in order to reach agreements on various common commercial and juridical problems among the countries of the Americas. In 1948 it was reconstituted as the Organization of American States.
Mostly reprints from the Bulletin of the Pan American Union. Various translators. Short selections from mostly romantic and modernist writers. Not particularly representative of their best production. Prose selections (fiction, descriptive prose, essays) by: Jose S. Alvarez (Argentina), Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina), Gabriel RenE-Moreno (Bolivia), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Daniel Samper Ortega (Colombia), Manuel Gonzalez Zeledon (Costa Rica), Jose Marti (Cuba), Pedro Henriquez Ureña (Dominican Republic), Juan Montalvo (Ecuador), Arturo Ambrogi (El Salvador), Jose Rodriguez Cerna (Guatemala), Marco Aurelio Soto (Honduras), Genaro Estrada (Mexico), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Ricardo J. Alfaro (Panama), Pablo Alborno (Paraguay), Jose Gálvez (Peru), Ricardo Palma (Peru), Juan Zorrilla de San Martin (Uruguay), Teresa de la Parra (Venezuela). Poems by: Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina), Jose Asuncion Silva (Colombia), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Guillermo Valencia (Colombia), Amado Nervo (Mexico), Alfredo Gomez Jaime (Colombia), Luis G. Urbina (Mexico), Ricardo Palma (Peru), Osvaldo Bazil (Dominican Republic), Rufino Blanco Fombona (Venezuela), Jose Maria Heredia (Cuba), Enrique Gonzalez Martinez (Mexico), Jose Santos Chocano (Peru), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Antonio Nicolãs Blanco (Puerto Rico), Juana de Ibarbourou (Uruguay), Rafael Pombo (Colombia), Juan Zorrilla de San Martin (Uruguay), Sor Juana InEs de la Cruz (Mexico).
Pan-American Union was an organization formed in 1890 to promote cooperation among the countries of Latin America and the U.S. It was established (as the International Union of American Republics) at the first Pan-American conference, which was called by U.S. secretary of state James Blaine in order to reach agreements on various common commercial and juridical problems among the countries of the Americas. In 1948 it was reconstituted as the Organization of American States.
Part of a tradition of innovative writing by Brazilian women begun by Clarice Lispector, Helena Parente Cunha's award-winning WOMAN BETWEEN MIRRORS (Mulher no espelho, 1983) explores new directions in feminist thought and novelistic construction. The novel revolves around an unusual image. The protagonist stands before a three-way mirror, considering alternative possible identities just as she views alternative images reflected endlessly in the mirrors. She carries on a dialogue with ‘the woman who writes me,' astonishing her by rejecting the oppressed housewife role that ‘the woman who writes me' has assigned her. Indeed, as the novel progresses, the protagonist moves toward full self-realization, reincorporating all those exotic and erotic elements that both she and ‘the woman who writes me' had denied. Using this innovative narrative technique, Parente Cunha's feminist explorations blossom into a satisfying work of literary art. Celebrating the restoration of all things denied, she also uses African elements as symbols of liberation, thereby embracing Brazil's African heritage. ‘This novel, at the very least a tour de force for the reader, is an exam pie of the very contemporary women's writing in Brazil. . . . The translators have succeeded in maintaining the seductive and often hypnotizing tone achieved quite well by Parente Cunha.' - Carmen C. McClendon, Sandy Beaver Teaching Professor of Romance Languages, University of Georgia .
A successful poet and short story writer as well as novelist, Helena Parente Cunha is professor of literary theory at the Universidade Federal in Rio de Janeiro. The translators, Fred P. Ellison and Naomi Lindstrom, are professor and associate professor, respectively, in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin.
An important anthology of writing by Latin American women. CONTENTS: THEY WON'T DROWN MY FIRE: TESTIMONY - Rigoberta Menchü (GUATEMALA) Things Have Happened to Me as in a Movie; Mercedes Sosa (ARGENTINA) Forced Exile; Ana Guadalupe Martinez (EL SALVADOR) Secret Prisons of El Salvador; Gloria Bonilla (EL SALVADOR) Talking; Domitila Barrios de Chungara (BOLIVIA) Two Deaths; The Russell Tribunal; Then Who Died. . . ?; Maria Tila Uribe (COLOMBIA) Notes from Inside; Women and Prison; America Sosa (EL SALVADOR) A Mothers Testimony; Irene Martinez (ARGENTINA) A Visit to My Mother; II. THE THAT STORY BURNING INSIDE. . . : NARRATIVE - Marjorie Agosin (CHILE) The Blue Teacups; Luisa Valenzuela (ARGENTINA) On the Way to the Ministry; Alicia Dujovrie Ortiz (ARGENTINA) Courage or Cowardice?; Cristina Pen Rossi (URUGUAY) The Influence of Edgar A. Poe in the Poetry of Raimundo Arias; Marta Traba (ARGENTINA) The Day Flora Died; III. THE TORCH THAT SHEDS MY LIGHT: ESSAY - Marta Benavides (EL SALVADOR) El Salvador The Presence Removed; Griselda Gambaro (ARGENTINA) The Talks That Never Took Place; Isabel Morel Letelier (CHILE) Introduction to Chile; Clara Nieto de Ponce de Leon (COLOMBIA) Colombia: Another ‘Dirty War'; Laura Restrepo (COLOMBIA) The Shirtless Man; Olga Behar (COLOMBIA) The Thorns on the Path; Claribel Alegria (EL SALVADOR) The Politics of Exile; IV. SPARKS OF FURY AND SHOOTING STARS: POETRY - Pastora (EL SALVADOR) The People's Teachers; Construction; Alaide Foppa (GUATEMALA) from ‘Words'; Woman; Julia Esquivel (GUATEMALA) They Have Threatened Us With Resurrection; Parable; Dolly Filártiga (PARAGUAY) Guarani Anguish; Always the North; Maria Gravina Telechea (URUGUAY) November 8; Since; The Bird Flew Flew; Cecilia Vicuna (CHILE) Wikuna; Topac Inca Yupanqui; Sachaj La Numac Tiox Mundo; Jacinta Escudos (EL SALVADOR) San Salvador 1983; Caly Domitila Cane'k (GUATEMALA) Birth and Death; Candles; Presa; Papa and Mama; Alenka Bermüdez Mallol (GUATEMALA) I Want to Explain a Few Things; I Take Your Hand and Move On; Reyna Hernández (EL SALVADOR) There Will Be Someone; In Old Man Shoes; Etelvina Astrada (ARGENTINA) The Hordes Came; In My Country; V. SETTING DISTANCE ON FIRE: LETTERS - Veronica de Negri (CHILE) Dear Lilian; Clara Piritz (URUGUAY) Marriage by Pros and Cons; Carmen Batsch (GUATEMALA) Dear Alicia; Selected Bibliography.
Alicia Partnoy was born in 1955 in Argentina. As a political activist, she was ‘disappeared' and jailed for a total of three years during the recent military dictatorship. She came to the United States as a refugee in 1979. She translates and performs her poetry, which has been set to music by Sweet Honey in the Rock and other groups. Alicia Partnoy lectures extensively at the invitation of Amnesty International, human rights groups and universities, on human rights and writing under repression. She is a translator and also works at Hispania Books, a Latin American bookstore in Washington, D.C. Alicia Partnoy is the author of The Little School; Tales of Disappearance and Survival in Argentina (Cleis Press, 1986), a Writer's Choice selection of the Pushcart Foundation. She lives with her husband and daughter.
A COLLECTION OF SHORT FICTION FROM COSTA RICA, GUATEMALA, HONDURAS, PANAMA, NICARAGUA, EL SALVADOR. These stories taken together are an eye on Central America, focusing on the real lives and enduring passions of today's men and women. Here are tales from quiet villages, from the urban vortex, from the field of battle. They have a ring of truth, the sound of having been lived in the heart of the beast, giving us a fresh vision of a crucial part of the Americas. ‘In Central America, there's a challenge: the need to create a literary territory that, as an expression of an authentic culture, can contribute to establishing us as countries with independent identities. . . ‘The most splendid contribution. . . will be to populate our desolate culture and reclaim our estranged national identities; to emerge as bearers of the truth, to be the gospel and the prophecy.' - Sergio Ramirez. CONTENTS: Eduardo Bahr (HONDURAS) - The Fever Heroes; Carmen Naranjo (COSTA RICA) - Walls; Samuel Rovinski (COSTA RICA) - The Grey Phantom; Hugo Lindo (EL SALVADOR) - A Train Ride; Rima Vallbona (COSTA RICA) - Penelope on Her Silver Wedding Anniversary; Alvaro MenEndez Franco (PANAMA) - An Antistory; Julio Escoto (HONDURAS) - High Noon In April; Rogelio Sinán (PANAMA) - Heaven's Surgeon; Lizandro Chavez Alfaro (NICARAGUA) - Clamor of Innocence; Delfina Collado (COSTA RICA) - Katok; SalarruE (Salazar ArruE) (EL SALVADOR) - We Bad; Bertalicia Peralta (PANAMA) - The Guayacan Tree; Juan Aburto (NICARAGUA) - A Surrender of Love; Jorge Luis Oviedo (HONDURAS) - The Last Flight of the Sly Bird; Dante Liano (GUATEMALA) - Democrash; Bessy Reyna (PANAMA) - The Clean Ashtrays; Fernando Gordillo (PANAMA) - Orders; Francisco Gavidia (EL SALVADOR) - The She-Wolf; Arturo Arias (GUATEMALA) - The Woman in the Middle; Miguel Angel Asturias (GUATEMALA) - Johnthe; Ernesto Cardenal (NICARAGUA) - The Swede; David Escobar Galindo (EL SALVADOR) - The Barricade; Mario Roberto Morales (GUATEMALA) - Dead Weight; Horacio Castellanos Moya (HONDURAS) - Setback; Carmen Lyra (COSTA RICA) - Estefania; Manlio Argueta (EL SALVADOR) -Taking Over the Street; Sergio Ramirez (NICARAGUA) - The Center Fielder; Fabian Dobles (COSTA RICA) - The Bridge; Enrique Jaramillo Levi (PANAMA) - While He Lay Sleeping; Roberto Castillo (HONDURAS) - Anita, The Insect Hunter; Augusto Monterroso (GUATEMALA) - Mr. Taylor. . NOTES ON WRITERS - JUAN ABURTO is a Nicaraguan who has published several books of short stories, among them Narraciones and El Convivio. MANLIO ARGUETA, a recipient of the Casa de las Americas prize, is a Salvadorean writer living in exile in Costa Rica. Two of his novels have been translated into English: A Day of Life and Cuzcatlán. ARTURO ARIAS is an exiled Guatemalan, living in Mexico. He has twice been awarded the Casa de las Americas prize. MIGUEL ANGEL ASTURIAS, the internationally renowned Guatemalan writer, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1967. EDUARDO BAHR is a Honduran who has published two books of short stories Fotografia del Penasco and El Cuento de la Guerra. ERNESTO CARDENAL is known worldwide as a poet and the Nicaraguan Minister of Culture. HORACIO CASTELLANOS MOYA was born in Honduras and grew up in El Salvador. He's the author of a novella, La Travesia. ROBERTO CASTILLO is a young Honduran whose two books of short stories are Subida Al Cielo (y otros cuentos) and El Corneta. LIZANDRO CHAVEZ ALFARO received the Casa de las Americas prize for Los Monos de San Tel mo. He has translated many North American writers, among them William Faulkner, into Spanish. DELFINA COLLADO is a Costa Rican writer. FABIAN DOBLES, from Costa Rica, was awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura. He is the author of short stories, and novels. JULIO ESCOTO is a Honduran writer of fiction. Two of his novels are El Arbol de los Pañuelos and Dias de Ventisca, Noches de Huracán. DAVID ESCOBAR GALINDO is a Salvadorean. FRANCISCO GAVIDIA was born in El Salvador in 1863 and is one of the precursors of Central American Modernism. A master of the short story, he was also a dramatist and poet, who translated the French symbolists into Spanish. FERNANDO GORDILLO, a Nicaraguan poet and essayist, died in 1967. He was 26. ENRIQUE JARAMILLO LEVI is a Panamanian dramatist, short story writer, and poet. He's currently at the University of Texas on a Fullbright Scholarship. DANTE LIANO is an exiled Guatemalan, living in Mexico. HUGO LINDO, a Salvadorean poet who died recently, has two poetry books translated into English, Only the Voice and Facile Word. CARMEN LYRA was born in Costa Rica in 1888 and died while exiled in Mexico in 1949, Her most famous book is Los Cuentos de Mi Tia Panchita, ALVARO MENDENDEZ FRANCO is a Panamanian writer, AUGUSTO MONTERROSO, a Guatemalan, is an essayist and translator, His most important books are Obras Cotnpletas y otros cuentos and La Oveja Negra y Demas Fabulas, MARIO ROBERTO MORALES is an exiled Guatemalan writer living in Costa Rica, He received the 1985 EDUCA Prize for his novel El Esplendor del Piramide, CARMEN NARANJO, a Costa Rican novelist and poet, is the editor of EDUCA. Among her many published books are, Diario de Una Multitud (a novel) and Mi Guerrilla, an epic poem. JORGE LUIS OVIEDO is a Honduran poet, who has written short fiction, collected in La Muerte Mas Aplaudida and Cincocuentos, BERTALICIA PERALTA is a Panamanian poet and journalist, Among her books are Barcarola y Otras Fantasias Incorregibles and Muerto en Enero. SERGIO RAMIREZ is the Vice-President of Nicaragua and an internationally-known fiction writer whose works have been translated into many languages. BESSY REYNA is a Panamanian writer and critic who lives in Connecticut, where she edits the bilingual magazine El Taller Literario, SAMUEL ROVINSKI is a Costa Rican essayist, novelist, and playwright. Among his many published works are Ceremonia de Casta (a novel) and Un Modelo para Rosaura (a play). SALARRUE (Salvador Salazar Arrue), the late Salvadorean writer and painter, is one of Central America's most highly respected writers, His selected works have been published by the University of El Salvador, ROGELIO SINAN is a Panamanian writer, professor, and diplomat. Among his books are Dos Aventuras en el Lejano Oriente and Semana Santa en la Niebla, RIMA VALLBONA is a Costa Rican writer residing in Houston, Texas, Noche en Vela and Polvo del Camino are two of her several books of fiction. THE TRANSLATORS - TINA ALVAREZ ROBLES contributed translations to Volcan and Tomorrow Triumphant. Recently, she translated Mario Roberto Morales' novel, El Esplendor del Piramide into English. DAN BELLM is a San Francisco translator and freelance journalist who has written widely on Latin America. LELAND CHAMBERS is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Denver, and translator of Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, THOMAS CHRISTENSEN, a former editor at North Point Press, translated Julio Cortazar's Around the Day in Eighty Worlds and is now translating a book of short stories by Carlos Fuentes. ELIZABETH GAMBLE MILLER is an Associate Professor of Foreign Languages and Literature at Southern Methodist University. She translated Hugo Lindo's books of poems into English. STEVE HELLMAN is a San Francisco writer, translator, and freelance journalist. SEAN HIGGINS is an Oakland-based translator. ALBERTO HUERTA, S.J. a poet, essayist, and translator, is an Assistant Professor of Romance Languages at the University of San Francisco. STEPHEN KESSLER has translated books by Nobel Prize-winning poet Vincente Aleixander and exiled Chilean poet Fernando Alegria. SYLVIA MULLALLY AGUIRRE is a KPFA radio host, and a journalist who writes for the weekly Spanish language newspaper El Mensajero. BARBARA PASCHKE co-edited Volcán, Roque Dalton's Poemas Clandestinos, and has contributed translations to many other anthologies and journals. DAVID VOLPENDESTA is a poet and freelance journalist who has written extensively on Latin American culture and politics. He also co-edited Otto Rene Castillo's selected poems, Tomorrow Triumphant and Homeless not Helpless. KATHLEEN WEAVER translated Omar Cabezas's best selling Testimonio, Fire From the Mountain, and is currently translating Julio Cortazar's Nicaragua Tan Violentomente Dulce. Leland Chambers, Thomas Christensen, Stephen Kessler, Elizabeth Gamble Miller, Barbara Paschke, and Kathleen Weaver are members of ALTA, The American Literary Translators Association.
BARBARA PASCHKE co-edited Volcán, Roque Dalton's Poemas Clandestinos, and has contributed translations to many other anthologies and journals. DAVID VOLPENDESTA is a poet and freelance journalist who has written extensively on Latin American culture and politics. He also co-edited Otto Rene Castillo's selected poems, Tomorrow Triumphant and Homeless not Helpless.
Bilingual collection of translations and original poems in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese. One to four selections by each poet. Poems by American poets are translated into Spanish. The anthology is the most extensive collection of works by women poets of Latin America. Arranged by country. Mostly twentieth century. Argentina: Maria Paseyro, Alfonsina Storni; Bolivia: Yolanda Bedregal, Maria Quiroga Vargas, Lola Taborga de Requena; Brazil: Cecilia Mereiles, Adalgisa Nery; Chile: Lucia Aguirre del Real, Gabriela Mistral; Colombia: Laura Victoria; Costa Rica: Maria Ester Amador, Ninfa Santos; Cuba: Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, Dulce Maria Loynaz; Dominican Republic: Virginia Ortea; Ecuador: Rosa Borja de Ycaza, Dolores Veintemilla de Galindo; El Salvador: Claribel Alegria, Antonia Galindo, Claudia Lars; Guatemala: Romelia Alarcon Folgar, Margarita Carrera de Wever; Haiti: Marie-ThErêse Colimon, Emmeline Carries Lemaire, Virginie Sampeur; Honduras: Fausta Ferrera; Mexico: Guadalupe Amor, Maria Enriqueta Camarillo, Maria del Mar, Margarita Paz Paredes, Sor Juana InEs de la Cruz, Rosario Sansores; Nicaragua: Amanda Aragon Somoza, Aura Rostand, Maria Teresa Sanchez; Panama: Esther Maria Osses, Matilde Real; Paraguay: Ida Talavera de Fracchia; Peru: Teresa Maria Llona, Maria Wiesse; Puerto Rico: Maria Cadilla de Martinez, Amelia Ceide, Providencia Rancho; Uuguay: Delmira Agustini, Juana de Ibarbourou, Maria Eugenia Vaz-Ferreira; Venezuela: Enriqueta Arvelo Larriva, Sor Maria Josefa de los Angeles. Poems by the editor and two other women poets from the United States conclude the collection. Illustrated.
Includes examples of Dario's modernist poems and selections from twentieth-century Nicaraguan poetry. Includes verse translations of the following poets: Ruben Dario (15 poems), Gilberto Barrios, Adolfo Calero-Orozco, Ernesto Cardenal, Alfonso CortEs, Pablo Antonio Cuadra, Julio Linares, Luis Mejia-Gonzalez, Maria Theresa Sanchez, Maria de la Selva (Aura Rostand), Salomon de la Selva.
An outstanding poet and critic, Octavio Paz has assembled this anthology-the first of its kind in English translation-with a keen sense of what is at once representative and universal in Mexican poetry. His introduction sets the 35 selected poets in their proper literary perspective within the four centuries (1521.1910) covered by the book, Samuel Beckett, famous playwright (WAITING FOR GODOT), is the translator; C.M. Bowra, author of THE GREEK EXPERIENCE, has provided an illuminating foreword. Notable among the artists who appear in this collection are Bernardo de Balbuena (1561-1627), a master of the Baroque period who sang of the exuberant atmosphere and wealth of the New World; Juan Ruiz de Alarcon (1581?-1639), who became one of Spain's great playwrights; and Sor Juana InEs de la Cruz (Juana de Asbaje, 1651-1695), the beautiful nun whose lyric poetry displays piercing psychological insight. Salvador Diaz Miron (1859-1928) and Manuel Gutierrez Nájera (1859-1895) are precursors of the Modernist movement, while Enrique Gonzalez Martinez searched for a more introspective tone. Ramon Lopez Velarde (l888-l921) - perhaps the most genuinely Mexican poet-has exerted a great influence upon recent generations, The only living poet represented is Alfonso Reyes, whose works-deeply rooted in the Spanish classics-have a lyric quality that is personal, mercurial, and atemporal. This anthology will appeal to all who enjoy poetry as a universal manifestation of the human spirit. It will also fill a long-felt need in Spanish language classes and courses on Latin American literature. CONTENTS: Poetry and Tradition, by C. M. Bowra; Introduction to the History of Mexican Poetry, by Octavio Paz; Foreword by Octavio Paz; Francisco de Terrazas (1525?-1600?)/Sonnet; Fernán Gonzalez de Eslava (ca. 1534-ca. 1601)/To the Nativity; Bernardo de Balbuena (1561 or 1562-1627)/Immortal Springtime and Its Tokens; Fernando de Cordova y Bocanegra (1565-1589)/Song to the Most Holy Name of Jesus; Juan Ruiz de Alarcon (1580 or 1581-1639)/Feast by the Manzanares; Miguel de Guevara (1585?-1646?)/'I am not moved to love thee, my Lord God'; ‘Raise me up, Lord'; ‘To crucify the Son; ‘Time and account'; Matias de Bocanegra (1612-1668)/Song on Beholding an Enlightenment; Luis de Sandoval y Zapata (middle of seventeenth century)/To the Admirable Transubstantiation of the Roses; To Primal Matter; To a Dead Actress; White Lily; Beauty on a Western Balcony; Grievous Peril of a Gallant in Moth Metaphor; Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora (1645-1700)/Invocation and Proposition; Juana de Asbaje (1651-1695)/Verses Expressing the Feelings of a Lover; Describes Rationally the Irrational Effects of Love; ‘Tarry, shadow of my scornful treasure'; ‘Diuturnal infirmity of hope'; ‘This evening when I spake with thee, beloved'; ‘This coloured counterfeit that thou beholdest'; ‘Divine rose, that in a pleasant garden'; ‘Crimson lute that comest in the dawn'; ‘Green enravishment of human life'; ‘Amorous of Laura's loveliness'; Christmas Hymn; First Dream; Jose Manuel Martinez de Navarrete (1768-1809)/Morning; Jose Joaquin Pesado (1801-1861)/The Huntress; Ignacio Rodriguez Galván (1816-1842)/Extract from the Prophecy of CuauhtEmoc; Ignacio Ramirez (1818-1879)/For the Dead Gregorians; Vicente Riva Palacio (1832-1896)/To the Wind; Ignacio Manuel Altamirano (1834-1893)/To the Atoyac; Joaquin Arcadio Pagaza (1839-1918)/The Crag; The Chest of Perote; Manuel M. Flores (1840-1885)/Eve; Jose Peon y Contreras (1843-1907)/Echoes; Justo Sierra (1848-1912)/Bucolic Funeral; Manuel Acuna (1849-1873)/Before a Corpse; Salvador Diaz Miron (1853-1928)/Grief; The Corpse; The Example; The Phantom; Nox; To an Araucaria; Within an Emerald; Manuel Jose Othon (1858-1906)/A Steppe in the Nazas Country; Elegy; Wild Idyll; Manuel GutiErrez Najera (1859-1895)/Dead Waters; To Be; Fragment from ‘Pax Anima'; Non Omnis Moriar; When the Day Comes; Francisco A. de Icaza (1863-1925)/Responding Voice; Wayfaring; Golden; For the Poor Blind Man; Luis G. Urbina (1868-1934)/The Ancient Tear; The Centaur's Bath; Dayspring; The Silent Day; Our Lives Are Rivers; Francisco Gonzalez Leon (1868?-1945)/Hours; Amado Nervo (1870-1919)/An Old Burden; Evocation; Entreaty to the Cloud; And Thou, Expectant; Jose Juan Tablada (1871-1945)/Haiku of a Day; Haiku of the Flowerpot; Dawn in the Cockloft; The Idol in the Porch; The Parrot; Alternating Nocturne; Enrique Gonzalez Martinez (1871-1952)/Wring the Swan's Neck; When It Is Given You to Find a Smile; House with Two Doors; Pain; The Condemned; Romance of the Living Corpse; Last Journey; Rafael Lopez (1875?-1943)/Venus Poised; EfrEn Rebolledo (1877-1929)/The Vampire; Manuel de la Parra (1878-1930)/The Well; Ramon Lopez Velarde (1888-1921)/My Cousin Agueda; In the Wet Shadows; Now, as Never; My Heart Atones; Your Teeth; Wet Earth; The Malefic Return; Ants; The Tear; I Honour You in Dread; Humbly; Alfonso Reyes (1889- )/The Menace of the Flower; Tarahumara Herbs; River of Oblivion; To-and-Fro of Saint Theresa; Scarcely; Monterrey Sun; Notes by Octavio Paz. . .
Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet-diplomat and writer. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Includes: Secret Ceremony by Marco Denevi (Argentina); The Aborigines by Carlos Martinez Moreno (Uruguay); Nausicaa by Alfonso Echeverria (Chile); The Harp by Tomas Mojarro (Mexico); A Plum for Coco by Laura del Castillo (Argentina); The Yoke by Faustino Gonzalez-Aller (Cuba); Black Ship by Carlos Rozas Larrain (Chile); The Cause by Haroldo Pedro Conti (Argentina); Jacob and the Other by Juan Carlos Onetti (Uruguay); Dream with No Name by Ramon Ferreira Lopez (Cuba); Sunday for an Architect by Rolando Venturini (Argentina).
Arturo Uslar Pietri (16 May 1906 in Caracas - 26 February 2001), was a Venezuelan intellectual, lawyer, journalist, writer, television producer and politician. Born on 16 May 1906 in Caracas, Venezuela, his parents were general Arturo Uslar Santamaría and Helena Pietri de Uslar. The last name Uslar is of German origin and can be traced back to Johann von Uslar, who fought for the rebel cause during Venezuela's independence wars. As a young boy and then teenager he lived in various cities in the comparatively urbanised central northern valleys of the country. He moved back to Caracas in 1924 to read political sciences at the Central University of Venezuela, where he graduated Doctor of Political Sciences in 1929. That same year he obtained a law degree. Uslar led a remarkably fruitful life, influential in Venezuelan politics, historical analysis and literature, and as an educator. His period of activity spanned the last years of Venezuelan Caudillismo, the transition to democracy and most of the democratic era of 1958 - 1999. He held posts such as Secretary for the Venezuelan Delegation at the League of Nations, delegate at the International Labour Organization, minister of education, minister of finance, contributor to the Act of Constitution of the New Democratic Government (1958), ambassador to the United States of America, professor of Latin American literature at Columbia University, professor of political economics at the Central University of Venezuela, chief editor of a main newspaper, candidate for the Presidency and member of the Royal Spanish Academy. Uslar Pietri had a lifetime involvement in the Venezuelan media as a cultural figure. He wrote regionally influential essays and novels, of which The Red Lances, an account of life during the Venezuelan War of Independence from various social perspectives is arguably the most famous. In his works he championed mestizaje, or miscegenation, as a valuable feature of Latin American culture. His literary output was recognised in 1990 with a Prince of Asturias Award. He was several times nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Uslar Pietri died on 26 February 2001 in Caracas. He had announced his retirement as an author in 1998 and last figured prominently in political debate in 1993.
illustrated The quality of selections by these modern writers is somewhat uneven. Includes stories by Breno Accioly, Jose Maria Moreira Campo, Manuel Eduardo Pinheiro Campo, Jose Conde, Oswaldo Almeida Fischer, Carlos Vasconcelos Maia, Jose Saldanha da Gama Coelho Pinto, Murilo Rubião, Joel Ribeiro Siiveira, Lygia Fagundes Teles.
‘If you can't make it across the border, ACROSS THE LINE/AL OTRO LADO is the next best thing to a trip to Mexico's Baja California. The astonishing range of fifty-three poetic voices, traditional native chants and popular corridos which are generously presented in bilingual format is rooted in a time and place that is both timeless and in constant flux. The poems are by turns full of yearning, lyric, exultant, pungent, mournful, fast-paced as the streets of Tijuana or slow as a cactus growing beyond the dunes. Baja Californians are a population on the move, alive to change, living on the edge, and the poetry in this lovingly-translated anthology conveys the feel of gritty towns and cities, burning deserts, lonely mountains, a huge sky still crowded with stars, the wind blowing in off the Pacific or the Sea of Cortes, the nearness of gray whales and pelicans, the uncertainties of isolation, the jittery rhythms of urban life, the United States forever looming on the other side of the border. And I am happy to say that these poets value the beauty and importance of Baja California's unique and fragile ecosystems; in Baja California moonlight still matters.' - Homero Aridjis
Harry Polkinhorn is a poet, writer, journalist, literary critic, psychotherapist, publisher, and a professor at San Diego State University. His epic prose poem, The Raven was published by MAG press in 2004. He also published The Manifesto of Negativity with Mutable Press in 2003. Mark Weiss, poet, translator, editor, anthologist and publisher, is the author of six volumes of poetry, most recently As Landscape (Tucson: Chax Press, 2010), translator of three volumes of Mexican and Cuban poetry, notably Stet: Selected Poetry of Jose Kozer (New York: Junction Press, 2006), coeditor of the anthology Across the Line / Al otro lado: The Poetry of Baja California (San Diego: Junction Press, 2002) and of Stories as Equipment for Living: Last Talks and Tales of Barbara Myerhoff (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), and editor of the bilingual anthology The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). His translations have appeared in two collections coedited by Jerome Rothenberg, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Poems by Pablo Picasso (Exact Change), and Poems for the Millennium, volume 3 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).
Poems from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Spanish American poets are: Francisco Acuña de Figueroa (Uruguay), Juan Cruz Varela (Argentina), Agustin F. Cuenca (Mexico), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Jose de Diego (Puerto Rico), Esteban Echeverria (Argentina), Santiago Escuti Orrego (Chile), Arturo Gimenez Pastor (Argentina), Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda (Cuba), Jose Maria Heredia (Cuba), Hermogenes Jrisarri (Chile), D. A. Lozano (Venezuela), Manuel Maria Madiedo (Colombia), Diego Maisias y Calle (Peru), Jose Mármol (Argentina), Pedro J. Naon (Argentina), Jose Joaquin de Olmedo (Ecuador), Mariano Ramallo (Bolivia), Jose Rivera Indarte (Argentina), Narciso Tondreau (Chile), Florencio Varela (Argentina), Domingo de Vivero (Peru), Ethelberto Zegarra Ballon (Peru), Juan Zorrilla de San Martin (Uruguay). Brazilian poets included in the anthology are: Antonio Goncalves Dias, Francisco Manuel, and Bruno Seabra.
Agnes Blake Poor (November 10, 1842 – February 28, 1922) was an American author and translator. She wrote under her own name and the pen name Dorothy Prescott. She is thought to be the first American to translate Brazilian poetry from Portuguese into English. Agnes Blake Poor was born on November 10, 1842 in Bangor, Maine. She was the daughter of financial analyst Henry Varnum Poor and Mary Wild Pierce, daughter of Reverend John Pierce, minister of the First Church of Brookline, Massachusetts. She lived most of her life in Brookline. She published short fiction in various magazines under the name Dorothy Prescott. One story in The Century called "A Little Fool" (October 1896) caused an uproar because of comments made by the title character directed at South Boston that were thought to be derogatory. Poor compiled and translated a selection of Spanish and Portuguese poems from South America, published as Pan American Poems (1918). It was the only selection of Portuguese translations available in the early 20th century. Poor, who taught Portuguese, included works by Antônio Gonçalves Dias (1823-1864), Bruno Seabra (1837-1876), and Francisco Manuel de Nascimento (1734-1819), though the latter had not been to Brazil. Agnes Blake Poor died on 28 February 1922 in Brookline.
Reprint. Originally published 1918.
Agnes Blake Poor (November 10, 1842 – February 28, 1922) was an American author and translator. She wrote under her own name and the pen name Dorothy Prescott. She is thought to be the first American to translate Brazilian poetry from Portuguese into English. Agnes Blake Poor was born on November 10, 1842 in Bangor, Maine. She was the daughter of financial analyst Henry Varnum Poor and Mary Wild Pierce, daughter of Reverend John Pierce, minister of the First Church of Brookline, Massachusetts. She lived most of her life in Brookline. She published short fiction in various magazines under the name Dorothy Prescott. One story in The Century called "A Little Fool" (October 1896) caused an uproar because of comments made by the title character directed at South Boston that were thought to be derogatory. Poor compiled and translated a selection of Spanish and Portuguese poems from South America, published as Pan American Poems (1918). It was the only selection of Portuguese translations available in the early 20th century. Poor, who taught Portuguese, included works by Antônio Gonçalves Dias (1823-1864), Bruno Seabra (1837-1876), and Francisco Manuel de Nascimento (1734-1819), though the latter had not been to Brazil. Agnes Blake Poor died on 28 February 1922 in Brookline.
These poems are songs. They are sung, on communal occasions, by those Quechua people who live in and around Cochabamba, Bolivia. Quechua (Runasimi) was the language of the Incas. It is still spoken by their descendants, the native Andean people who live in Bolivia, Peru, parts of Ecuador, and in the north of Chile. The songs were transcribed, translated into Spanish, and published by Jesás Lara in Poesia Popular Quechua (Editorial Canata, La Paz-Cochabamba, Bolivia, 1956). Lara's anthology is bilingual: his Spanish translations face their Quechua originals. The present English versions are based on the Spanish, though Quechua dictionaries and commentaries have also been consulted. Inside rear flap: Quechua text of ‘Testament: Fragments.' QUECHUA PEOPLES POETRY was printed at Curbstone Press in Aldine Roman on 80-lb. Strathmore Text in an edition of 1000 copies. CONTENTS: WORDS BEFOREHAND; texts - DEDICATED TO JESUS LARA; SONG OF THE SPIRIT; WHAT CLOUD IS THAT CLOUD; CARNIVAL!; NIGHTWATCH SONG; ENVY AND SHAME; LOVE: FRAGMENTS; CHRISTMAS CAROL; BUMP, BUMP, LITTLE BULL; SANTA VERACRUZ CANTOS; TRAVELING MAN; POLITICS; TESTAMENT FRAGMENTS.
Maria Proser was an Argentine translator and activist. She and her husband, Matthew, a professor of English at the University of Connecticut, collaborated on a number of Spanish to English translations. Maria died in 2018. She is survived by Matthew, who lives in Eastern Connecticut. Poet, editor, essayist, and translator James Scully was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of more than ten volumes of poetry, including The Marches (1967), which won the Lamont Poetry Award (now the James Laughlin Award); Santiago Poems (1975), about his experience as a Guggenheim fellow in Chile during Pinochet's coup; and Angel in Flames: Selected Poems and Translations 1967–2011 (2011). Scully is interested in politics, identity, and revolution, and his poetry directly engages and challenges social constructions. He has translated several poetry collections, including Quechua Peoples Poetry (1977, with Maria A. Proser), Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound (1989, with C. John Herrington), and The Complete Plays of Sophocles: A New Translation (2011, with Robert Bagg). He is also the author of the prose collections Line Break: Poetry as Social Practice (1988) and Vagabond Flags: Serbia & Kosovo Journal, Scrapbook & Notes (2009). In the foreword to Line Break, poet Adrienne Rich noted, James Scully's essays, like his poems, refuse to soothe or simplify, to shortchange either poetry or the imperative for social revolution. Scully is the founding editor of the Curbstone Press Art on the Line chapbook series and edited the anthology Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (1966). His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His translations have won the Jenny Taine Memorial Award and the Islands & Continents Translation Award. Scully has also received the Bookbuilders of Boston Award for book cover design. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut.
What brings these poets together and why present them as a group? Their common vision of the relationship between the craft and their lives - a vision born of their profound identification with the social process they're part of; a vision, on the other hand, which has taken them down a variety of roads in terms of form and even content. The poets included in this sampling - and sampling is really the best description, in this case - exemplify 1) that poetry, in any society, is a social activity, and 2) in a society where a socialist revolution has radically changed the economic and political base, the poetic process begins to change as well. These poets represent this change, this writing out of a totally new and body-shaking experience, this grappling with non-traditional concepts of life and its expression, this living out of Marx's prediction: ‘. . . the time will come when we'll have not writers but men and women who write,' These are very much poets of the Revolution - born in it in most cases, developing with it and out of it, shaped by it. They are not simply poets who are ‘with the Revolution' as if it were some outside event one might or might not adhere to. CONTENTS / SUMARIO: INTRODUCTION; Why This Selection?; Notes for Approaching the Present; People's Culture in a Revolutionary Society; Notes; Other Sources; THE POETS - RAUL RIVERO Amigos/Friends; Rebelde desconocido/Unknown Rebel; Para llevarlos conmigo/To Take Them With Us; ALEX FLUTES - Mujer sentada (en gris y rojo)/Seated Woman (in gray and red); Tiempo del agua/The Wet Season; Rostros/Faces; Calle Ronda, 2: 00 am/Ronda Street, 2 am.; NORBERTO CODINO - Un poema de amor, segun datos demograficos/A Love Poem Based on Demographic Data; De una primera aventura/On An Early Adventure; El lago de la espada perdida/Lake of the Lost Sword; Los peregrinos del Mayflower/The Mayflower Pilgrims; SOLEIDA RIOS - De la sierra/Of the Sierra; Hora dificil/Difficult Hour; Tambien me canto/I also Sing of Myself; ALEX PAUSIDES - XV/XV; Coloradas/Coloradas; Poeta en la isla/Poet on the Island; FRANCISCO GARZON CESPEDES - El rencor no aparece en las radiografias/Resentment Doesn't Show Up on X-Rays; Revolucion/Revolution; VICTOR RODRIGUEZ NUNEZ - Cayama I/Cayama I; Dolor/Pain; Mamino/Mamino; Melchor/Melchor; Cayama II/Cayama II; MILAGROS GONZALEZ - Dialogo primero/First Dialogue; Seras Sur/You Will be South; OSVALDO SANCHEZ CRESPO - Amor/Love; Yo llegue tarde a tu siglo/I arrived Late at your Century; ANGEL PENA - Preocupaciones por un poeta/Concern for a Poet; Como en un Boeing/As in a Boeing; Constancía/Constance; Horas/Hours; FRANCISCO MIR MULET - Guitarra/Guitar; Y decirme monte/And Tell Me Mountain; Hendijas/Cracks; A mi hermanito/To My Little Brother; ‘A esta Isla no llega nadie por naufragio'/'No one comes shipwrecked to this Island'; Voy bien, Camilo'/'How am I doing, Camilo'; OSVALDO NAVARRO - Espejo de conciencia (fragmentos)/Mirror of Consciousness (fragments); WALDO LEYVA - Angola/Angola; Ahora/Now; Cual de todos sera Augusto Gangula?/Who Among Them is Augusto Gangula?; Detras del AK/Behind the AK; Raul/Raul; Agostinho Lamba/Agostinho Lamba; NELSON HERRERA YSLA - Notas sobre una experiencia social inconfundible/Notes on a Unique Social Experience; Estad alertas, companeros. En el promixo avion llegara seguramente/Be Ready, Comrades, he's sure to be landing on the next plane; Torre de la vida/Tower of Life; RAMON FERNANDEZ-LARREA - Elegia familiar/Family Elegy; Cancion bayamesa/Song of Bayamo; Cancion de amor para las manos de mi madre/Love Song for My Mother's Hands. . .
Margaret Randall (born December 6, 1936, New York City, USA) is an American-born writer, photographer, activist and academic. Born in New York City, she lived for many years in Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and spent time in North Vietnam during the last months of the U.S. war in that country. She has written extensively on her experiences abroad and back in the United States, and has taught at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and other colleges.
This volume may serve as a brief introduction to the rich, and often neglected, field of Spanish-American poetry. The forty selections range from the time of the conquest through the first third of the twentieth century. A companion volume to the previous Selections From Spanish Poetry, Spanish-American Poetry should appeal to the general reader, with or without a knowledge of Spanish. Vocabulary and grammatical constructions are facilitated by English translations on facing pages. These translations allow the reader to enjoy the beauty of the poems without the problem of translating. Illustrated with the charming and authentic drawings of Anne Marie Jauss, this book is another well conceived collection by Dr. Resnick. CONTENTS: The Araucaniad/La Araucana-ALONSO DE ERCILLA (TRANSLATED BY C M. LANCASTER AND P. T. MANCHESTER); Foolish Men/Hombres necios-SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ; To Her Portrait/A su retrato-SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ (TRANSLATED BY BEATRICE GILMAN PROSKE); Privileges of the Poor/Privilegios del pobre-JUAN DEL VALLE V CAVIEDES; All My Affection/Todo mi afecto-MARIANO MELGAR; The Victory of Junk/La victoria de Junin-JOSE JOAQUIN OLMEDO; Ode to Niagara/Niagara-JOSE MARIA HEREDIA (TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT); On Leaving Cuba/Al partir-GERTRUDIS GÔMEZ DE AVELLANEDA (TRANSLATED BY ALICE STONE BLACKWELL); Prayer to God-ANONYMOUS/Plegaria a Dios-PLACIDO; In the Mouth of the Last Inca/En boca del ultima Inca-JOSE EUBESIO CARO (TRANSLATED BY ALFRED COESTER); The Ombu/El ombü-LUIS L. DOMINGUEZ; Martin Fierro/Martin Fierro-JOSE HERNANDEZ (TRANSLATED BY WALTER OWEN); Cry, O Cry, Urutau/Llora, llora, urutau-CARLOS GUIDO Y SPANO; Nocturne to Rosario/Nocturno a Rosario-MANUEL ACUNA; When I Die/Para entonces-MANUEL GUTIERREZ NAJERA (TRANSLATED BY MILDRED E. JOHNSON); Simple Verses/Versos sencillos-JOSE MARTI; The Firewood of St. John/Los maderos de San Juan-JOSE ASUNCIÔN SILVA (TRANSLATED BY MILDRED P. JOHNSON); Nocturne III/Nocturno III-JOSE ASUNCION SILVA (TRANSLATED BY G. DUNDAS CRAIG); Sonatina/Sonatina-RUBEN DARIO; An Autumn Song in Spring/Cancion de otoño en primavera-RUBEN DARI0 (TRANSLATED BY G. DUNDAS CRAIG); Cowardice/Cobardia-AMADO NERVO; Solidarity/Solidaridad-AMADO NERVO (TRANSLATED BY MILDRED E. JOHNSON); If You Are Good/Si eres bueno-AMADO NERVO; The Song by the Way/La cancion del camino-FRANCISCO ICAZA (TRANSLATED BY ALICE STONE BLACKWELL); Triolet I/Los bienes y las glorias de la vida-MANUEL GONZALEZ PRADA (TRANSLATED BY ALICE JANE MCVAN); Triolet II/Algo me dicen tus ojos-MANUEL GONZALEZ PRADA; To Love/Al amor-MANUEL GONZALEZ PRADA; Broken Wings/Alas rotas-FABIO FIALLO (TRANSLATED BY ALICE STONE BLACKWELL); Wring the Neck of the Swan/TuErcele el cuello al cisne- ENRIQUE GONZALEZ MARTINEZ (TRANSLATED BY C. DUNDAS CRAIG); The Ballad of Mad Fortune/Balada de la loca fortuna-ENRIQUE GONZALEZ MARTINEZ (TRANSLATED BY EDNA WORTHLEY UNDERWOOD); Who Knows?/QuiEn sabe!-JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO (TRANSLATED BY MILDRED E. JOHNSON); Song/Tonada-LEOPOLDO LUGONES; Rocking/Meciendo-GABRIELA MISTRAL; Night/La noche-GABRIELA MISTRAL; Ballad of the Star/Balada de la estrella-GABRIELA MISTRAL (TRANSLATED BY ALICE JANE MCVAN); Squares and Angles/Cuadrados y ángulos-ALFONSINA STORNI; Dear Little Man/Hombre pequeñito- ALFONSINA STORNI (TRANSLATED BY MILDRED E. JOHNSON); The Hour/La hora-JUANA DE IBARBOUROU; The Strong Bond/El fuerte lazo-JUANA DE IBARBOUROU; Poem 20/Poema 20-PABLO NERUDA; Index; LITERAL PROSE TRANSLATION BY THE AUTHOR-EDITOR.
SEYMOUR RESNICK is a distinguished editor-teacher-writer in the Spanish language and its literature, He has also written numerous textbooks and has edited a two-volume anthology of Spanish literature. Dr, Resnick received his Ph.D. in Spanish from New York University, He has taught at Rutgers University, the City College of New York and New York University, At present, he is teaching at Great Neck North Senior High School, Great Neck, L,I., and at Queens College, New York City. . ANNE MARIE JAUSS studied art in Munich where she was born, After leaving Germany in 1932 she spent fourteen years in Portugal, Miss Jauss has illustrated more than forty books for children, She has also written several books since her arrival in this country in 1946.
From the beginning of the Modernist movement, manifested in the works of Ruben Dario, through the generation of Solar, MourE, VelEz, and Huidobro to the present-day influences of Pablo Neruda and Nicanor Parra, the poetry of Chile has undergone a series of evolutionary changes. It bears the strong markings of an art which is decidedly Chilean, yet still universal in its appeal. Traditionally, before Neruda and for some time after, Chilean poetry was formally rigid in structure; it was, as was most American and European poetry, hanging on to older forms and stylistics while at the same time conscientiously striving to grasp the new. The past three decades, however, reveal the emergence of remarkably distinct poetic themes and trends. It is obvious that the Chilean poets of this generation mean to produce, not a narrow national poetry, but a human poetry that is direct, forceful, devoid of ostentation and unnecessary decor, and which presents old themes in fresh ways. A number of poets of the eighties, both older and younger, seem to be striving toward a common goal: the mastery of a poetry which, though brief, is not epigrammatic, not ‘easy', yet clearly executed. The best of these contemporary poets show superb technical control, often producing a poetic cadence which is strong yet so subtle it is not perceived at first reading. Free verse and the prose poem are popular, but many poets, like Enrique Lihn and Oscar Hahn, are equally comfortable writing sonnets and other structured forms including hendecasyllabic verse, both rhymed and unrhymed. At the same time, some writers are seeking to liberate themselves from conventional modes of expression by substituting repetition, anaphora, and heavy enjambment for traditional rhyme and meter, creating tones of bland cynicism, suppressing the intensity of passion which flows throughout their work, Sometimes a light sentimentality is created-nostalgic, but not overly lyrical. Some experimentalists deal heavily with the abstract) using collage poetry, physical poetry, or any poetic innovation as a means of making a statement and breaking with tradition. Their attempts are admirable; the effects are varied, exciting, and challenging to both the critic and the poet. Chilean fiction, like most fiction of this generation, is highly variant. It runs the spectrum from traditional to abstract/experimental with some surrealistic and metaphysical trends falling somewhere in between, Common themes include the search for love, the search for individualism, nostalgia for the past, and contemporary social problems. The styles and types of Chilean fiction today are as numerous as the writers themselves. This richness of subject and diversity of style, together with a gentle irony, is much of what makes Chilean fiction, as well as the poetry, such a pleasure to read. The many manifestations of these elements, more as attitude than technique, account for the great differences among the works included here. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION - New Chilean Writing; THE POETRY - NICANOR PARRA - A Note About the Reading of Antipoetry; Trading; Let's Loot This Dirty Old Man; The Nobel Prize; Rape; What Good Is It for an Old Man to Work Out in the Gym; The Great Enigma of Philosophy; Poetry Poetry All is Poetry; Under My Bed; GONZALO ROJAS - It Is Written; Heresy; In Opposition to Death; Someone Is Writing on the Wind; Written with L; FERNANDO ALEGRIA - Where Brave Men Weep; The Fall of a Bishop; MIGUEL ARTECHE - ‘I Know That You Are Here'; JOSE DONOSO - ‘Julia Came to Tell Us'; ENRIQUE LIHN - Nothing to See at a Glance; Trash; Lions of the Nineteenth Century; DELIA DOMINGUEZ - Life Is in the Street; CARLOS CORTINEZ - There's Been a Slight Mistake; JORGE TEILLIER - When All Is Said and Done; To Speak with the Dead; Lewis Carroll; ARMANDO URIBE ARCE - Poems; DAVID TURKELTAUB - Death Interrupts Routine; Suddenly I Understood; Newscast; Upturned Card; Poetry Is Good for Anything; ‘Like the Last Block of Concrete Set into the Breakwater'; OSCAR HAHN - In the Middle of the Bedroom; Don Juan; Gladiolas by the Sea; HERNAN LAVIN CERDA - Better the Fire; Now You Hang Like a Broken Necklace; The Skull; Begonias; Unearthing; MANUEL SILVA ACEVEDO - Contrary to Nature; Dream; Off with the Poet's Head; The Rat; NAIN NoMEZ - Water Nymph; GONZALO MILLAN - Mail; Prison; Breaktime; Firing Squad; JUAN CAMERoN - One More Stripe to the Tiger; ANTONIO VIEYRA - ‘Running Down the Same Road'; ‘Useless to Explore the City'; ‘Let Us Take Off Our Masks'; RAUAL ZURITA - Green Areas; MAJORIE AGOSIN - Families; ARMANDO RUBIO - Mirrors; Renunciation; THE FICTION - ENRIQUE CAMPOS MENENDEZ - The Missionary; CECILIA CASANOVA - The Unmarriage; JOSE DONOSO - Santelices; LUIS DOMINGUEZ - Duo; JOSE LUIS ROSASCO - Damelza; POLI DELANO - But Life; MARTA BLANCO - Sweet Companion; CARLOS PASTEN - Law of Escape; JUAN CARLOS GARCIA - The Earth-Eater; The Flood; CARLOS ITURRA - A Drop of Immortality; INDEX.
Sandra Reyes received her M.F.A. in literary translation from the University of Arkansas and has taught at North Arkansas Community College, the University of Maryland, and the University of Arkansas. She is currently a professor of Spanish and English at the University of the Ozarks. Her translation of Nicanor Parra's Sermons and Homilies of the Christ of Elqui was awarded the American Literary Translators Association Richard Wilbur Award for Poetry in Translation for 1984.
Though connected to us physically, South America remains the least ‘discovered,' most mysterious of the continents. It has often been described in terms of its natural wonders, and more often for its baffling political and economic flaws, but never for the glorious diversity of its cultures. And yet it is from the great South American poets and novelists of today, and the great South American sculptors and city-builders of yesterday, that our blander, better ‘organized' civilization has most to learn. And it is precisely because we have ignored those cultures that our clumsy attempts to impose our own have failed, and the idealistic image of the Good Neighbor has yielded to the ugly stereotype of the Yanqui Imperialist. No writer is better equipped to help redress this distorted perspective than Selden Rodman. As poet, anthologist, and Mexican diarist, he was among the first to call attention to the young giants of Latin American literature. As art critic, he played a key role in the ‘renaissance' of Haitian art. As political essayist and later as historian, he made friends with statesmen and revolutionaries. In SOUTH AMERICA OF THE POETS he puts these talents together for the first time to give a uniquely informal and revealing portrait of the South America the tourist, traveling salesman, and diplomat rarely see. The ‘poetry' evoked goes beyond the intimate close-ups of the famous literary figures the author visits, beyond the masterpieces of art he communes with; it is in the awesome landscapes, the historical confrontations, the indomitable inhabitants of mountain, jungle, and city slum-all embraced in grateful humility but without sacrificing the pride and prejudice of being an American.
Selden Rodman (February 19, 1909 - November 2, 2002) was an American writer and poet. Selden Rodman was born to a wealthy family in Manhattan and attended Yale University. He traveled widely, and published over 40 books in his lifetime. His most frequent subjects were Haitian art, other writers, as well as several poetry anthologies and travelogues. Rodman also co-founded the magazine Common Sense with Alfred Bingham. Bill Negron, who illustrated two of Selden Rodman's earlier books, met the author on a tennis court in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 1963, and they followed this up by playing on the courts of every country in the hemisphere. After serving in the Navy, receiving his bachelor's degree in journalism from Indiana University, and graduating from Cooper Union Art School, Bill Negron became a free-lance artist and design consultant in New York City.
This is the first volume of The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature: a comprehensive anthology, the only one of its kind, including historical and critical as well as biographical commentary on each writer's work, and essays on each major period in the literature as a whole. This volume covers writings from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, from Columbus and Pero Vaz de Caminha, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, and Sor Juana InEs de la Cruz to Concolorcorvo, Ricardo Palma, and Machado de Assis. It is edited by the distinguished critic of Latin American literature, Emir Rodriguez Monegal, a Professor of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale. CONTENTS; General Introduction; PART ONE: THE FABULOUS SOURCES - 1. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS/The Green and Beautiful Land; 2. PERO VAZ DE CAMINHA/The Almost Noble Savage; 3. AMERIGO VESPUCCI/A New World; 4. BARTOLOME DE LAS CASAS/The Horrors of the Conquest; 5. GONZALO FERNANDEZ DE OVIEDO/The Unique Monkey; 6. ALVAR NUNEZ CABEZA DE VACA/The Naked Spaniards; 7. BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO/The Entry of Cortes into Mexico; 8. GASPAR DE CARVAJAL/Encounter with the Amazons; 9. ALONSO DE ERCILLA Y ZUNIGA/An Election in Old Araucana; 10. INCA GARCILASO DE LA VEGA/The Royal Commentaries of the Inca; 11. Five Mexican Baroque Poets - I/. BERNARDO DE BALBUENA/Immortal Springtime and Its Tokens; II. JUAN RUIZ DE ALARCON/Feast by the Manzanares; III. MIGUEL DE GUEVARA/Three Sonnets; IV. LUIS SANDOVAL Y ZAPATA/Three Sonnets; V. SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ/Ten Poems; 12. JUAN RODRIGUEZ FREILE/Two Tales from Santa Fe; 13. JUAN DE MELENDEZ/Saint Rose of Lima; 14. FRANCISCO NUNEZ DE PINEDA Y BASCUNAN/The Happy Captivity; 15. JUSTO MANSILLA and SIMON MACETA/Atrocities of the Bandeirantes; 16. ANTONIO VIEIRA/How to Save Both Souls and Bodies; 17. GREGÔRIO DE MATOS/The Satirical and Popular Muse; 18. CARLOS DE SIGUENZA Y GONGORA/Living with English Pirates; 19. JOSE GUMILLA/How the Indians Make Curare; 20. BARTOLOME ARZANS DE ORZUA Y VELA/The Wicked Hermit; 21. CONCOLORCORVO/An Unflattering Glimpse of the Gauchos; 22. Rebellion and Death of Tüpac Amaru; PART TWO: THE REDISCOVERY OF AMERICA - 1. FRAY SERVANDO TERESA DE MIER/The Flight into Revolutionary France; 2. JOSE JOAQUIN FERNANDEZ DE LIZARDI/The Itching Parrot; 3. A Sample of Romantic Poetry - I. JOSE JOAQU1N DE OLMEDO/The Victory at Junin: Song to Bolivar; II. ANDRES BELLO/Ode to the Agriculture of the Torrid Zone; III. JOSE MARIA DE HEREDIA/Ode to Niagara; IV. ANTONIO CASTRO ALVES/Twilight Upcountry; 4. ESTEBAN ECHEVERRIA/The Slaughterhouse; 5. DOMINGO FAUSTINO SARMIENTO/A Portrait of Facundo; 6. ESTANISLAO DEL CAMPO/Doctor Faust in the Pampas; 7. JOSE HERNANDEZ/The Gaucho Martin Fierro; 8. EDUARDO ACEVEDO DIAZ/The Battle of the Ruins; 9. MANUEL DE JESUS GALVAN/Enriquillo, the Indian Rebel; 10. RICARDO PALMA/Three Peruvian Traditions; 11. TOMAS CARRASQUILLA/Simon Magus; 12. JOSE DE ALENCAR/A Marriage of Convenience; 13. MANUEL ANTONIO DE ALMEIDA/Fresh Mischief; 14. JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE Assis/Dom Casmurro; 15. RAUL POMPEIA/The Initiation; 16. EUCLIDES DA CUNHA/Antonio Conselheiro, the ‘Counselor'; PART THREE: THE RETURN OF THE GALLEONS - 1. JOSE MARTI/Simple Lyrics; 2. SALVADOR DIAZ MIRON/Two Poems; 3. JULIAN DEL CASAL/Tropical Countryside; 4. RUBEN DARIO/Eight Poems; 5. LEOPOLDO LUGONES/White Solitude; 6. JULIO HERRERA Y REISSIG/Two Poems; 7. DELMIRA AGUSTINI/My Loves; 8. JOSE ENRIQUE RODO/The Granite Plain; 9. JAVIER DE VIANA/Guri; 10. MARIAN0 AZUELA/The Underdogs; 11. ROMULO GALLEGOS/Doña Barbara; 12. JOSE EUSTASIO RIVERA/The Vortex; 13. RICARDO GUIRALDES/Don Segundo Sombra; 14. MARTIN LUIS GUZMAN/The Eagle and the Serpent; 15. LIMA BARRETO/The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma; 16. GRACILIANO RAMOS/The Dog; 17. JOSE LINS DO REGO/Dead Fires; 18. JORGE AMADO/Sea of the Dead; 19. Five Spanish American Postmodernist Poets - I. JOSE JUAN TABLADA/Poems; II. MAGEDONIO FERNÁNDEZ/Elena Beauty Death; III. RAMON LOPEZ VELARDE/Poems; IV. GABRIELA MISTRAL/Poems; V. ALFONSO REYES/Poems. . .
Emir Rodríguez Monegal (28 July 1921 - 14 November 1985), born in Uruguay, was a scholar, literary critic, and editor of Latin American literature. From 1969 to 1985, Rodríguez Monegal was professor of Latin American contemporary literature at Yale University. He is usually called by his second surname Emir R. Monegal or Monegal, or erroneously Emir Monegal. Described as 'one of the most influential Latin American literary critics of the 20th century' by the Encyclopædia Britannica, Monegal wrote key books about Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges, and the Britannica Macropædia notice of the later. He was a part in 'The Boom' of 1960s Latin American literature as founder and 1966–1968 editor of his influential magazine Mundo Nuevo. He is remembered as a member of the Generation of 45, a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, Juan Carlos Onetti, among others.
This is the second volume of The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature: a comprehensive anthology, the only one of its kind, including historical and critical as well as biographical commentary on each writer's work, and essays on each major period in the literature as a whole. Volume Two, like the first volume edited by Professor Rodriguez Monegal, contains selections from the modern era, including all the most important writers of our time, from Borges and Paz to Guimarães Rosa and Jose Donoso. CONTENTS: Preface to the Second Volume; PART FOUR: THE MODERN MASTERS - 1. JORGE LUIS BORGES/The Aleph; 2. MIGUEL ANGEL ASTURIAS/El Señor Presidente; 3. ALEJO CARPENTIER/Journey Back to the Source; 4. ARTURO USLAR PIETRI/The Drum Dance; 5. JUAN CARLOS ONETTI/Jacob and the Other/A Dream Come True; 6. VICENTE HUIDOBRO/Altazor and Other Poems; 7. CESAR VALLEJO/Human Poems; 8. CESAR MORO/A Surrealist Poem; 9. JOSE COROSTIZA/Death Without End; 10. XAVIER VILLAURRUTIA/Nocturnes; 11. NICOLAS GUILLEN/Two Poems; 12. PABLO NERUDA/Six Poems; 13. OLIVERIO GIRONDO/Into the Moremarrow; 14. ENRIQUE MOLINA/Two Surrealist Poems; 15. JOSE LEZAMA LIMA/Texts in Prose and Verse; 16. MANUEL BANDEIRA/Poems; 17. OSWALD DE ANDRADE/Two Texts; 18. MARIO DE ANDRADE/Two Texts; 19. CASSIANO RICARD0/My Father Was the King; 20. JORGE DE LIMA/The Big Mystical Circus; 21. CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE/Poems; 22. JOAO GUIMARAES ROSA/Two Texts; PART FIVE: A NEW WRITING - 1. OCTAVIO PAZ/Blanco; 2. NICANOR PARRA/Poems and Antipoems; 3. ADOLFO BI0Y CASARES/The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice; 4. JULIO CORTAZAR/The Other Heaven; 5. ERNESTO SABATO/Report on the Blind; 6. CARLOS MARTINEZ MORENO/The Pigeon; 7. JUAN RULFO/Luvina; 8. Five Brazilian Poets - I. VINICIUS DE MORAES/Two Poems; II. JOAO CABRAL DE MELO NETO/The Dog Without Feathers; III. LEDO IVO/Didactic Elegy; IV. HAROLDO DE CAMPOS/Two Concrete Poems; V. FRANCISCO ALVIM/Two Poems; 9. CLARICE LISPECTOR/The Passion According to G.H.; 10. NELIDA PINON/House of Passion; 11. Twenty Spanish American Poets - I. ALBERTO GIRRI/Epistle to Hieronymus Bosch; II. ALI CHUMACERO/Two Poems; III. CESAR FERNANDEZ MORENO/Argentine Until Death Do Us Part; IV. IDEA VILARINO/Three Poems; V. CINTIO VITIER/Two Poems; VI. ERNEST0 CARDENAL/Poems; VII. ROBERTO JUARROZ/Four Poems; VIII. BLANCA VARELA/Three Poems; IX. JAIME SABINES/Two Poems; X. CARLOS GERMAN BELLI/O Cybernetic Fairy; XI. ENRIQUE LIHN/Poems; XII. FAYAD JAMIS/Poems; XIII. PABLO ARMANDO FERNANDEZ/Three Poems; XIV. HEBERTO PADILLA/Two Poems; XV. GUILLERMO SUCRE/Poems; XVI. JUAN GELMAN/Theory re Daniela Rocca; XVII. JOSE EMILIO PACHECO/Two Poems; XVIII. HOMERO ARIDJIS/Five Poems; XIX. JAVIER HERAUD/The Rivers; XX. ANTONIO CISNEROS/Poems; 12. JOSE DONOSO/Legitimate Games; 13. CARLOS FUENTES/The Doll Queen; 14. GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ/One Day After Saturday; 15. GUILLERMO CABRERA INFANTE/Three Trapped Tigers; 16. MANUEL PUIG/The Buenos Aires Affair; 17. MARIO VARGAS LLOSA/The Green House; 18. SEVERO SARDUY/The Entry of Christ into Havana; 19. GUSTAVO SAINZ/The Princess of the Iron Palace; 20. REINALDO ARENAS/Concerning Los Toribios Prison and the Chaining of the Friar. . .
Emir Rodríguez Monegal (28 July 1921 - 14 November 1985), born in Uruguay, was a scholar, literary critic, and editor of Latin American literature. From 1969 to 1985, Rodríguez Monegal was professor of Latin American contemporary literature at Yale University. He is usually called by his second surname Emir R. Monegal or Monegal, or erroneously Emir Monegal. Described as 'one of the most influential Latin American literary critics of the 20th century' by the Encyclopædia Britannica, Monegal wrote key books about Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges, and the Britannica Macropædia notice of the later. He was a part in 'The Boom' of 1960s Latin American literature as founder and 1966–1968 editor of his influential magazine Mundo Nuevo. He is remembered as a member of the Generation of 45, a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, Juan Carlos Onetti, among others.
A collection of poetry in translation from three contemporary Latin-American women poets that includes brief biographies of each poet, provided by Rodriguez-Nieto. The poems of ELSIE ALVARADO DE RICORD which appear in this edition were originally published in Entre materia y sueño (Panama, 1966), in the magazine Loteria (Panama, 1972), and in Pasajeros en transito (Panama, 1973). LUCHA CORPI'S poems have not been published previously. Genesis,' by Concha Michel, was translated from a preprint, and the other two poems from a collection entitled Dios nuestra señora (Mexico, 1966). All were reissued in Dios principio en la pareja (Mexico, 1974).
Catherine Rodriguez-Nieto is a freelance translator living in the San Francisco Bay area.,
SCENTS OF WOOD AND SILENCE: SHORT STORIES BY LATIN AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS brings together twenty-three excellent stories by a diverse group of authors from Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America. Represented in the collection are a variety of styles and themes that reflect a multiplicity of experience and voices. Ranging from issues of social justice to those of personal freedom, from intellectual inquiry to emotional self-exposure, the concerns of the women writers grouped here are as heterogeneous as the authors themselves. The reader also will find many points of convergence between stories, as well as ample bibliographic material for further study. SCENTS OF WOOD AND SILENCE focuses primarily, although not exclusively, on stories published since 1980, with the goal of bringing to an English-reading audience some of the most challenging writing being produced in contemporary Latin America. The collection includes the latest works by internationally-known writers, as well as the stories of many authors recognized in their own countries but less frequently translated into other languages. Several of these writers appear in English for the first time here. A group of outstanding translators, working from the original Spanish and Portuguese, have rendered into English the rich narration of these current short stories. With the publication of this anthology, the important work of bringing modern Latin American women writers to the attention of North American readers-work barely begun a decade ago- is continued and enriched. CONTENTS; Introduction by Kathleen Ross; MARGARITA AGUIRRE-The Black Sheep, Translation by Pamela Carmell; CLARIBEL ALEGRIA-The Awakening, Translation by Darwin J. Flakoll; ISABEL ALLENDE-Tosca, Translation by Margaret Sayers Peden; ALBALUCIA ANGEL-Down the Tropical Path, Translation by Pamela Carrnell; PIA BARROS-Scents of Wood and Silence, Translation by Alice A. Nelson; LYDIA CABRERA-Susundamba Does Not Show Herself By Day, Translation by Jose Piedra; JULIETA CAMPOS-The House, Translation by Kathleen Ross; ANA MARIA DEL RIO-Wash Water, Translation by Pamela Cannell; LYGIA FAGUNDES TELLES-The Structure of the Soap Bubble, Translation by David George; ANGELICA GORODISCHER-Camera Obscura, Translation by Diana L. VElez; MATILDE HERRERA-Eduardito Doesn't Like the Police, Translation by Richard Schaaf; CLARICE LISPECTOR-Beauty and the Beast, or, the Wound Too Great, Translation by Earl E. Fitz; SILVIA MOLINA-Autumn, Translation by Margaret Sayers Peden; SYLVIA MOLLOY-Sometimes in Illyria, Translation by the author; CARMEN NARANJO-A Woman at Dawn, Translation by Linda Britt; OLGA NOLLA-A Tender Heart, Translation by Maria de los Angeles Nevárez; SILVINA OCAMPO- Creation (An Autobiographical Story), Translation by Suzanne Jill Levine; CRISTINA PEN ROSSI-The Art of Loss, Translation by Gregory Rabassa; NELIDA PIÑON-The Heat of Things, Translation by Gregory Rabassa; MARIA LUISA PUGA- Memories on the Oblique, Translation by Leland H. Chambers; MARIELLA SOLA-From Exile, Translation by Richard Schaaf; LUISA VALENZUELA-Tango, Translation by Asa Zatz; ANA LYDIA VEGA-Death's Pure Fire, Translation by Carol Wallace. Bibliography.
Kathleen Ross is an editor and the translator of books that include Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism and The Initials of the Earth. Yvette E. Miller is a publisher and the editor of collections that include Isabel Allende Today and Latin American Women Writers: Yesterday and Today.
Well-annotated edition. Includes 25 selections from Latin American Indian cultures. Illustrated.
Jerome Rothenberg (born December 11, 1931) is an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry.
Well-annotated study and selection of so-called 'primitive' poetry from Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania. Includes the Aztec poem, 'The flight of Quetzalcoatl' (pp. 92-97), and other Latin American Indian poems and songs.
Jerome Rothenberg (born December 11, 1931) is an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry.
Scholarly edition in Maya and English of this important Mayan work. bibliog.
Contents: Acknowledgments. Introduction. Stories: Carmen Dolores, A Drama in the Countryside (1907); Jália Lopes de Almeida, I From He and She (1910); Rachel de Queiroz, From The Year Fifteen (1930); Clarice Lispector, The Flight (1940); Sm. Leandro DuprE, From We Were Six (1943); Emi Bulhoes Carvalho da Fonseca, In the Silence of the Big House (1944); Lácia Benedetti, My Uncle Ricardo (1950); Dinah Silveira de Queiroz, Jovita (1957); Lia Correia Dutra, A Perfect World (1957); Lygia Fagundes Telles, Just a Saxophone (1969); Adalgisa Nery, Premeditated Coincidence (1972); Hilda Hilst, Agda (1973); NElida Piñon, Near East (1973); Tania Jamardo Faillace, Dorceli (1975); Elisa Lispector, The Fragile Balance (1977); Edla van Steen, The Sleeping Beauty (Script of a Useless Life)(1978); Marina Colasanti, Little Girl in Red, on Her Way to the Moon (1980); Marcia Denser, The Vampire of Whitehouse Lane (1980); Lya Luft, From The Left Wing of the Angel (1981); Sônia Coutinho, Every Lana Turner Has Her Johnny Stompanato (1985).
Darlene Sadlier is the Director of the Portuguese Program and a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University.
A marvelous new anthology from the editors of Las Christmas in which our most admired Latino authors share memories of their mothers. The women lovingly portrayed in Las Mamis represent a cross section of Latino life and culture. They come from rich families in the big cities of Latin America, from rural immigrant families, and from the worlds in between-and they share an extraordinary inner strength, often maintained against incredible odds. Pressed by conflicting cultural expectations, circumstance, and religion, they have managed the challenges of motherhood, leaving enduring legacies for their children. Now, in these vivid, poignant, and sometimes hilarious reminiscences-all of them infused with distinct sabor latino-Las Mamis celebrates the universality of family love and the special bond between mothers and children. Contributors include: Esmeralda Santiago, Piri Thomas, Marjorie Agosin, Junot Diaz, Alba Ambert, Liz Balmaseda, Mandalit del Barco, Gioconda Belli, Maria Escandon, Dagoberto Gilb, Francisco Goldman, Jaime Manrique, Gustavo Perez-Firmat, Ilan Stavans. . .
Esmeralda Santiago (born May 17, 1948) is a Puerto Rican author and former actress known for her novels and memoirs.
‘Boricua is what Puerto Ricans call one another as a term of endearment, respect, and cultural affirmation; it is a timeless declaration that transcends gender and color. Boricua is a powerful word that tells the origin and history of the Puerto Rican people.' - From the Introduction. CONTENTS: PROLOGUE: CATHARSIS - Sandra Maria Esteves/Here; PART 1: PRIDE - Jose de Diego/To the Persecuted; Martita Morales/The Sounds of Sixth Street; Jose Torres/A Letter to a Child Like Me; PART 2: HISTORY AND POLITICS - Sandra Maria Esteves/It Is Raining Today; Jesus Colon/How to Know the Puerto Ricans; Esmeralda Santiago/Island of Lost Causes; Jose de Diego/Hallelujahs; Pedro Albizu Campos/Puerto Rican Nationalism; Luis Muñoz Marin/On Recent Disturbances in Puerto Rico; Abraham Rodriguez, Jr./The Boy Without a Flag; Julia de Burgos/ Grand River of Loiza; Jose Luis Gonzalez/The ‘Lamento Borincano'; Pablo Guzman/The Party (FROM PALANTE! YOUNG LORDS PARTY); Ronald Fernandez/Los Macheteros; Rosario Morales/Double Allegiance; PART 3: IDENTITY AND SELF-ESTEEM - Aurora Levins Morales/child of the Americas; Julia de Burgos/Ay Ay Ay, of the Kinky Negress; clara F. Rodriguez/Puerto Ricans: Between Black and White; Willie Perdomo/Nigger-Reecan Blues; Roberto Santiago/Black and Latino; Piri Thomas/Babylon for the Babylonians (from DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS); Victor Hernández Cruz/African Things; Judith Ortiz Cofer/The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria; Miguel Algarin/A Mongo Affair; PART 4: ANXIETY AND ASSIMILATION - Pedro Pietri/Puerto Rican Obituary; Piri Thomas/The Konk; Judith Ortiz Cofer/The Story of My Body; Julia de Burgos/To Julia de Burgos; Joseph B. Vasquez/Hangin' (out) with the Homeboys; Martin Espada/Niggerlips; Jesus Colon/Little Things Are Big; Rene Marques/The Docile Puerto Rican-Literature and Psychological Reality; Esmeralds Santiago/The American Invasion of Macun (from WHEN I WAS PUERTO RICAN); PART 5: URBAN REALITY - Pedro Pietri/Monday Morning; Freddie Prinze/'Looking Good'; Edwin Torres/Carlito's Way; Miguel Pinero/Short Eyes; Reinaldo Povod/Poppa Dio!; Pedro Juan Soto/Bayaminina; Felipe Luciano/Roots (FROM PALANTE! YOUNG LORDS PARTY); PART 6: LOVE, FAITH, AND TRANSCENDENCE - Julia de Burgos/I Became My Own Path; Migene Gonzalez-Wippler/Yoruba (from THE SANTERIA EXPERIENCE); Nlcholasa Mohr/Aunt Rosana's Rocker; Asia Lydia Vega/Aerobics for Love; Jack Agüeros/Malig; Malig & Sal; Sal. (from DOMINOES AND OTHER STORIES FROM THE PUERTO RICAN); Ed Morales/My Old Flame; Miguel Algarin/HIV; Julia de Burgos/Poem for My Death; Lucky CienFuegos/Dedicated to Maria Rodriguez Martinez-February 24, 1975; Maria Graniela de Pruetzel/The Freddie Prinze Story; Geraldo Rivera/ A Special Kind of Courage: Bernard Carabello; Victor Hernández Cruz/Loiza Aldea; EPILOGUE: REDEMPTION - Jose de Diego/The Final Act; About the Contributors; Author Index; Permission Acknowledgments.
Roberto Santiago is a journalist who lectures around the nation on Latino issues. He received the 1991 Inter American Press Association Award for Commentary and won first prize in the 1990 Hispanic Magazine Short Story Contest. A former reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Santiago has written for Omni, Rolling Stone, and Essence. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Twenty stories from the leading contemporary writers of Central America, including: Claribel Alegria; Manlio Argueta; Arturo Arias; Floracio Castellanos Moya; Roberto Castillo; Lyzandro Chavez Alfaro; Fabian Dobles; Julio Escoto; Jacinta Escudos; Augusto Monterroso; Mario Roberto Morales; Carmen Naranjo; Mario Payeras; Bertalicia Peralta; Alfonso Quijada Urias; Sergio Ramirez; Rodrigo Rey Rosa; Pedro Rivera; Samuel Rovinski; Leonel Rugama. An invitation to a world of deep sadness and joy, AND WE SOLD THE RAIN joins together the widely divergent styles and subject matter of a diverse group of writers. Some of the stories are firmly rooted in the tradition of ‘magical realism.' Others recall the lyricism of the great Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario. Several are recognized masterpieces. Together, they point in a new direction, reflecting the peculiar strength and courage it takes to write under extraordinary circumstances. CONTENTS: Preface by Rosario Santos; Introduction by Jo Anne Engelbert; Look at Lislique, See How Pretty It Is/JACINTA ESCUDOS (EL SALVADOR); The Proof/RODRIGO REY ROSA (GUATEMALA); Anita the Insect Catcher/ROBERTO CASTILLO (HONDURAS); Confinement/HORACIO CASTELLANOS MOYA (HONDURAS); Story of the Maestro Who Spent His Whole Life Composing a Piece for the Marimba/MARIO PAYERAS (GUATEMALA); Guatemala 1954-Funeral for a Bird/ARTURO ARIAS (GUATEMALA); I Am RenE Espronceda de la Barca/LEONEL RUGAMA (NICARAGUA); For These Things My Name Is RenE/MARIO ROBERTO MORALES (GUATEMALA); April in the Forenoon/JULIO ESCOTO (HONDURAS); The Perfect Game/SERGIO RAMIREZ (NICARAGUA); In the Shade of a Little Old Lady in Flower/ALFONSO QUIJADA URIAS (EL SALVADOR); Tarantulas of Honey/PEDRO RIVERA (PANAMA); A March Guayacan /BERTALICIA PERALTA (PANAMA); Microbus to San Salvador/MANLIO ARGUETA (EL SALVADOR); Sodom/SAMUEL ROVINSKI (COSTA RICA); And We Sold the Rain/CARMEN NARANJO (COSTA RICA); The Dog/LYZANDRO CHAVEZ ALFARO (NICARAGUA); Boardinghouse/CLARIBEL ALEGRIA (EL SALVADOR); Mr. Taylor/AUGUSTO MONTERROSO (GUATEMALA); Self-Defense/FABIAN DOBLES (COSTA RICA); Authors' Biographies; Translators' Biographies; Acknowledgments.
ROSARIO SANTOS directs Fulbright programs for Latin America for the Institute of International Education. She has been the managing editor of the literary journal, REVIEW: LATIN AMERICAN ART AND LITERATURE, and the director of the literature program of the Center for Inter-American Relations. Her most recent book is AND WE SOLD THE RAIN: CONTEMPORARY FICTION FROM CENTRAL AMEIRCA. She lives in New York City.
The twenty stories collected in this volume - the most far-reaching look at modern Bolivian literature in English - are a passport to a land and a body of literature unlike any other. Bolivia has been blessed with the largest and most diverse indigenous population in South America, but generations of oppression have embroiled it in social and political conflict. This explosive and uniquely fertile cultural soil has made for a magical literary landscape. In Ricardo Ocampo's ‘THE INDIAN PAULINO,' a poor Indian farmer has been rounded up with thousands and taken into the city to march for a government he hardly knew existed. In Edmundo Paz Soldan's ‘Dochera', a crossword puzzle writer is driven to invent a new language in tribute to a woman whose name he cannot forget. And in Cesar Verduguez's ‘To Die In Oblivion', a young migrant from the country dies anonymously in La Paz, and receives a hero's funeral procession from the workers, the homeless, and the down-trodden of the city. Here are stories by trail-blazing young writers like Gonzalo Lema, whose ‘Fat Man From La Paz' transforms detective writing into a gripping analysis of Bolivia's power elite, alongside such luminaries as Augusto Cespedes and Oscar Cerruto. Cespedes's ‘The Well' takes a hard look at Bolivia's brutal, futile Chaco war through a chronicle in diary form of one army regiment's exhausting search for water. Each story in this collection is a song. Some are odes, others dirges or anthems, but each is a song for Bolivia. Born in La Paz, Bolivia, Contents include - INTRODUCTION by Javier SanjinEs; ‘The Day of Atonement' by Giovanna Rivero Santa Cruz; ‘Buttons' by Claudia Adriázola; ‘Dochera' by Edmundo Paz-Soldán; ‘Celebration' by Giancarla de Quiroga; ‘The Pianist' by Ximena Arnal Franck; ‘The Fat Man from La Paz' by Gonzalo Lema; ‘Sisterhood' by Virginia Ayllon; ‘The Creation' by Homero Carvalho; ‘Sacraments by the Hour' by Blanca Elena Paz; ‘The One with the Horse' by Manuel Vargas; ‘Angela from Her Own Darkness' by RenE BascopE; ‘The Window' by Alfonso Gumucio Dragon; ‘Hedge-hopping' by Raul Teixido; ‘To Die in Oblivion' by CEsar Verduguez; ‘Ambush' by Adolfo Cáceres Romero; ‘The Other Gamecock' by Jorge Suárez; ‘The Cannon of Punta Grande' by NEstor Taboada Terán; ‘The Indian Paulino' by Ricardo Ocampo; ‘The Spider' by Oscar Cerruto; and ‘The Well' by Augusto CEspedes. AUTHORS' AND TRANSLATORS' BIOGRAPHIES.
ROSARIO SANTOS directs Fulbright programs for Latin America for the Institute of International Education. She has been the managing editor of the literary journal, REVIEW: LATIN AMERICAN ART AND LITERATURE, and the director of the literature program of the Center for Inter-American Relations. Her most recent book is AND WE SOLD THE RAIN: CONTEMPORARY FICTION FROM CENTRAL AMEIRCA. She lives in New York City.
What is it like to be black in Cuba? Does racism exist in a revolutionary society which claims to have abolished it? How does the legacy of slavery and segregation live on in today's Cuba? AfroCuba looks at the black experience in Cuba through the eyes of the island's writers, scholars and artists. Most contributors are black, and most contributions written since the 1959 revolution. The collection mixes poetry, fiction, political analysis and anthropology, producing a multi-faceted Insight Into Cuba's rich ethnic and cultural reality. In their introduction, editors Pedro Perez Sarduy and Jean Stubbs draw on their extensive knowledge of Cuba in reassessing the role of race in the island's turbulent history. Their choice of contributions introduce the reader to a wide range of previously unavailable Cuban writing, in which dissenting voices speak alongside established authors. ‘The editors have brought together a rich portrait of ‘AfroCuba', one of the most vibrant and - from an Anglo-Saxon viewpoint - least well documented of the black Caribbean diasporas.' - Stuart Hall, leading Caribbean scholar. CONTENTS: Acknowledgements and note on terminology; Introduction: The rite of social communion by Pedro Perez Sarduy & Jean Stubbs; For a Cuban integration of whites and blacks by Fernando Ortiz; PART 1: THE DIE IS CAST The 19th century black fear by Rafael Duharte Jimenez Mariana and Maceo by Jose Ludáno Franco; People without a history by Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux; Drum ballad by Jesus Cos Causse; Claudio Jose Domingo Brindis de Salas by Odilio Urfe; Back to Africa by Rodolfo Sarracino; Solutions to the black problem by Pedro Serviat; Times I walk with my father by Domingo Alfonso; The 20th century black question by binds Fernández Robaina; PART 2: MYTH AND REALITY - Imaginary dialogue on folklore by Rogelio Martinez Fure; An initiation ceremony in Regla de Palo by Gladys Gonzalez Bueno; The principle of multiple representation by Joel James; Abakuá signs by Argeliers Leon; Sara, one way or another by Tomas Gonzalez; The Orishas in Cuba by Natalia Bolivar; The strokes of magical realism in Manuel Mendive by Gerardo Mosquera; Bembesiana by Marcelino Arozarena; Asere by Eloy Machado; lfa says by Tato Quinones; Ofumelli by Excilia Saldana; Maria Antonia by Eugenio Hernandez; Adire and broken time by Manuel Granados; PART 3: REDRAWING THE LINE - Birth of a national culture by Walterio Carbonell; A white problem: Reinterpreting Cecilia Valdes by Reynaldo Gonzalez; The black and white in the narrative of Alejo Carpentier by Salvador Bueno; Runaway story by Miguel Barnet; Race and nation by Nancy Morejon; Rethinking the plantation by Alberto Pedro; Matilda by Pablo Armando Fernández; The maids by Pedro Perez Sarduy; Questions only she can answer by Georgina Herrera; The true door by Soleida Rios; Images and icons by Sergio Giral; Rey Spencer's swing by Marta Rojas. Notes on contributors. Glossary. Bibliographical note. Index.
Pedro Perez Sarduy (born 1943) is an Afro-Cuban writer and broadcaster, who has published poetry and fiction, in addition to journalism. He gives lectures and reads his work at academic institutions internationally and is currently resident in London, UK. Pedro Perez-Sarduy was born in 1943 in Santa Clara, Cuba, where he was raised. He said in a 2016 interview: "When I was young I won a short story competition and in 1962 I went to Havana when the National School of Arts (ENA) was being created. I suddenly found myself on the 6th floor of the Havana Libre hotel training as a literary advisor so that I could show people in the countryside how they could make their story into a story." He studied English, American and French literature and language at the University of Havana. From 1965 until 1979 he was a current affairs journalist for Cuban National Radio, and also worked on television on the first African and Caribbean music show in Cuba. After becoming resident in London, he worked in the Latin American department of the BBC World Service (between 1981 and 1994). His poetry has been published in three collections - Surrealidad (1967), Cumbite (1987) and Melecon Sigloveinte (2005), as well as appearing in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse (eds Stewart Brown and Mark McWatt, 2005) and other publications. He is the author of one novel, translated from Spanish as The Maids of Havana, which is based on his mother's memories of life as an Afro-Cuban from 1938 onwards, and was described by poet and critic Nancy Morejon as "a chronicle of an un-chronicled social psychology". He also co-edited with historian Jean Stubbs Afro-Cuba: An Anthology of Cuban Writing on Race, Politics and Culture (1993). Sarduy has read his work internationally and lectured regularly on race, politics and culture at academic institutions. He was a Ford Foundation Writer in Residence at Columbia University, New York (1989), on the CUNY Caribbean Exchange Program at Hunter College (1990), a Rockefeller Visiting Scholar at the University of Florida, Gainesville 1993), in 1997 at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, and on the Rockefeller Fellowship Caribbean 2000 Program. He has also been a Charles McGill Fellow Visiting Lecturer at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut (Fall 2004), and Associate Fellow of the Caribbean Studies Centre at London Metropolitan University. Awards he has received include (for poetry) the Casa de las Americas (1966) and Julián del Casal (Union Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, UNEAC) in 1967; and in 2008 the Prix du Livre Insulaire, Ouessant, for the French translation of his novel, Les bonnes de La Havane. Jean Stubbs is Co-Director of the Commodities of Empire British Academy Research Project (2007-2017), in collaboration with the Open University's Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies; Associate Fellow of the Institute of the Americas, University College London, and Bader International Study Centre (BISC-UK), Queen's University, Canada; and Professor Emerita of London Metropolitan University, where she directed the Caribbean Studies Centre (2002-2009). The recipient of Rockefeller, Ford, and McArthur funding as a visiting scholar at the University of Florida, Florida International University, University of Puerto Rico, and City University of New York, she returned to the University of Florida as the Center for Latin American Studies 2011 Bacardi Family Eminent Scholar. She was Fall 2012 Semester Scholar-in-Residence at BISC-UK, convening the special topics course ‘Global Issues of the 21st Century: Commodities, Globalisation and Migration in Comparative Perspective', and returns there in Winter 2014. She was elected member of the Academy of History of Cuba (2012) and awarded the UNESCO Toussaint L'Ouverture Medal (2009) for her services in combating racism and promoting diversity, and she served as president of the Caribbean Studies Association (2002-3) and chair of the U.K. Society for Caribbean Studies (1993-5). She was the founding editor of the International Journal of Cuban Studies (2008-9) and guest-editor with Dr Catherine Krull (Queen's University, Canada) of the themed women and gender issue of Cuban Studies 42 (2011); and has published widely on Cuba, her specialist interests spanning tobacco, labour, gender, race and migration. She is currently completing research on ‘the offshore Havana cigar' and is co-researcher with Dr Krull on The New Cuban Diaspora in Canada and Western Europe (2011-2014), a collaborative project funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
The generation of poets presented in this anthology began to receive recognition in Mexico in the 1970s, with the exception of Pacheco and Aridjis, who were already well-known in the previous decade. Conceived to discover an English-language audience for poetry in Mexico, this book was compiled from hundreds of works submitted by poets who were under 40 and had at least one book published at the time the anthology was created. Thus, the anthology's aim is not to highlight a poetic school or schools, but instead to demonstrate the variety of Mexican poetry from the generation born into World War II. The 12 poets are presented by the work of 7 translators, who had opportunity to consult with the majority of the poets as they worked on their translations. Biographical and bibliographical information on each poet is provided by the editor. Includes the Mexican poets from the 1960s and 1970s - BECERRA; PACHECO; HERNANDEZ; ARIDJIS; HUERTA; REYES; SAMPEDRO; RAMIREZ; CERVANTES; CAMPOS; MACIAS; TREJO. CONTENTS: Preface; JOSE CARLOS BECERRA - fragment from: Seated on a Stone; The Rules of the Game; Ragtime; La Venta; The Maltese Falcon; (drawing by Jose Luis Cuevas); (the drowned); (Via Veneto); JOSE EMILIO PACHECO - The Climbing Vine; Gift of Heraclitus; Don't Ask Me How Time Goes By; Footnote to Jorge Manrique; A Lecture on Crabs; Mirror of Enigmas: Monkeys; Scorpions; Three Canadian Poems; Physiology of the Slug; Autumn Afternoon in an Old Country House; Old Forest Hill Road (Toronto); Eyes of the Fish; Galdôs; Jardin de Ninos; Graffiti; FRANCISCO HERNÁNDEZ - The Old Man and the Gunpowder; The Dream and the Vision; Post Card From Madrid; The Poet Who Played the Flute; From the Empty Cage; Music by Mahler; Sunday; Under the Volcano; One; Three; 1/7/9/24; Street; HOMERO ARIDJIS - Before the Kingdom; I'll give you my weapons the northern wine; 74 Night dies over a broken apple; before he dies the old man sees a young man approach; he had a vial where he kept algae; Faster than thought the image moves; In the hand air; Angels feel themselves in light; the song under the mist; Woman goes naked under each glance; Like the earth; DAVID HUERTA - Residence; Garden; III; Details; There is a small prophecy in the air's poorest wall; Today is threshold and immediate possibility, haste and writing; There is no ‘language of the look: ‘it's a stammering; There's something like a strange coating in my mouth, a taste of; Afternoon has arrived like an eye of dust, its matter fallen in; What hasn't been said is millenial-it's in the heart of a; JAIME REYES -The Defeated; Without Memory or Oblivion; JOSE DE JESUS SAMPEDRO - joe & marilyn; the cave of god second printing; total union; to caroline; or volga 1943; after everything; sam's blues; regarding the tactical need for a prior politization; MIGUEL HOSES RANILREZ - Guernica; Short Takes; One eye is missing; Ars Poetica; Brevity Gasps; Ezra Pound; Poet's Death; Earthquake Picture; Vital spaces; Two Images 0f Poets Two; One Day Mirrors Will Have Aged; To Talk a Bit; FRANCISCO CERVANTES - The chronicle was drawn; The Minstrel's Dream; VI; VII; Stained Was the Grass; The Devil Memory; V; XI; Pardonless Autumn; MARCO ANTONIO CAMPOS - Semantics; A Chat With Walt Whitman and the Same Phantom; I Begin; Creation of the Poet or Misinterpretation of Blake; Elegy (1); My Brothers Left Little By Little; Florence in the World's Heart; What Has Become of My Friends?; Early Morning in Athens; That Voice in Pireus; ELVA MACIAS - Image; Today; Adonis; The Rooster on the Balcony; Irreverence; Solicitude; II; X; Cold Spark; Wing of Sun; The Untouchable Love; Absence 0f the Unicorn; ERNESTO TREJO - Your Room; In Short; My Tongue Is the Tongue; It's Your Name and It's Also December; This Is What Happened; The Cloud Unfolding; Cipriana (1881-1975); Tonight This House Speaks; E. Gives a Name; F. at the Zocalo; Notes on Translators; Bibilography.
Linda Scheer has translated both Mexican and American prose and poetry. Her translations have appeared in anthologies, magazines, newspapers and literary journals in the United States and Mexico.
William Shand (1902–1997) was a Scottish-born Argentine poet, novelist and playwright. Arriving in Argentina in 1938, he worked for La Nacion as a book reviewer, translator and critic. Shand translated the poetry of John Donne and Stephen Spender and was a playwright of multiple works, including the libretto for the opera Beatrix Cenci of Alberto Ginastera. Collaborating with Alberto Girri, they compiled other poets' works into collected editions. Characterized as "a careful observer of contemporary Argentine society" Shand "... often dealt with highly controversial and delicate topics". He split his time between an apartment opposite Plazoleta Carlos Pellegrini and a villa in San Miguel.
This anthology gives the reader an opportunity to sample some of the latest examples of the mystery genre from Latin America. With this volume, readers can enjoy some of the best mystery and crime fiction from Latin America, as Latin Americans have long been devotees of British whodunits as well as North American hard-boiled tales. Here, translated from the Spanish and Portuguese, are eight stories from those countries where the most significant work in mystery and crime fiction in Latin America originates - Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and Cuba. A boom in the genre can be observed in the 1970s and 1980s, the period to which these stories belong. In an introductory essay, Amelia S. Simpson explains the background to that boom, and the context that makes Latin American mystery and crime fiction an intriguing and exceptional body of writing within what is often thought of as a formulaic genre with little substance and few literary pretensions. The stories in the present volume cover a range of styles and express a variety of views of what mystery and crime fiction can mean. The elegant and supple voice of Argentine author Ricardo Piglia looks at systems of violence in "The Crazy Woman and the Story of the Crime." With a nod to Raymond Chandler and the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, and a bow to Poe's ratiocinations, Piglia creates one of the most imaginative, intricate in its implications, and original crime stories Latin America has produced. The real horror of Piglia's tale of violence is that it never ends. "Hierarchy," by Piglia's fellow Argentine Eduardo Goligorsky, on the other hand, reaches an explosive conclusion that punctuates another vision of systematic violence. In "Doctor and Doctoring," the Mexican author Luis Arturo Ramos draws on history and memory--a story of haves and have-nots--to bring together two men in a murderous embrace. The next four stories are from Brazil. The first two deal specifically, like Ramos's tale, with the fact of social privilege and authority. Ignacio de Loyola Brandao's "Monday's Heads" shows a deeply rooted social psychosis blossom in the narrow confines of an elevator car. The documentary style of Paulo Celso Rangel's "Deposition" underlines the lack of artifice needed to play this predictable and brutal game of cat and mouse. In "Mandrake," Rubem Fonseca's private eye shows us a deeply disturbed and disturbing side of Rio de Janeiro. Glauco Rodrigues Correa's "The South Bay Crime" provides an amusing look at provincial Brazilians and maintains as well a suspenseful narrative concerning a young boy's mysterious disappearance. Finally, Cuban author Arnaldo Correa's "The Man under the Ceiba Tree" subtly undermines the transparent approach of much socialist detective fiction of the postrevolutionary period. Like all good mystery and crime stories, these can be read simply for pleasure, as well as for the insights they offer into Latin American culture and fiction.
Amelia S. Simpson received an M.A. in Latin American studies in 1977 and a Ph.D. in Spanish American literature in 1986, both from the University of Texas at Austin. She has taught in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Florida, Gainesville, since 1987. The author is currently editing and translating an anthology of Argentine, Mexican, Brazilian, and Cuban detective fiction stories from the 1970s and 1980s. Her critical articles and translations - including essays by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Octavio Paz, and Severo Sarduy - have appeared in various journals.
The first of two volumes of translations which were published separately. Includes works by: Antonio Acevedo Hernández (Chile), Cabrerita (Cabrerita), translated Wilbur E. Bailey; Florencio Sanchez (Uruguay), The foreign girl (La gringa, 1904), translated Alfred Coester; Luis Vargas Tejada (Colombia), My poor nerves (Las convulsiones). (reprint Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971).
'Writers from Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, and other countries represent an ethnically diverse culture with roots in eastern Europe as well as Spain. . . . The anthology includes tales by such masters as Alberto Gerchunoff . . . and Germán Rozenmacher, a large number of innovative women writers, and some authors more familiar to English-speaking readers.' - Library Journal. 'Reminds us that society south of the border is just as multicultural as in the US, and that Jews have played an important role in it since the time of the Spanish conquest.' - Publishers Weekly. Jewish identity and magical realism are the themes of the tales of adventure and cultural alienation collected here by the leading authority on Jewish Latin American literature. First published in 1994 as Tropical Synagogues: Short Stories by Jewish-Latin American Writers, Ilan Stavans's classic anthology is expanded and updated in this new edition.
Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books Art and Anger: Essays on Politics and the Imagination and The Riddle of Cantinflas: Essays on Hispanic Popular Culture, Revised and Expanded Edition are also available from UNM Press.
A major bilingual anthology of twentieth-century Latin American poetry During a century of extraordinary change, poets became the chroniclers of deep polarizations. From RubEn Darío's quest to renew the Spanish language to CEsar Vallejo's linking of religion and politics, from Jorge Luis Borges's cosmopolitanism to Pablo Neruda's placement of poetry as uncompromising speaker for the downtrodden, and from Alejandra Pizarnik's agonies of the self to Humberto Ak'Abal's examination of all things indigenous, it is through verse that the hemisphere's cantankerous collective soul in an age of overhaul might best be understood. A brilliant, moving, and thought-provoking summation of these forking paths, The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry invites us to look at an illustrious literary tradition with fresh eyes. Ilan Stavans, one of the foremost scholars of Hispanic culture and a distinguished translator, goes beyond easy geographical and linguistic categorizations in gathering these works. This bilingual anthology features eighty-four authors from sixteen different countries writing in Spanish, Portuguese, Mapuche, Nahuatl, Quechua, Mazatec, Zapotec, Ladino, and Spanglish. The poems are rendered into English in inspired fashion by first-rate translators such as Elizabeth Bishop, Galway Kinnell, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Mark Strand, and Richard Wilbur. In these pages the reader will experience the power of poetry to account for a hundred years in the life of a restless continent.
Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, publisher of Restless Books, host of NPR's podcast In Contrast, and a columnist for the New York Times en Español. The recipient of numerous international awards and honors, his books have been translated into twenty languages. He is the author, with Marcelo Brodsky, of Once@9:53am: Terror in Buenos Aires and, with Roberto Weil, of Don Quixote of La Mancha, both published by Penn State University Press.
In The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays, Ilan Stavans provides an anthology that is as vast, as varied, and as fascinating as the region it represents. While retaining much of the flavor of Latin American fiction-the dazzling metaphors, richness of language, and sheer imaginative bravado-these essays give us the more intellectual, critical, and self-reflexive side of the dreaming mind that has so thoroughly entranced the literary world. From Baldomero Sanin Cano's lacerating critique of Theodore Roosevelt to Ezequiel Martinez Estrada's reverential reading of Thoreau; from Pablo Neruda's passionate Nobel acceptance speech to Mario Vargas Llosa's penetrating analysis of the destruction of the Incas; from Isabel Allende's and Carlos Fuentes's personal accounts of their writing to Gabriel Garcia Márquez's playful repudiation of the umbrella and Rosario FerrE's complex assessment of the role of the translator, this volume gives us the whole spectrum of concerns that have animated some of the greatest writers of our time. Of course, the political struggles that have afflicted the region for centuries-the ‘endemic dictatorships resembling tropical fevers,' as Augusto Roa Bastos calls them-exert a constant pressure on the writing gathered here. Indeed, it is the attempt to understand the effects of history and politics on personal, cultural, and literary identities that makes these essays so compelling. Enrique Anderson Imbert asserts that ‘the history of the essay does not show us a limbo of indecisive people or apprentices, but an emphatic assembly of spirits who felt confident, ingenious, and aware.' Includes selections by AndrEs Bello, Jorge Amado, Julio Cortázar, Clarice Lispector, Octavio Paz, Ariel Dorfman, Manuel Puig, and many others.
Ilan Stavans (born Ilan Stavchansky on April 7, 1961) is a Mexican-American essayist, lexicographer, cultural commentator, translator, short-story author, publisher, TV personality, and teacher known for his insights into American, Hispanic, and Jewish cultures. He is the author of Quixote (2015) and a contributor to the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (2010).
The expression ‘Mexican poetry' is ambiguous: is it poetry written by Mexicans or poetry that in some manner reveals the spirit, the reality, or the character of Mexico? Our poets write twentieth-century Mexican Spanish but the Mexicanness of their poems as reflecting national character is very doubtful. It is said that Lopez Velarde is the most Mexican of our poets, yet his work is so personal in style that it would be useless to look for someone like him among his contemporaries and descendants. If that is what determines one's Mexicanness, then we would have to conclude that Mexicanness consists in not appearing like any other Mexican. It would not be a general characteristic without personal anomaly. The fact is that the work of Lopez Velarde bears more than a slight resemblance to the work of the Argentine poet Lugones, which, in its time, seemed close to the work of Laforgue. Not national character but the spirit of an epoch unites these three poets. This observation is applicable to other literatures: Manrique seems more like Villon than Garcilaso, and Gongora is closer to Marino than to Berceo. The existence of a French or a German or an English poetry is debatable; but the reality of Baroque, Romantic, or Symbolist poetry is not. Anthologies aim to present the best poems of an author or of the period and, in this way, they imply a more or less static view of literature, But if I admit that tastes change, criticism asserts that almost always works remain; though the vision of one critic be different from that of other critics, the territory they consider is the same. This book is inspired by a distinct idea: the territory also changes. Works are never the same, readers are authors as well. The works that inspire us with passion are those that transform themselves indefinitely; the poems that we love are mechanisms of successive meaning-an architecture that unmakes and remakes itself without stopping, an organism in perpetual revolution, not quiet beauty, but mutations and transmutations. A poem does not mean, but engenders meaning: it is language in its purest form. This book is not an anthology but an experiment. It is this in two senses: because of the idea that inspired it and by being a collective work. This book is divided into four parts. The first is dedicated to the young. It is not, nor could it be, a complete selection, More than a picture of recent poetry, it is a window which opens onto a rapidly changing landscape. The second part confronted us with a diverse group whose truly significant work was done not in their youth but in their maturity. It is a generation marked by the Second World War and by the ideological quarrels that preceded it and followed it. Later than the others, as if to recover lost time, it jumped forward toward its youth. Contents: INTRODUCTION by Octavio Paz; PREFACE by Mark Strand; HOMERO ARIDJIS - A veces uno toca un cuerpo/Sometimes We Touch a Body (translated by W. S. MERWIN); Es tu nombre y es tambiEn octubre/It's Your Name and It's Also October (translated by W. S. MERWIN); Antes del reino/Before the Kingdom (translated by W. S. MERWIN); JOSE EMILIO PACHECO - De algün tiempo a esta parte/From Some Time to This Place (translated by PHILIP LEVINE); La enredadera/The Climbing Vine (translated by PHILIP LEVINE); Las palabras de Buda/The Words of the Buddha (translated by PHILIP LEVINE); OSCAR OLIVA - Mientras tomo una taza de cafE/While Drinking a Cup of Coffee (translated by W. S. MERWIN); FRANCISCO CERVANTES - Mambrü/Mambru (translated by MARK STRAND); JAIME AUGUST0 SHELLEY - Los pájaros/The Birds (translated by W. S. MERWIN); El cerco/The Ring (translated by W. S. MERWIN); SERGIO MONDRAGON - Guru/Guru (translated by W. S. MERWIN); GABRIEL ZAID - Nacimiento de Venus/Birth of Venus (translated by DANIEL HOFFMAN); La ofrenda/The Offering (translated by DANIEL HOFFMAN); - Pastoral/Shepherd's Song (translated by DANIEL HOFFMAN); Resplandor ültimo/Final Splendor (translated by DANIEL HOFFMAN); MARCO ANTONIO MONTES DE OCA - La luz en ristre/The Light in Its Stand (translated by W. S. MERWIN); El jardin que los dioses frecuentaron/The Garden Which the Gods Frequented (translated by W. S. MERWIN); TOMAS SEGOVIA - La que acoge y conforta/What Welcomes and Comforts (translated by MARK STRAND); JAIME SABINES - Yo no lo se de cierto/I Don't Know for Certain; Tarumba/Tarumba (translated by W. S. MERWIN); A la casa del dia/In the House of the Day (translated by PHILIP LEVINE); A caballo/On Horseback (translated by PHILIP LEVINE); Si alguien te dice que no es cierto/If Someone Tells You It's Not for Sure (translated by PHILIP LEVINE); Te puse una cabeza/I Put a Head (translated by PHILIP LEVINE); Vamos a cantar/He aqui que estamos reunidos/So Here We Are (translated by PHILIP LEVINE); Algo sobre la muerte del mayor Sabines/Something on the Death of the Eldest Sabines (translated by PHILIP LEVINE); JAIME GARCIA TERRES - Ipanema/Ipanema (translated by W. S. MERWIN); JUAN JOSE ARREOLA - Elegia/Elegy (translated by W. S. MERWIN); La caverna/The Cave (translated by W. S. MERWIN); Telemaquia/Telemachus (translated by W. S. MERWIN); El sapo/The Toad (translated by W. S. MERWIN); Cevidos/Deer (translated by W. S. MERWIN); Metamorfosis/Metamorphosis (translated by W. S. MERWIN); ALl CHUMACERO - El orbe de la danza/The Sphere of the Dance (translated by DANIEL HOFFMAN); EFRAIN HUERTA - Los hombres del alba/The Men of the Dawn (translated by PHILIP LEVINE); La muchacha ebria/The Drunken Girl (translated by PHILIP LEVINE); OCTAVIO PAZ - Trabajos del poeta/Works of the Poet (translated by ELIOT WEINBERGER); Madrugada/Dawn (translated by ELIOT WEINBERGER); Aqui/Here (translated by ELIOT WEINBERGER); Viento entero/ Wind from All Compass Points (translated by PAUL BLACKBURN); GILBERTO OWEN - Interior/ Interior (translated by MARK STRAND); SALVADOR NOVO - Del pasado remoto (Fragmento)/From the Remote Past (A Fragment) (translated by SUZANNE JILL LEVINE); Roberto el subteniente/Roberto, the Second Lieutenant (translated by SUZANNE JILL LEVINE); XAVIER VILLAURRUTIA - Nocturno de la estatua/Nocturne of the Statue (translated by DONALD JUSTICE); Nocturno eterno/Eternal Nocturne (translated by RACHEL BENSON); Nocturna rosa/Rose Nocturnal (translated by DONALD JUSTICE); Cementerio en la nieve/Cemetery in the Snow (translated by DONALD JUSTICE); JOSE GOROSTIZA - Muerte sin fin (Fragmentos)/from Death Without End (translated by RACHEL BENSON); MANUEL MAPLES ARCE - Urbe (Fragmento)/City (translated by MARK STRAND) CARLOS PELLICER - Estudio/Study (translated by DONALD JUSTICE); Recuerdos de Iza/Memories of Iza (translated by DONALD JUSTICE); Deseos/Wishes (translated by DONALD JUSTICE); Estudios/Studies (translated by DONALD JUSTICE); Poema prodigo/Prodigal Poem (translated by DONALD JUSTICE); JULIO TORRI - A Circe/Circe (translated by MARK STRAND); Mujeres/Women (translated by MARK STRAND); RAMON LOPEZ VELARDE - Mi prima Agueda/My Cousin Agatha (translated by DOUGLAS EICHHORN); Hormigas/Ants (translated by DOUGLAS EICRHORN); El candil/The Chandelier (translated by DOUGLAS EICHHORN); Humildemente/Humbly (translated by DONALD JUSTICE); El sueno de los guantes negros/The Dream of the Black Gloves (translated by DONALD JUSTICE); JOSE JUAN TABLADA - El pavo real/The Peacock (translated by HARDIE ST. MARTIN); Los sapos/The Toads (translated by HARDIE ST. MARTIN); Hojas secas/Dry Leaves (translated by W. S. MERWIN); Mariposa nocturna/Night Moth (translated by HARDIE ST. MARTIN); El mono/The Monkey (translated by HARDIE ST. MARTIN); Panorama/Panorama (translated by W. S. MERWIN); Peces voladores/Flying Fish (translated by W. S. MERWIN); Nocturno alterno/Alternating Nocturne (translated by ELIOT WEINBERGER); La Cruz del Sur/Southern Cross (translated by HARDIE ST. MARTIN); INDEX OF AUTHORS; INDEX OF FIRST LINES-SPANISH; INDEX OF FIRST LINES-ENGLISH. . .
Mark Strand was recognized as one of the premier American poets of his generation as well as an accomplished editor, translator, and prose writer. The hallmarks of his style are precise language, surreal imagery, and the recurring theme of absence and negation; later collections investigate ideas of the self with pointed, often urbane wit. Named the US poet laureate in 1990, Strand's career spanned five decades, and he won numerous accolades from critics and a loyal following among readers. In 1999 he was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection Blizzard of One. Born on Prince Edward Island, Canada, Strand grew up in various cities across the United States and in Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Strand originally expressed interest in painting and hoped to become an artist. He earned a BA from Antioch College in 1957 and a BFA from Yale University in 1959, where he studied with the painter Josef Albers. His interest in painting waned while at Yale, and he then decided to become a poet instead. Following his graduation, he went to Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship and studied 19th-century Italian poetry. I was never much good with language as a child, Strand admitted during an interview with Bill Thomas for the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Believe me, the idea that I would someday become a poet would have come as a complete shock to everyone in my family. Strand earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1962 and began teaching at various colleges, including Yale University, Princeton University, and Harvard University. He spent a year in Brazil in 1965 as a Fulbright lecturer. Strand admitted there were some benefits to being a poet during the turbulent 1960s. Groupies were a big part of the scene, he told Thomas. Poets were underground pop stars, and when we made the campus circuit, girls would flock around. It wasn't bad. I rather liked the uncertainties of my life then. Strand's first book, Sleeping with One Eye Open (1964), introduced his distinctive approach to poetry. The volume is characterized by a pervasive sense of anxiety and restless foreboding. Discussing the title poem with the radio program, Weekend America, Strand said the poem speaks to a certain anxiety I experienced back in the early '60s. I was afraid the United States would go to war with Russia or the USSR. I think it's a poem surrounded by a great deal of silence. In the first stanza of the frequently anthologized poem Keeping Things Whole, Strand sets the tone and presents the themes which continue to dominate his later work: In a field / I am the absence / of field. / This is / always the case. / Wherever I am / I am what is missing. Just before his death in 2014, Strand asserted that he wrote this poem in 20 seconds during a card game. The speakers in Strand's early poetry are characterized by an intense concern with self and identity. David Kirby remarked in Mark Strand and the Poet's Place in Contemporary Culture, Many poems in Strand's first book show an uneasy preoccupation with self, and the vehicle used to express that preoccupation is often a dream state in which the speaker is divided between two worlds and can locate himself comfortably in neither. The concern with identity is woven through Strand's later work, as well. The basic themes are treated in the poems with a growing unease that the reader feels more intensely than before - as his skill increases, so does the poet's power to disturb, Kirby explained. Strand's early collections of poetry, including Reasons for Moving (1968), made his reputation as a dark, brooding poet haunted by death, but Strand himself does not find them especially dark, he told Thomas. I find them evenly lit, he continued. Critics, however, discerned a shift with Strand's third book. Harold Bloom, reviewing Darker (1970) found that the irreality of Borges, though still near, is receding in Darker, as Strand opens himself more to his own vision. The New Poetry Handbook, included in that book, illuminates Strand's slight shift in perspective. While many of the poems that follow it express a concern with the apparent meaninglessness of life, The New Poetry Handbook offers a solution: poetry. Strand seriously considers the place of poetry in the universe, concluding that when a man finishes a poem / he shall bathe in the blank wake of his passion / and be kissed by white paper. Kirby viewed the poem as an answer to the problem of self. But while Strand's focus grew to include an affirmation of the positive, he remained a poet of mood, of integrated fragments, of twilit landscape, and of longing, wrote Henri Cole in Poetry. His collections The Story of our Lives (1973) and The Late Hour (1978) also were dark, occupying the Rilkean space between beauty and terror. His ominous, foreboding early poems carry the anxiety of what cannot be communicated because it cannot be known, only anticipated, wrote Dave Lucas in the Virginia Quarterly Review, though they also include more obviously autobiographical poems like Elegy for my Father. In 1980's Selected Poems, Strand relies on an ethereal, cumulative effect to express the idea that the two fixed points of a man's life are the self and God; both are darknesses, one leading to another, Cole continued. In the New York Review of Books, Irvin Ehrenpreis, however, was critical of Strand's solipsistic emphasis on the self: For all his mastery of rhythm and music, Strand does not open the lyric to the world but makes it a self-sustaining enterprise. Strand spent the decade after the publication of Selected Poems not writing poetry. In a profile by Jonathan Aaron, Strand admitted that I gave up [writing poems] that year. I didn't like what I was writing, I didn't believe in my autobiographical poems. He turned to other forms of writing instead, including a foray into children's literature with The Planet of Lost Things (1982). As with his poetry, Strand focused on questions of loss, using the story to address the common childhood worry about where things go when they are lost. Strand's other books for children include The Night Book (1985) and Rembrandt Takes a Walk (1986). A frequent contributor of short stories to periodicals, Strand published a collection of prose narratives in 1985. The resulting volume, Mr. and Mrs. Baby (1985), addressed Strand's recurrent concern with the superficiality of life. Alan Cheuse of the Los Angeles Times Book Review described the book as a mixture of irony and affection. The collection mixes the fantastic with the mundane; describing the stories as odd, surrealistic sketches of alienation and rootlessness, New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani found them so slight, so tentative, that they evaporate into the air. Ellen Lesser of the Village Voice wrote, By far the greatest pleasures of Mr. and Mrs. Baby are not to be found in its mysteries, comic vision, or even its hapless picture of the contemporary male, but rather in the writing. On practically every page, one can be dazzled by Strand's language. Strand also published books of art criticism, including The Art of the Real (1983) and William Bailey (1987). His 1994 volume Hopper was a highly expressive elucidation of the technique and narrative meaning of the American realist painter Edward Hopper's works. Of the many pieces of writing stimulated by Hopper, observed John Updike in The New York Review of Books, none is more coolly and eerily attentive (more Hopperesque, we could say) than Mark Strand's brilliant small book Hopper, showing how we are moved and disquieted by formal elements in the paintings. Strand describes Hopper's human subjects, for example, as ‘characters whose parts have deserted them and now, trapped in the space of their waiting, must keep themselves company with no clear place to go, no future.' Strand published The Continuous Life, his first book of poems in a decade, in 1990. In the New York Times Book Review, Alfred Corn commented that the book doesn't strike me so much as a capstone of Mr. Strand's career as one more turning in his development. Corn pointed to changes in meter, diction and point of view. This is a poetry written, as it were, in the shadow of high mountains, and touched with their grandeur, he concluded. Strand's appointment as US poet laureate the same year brought the book even more attention. Strand's next books received much critical acclaim. Dark Harbor (1993) is a single long poem divided into 55 diverse sections. Reviewers emphasized the poem's motifs of anticipation and tension lacking resolution, as well as the exotic and rarified beauty of Strand's often surrealistic language, though Judith Hall, in the Antioch Review, found that the austerity of the sequence is eased by tone - elegiac and self-mocking; part Cheever, part Brancusi, with the indefiniteness that Poe said was essential to music. In 1999 Strand was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Blizzard of One. The collection returns to the same concerns that have preoccupied Strand throughout his career as a poet. The poems in Mark Strand's latest collection are missing their subjects, wrote Sarah Manguso in the Iowa Review, pointing out the presence of familiar Strand themes of loss, dispersion and absence. For many critics Blizzard of One was an affirmation of Strand's continued appeal. A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that it was somehow scandalous that in his gorgeous, unabashed nostalgia or erotic melancholy there remained a tremendous allure and that Strand continued to be one of our most deeply enjoyable poets. In The New York Times, Deborah Garrison named Strand among the luminaries of contemporary poets, calling Blizzard of One a masterly new collection in which even the single snowflake that gives the volume its title ... is a kind of Platonic essence, linked to a continuum of snowflakes out there in the weather and inside, in the reader's consciousness. Garrison also found that in his serious verses there are glimmers of an appealing new lightness; it's as though his gradual adaptation to his own stringency has freed him up. When Strand published a collection of 15 short prose works as Weather of Words (2000), he was commended for his insight into the work of other poets. The essays ranged from commentary on poets, analysis of individual poems, and a discussion of poetic forms. The book was also valued for its relevance to Strand's own poetry. Ian Tromp, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, compared the collection to Blizzard of One and found the poems poised and subtle, imbued with wisdom, while the essays and prose were considered playful and witty. Strand also coedited the anthology The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (2000) with Eavan Boland. Strand's collection Man and Camel (2006) contains more playful, witty moments than previous books, though, as Lucas pointed out in his VQR review, its tension, between what is present and what cannot be touched, continues to be the most consistent theme in Strand's work. New Selected Poems (2007) draws on Strand's work from the previous two decades and is full of buffoons whom the poet nevertheless loves, wrote Dan Chiasson in the New Yorker, adding they represent his new empathy for that old absurdity the self. His last book, Collected Poems (2014), was a longlist nominee for the National Book Award. In his later years, Strand stopped writing poetry and began to work again in art, preferring to make collages with paper he made by hand. His work was exhibited at Lori Bookstein Fine Art in Chelsea. Mark Strand's honors include the Bollingen Prize, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, a Rockefeller Foundation award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. He served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He taught at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University. He died in late 2014 at the age of 80. - POETRY FOUNDATION.
Short, lyric poems which complement those of The singing mountaineers.
Mark Strand was recognized as one of the premier American poets of his generation as well as an accomplished editor, translator, and prose writer. The hallmarks of his style are precise language, surreal imagery, and the recurring theme of absence and negation; later collections investigate ideas of the self with pointed, often urbane wit. Named the US poet laureate in 1990, Strand's career spanned five decades, and he won numerous accolades from critics and a loyal following among readers. In 1999 he was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection Blizzard of One. Born on Prince Edward Island, Canada, Strand grew up in various cities across the United States and in Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Strand originally expressed interest in painting and hoped to become an artist. He earned a BA from Antioch College in 1957 and a BFA from Yale University in 1959, where he studied with the painter Josef Albers. His interest in painting waned while at Yale, and he then decided to become a poet instead. Following his graduation, he went to Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship and studied 19th-century Italian poetry. I was never much good with language as a child, Strand admitted during an interview with Bill Thomas for the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Believe me, the idea that I would someday become a poet would have come as a complete shock to everyone in my family. Strand earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1962 and began teaching at various colleges, including Yale University, Princeton University, and Harvard University. He spent a year in Brazil in 1965 as a Fulbright lecturer. Strand admitted there were some benefits to being a poet during the turbulent 1960s. Groupies were a big part of the scene, he told Thomas. Poets were underground pop stars, and when we made the campus circuit, girls would flock around. It wasn't bad. I rather liked the uncertainties of my life then. Strand's first book, Sleeping with One Eye Open (1964), introduced his distinctive approach to poetry. The volume is characterized by a pervasive sense of anxiety and restless foreboding. Discussing the title poem with the radio program, Weekend America, Strand said the poem speaks to a certain anxiety I experienced back in the early '60s. I was afraid the United States would go to war with Russia or the USSR. I think it's a poem surrounded by a great deal of silence. In the first stanza of the frequently anthologized poem Keeping Things Whole, Strand sets the tone and presents the themes which continue to dominate his later work: In a field / I am the absence / of field. / This is / always the case. / Wherever I am / I am what is missing. Just before his death in 2014, Strand asserted that he wrote this poem in 20 seconds during a card game. The speakers in Strand's early poetry are characterized by an intense concern with self and identity. David Kirby remarked in Mark Strand and the Poet's Place in Contemporary Culture, Many poems in Strand's first book show an uneasy preoccupation with self, and the vehicle used to express that preoccupation is often a dream state in which the speaker is divided between two worlds and can locate himself comfortably in neither. The concern with identity is woven through Strand's later work, as well. The basic themes are treated in the poems with a growing unease that the reader feels more intensely than before - as his skill increases, so does the poet's power to disturb, Kirby explained. Strand's early collections of poetry, including Reasons for Moving (1968), made his reputation as a dark, brooding poet haunted by death, but Strand himself does not find them especially dark, he told Thomas. I find them evenly lit, he continued. Critics, however, discerned a shift with Strand's third book. Harold Bloom, reviewing Darker (1970) found that the irreality of Borges, though still near, is receding in Darker, as Strand opens himself more to his own vision. The New Poetry Handbook, included in that book, illuminates Strand's slight shift in perspective. While many of the poems that follow it express a concern with the apparent meaninglessness of life, The New Poetry Handbook offers a solution: poetry. Strand seriously considers the place of poetry in the universe, concluding that when a man finishes a poem / he shall bathe in the blank wake of his passion / and be kissed by white paper. Kirby viewed the poem as an answer to the problem of self. But while Strand's focus grew to include an affirmation of the positive, he remained a poet of mood, of integrated fragments, of twilit landscape, and of longing, wrote Henri Cole in Poetry. His collections The Story of our Lives (1973) and The Late Hour (1978) also were dark, occupying the Rilkean space between beauty and terror. His ominous, foreboding early poems carry the anxiety of what cannot be communicated because it cannot be known, only anticipated, wrote Dave Lucas in the Virginia Quarterly Review, though they also include more obviously autobiographical poems like Elegy for my Father. In 1980's Selected Poems, Strand relies on an ethereal, cumulative effect to express the idea that the two fixed points of a man's life are the self and God; both are darknesses, one leading to another, Cole continued. In the New York Review of Books, Irvin Ehrenpreis, however, was critical of Strand's solipsistic emphasis on the self: For all his mastery of rhythm and music, Strand does not open the lyric to the world but makes it a self-sustaining enterprise. Strand spent the decade after the publication of Selected Poems not writing poetry. In a profile by Jonathan Aaron, Strand admitted that I gave up [writing poems] that year. I didn't like what I was writing, I didn't believe in my autobiographical poems. He turned to other forms of writing instead, including a foray into children's literature with The Planet of Lost Things (1982). As with his poetry, Strand focused on questions of loss, using the story to address the common childhood worry about where things go when they are lost. Strand's other books for children include The Night Book (1985) and Rembrandt Takes a Walk (1986). A frequent contributor of short stories to periodicals, Strand published a collection of prose narratives in 1985. The resulting volume, Mr. and Mrs. Baby (1985), addressed Strand's recurrent concern with the superficiality of life. Alan Cheuse of the Los Angeles Times Book Review described the book as a mixture of irony and affection. The collection mixes the fantastic with the mundane; describing the stories as odd, surrealistic sketches of alienation and rootlessness, New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani found them so slight, so tentative, that they evaporate into the air. Ellen Lesser of the Village Voice wrote, By far the greatest pleasures of Mr. and Mrs. Baby are not to be found in its mysteries, comic vision, or even its hapless picture of the contemporary male, but rather in the writing. On practically every page, one can be dazzled by Strand's language. Strand also published books of art criticism, including The Art of the Real (1983) and William Bailey (1987). His 1994 volume Hopper was a highly expressive elucidation of the technique and narrative meaning of the American realist painter Edward Hopper's works. Of the many pieces of writing stimulated by Hopper, observed John Updike in The New York Review of Books, none is more coolly and eerily attentive (more Hopperesque, we could say) than Mark Strand's brilliant small book Hopper, showing how we are moved and disquieted by formal elements in the paintings. Strand describes Hopper's human subjects, for example, as ‘characters whose parts have deserted them and now, trapped in the space of their waiting, must keep themselves company with no clear place to go, no future.' Strand published The Continuous Life, his first book of poems in a decade, in 1990. In the New York Times Book Review, Alfred Corn commented that the book doesn't strike me so much as a capstone of Mr. Strand's career as one more turning in his development. Corn pointed to changes in meter, diction and point of view. This is a poetry written, as it were, in the shadow of high mountains, and touched with their grandeur, he concluded. Strand's appointment as US poet laureate the same year brought the book even more attention. Strand's next books received much critical acclaim. Dark Harbor (1993) is a single long poem divided into 55 diverse sections. Reviewers emphasized the poem's motifs of anticipation and tension lacking resolution, as well as the exotic and rarified beauty of Strand's often surrealistic language, though Judith Hall, in the Antioch Review, found that the austerity of the sequence is eased by tone - elegiac and self-mocking; part Cheever, part Brancusi, with the indefiniteness that Poe said was essential to music. In 1999 Strand was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Blizzard of One. The collection returns to the same concerns that have preoccupied Strand throughout his career as a poet. The poems in Mark Strand's latest collection are missing their subjects, wrote Sarah Manguso in the Iowa Review, pointing out the presence of familiar Strand themes of loss, dispersion and absence. For many critics Blizzard of One was an affirmation of Strand's continued appeal. A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that it was somehow scandalous that in his gorgeous, unabashed nostalgia or erotic melancholy there remained a tremendous allure and that Strand continued to be one of our most deeply enjoyable poets. In The New York Times, Deborah Garrison named Strand among the luminaries of contemporary poets, calling Blizzard of One a masterly new collection in which even the single snowflake that gives the volume its title ... is a kind of Platonic essence, linked to a continuum of snowflakes out there in the weather and inside, in the reader's consciousness. Garrison also found that in his serious verses there are glimmers of an appealing new lightness; it's as though his gradual adaptation to his own stringency has freed him up. When Strand published a collection of 15 short prose works as Weather of Words (2000), he was commended for his insight into the work of other poets. The essays ranged from commentary on poets, analysis of individual poems, and a discussion of poetic forms. The book was also valued for its relevance to Strand's own poetry. Ian Tromp, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, compared the collection to Blizzard of One and found the poems poised and subtle, imbued with wisdom, while the essays and prose were considered playful and witty. Strand also coedited the anthology The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (2000) with Eavan Boland. Strand's collection Man and Camel (2006) contains more playful, witty moments than previous books, though, as Lucas pointed out in his VQR review, its tension, between what is present and what cannot be touched, continues to be the most consistent theme in Strand's work. New Selected Poems (2007) draws on Strand's work from the previous two decades and is full of buffoons whom the poet nevertheless loves, wrote Dan Chiasson in the New Yorker, adding they represent his new empathy for that old absurdity the self. His last book, Collected Poems (2014), was a longlist nominee for the National Book Award. In his later years, Strand stopped writing poetry and began to work again in art, preferring to make collages with paper he made by hand. His work was exhibited at Lori Bookstein Fine Art in Chelsea. Mark Strand's honors include the Bollingen Prize, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, a Rockefeller Foundation award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. He served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He taught at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University. He died in late 2014 at the age of 80. - POETRY FOUNDATION.
‘This bilingual and exciting volume of Brazilian theatre encloses three plays written by the most creative dramatists writing in Brazil today. Plinio Marcos in TWO LOST IN THE FILTHY NIGHT, shows language as the only possession of two paupers living in the claustrophobic conditions. The rapid and vigorous dialogue lashes out to the reader enclosing him into the brutal game. Leilah Assunçao in MOIST LIPS, QUIET PASSION, dramatizes the sexual life of a couple trying to achieve their Big Orgasm. They remember their frustrating games by the dates of the military coups. Existence is possible only through games. In WALKING PAPERS by Consuelo de Castro, a man and a woman interact in fragmented situations bordering on insanity. There is no reference to socio-political events but the obsessive language, the exacerbating rituals, the claustrophobic dependent relationship projects the shadow of the repressive system. The authors of this bilingual text have achieved a unity of form and content in their selection of the plays. Their translation is very successful in representing both the power of the original language and the theatrical urgency of the modem Brazilian dramatists. As such, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of literature, the visual arts and of culture in general.' - Miriam Balboa Echeverria, Department of Spanish, Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos. CONTENTS: Introduction; PLINIO MARCOS - Author Critical Commentary; Two Lost In A Filthy Night; Dois Perdidos Numa Note Suja; LEILAH ASSUNCAO - Author Critical Commentary; Moist Lips, Quiet Passion; Boca Molhada De Paixão Calada; CONSUELO DE CASTRO - Author Critical Commentary; Walking Papers; Aviso Previo. . PLINIO MARCOS DE BARROS was born in Santos, near São Paulo. After getting a diploma from primary school he spent his teenage years among shipyard workers and flim flam people hanging around the port area. At the age of fifteen he started his career as a clown. He also tried other jobs: he was a football player, worked at the port, acted in several mini series and wrote articles for various journals. The first stage of Marcos' work, to which TWO LOST IN THE FILTHY NIGHT belongs, tends to be categorized by critics as realistic style-wise, and social as far as the message is concerned. Besides the social concern however, there is a visible attempt on Marcos' side to portray the individuals dealing with extreme situations within the existential perspective. The author's favorite themes are: the search for individual freedom and spiritual knowledge, the inability of communicating between individuals and the rebellion against tied social rules. In some of his later plays, there is a slight feminist accent due to the crucial role of the woman. In ABAJUR LILÁS the three prostitutes represent three different attitudes towards life that are analogous to three possible political approaches: rebellious, moderate and alienated. They have to solve a problem with their pimp who exploits them. None of the attitudes seems efficient enough. If in Marcos' earlier plays women have to be protected by men, in his most recent plays the author presents the man and the woman in the same perspective (MADAME BLAVATSKY) or negates the role of sex by presenting it metaphorically (Balada de urn Palhaco). In TWO LOST IN THE FILTHY NIGHT, claimed to be Marcos' major dramatic achievement, the crucial problem lies in the lack of understanding between two individuals that represent two different social classes: low class and marginals. Besides being unable to communicate with each other on the human and social level, they are also unable to communicate with the outside world. Their intense interaction can be seen as one of victim/oppressor with a surprising switch of roles in the end. The subjacent homosexual motif is very significant as well in this struggle for power. Some plays by the author: Barrela (1957); Reportagem de urn tempo mau (1965); Jornada de um Imbecil ate o Entendimento (1965) - all three still forbidden by censorship; Dois Perdidos numa Noite Suja (1967); Navalha na Carne (1967); Homens de Papel (1968); Abajur Lilás (1969); Balbina de Iansã (1970); Oraçño Para o Pe de Chinelo (1971); Quando as Máquinas Param (1972); Poeta da Vila (1977); Feira Livre (1979); Signo da Discoteca (1979); Jesus Homem (1981); Madame Blavatsky (1985); Balada de um Palhaco (1986); A Mancha Roxa (1988). LEILAH ASSUNCAO was born in lBotucatu in the state of Säo Paulo. Her great-grandmother founded the first school there. Born in a family of teachers, Leilah enrolls in the Department of Education at the University of Campinas in 1960. In 1962, she moves to Sao Paulo and studies literary criticism, as well as acting and fashion design. In 1964, she gets a BA in Education from the University of São Paulo. She also works as a fashion designer for Madame Boriska. Her acting career began in 1964, as she appeared in Vereda da Salvaçao, a play by Jorge Andrade. In 1965, she had a role in the Three Penny Opera by Bertolt Brecht. She also worked as a fashion model for such celebrities as Valentino and Pierre Cardin. Her first play, Fala Baixo Senão Eu Grito , was staged in 1969. Granted a Moliere Prize, she traveled to Europe and Africa in 1970-72. According to the author, her first plays reveal, besides the feminist problems, a strong concern about shocking the audience by the choice of topics and the language. In this ‘Epatez le bourgois' stage that ends in the early eighties, Leilah Assunçäo recalls the influence of Albee, Arrabal and, in Brazil, Plinio Marcos. Her second stage is far more personal and coincides with major changes in the author's private life. Assunçao also changes her style and becomes lyrical rather than violent in order to seduce the audience at this time. Her recent play Lua Nua, successfully performed in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in 1988, represents most clearly the direction of those changes. One of the author's favorite concerns is the analogy between sex and politics seen metaphorically, both representing the game of power, or, in other words, a fight between two extremes. Leilah's attitude towards feminism can be characterized as a demand for the possibility of an option for a woman to live in a ‘masculine world' rather than being forced to change her nature. Another phenomenon that the author likes to recall in talking about her plays is the ‘trash language' (linguagem do lixo) that women are supposed to dominate the best. Plays by the author: Vejo urn Vulto na Janela, Me Acudam Que Eu Sou Donzela (1964); Use P6 de Arroz Bijou (1968) - unpublished; Fala Baixo Senão Eu Grito (1969); Amanhã, Amelia de Manha (1973); Roda Cor de Roda (1975); A Kuka de Kamaiorá (1975) - unpublished; Sobrevividos (1977); Sede Pura e Alfinetadas (1980); 0 Segredo da Alma de Ouro (1983), inspired by A Kuka de Kamaiorá; Boca Molhada de Paixiio Calada (1980); Os Jardins de ValEria de Oliveira (1985) - unpublished; Lua Nua(1987); Quatro Mulheres (1988); and several scripts for films and TV. CONSUELO DE CASTRO was born in Araguari in the state Minas Gerais. She studied Anthropology at the University of São Paulo where she experienced the military coup d'etat in 1964. Her first play, A Prova do Fogo (1967) reflects those dramatic moments. After the military take over, Castro's plays being forbidden by censorship, the author made her living undertaking various jobs. She worked as a typist, she advertised products for a company producing fertilizers etc. During those stormy times Castro's plays dealt basically with Brazilian reality and numerous social and political issues. The dominant tones in these works were anger, hate and desperation. The style was realistic. The author portrayed milieus that she knew from her own experience: students and academics in A Prova do Fogo and A Flor da Pele; the behind-the- scenes of show business in Script-tease and Flor da Pele; the world of unemployment in Caminho de Volta. She also wrote about problems of groups to which she could approach only intuitively: A Cidade Jmpossivel do Pedro Santana (architects); Porco Ensanguentado (high society); 0 Grande Amor de Nossas Vidas (lower middle class). Since 1984 Castro's social preoccupation has given way to a profound existential concern. This has been accompanied by a gradual break in form. From then on the author has tried to find a synthetic mode of expression, experimenting with the verbal as well as body language, light, space, sound and other stage devices. She does not construct her characters any more, but deconstructs them looking for the essence of the human condition. While the plays acquire a more and more fragmented structure the action is never neglected, even in the apparently static works. Walking Papers exemplifies these formal changes and thematic preoccupations. Recently in her search for ideas the author returned to antique Greece. She has already successfully incorporated the structure of the Greek tragedy in her first play, A Prova do Fogo. Now she also introduces into her plays elements of the mythological and archetypical situations.The authors and themes Castro likes to recall as the most influential for her artistic formation are: Strindberg and the theme of madness; Artaud and his Theater of Cruelty; Beckett and his world of absurd and nothingness. According to the author, for the characters in her plays, balancing between extremes, the only way out of their fatal situation is madness. There is no other way to from fate. Plays by the author: till 1984: A Prova do Fogo; A Flor da Pele; Crucificado; 0 Porco Ensanguentado; Louco Circo; Grande Amor de Nossas Vidas; A Cidade Impossivel do Pedro Santana; Caminho de Volta; after 1984: Script-tease; Aviso PrEvio; Abelhas; Marcha a Re; and several scripts for film and TV.
Elzbieta Szoka is the author of "A Semiotic Approach to Three Plays by Plinio Marcos" and numerous articles on Brazilian literature and theater. She has translated Marcos's "Dois Perdidos Numa Noite Suja" (Two Lost in the Filthy Night) for Host Publications. She teaches at Columbia University. Joe Bratcher III, a Texas native, received his Bachelors degree in philosophy from Tulane University in New Orleans, and a Masters degree in English at the University of Texas at Austin. Upon completing his PhD in English Literature, Joe and his wife Elzbieta Szoka embarked on a new project and founded HOST Publications. Determined to give a voice to great international authors, Joe's commitment to identifying and sharing the best in unique international literature is unparalleled in the field.
Latin Americans have written some of the world's finest poetry in the twentieth century, as the Nobel Prizes awarded to Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz attest. Yet this rich literary production has never been gathered into a single volume that attempts to represent the full range and the most important writers-until now. Here, under one cover, are the major poets and their major works, which appear both in the original language (Spanish or Portuguese) and in excellent English translations. The poems selected include the most famous representative poems of each poetic tradition, accompanied by other poems that represent the best of that tradition and of each poet's work within it. Tapscott's selections cover the full range, from the Modernist generation though the Mexican Revolutionary post-Moderns and the Vanguardist poets to very contemporary younger writers of political and experimental commitments. In all, eighty-five poets, including Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra, Octavio Paz, Gabriela Mistral, Nicolás GuillEn, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Carlos Pellicer, CEsar Vallejo, and Cecília Meireles, and over 400 poems are included, often in translations by some of North America's most esteemed poets.
Stephen Tapscott is Professor of Literature at MIT. He translated Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets / Cien sonetos de amor (UT Press, 1986).
AN ANTHOLOGY OF CUBAN POETRY OF THE LAST SIXTY YEARS. In some countries poets appear to enjoy greater esteem than they do in the West. Earlier, in Cuba, poets are as abundant as trees and books as leaves. Then, in 1968 with the events in Prague, everything went dark again and Cuba itself looked as if it might he losing its way. It cannot be said often enough that those who are likely to suffer most under repression are precisely the poets for, despite appearances, it is the poets who are beginning to understand government better than anyone else. Now there are signs that the battle between bureaucrats and poets persists in Cuba. This book grew haphazardly out of a journey to Cuba and the desire to share a number of poems one had discovered and read with pleasure. It begins just after the internationally famous father of modern Cuban verse - Nicolás GuillEn. It is not designed to be fully ‘representative', a number of good writers have been unavoidably omitted and no ranking is implied in the number of poems chosen from any one writer. In part, the selection was determined by the availability of books and of members of the oppressed race of translators. Their choice of poems in the books submitted to them was for the most part their own. CONTENTS: FELIX PITA RODRIGUEZ (b. 1909)-Because We Love Life/Porque Amamos La Vida (translated by Lionel Kearns); JOSE LEZAMA LIMA (b. 1912)-'Tell Me, Ask Me'/'Dime, Preguntame' (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); An Obscure Meadow Lures Me/Una Oscura Pradera Me Convida (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); Summons Of The Desirer/Llamado Del Deseoso (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); SAMUEL FEIJOO (b. 19l4)- On The Death By Fire Of Gladys, The Girl Of The Canaries/En La Muerte Por Fuego De Gladys, La Joven De Los Canarios (translated by Anthony Kerrigan); The Song Of Man At Death/La Cancion Del Hombre En La Muerte (translated by Tom Raworth); ELISEO DIEGO (b. 1920)-The Whole Ingenuous Disguise, The Whole Of Happiness/Todo El Ingenuo Disfraz, Toda La Dicha (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); Fragment/Fragmento (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); On This Single, This One And Only Afternoon/En Esta Sola, En Esta Unica Tarde (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); Difficulties Of An Equilibrist/Riesgos Del Equilibrista (translated by Tim Reynolds); CINTIO VITIER (b. 1921)-The Dispossessed/El Deposeido (translated by Tom Raworth); The Light On Cayo Hueso/La Luz Del Cayo (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); Nicodemus Speaking/Palabras De Nicodemo (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); FINA GARCIA MARRUZ (b. 1923)-Noon/El Mediodia (translated by Tom Raworth); LUIS MARRE (b. 1929)-'I Had In My Hand'/'Tenia En Mi Mano' (translated by Donald Gardner); ‘And There Was Also A Ranch In Hell'/'Y Tambien Hube Una Estancia En El Infierno' (translated by Donald Gardner); PABLO ARMANDO FERNANDEZ (b. 1930)-Birth Of Eggo/Nacimiento De Eggo (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); Surrender Of Eshu/Rendicion De Eshu (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); Islands/Islas (translated by Tim Reynolds); From Man To Death/De Hombre A Muerte (translated by Tim Reynolds); FAYAD JAMIS (b. 1930)-The Milky Way/La Via Lactea (translated by David Ossman & Carl Hagen); Poem In Nanking/Poema En Nankin (translated by David Ossmain & Carl Hagen); Shut Up You Shit/No Hables Mierda (translated by Adrian Mitchell); ROBERTO FERNANDEZ RETAMAR (b. 1930)-How Lucky They Are, The Normal Ones/Felices Los Normales (translated by Tim Reynolds); A Man And A Woman/Un Hombre Y Una Mujer (translated by Tim Reynolds); Being Asked About The Persians/Le Preguintaron Por Los Persas (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); PEDRO DE ORAA (b. 1931)-New Poetics/Nueva Poetica (translated by Donald Gardner); HEBERTO PADILLA (b. 1932)-The Hour/La Hora (translated by Elinor Randall); Like An Animal/Como Un Animal (translated by Tom Raworth); The Old Bards Say/Dicen Los Viejos Bardos (translated by Anthony Kerrigan); RAFAEL ALCIDES (b. 1933)-'This Is Not A Letter To Be Opened'/'Esta No Es Una Carta Para Abrir' (translated by Donald Gardner); ‘All That Winter, All That Spring'/'Hemos Padecia La Mania De Creer' (translated by Donald Gardner); A List Of Things Hands Can Do/Lista De Cosas Que Saben Hacer Las Manos (translated by Anthony Kerrigan); CESAR LOPEZ (b. 1933)-'I Can't Talk About Him'/'No Puedo Hablar De El' (translated by Margaret Randall); ‘When A Man Dies'/'Cuando Alguien Muere' (translated by Donald Gardner); ‘What Happened To Her'/'Que Le Ocurrio' (translated by Anthony Kerrigan); MANUEL DIAZ MARTINEZ (b. 1936)-Ophelia In The Rain/Ofelia En La Lluvia (translated by Donald Gardner); Ancient History/Historia Muy Vieja (translated by Donald Gardner); LUIS SUARDIAZ (b. 1936)-Best Sellers/Best Sellers (translated by Adrian Mitchell); Found/Hallazgos (translated by Adrian Mitchell); Today, The Twelfth Of September, In Cordoba/Hoy Doce De Septiembre En Cordoba (translated by Lionel Kearns); FELIX GUERRA (b. 1939)-This Is The Century I Love/Este Es Mi Querido Siglo (translated by Adrian Mitchell); MIGUEL BARNET (b. 1940)-Epitaph/Epitafio (translated by Lionel Kearns); Errata/Fe De Erratas (translated by Lionel Kearns); DAVID FERNANDEZ (b. 1940)-Inventory/Inventario (translated by Donald Gardner); Camaguey, 30 November 1966/Camaguey, Noviembre 30 Del 66 (translated by Donald Gardner); ISEL RIVERO (b. 1941)-Newspaper Item/Resena (translated by Adrian Mitchell); ORLANDO ALOMA (b. 1942)-The Militant Angel/El Angel Mllitante (translated by Margaret Randall); GERARDO FULLEDA LEON (b.1942)-A Man/Un Hombre (translated by Elinor Randall); BELKIS CUZA MALE (b. 1942)-Deadly Woman/Una Mujer Fatal (translated by Tom Raworth); Thus The Poets In Their Sad Likenesses/Asi Estan Los Poetas En Sus Tr1stes Retratos (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); GUILLERMO RODRIGUEZ RIVERA (b. 1943)-Vita Nuova/Vida Nueva (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); VICTOR CASAUS (b. 1944)-Epitaph For God/Epitafio De Dios (translated by Anthony Kerrigan); A Story/Una Historia (translated by Anthony Kerrigan); Advertisement/Anuncio De Solicitud (translated by Anthony Kerrigan); FROILAN ESCOBAR (b. 1944)-Worries/Murumacas (translated by Tom Raworth); NANCY MOREJON (b. 1944)-'Love Slides Down The Sides'/'El Amor Tambien Se Desliza' (translated by Tim Reynolds); Some People/Central Park/3.O0 P.M./Parque Central, Alguna Gente (translated by 3: 00 P.M.) (translated by Nathaniel Tarn); LUIS ROGELLO NOGUERAS (b. 1944)-The Same As Ever/Es Lo Mismo De Siempre (translated by Donald Gardner); The Brothers/Los Hermanos (translated by Donald Gardner); LINA DE FERIA (b. 1945)-'When My Old Age'/'Cuando Mi Vejez' (translated by Tom Raworth); ‘When My Papers'/'Cuando Mis Papeles' (translated by Anthony Kerrigan); EDUARDO LOLO (b. 1945)-'Anna'/'Ana' (translated by Tim Reynolds); ‘If You Get Up'/'Si Ud. Se Levanta' (translated by Stephen Schwartz).
Nathaniel Tarn (born June 30, 1928) is an American poet, essayist, anthropologist, and translator. He was born in Paris to a French mother and a British father. He lived in Paris until age 7, then in Belgium until age 11; when World War II began, the family moved to England. He emigrated to the United States in 1970 and taught at several American universities, primarily Rutgers, where he was a professor from 1972 until 1985. He has lived outside Santa Fe, New Mexico since his retirement from Rutgers. Tarn was educated at LycEe d'Anvers and Clifton College and graduated with degrees in history and English from King's College, Cambridge. He returned to Paris and, after some journalism and radio work, discovered anthropology at the MusEe de l'Homme, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and the Collège de France. A Smith-Mundt-Fulbright grant took him to the University of Chicago; he did fieldwork for his doctorate in anthropology with the Highlands Maya of Guatemala. In 1958, a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation administered by the Royal Institute of International Affairs sent him to Burma for 18 months, after which he became an instructor at London School of Economics and then lecturer in Southeast Asian Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Even after moving primarily to literature, he continued to write and publish anthropological work on the Highland Maya and on the sociology of Buddhist institutions, as E. Michael Mendelson. Tarn published his first volume of poetry Old Savage/Young City with Jonathan Cape in 1964 and a translation of Pablo Neruda's The Heights of Macchu Picchu in 1966 (broadcast by the BBC Third Programme 1966), and began building a new poetry program at Cape. He left anthropology in 1967. From 1967-9, he joined Cape as General Editor of the international series Cape Editions and as a Founding Director of the Cape-Goliard Press, specializing in contemporary American Poetry with emphasis on Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Louis Zukofsky and their peers and successors. He brought a great many French, other European and Latin American titles to Cape and made many visits to the U.S. as a Cape Editor. He taught English at SUNY Buffalo in the summer of 1969. In 1970, with a principal interest in the American literary scene, he immigrated to the U.S. as Visiting Professor of Romance Languages, Princeton University, and eventually became a citizen. Later he moved to Rutgers. Since then he has taught English and American Literature, Epic Poetry, Folklore and other subjects at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Colorado, and New Mexico, as well as reading and lecturing elsewhere. As poet, literary & cultural critic (Views from the Weaving Mountain, University of New Mexico Press, 1991, and "The Embattled Lyric, Stanford University Press, 2007), translator (he was the first to render Victor Segalen's "Stèles" into English, continued work on Neruda, Latin American and French poets) and editor (with many magazines), Tarn has published some thirty books and booklets in his various disciplines. He has been translated into ten foreign languages. In 1985, he took early retirement as Professor Emeritus of Poetry, Comparative Literature & Anthropology from Rutgers University and has since lived near Santa Fe, New Mexico. His interests range from bird watching, gardening, classical music, opera & ballet, and much varied collecting, to aviation and world history.
With this volume, SHORT STORIES OF LATIN AMERICA, Las Americas Publishing Company introduces a series of anthologies designed to offer the English speaking reader translations of short stories written by Latin American authors and by Spanish writers residing in The Americas. Most of the writers whose work is included in this first volume are very active in the ‘Post Modernista' experimental and radical short story movements. Here for the first time in English translation are stories by men like Jorge Luis Borges, Francisco Ayala, Alejo Carpentier and Agustin Yanez who are contributing to and enriching the development of the young tradition of the short story in Latin America. The themes and styles of these short stories are multifarious and range from the indigenous and almost ‘folk-style' to the most fanciful and macabre flights of a surrealistic imagination. Here too are the fundamental questions of the human situation, love, misery, hunger, the ‘fellow-man,' political existence, treated in a manner which ranges from the most realistic depiction to depiction against the most ‘fictive' world imaginable. Arturo Torres-Rioseco, who selected the stories and edited the volume, is an outstanding literary critic and authority on Latin American literature. Professor Torres-Rioseco is chairman of the Spanish Department at the University of California in Berkeley. CONTENTS: The Short Story in Latin America; About the Authors; TOBIAS, Felix Pita Rodriguez; THAT NIGHT, Lino Novas Calvo; JUSTICE, Horatio Quiroga; THE LAST SUPPER, Francisco Ayala; BIGUU, AndrEs Henestrosa; THE ZAPOTEC PROMETHEUS, Andrês Henestrosa; THE TREE, Maria Luisa Bombal; RETURN TO THE SEED, Alejo Carpentier; THE STONE AND THE CROSS, Ciro Alegria; THE GLASS OF MILK, Manuel Rolas; THE MORIBUND, Guadalupe Dueñas; ALDA OR MUSIC DISCOVERED, Agustin Yanez; GRUBS, Alfredo Pareja Diez-Canseco; THE FUNERAL, Juan Marin; THE ALEPH, Jorge Luis Borges.
Dr. Arturo Torres-Rioseco (1897–1971) was a Chilean poet, scholar, translator, historian, and diplomat who taught extensively in the United States and Latin America. He was full professor of Spanish American Literature at UC Berkeley (1936–1969), professor of summer sessions at Columbia University, University of Mexico, University of Guatemala, Stanford University, Duke University, and Mills College. Dr. Torres-Rioseco worked closely with Mills College's Casa Panamericana Program and its School of International Relations in the 1940's. In 1961, he was appointed by John F. Kennedy as a member of the Advisory Committee on Latin American Relations. He also wrote several books of poetry, translated the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and wrote a book on Gabriela Mistral. After Dr. Torres-Rioseco's death his wife, Rosalie Godt Torres-Rioseco, began to donate books and manuscripts, including letters, non-fiction, poetry, novels, and journals from Arturo Torres-Rioseco's private collection to the Special Collections Department of the F.W. Olin Library, Mills College. This department now houses the Arturo Torres-Rioseco Collection, consisting of over 400 volumes of literature of major 20th century Latin American poets and writers, as well as correspondence from political and literary figures.
Reprint as Quisqueya; an English-Spanish version of the poetry of Santo Domingo. Bogota: UISLS, 1964. 63 p.).
The only comprehensive survey of the poetry of the Dominican Republic in English translation. Poems by: Rafael Richiez Acevedo ('Agapito javalera'), Enrique Aguiar, Osvaldo Bazil, Federico Bermudez, Franklin Mieses Burgos, Manuel Cabral, Enrique Cambier, J. Agustin Concepcion, Pedro Rene Contin Aybar, Gaston F. Deligne, Vigil Diaz, Virgilio Diaz Ordoñez, Francisco Dominguez Charro, Alfredo Fernández Simo, Fabio Fiallo, Victor Garrido, Valentia Giro, Clemencia Damiron Gomez P., Ernestina Gomez de Read, Miguel A. Guerrero, Enrique Henriquez, Gustavo Julio Henriquez, Rafael A. Henriquez, Tomás Hernández Franco, Porfirio Herrera, Hector Incháustegui Cabral, Ramon Emilio Jimenez, Martha Lamarche, Julio de Windt Lavandier, Mariano Lebron Savinon, Tomás Morel, Domingo Moreno Jimenez, Amada Nivar de Pitaluga, Armando Oscar Pacheco, Arturo B. Pellerano Castro, Emilio Prudhomme, Rafael Emilio Sanabia, Altagracia Savinon, Ruben Suro, Delia Weber. (Rpt. Ciudad Trujillo: Editora del Caribe, 1954. 101 p.; reprint as Quisqueya; an English-Spanish version of the poetry of Santo Domingo. Bogota: UISLS, 1964. 63 p.).
A bilingual edition, parallel texts. Poets include: Mario de Andrade, Manuel Bandeira, Ruy Ribeiro Couto, Jorge de Lima, Cecilia Meireles, Augusto Frederico Schmidt. Limited by the selection of only a few poems from the first half of the twentieth century.
John Brande Trend, or J.B. Trend (1887–1958), was a British Hispanist and the first Professor of Spanish at the University of Cambridge. Born in Southampton, Trend was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he won an Exhibition to take the Natural Science Tripos. After serving in continental Europe during the First World War, he developed a keen interest in Spanish and the historiography of Spanish music. In 1933 he was appointed to the first Chair in Spanish at Cambridge. His areas of expertise included a wide variety of topics, and he was known for such general works as his The Origins of Modern Spain. He wrote on the composer Manuel de Falla, with whom Trend corresponded regularly, and he was the author of the first critical study of Falla's work in English: Manuel de Falla and Spanish Music (1929).
CONTENTS: POETS OF TODAY - MANUEL GUTIERREZ NAJARA - The Duchess Job; Shubert's Serenade; To Salvador Diaz Miron; Sometime; Non Omnis Moriar; Calicot; For A Menu; Para El Corpino; Butterflies; Sad Night; SALVADOR DIAZ MIRON - Green Eyes; The Deserter; Men Of Genius; MANUEL JOSE OTHON - Sonnet Sequence II; Sonnet Sequence II; Sonnet Sequence III; ENRIQUE FERNANDEZ GRANADOS - Wine Of Lesbos; ENRIQUE GONZALEZ MARTINEZ - The Grief Of Autumn; The Captive; House With Two Doors; Useless Days; Homesick Memory; My Grief Is A Rosebush Always In Flower; The Voice Of Long Ago; Change; The Ballad Of Mad Fortune; Noli Me Tangere; AMADO NERVO - Los Mysticos; Rondo Vago; The Buddha Of Basalt; The Mountain; Old Song; RAMON LOPEZ VELARDE - Wet Land; The Spell Of Return; My Heart; RICARDO ARENALES - The Lament Of October; Stanzas; Song Of La Vida Profunda; RAFAEL LOPEZ - Manuel De La Parra; JOSE JUAN TABLADA - Alternating Nocturn; A La Watteau; Ballad Of The Eyes; Onyx; Heron; LUIS G. URBINA - Noche Clara; First Romantic Interlude; Alone; Ballad; FRANCISCO A. DE ICAZA - A Village Of Andalusia; Landscape Of The Sun; Eastern Music; Poor Blind Man; Autumn; EFREN REBOLLEDO - Voto; Insomnia; MANUEL DE LA PARRA - A Fable By Grimm; The Cistern; ENRIQUE GONZALEZ ROJO - The Midday Sea; Naked Woman; Stones; JESUS E. VALENZUELA - To Duque Job; MANUEL LARRANAGA PORTUGAL - Sonnet; RUBEN M. CAMPOS - Tropic Nocturns; FRANCISCO M. OLAGUIBEL - Provenzal; MANUEL OLAGUIBEL - Jesus; ROBERTO ARGUELLOS BRINGAS - Will; MARIA ENRIQUETA CAMARILLO - The Forgotten Path; Landscape; To A Shadow; Hail; The Scissor's Grinder; LUIS ROSADO VEGA - Nocturn Of The Rain; EDUARDO COLIN - After The Rain; ALFONSO REYES - La Amenaza De La Flor; Glosa De Mi Tierra; A; I; CARLOS BARRERA - Longing; FRANCISCO MONTERDE - ANTONIO MEDIZ BOLIO - Theatrical Sword; Joaquin Tellez Beside The Sea By Vera Cruz; JOAQUIN D. CASASUS - To An Unknown Woman; JUAN B. DELGADO - La Canada; RAFAEL DELGADO - In The Mountains; GENARO ESTRADA - Back To The Sea; JOSE D. FRIAS - Sonata Of Beethoven; F. GONZALEZ GUERRERO - Apparition; Fountain; LUCIANO JOUBLANC RIVAS - Sadness; CARLOS PELLICER - To Jose Manuel Puig Cassauranc; Desires; Snows Of The Andes; Uxmal; Study; Dawn; The Reaper; MANUEL-MAPLES ARCE - Paroxysm; Parting; 80 H. P.; BERNARDO ORTIZ DE MONTELLANO - Contents; The Five Senses; Sketch; RAFAEL LOZANO, JR. - Tee Aztec Flutist JOSE GOROSTITZA - The Aquarium; Seashore; Autumn; Twilight; JAIME TORRES BODET - Music; The Shadow; Romance; Dream; XAVIER VILLAURRUTIA - Air; Amplifications; Village; Phonographs; Picture; Insomnia; SALVADOR NOVO - Contents; A L1ttle Suite. Brief Romance In Time Of Absence I; Brief Romance In Time Of Absence II; Brief Romance In Time Of Absence III; Brief Romance In Time Of Absence IV; Brief Romance In Time Of Absence V; Shipwreck; The Deluge; RUDOLFO USIGLI - Nocturn; JUAN MANUEL RUIZ ESPARZA - U; I; C; E; FRANZ SAENZ AZCORRA - The Path; By The Dead Cities Of Yucatan; GILBERTO OWEN - Interior; Poem In Which The Word Love Is Often Used; POETS OF YESTERDAY - FRANCISCO DE TERRAZAS - Sonnet; JUAN RULE DE ALARCÔN - To Vesuvius; SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ - To The Vicereine; Cupid; Salutation; Phoenix; FRAY MANUEL NAVARRETE - Love; JOSE JOAQUIN FERNÁNDEZ DE LIZARDI - Epitaph To The Liberty Of America; MANUEL CARPIO - To The River Cosamaloapan; WENCESLAO ALPUCHE - Fame; FERNANDO CALDERON - To A Faded Rose; MIGUEL GERONIMO MARTINEZ - The Pruning Season; GUILLERMO PRIETO - An Old Man's Love; IGNACIO RAMIREZ - My Portrait; JOSE MARIA ROA BARCENA - The Founding Of Mexico City; IGNACIO MARISCAL - The Tomb Of Juarez; PANTALEON TOVAR - To A Girl Weeping For Flowers; VICENTE RIVA PALACIO - Midday On The Coast Of Mexico; Evening In The Valley Of Mexico; Night On The Mountains Of Mexico; Two Swallows; IGNACIO M. ALTAMIRANO - To Atroyac; JUAN DIAZ COVARRUBIAS - Selection; JUAN VALLE - Romance; JOSE ROSAS MORENO - The Zentzontle; JOAQUIN ARCADIO PAGAZA - Evening Prayer; Night On Zempoala; IGNACIO MARTES DE OCA - Farewell My Native City; MANUEL M. FLORES - Jasmine; Ode To The Fatherland; JOSE PEON CONTRERAS - Canticles; JOSE PEON DEL VALLE - Omnia Pulvis!; No Volvio!; RAFAEL ENR1QUE ZAYOS - Spring Song; PEDRO I. PEREZ PINA - JUSTO SIERRA - To A Poet Who Killed Himself; MANUEL ACUNA - Nocturn; Ode; IGNACIO M. LUCHICHI - Verses For An Album; Bluettes; MANUEL DIAL MIRÔN - Orizaba; FRANCISCO G. COSMES - Remember; AUGUSTIN F. CUENCA - On Banks Of The Atroyac; JUAN DE DIOS PEZA - Night Of Winter; Beyond The Seas; LAURA MENDEZ DE CUENCA - The Magdalene; ADELBERTO A. ESTEVA - Tropic Night; The Sea By Vera Cruz; On The Shore; At The Ball; FELIPE T. CONTRERAS - The Middle Age; JOSE PABLO RIVAS - Festival Of Love; BALBINO DAVALOS - Then; JOSE M. BUSTILLOS - The Carpenter; JOSE J. NOVELO - ‘My Muse'; PROSE MINIATURES - RAFAEL LOPEZ - Colonial Puebla; AMADO NERVO - Puebla De Los Angeles; ALFONSO REYES - The Landscape Of Mexico; ALFONSO REYES - Landscape Of Mexico; FRANCISCO MONTERDE - The Road To Taxco; GENARO ESTRADA - The House; XAVIER VILLAURRUTIA - Night And Rain Over The City Of Mexico; FRANZ SAENZ AZCORRA - November In Yucatan; FRANCISCO MONTERDE - Night Over Taxco; E. A. CHAVEZ - Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz; GENARO ESTRADA - The Treasure; PEDRO I. PEREZ PINA - Dawn In Yucatan ; GENARO ESTRADA - The Colonial City; FRANZ SAENZ AZCORRA - March In Yucatan.
Edna Worthley Underwood (January 1873 - June 14, 1961) was an American author, poet, and translator. Born in Maine in January 1873, Edna Worthley received little education as a child, attending school occasionally, only when her family moved to Kansas in 1884. She undertook a program of extensive self-instruction, learning Latin and several of the major European languages. She began attendance at Garfield University in Wichita, Kansas, but later transferred to University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she received a B.A. in 1892. Returning to Kansas, she taught in a public school for three years before being dismissed because she refused to give up yellow-bound foreign-language books which her superiors believed to be 'wicked', of a possibly pornographic nature. After marrying Earl Underwood in August 1897, Edna moved to Kansas City and then to New York City. She immediately undertook various literary activities including the composition of poetry, plays and filmscripts. Her first published book was a collaborative translation of a work by Nikolai Gogol in 1903. The first published book that bore Underwood's name as author was the collection of short stories, A Book of Dear Dead Women (1911). With the sole exception of 'An Orchid of Asia', Underwood apparently wrote no more short stories. In 1919, she published Letters from a Prairie Garden, a collection of her letters to a famous artist who had visited the mid-West and undertaken a correspondence with her. Underwood had published a book of poetry, The Garden of Desire (1913) but then turned to the writing of, for the most part, historical novels, drawing heavily upon the languages she had learned, the extensive travel she had undertaken, and her thorough grounding in history. The Whirlwind (1918) is about Catherine II of Russia. It was followed by The Penitent (1922), about Alexander I; The Passion Flower (1924), about Nicholas I and Alexander Pushkin. The Pageant-Maker was a novel planned but never completed or published. These novels gained favourable reviews, but by the late 1920s Underwood turned principally to poetry and translation. She had already issued translations from Russian and the Slavic languages (Short Stories from the Balkans, 1919), as well as translations from Persian (Songs of Hafiz, 1917) and Japanese (Moons of Nippon, 1919). She then made several translations from the Chinese, including the eighth-century poet Tu Fu (now rendered as Du Fu); these translations were made in collaboration with Chi-Hwang Chu. By the early 1930s she had turned to translating from the Spanish, including poets of Mexico, Haiti, and South America. By 1940 Underwood appears to have given up her literary endeavours. She entered a sanatorium in 1953 suffering from dementia. She died on June 14, 1961.
An anthology of short stories and critical essays. Various translators. Notes on the collaborators, pp. 128-31. Includes: Carmen Naranjo (3 stories); es- says by Victoria Urbano and Corina Mathieu. Eunice Odio (2 stories); essay by Rima Vallbona. Yolanda Oreamuno (2 stories); essays by Catherine G. Bellver and Victoria Urbano. Victoria Urbano (2 stories); essay by Kathleen Glenn. Rima Vallbona (3 stories); essay by Alicia G. R. Aldaya.
Central American feminist author Victoria Eugenia Urbano was born June 4, 1926 in San Jose, Costa Rica to Victor Urbano and Aida PErez Urbano. Urbano began to show a passion for writing at an early age and went on to compose and publish numerous works of poetry, essays, short stories, articles, and plays throughout her lifetime. As a girl at the Escuela República Argentina in San Jose, Urbano won the Premio Jose Arce in 1940 for her composition about Argentine national heroes. Four years later, she started RITMO, the first student newspaper at the Colegio Superior de Señoritas. After graduation from secondary school, Urbano moved to San Francisco, Calif. to work and study. She worked as a secretary at the Connell Bros. Company from 1947 to 1952, and in her free time wrote poetry, prose, and many travel articles for local newspapers. Urbano also presided over the Círculo Hispanoamericano and its series of programs and lectures. It was during this time in San Francisco that she wrote Marfil, cuentos y poesías, published in 1951 by Ediciones Botas of Mexico City. In 1952 Victoria Urbano moved to Madrid to study dramatic writing at Spain's Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático. There she wrote several plays that were produced in Madrid and well reviewed, including Agar, la esclava, and La Hija de Charles Green. After she graduated with honors, Urbano went on to study at the University of Madrid where she received her M.A. and Ph.D., Magna Cum Laude. Urbano accepted a teaching position at Lamar University in Beaumont, Tex and returned to the U.S. in 1966. She was a primarily a professor of Spanish language, but also taught Spanish literature and Italian. She was active in numerous campus committees, activities, and professional organizations, including the Lamar Spanish Circle, the Lamar Italian Circle, the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, the American Association of University Professors, the Pan American Round Table, and the South Central Modern Language Association. Urbano was named a lifetime Regents' Professor in 1972 for her outstanding work in research and instruction. She also received several awards from the Lamar Research Center, and with those grants wrote literary criticism on Central American and Spanish theatre, Chaucer's Woman of Bath, Yolanda Oreamuno, and Clarice Lispector. Dr. Urbano remained at Lamar University until her death in 1984. Throughout her career Victoria Urbano received many international prizes and honors for her writing and leadership, including the title of Vice-Consul of Costa Rica in Texas and the Ribbon of Honor of Spain. She was also awarded the Premio Cultura Hispánica on History for her book Juan Vázquez de Coronado, and the international poetry prize Fray Luis de Leon for her book Los Nueve círculos. However, perhaps the most famous and prestigious honor came in 1969 when Dr. Urbano won the Premio Leon Felipe in Mexico. She was awarded this first international prize for literature for her collection of six short stories entitled Y era otra vez hoy, which was later published by Editorial Costa Rica in 1978. The winning of the Premio Leon Felipe took Urbano on an international tour throughout Mexico, Central America, and Europe for numerous speaking engagements, interviews, and readings of her work. In 1974 Dr. Urbano founded the professional organization Asociacion de Literatura Femenina Hispánica (ALFH) and its literary journal Letras Femininas. She envisioned an association where writers, both women and men, could converse and contribute to the genre of Latin American/feminist literature. The ALFH had hundreds of members from numerous countries, including the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Venezuela. Besides publishing papers and poetry in Letras Femininas, the group met several times yearly, usually in conjunction with the annual conventions of the Modern Language Association, the South Central Modern Language Association, or the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association. Dr. Urbano acted as director of the ALFH and the editor if its journal until 1984 when she died in Houston of a renal illness.
UL: FOUR MAPUCHE POETS is a collection of work by contemporary Chilean poets Elicura Chihuailaf, Leonel Lienlaf, Jaime Luis Huenun, and Graciela Huinao. Written in the poets' native Mapudungun and Spanish, and appearing with English translations, these extraordinary poems celebrate the rich indigenous heritage of Chile and provide rare insight into a culture that remains largely unknown. The mystery of midnight has always stirred me. / It would seem the heavens dropped sharpened knives / to earth, cutting the night in two. / I think of my mother at midnight 14 October / 1956 when my mouth became filled with the South. (Graciela Huinao, Semblance of a Biography). This collection includes a useful introduction by Vicuna, with extensive notes, as well as a glossary. It is co-published with the Americas Society as one of two unprecedented anthologies appearing in trilingual format.
Cecilia Vicuña (born July 22, 1948) is a Chilean poet, artist, and filmmaker. Her work is noted for themes of language, memory, decay and exile. Critics also note the relevance of her work to the politics ecological destruction, cultural homogenization, and economic disparity, particularly the way in which such phenomena disenfranchise the already powerless. Vicuña was born and raised in Santiago de Chile in 1948, but went into exile in London in 1973 following the death of President Salvador Allende and the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat led by General Augusto Pinochet. In 1980, Vicuña moved to New York City. Cecilia Vicuña was part of a group of artists and poets, Tribu No, that created art actions in Santiago de Chile from 1967 to 1972. She gave the group its name and authored its "No Manifesto." She performs her poetry internationally, frequently in conjunction with exhibitions or art installations, and documents her performances in videos, the Vicuña audio page at Pennsound, and the 2012 collection Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuna which includes transcriptions, commentary, and audience commentaries. Vicuña has authored and published sixteen books of her visual art installations and poetry books, most of which have been translated into several languages. These include Saboramí (1973), a book made in collaboration with Felipe Ehrenberg that resembles a personal diary, The Precarious/Precario (1983), Cloud Net (2000), Instan (2002) and Spit Temple (2010), a collection of her oral performances. In 2009 she co-edited the Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry with Ernesto Livon Grosman, an anthology of 500 years of Latin American Poetry, which the Washington Post called "magisterial". Vicuña creates "precarious works;" characteristic of Vicuña's work is her use of materials that are often fragile, worn by the elements and/or biodegradable: the return to the environment. She describes her work as a way of "hearing an ancient silence waiting to be heard." In 1966 she began creating sculptural interventions called precarios, combining ritual and assemblage and typically throw-away materials such as yarn, sticks, feathers, leaves, stones and bones. Linked to the sacred wild Andean vicuña animal by name, Cecilia Vicuña utilized the wool of these animals for her Cloud-Net installation series as a metaphoric tool. The visual language of this series resulted in large-scale warp and weft installations within rural and urban environments - weavings - thus linking Vicuña to the Feminist Art Movement's Pattern and Decoration Movement. Museums that have exhibited her work include the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Santiago, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Art in General, New York City, the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, and MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Translations by 18 translators in this bilingual edition. Included are biographical sketches of the poets. Although the anthology contains selections from the colonial period, most of the poets are from the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. The poets are: Olegario Victor Andrade (Argentina), Rafael Arevalo Martinez (Guatemala), Rufino Blanco Fombona (Venezuela), Mariano Brull (Cuba), Jose Eusebio Caro (Colombia), Ricardo Carrasquilla (Colombia), Julián del Casal (Cuba), Jose Santos Chocano (Peru), Luis Felipe Contardo (Chile), Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), Virgilio Dávila (Puerto Rico), Balbino Dávalos (Mexico), Salvador Diaz Miron (Mexico), Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga (Chile), Fabio Fiallo (Dominican Republic), Julio Flores (Colombia), Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda (Cuba), Antonio Gomez Restrepo (Colombia), Enrique Gonzalez Martinez (Mexico), Alfonso Guillen Zelaya (Honduras), Manuel Gutierrez Nájera (Mexico), Jose Maria Heredia (Cuba), Enrique Hernández Miyares (Cuba), Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay), Dimitri Ivanovitch (Colombia), Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (Mexico), Samuel A. Lillo (Mexico), Muna Lee de Muñoz Mann (Puerto Rico), Luis C. Lopez (Colombia), Rene Lopez (Cuba), Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina), Manuel Magallanes Moure (Chile), Rafael Maria de Mendive (Cuba), Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Ernesto Montenegro (Chile), Luis Muñoz Rivera (Puerto Rico), Amado Nervo (Mexico), Luis G. Ortiz (Mexico), Joaquin Arcadio Pagaza (Mexico), Ricardo Palma (Peru), Felipe Pardo (Peru), Antonio Perez-Pierret (Puerto Rico), Martina Pierra de Poo (Cuba), Ramon Pimentel Coronel (Venezuela), Rafael Pombo (Colombia), Jose Manuel Poveda (Cuba), Pedro Requena Legarreta (Mexico), Lola Rodriguez del Tio (Puerto Rico), Jose Rosas Moreno (Mexico), Antonio Sellen (Cuba), Jose Asuncion Silva (Colombia), Victor Domingo Silva (Chile), Jose Juan Tablada (Mexico), Diego Vicente Tejera (Cuba), Luis G. Urbina (Mexico), Guillermo Valencia (Colombia), Jose E. Valenzuela (Mexico), Daniel de la Vega (Chile), Juan Jose Velgas (Chile). The collection also includes poems by Brazilians BuIho Pato and Faqundes Varella. (reprint Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus, 1969).
Thomas Walsh (1875–1928) was a poet, literary critic, translator, and scholar of Latin American and Spanish literature. Walsh was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 14, 1875, to Michael Kavanagh Walsh and Catherine Farrell Walsh. He lived with his brothers Frank M. Walsh and Edward Maris Walsh, and sisters Lorna Walsh and Lydia Walsh, in the family's Brooklyn home. Walsh was educated at Columbia University, Georgetown, Notre Dame, and Marquette University, from which institutions he received degrees in law, philosophy, and literature. He graduated from Georgetown in 1892, during which year he wrote the class poem, "Columbus." He also composed the Georgetown alumni ode "The Crusaders" in 1901, and read an ode for the dedication of the university's monument to John Carroll in 1912. Walsh was well known in Brooklyn for having composed an ode which he read at the formal unveiling of the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park on November 14, 1908. He was the occasion's poet laureate. During his lifetime, Walsh published four books of poetry: The Prison Ships and Other Poems (1909), The Pilgrim Kings: Greco, Goya and Other Poems of Spain (1915), Gardens Overseas and Other Poems (1918), and Don Folquet and Other Poems (1920). Walsh was an editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia and an anthology of translated Spanish poetry, the Hispanic Anthology (1920). According to John Bunker, "it is beyond question that his versions of many of the Spanish and Spanish-American poets introduced them to their first North American audience." He also served as an editor of Commonweal magazine from its founding in 1924 until his death in 1928. In addition to editing, Walsh also wrote many short articles and reviews, including several for the New York Times. Walsh died suddenly of heart disease on the morning of October 29, 1928, on the steps of his home. A posthumous collection of his poems, Selected Poems of Thomas Walsh, was published in 1930. The volume "embodies about one-half of his entire poetic product" and includes a memoir of Walsh written by friend and fellow writer John Bunker and "appreciations" of Walsh by his friends Edward L. Keyes and Michael Williams. In his memoir, Bunker writes, "it is no exaggeration to say that he was one of the most noteworthy of our modern American ambassadors of culture."
In these works by five of Cuba's most popular poets, Nicolas Guillen, Belkis Cusa Mael, Guillermo Rodriguez, Nancy Morejon, and Victor Casaus, we get a glimpse into the emotional reality of life in the New Cuba. The poems appear here in both English and the original Spanish, with illustrations by the Cuban artist, Nuez.
This anthology spans the 20th century with an emphasis on poetry written after 1950. Eleven of the poets are deceased; nine are living. Poets are included from Colombia, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba and Mexico. The book does not pretend to be exhaustive. There are many more fine poets who have not been included. In the case of some, such as Claribel Alegria from El Salvador or Nancy Morejon from Cuba, we were not able to see enough of their published poetry to make an adequate selection. There are many factors which perpetuate the ‘out of print' or ‘not available' situation. The high cost of publishing results in limited copies. When the book is out of print, with rare exceptions, it remains so. Also, book distribution from one country to another in Latin America is such that only the relatively few established writers are known outside their own country. Often poets had heard of a poet from another country but they had never had access to the published work. Publishing cooperatives such as EDUCA in San Jose, Costa Rica, which serves six Central American Republics, can help in giving recognition to writers outside their country. But distribution of books is still a problem, basically an economic one. Another factor detrimental to writers in many countries is direct or indirect censorship by the regime in power. Many Latin American regimes overtly ban particular books they deem offensive. These governments can exercise indirect censorship by creating obstacles or conditions which make writing impossible. In some countries the political situation is such that writers must direct all their energies to mere survival. This situation can make creative expression a somewhat superfluous luxury. There were instances where we felt almost apolegetic trying to seek out women poets when the country itself teetered on the brink of social and economic disaster. CONTENTS: MARIA EUGENIA VAZ FERREIA - La voz del retorno/The Voice of Return; Historia postuma/Posthumous Story; Al atadd flotante/The Floating Casket; Vaso furtivo/A Furtive Glass; La nina vacua/The Vacuous Rime; DELMIRA AUGUSTINI - Otra estirpe/Another Race; Vision/Vision; Lo inefable/Unspeakable; ALFONSINA STORNI - Peso ancestral/Ancestral Weight; La caricia perdida/The Lost Caress; Han venido/They've Come; Plaza in invierno/The Park in Winter; Voy a dormir/I'm Going to Sleep; JUANA DE IBARBOUROU - Vida-garfio/Life Hook; Cronica/ Chronicle; GABRIELA MISTRAL - Los sonetos de la muerte I/Death Sonnets I; Los sonetos de la muerte II/Death Sonnets II; Los sonetos de la muerte III/Death Sonnets III; Pan/Bread; CLAUDIA LARS - Cartas escritas cuando la noche - I; III; VI; VIII; X; XI; XIV; XV; Letters Written when Night Grows - I; III; VI; VIII; X; XI; XIV: XV; Evocacion de Gabriela Mistral/Evocation of Gabriela Mistral; CECILIA MEIRELES - Mar absoluto/Absolute Sea; OLGA OROZCO - Olga Orozco/Olga Orozco; Noica/Noica; Lamento de Jonas/Jonah's Lament; Esfinges suelen ser/Sphinxes Inclined to be; THE NICARAGUAN GROUP - MARIANA SANSON - ‘No he oido el golpe'/'I didn't hear the door'; ‘Cuando Dios estaba'/'When God was'; LYGIA GUILLEN - ‘una tristeza que me conocia'/'A sadness which already knew me'; VIDALUZ MENESES - Cuando yo me case/When I Marry; Advertencias/Warning; ANA ILCA - Mesa/Table; GIOCONDA BELLI - Cotidiano/The Mundane; ROSARIO MURILLO - Por culpa del retrato/On Account of the Picture; YOLANDA BLANCO - Llueve/It's Raining; ROSARIO CASTELLANOS - Elegia/Elegy; El otro/Someone Else; Amanecer/Dawn; Ajedrez/Chess; Se habla de Gabriel/Speaking of Gabriel; Meditacion en el umbral/Meditation on the Brink; Lecciones de cosas/Learning about Things; EUNICE ODIO - ‘Escucha ese silencio'/'Listen to that silence'; Retratos del corazon/Portraits of the heart; AMANDA BERENGUER - Communicaciones/ Communications; Tarea domEstica/Housework; Tabla del dos/The Two Times Table; Inventario solemne/Solemn Inventory; Poniente sobre el mar del sábado 4 de marzo 1972/The Sunset on the Sea, Saturday the 4th of March 1972; ‘el incendio se propaga'/'The fire advances'; (Poema cinEtico); BLANCA VARELA - Madonna/Madonna; ‘Tal vez en primavera'/'Perhaps in the spring'; Vals del Angelus I/The Waltz of the Angelus I; Vals del Angelus II/The Waltz of the Angelus II; FRANCISCA OSSANDON - V/V; ‘Despliegue de cortezas'/'The unfurling of bark'; Juegos de la tierra y de la luz/Games of Earth and Light; OLGA ELENA MATTEL - ‘Yo soy una señora burguesa'/'I am a bourgeois wife'; ‘Recuerdas'/'Do you remember'; ‘Diciembre treinta y uno'/'December thirty first'; ‘Las galletas de soda'; ‘Pairs'; ‘Yo soy aqui'/'I am here'; NANCY BACELO - ‘No me interesan los datos'/'I'm not interested in dates'; Muy bajito/In a very, very quiet voice; ‘De vos de mi tenidos habitantes'/'From you from me painted dwellers'; ‘Me sorprendo en lugares'/'I surprise myself in places'; Todavia es temprano/It's Still Early; BELKIS CUZA MALIE - Los FotogEnicos/The Photogenic Ones; Las Cenicientas/The Stepsisters; Oh, Mi Rimbaud/Oh, My Rimbaud; Mujer Brava Que se Caso Con Dios/The Shrew Who Married God; Fausto/Faust; Están Haciendo Una Muchacha Para la Epoca/They're Making a Girl for the Age; ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK - Pido el silencio/I ask silence; Antes/Before; Moradas/Abodes; Amantes/Lovers; Verde paraiso/Green Paradise; Crepüsclo/Dusk; Nombrarte/To Name You; Las Grandes Palabras/The Great Words; Fronteras inütiles/Useless Frontiers; Reloj/Clock; Fiesta/Party; Sortilegios/Sorceries; CRISTINA MENEGHETTI - ‘La forma de dar forma al pensamiento'/'The utter form of giving form to thought'; ‘eran borrosos visitantes'/'They were nebulous visitors'; ‘la forma pequeña forma'/'the form small form'; ‘ültimo capitulo de una madurez'/'the last chapter of maturity'; ‘te necesito'/'I need you'; BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Nora Jacquez Wieser was a professor at Oberlin College.
CONTENTS: Introduction by Miller Williams; MIGUEL ARTECHE - poems - Epitalamio/Epitualamium; Girando/Spinning; Golf/Golf; Elegia Por Un Nino Muerto/Elegy For A Dead Boy; El Nino Idiota/Tue Idiot Child; EFRAIN BARQUERO - poems - Mi Amada Esta Tejiendo/My Beloved Is Knitting; La Miel Heredada/The Inheritance; Te Andan Suenos En Los Ojos/Dreams Run In Your Eyes; ROLANDO CARDENAS - poems - TIERRA DEL FUEGO/TIERRA DEL FUEGO; MUELLES/WHARVES; LUISA JOHNSON - poems - Noticia/Notice; Horas/Devotional; ENRIQUE LIHN - poems - Monologo Del Viego Con La Muerte/Monologue Of The Old Man With Death; Gallo/Rooster; Cementario De Punto Arenas/Graveyard At Punta Arenas; PABLO NERUDA - poems - Al Pie Desde Su Nino/To The Foot From His Child; Donde Estrara La Guillermina?/Where Is Guillermina?; Bestiario/Bestiary; Cierto Cansancio/A Certain Weariness; Laringe/Larynx; Fabula De La Sirena Y Los Borrachos; NICANOR PARRA - poems - El Pequeno Burgues/The Little Man; Momias/Zombies; Pido Que Se Levante La Sesion/I Move The Meeting Be Adtourned; En El Cementerio/In The Graveyard; El Galan Imperfecto/The Imperfect Lover ALBERTO RUBIO - poems - La Abuela/The Grandmother; Retrato De Una Nina/Portrait Of A Girl; JORGE TEILLIER - poems - Fin Del Mundo/End Of The World; A Un Nino En Un Arbol/To A Boy In A Tree; Cuando Todos Se Vayan/When Everyone Goes; Senales/Signals; Despedida/Renunciation; Un Arbol Me Despierta/A Tree Wakes Me Up; ARMANDO URIBE ARCE - poems - Poemas/Poems; POLI DELANO - story - The Boarding House; ANTONIO SKARMETA - story - First Comes The Sea; RAUL RUIZ - play - The Cheater. Illustrations by Nemesio Antunez & Cecilia Bruna. Poems by Miguel Arteche appeared in Deutierro y Tinieblas (Zig-Zag, Stgo., 1963). Efrain Barquero: ‘Te Andan Sueños' and ‘Mi Amada Esta Tejiendo' appeared in La Compañera (Nascimento, Stgo., 1956), and ‘La Miel Heredada' appeared in his book Enjambre. The poems by Rolando Cârdenas appeared in El Invierno de la Provincia (Sociedad de Escritores de Chile, Editorial Universitaria, Stgo., R. C, 1963). ‘El Final' by Poli Delano appeared in Gente Solitaria (Ediciones Mazorca, Imprenta Alfa, Stgo., 1960). The poems by Luisa Johnson appeared in Horario de un Caracol (Armando Mendin, Stgo., 1964), The poems of Enrique Lihn appeared in La Pieza Oscura (Editorial Universitaria, Stgo., F. L. 1963) The poems by Nicanor Parra are from Versos de Salon (Nascimento, Stgo., 1962). The poems of Alberto Rubio appeared in La Greda Vasija (Stgo., 1952) A. R.). ‘First Comes The Sea' by Antonio Skarmeta appeared in El Boletin del Instituto Nacional de Chile. ‘Fin del Mundo' and ‘To A Boy in A Tree' by Jorge Teillier appeared in Poemas del Pals de Nunca Jamás (Menedin, Stgo., 1963); the other poems by Sr. Teillier are from El Arbol de la Memoria (Imprenta Alfa, Stgo., 1960). The poems of Armando Uribe Arce: ‘La Lengua Habla' and ‘No Se Mi Nombre' appeared in his book Los Obstáculos, Coleccion Adonis (Madrid, 1961); ‘Quien Eres Tu,' ‘No Te Amo' and ‘Es Como Una Enfermedad' appeared in El Enganoso Land (Ediciones del Joven Laurel, Editorial Universitaria, Stgo., 1956). Some of the poems by Barquero, Parra, Rubio, nd Teillier have appeared in Chicago Review; by Arteche, Barquero, Lihn, Parra, Teillier, and Uribe in Al olive; by Arteche, Barquero, Lihn, and Teillier in Prairie Schooner; the interview the Nicanor Parra is reprinted from Shenandoah, The Washington and Lee University Review, Volume 18, Number 1, by permission of the editor. The poems by Pablo Neruda are reprinted by per. mission of the author and appeared in Estravagria (Editorial Lozada, Buenos Aires, 1958). .
Poet, editor, critic, and translator Miller Williams (April 8, 1930, Hoxie, AR - January 1, 2015, Fayetteville, AR) was born in Hoxie, Arkansas in 1930, the son of a Methodist clergyman and civil rights activist. Miller's work is known for its gritty realism as much as for its musicality. Equally comfortable in formal and free verse, Williams wrote poems grounded in the material of American life, frequently using dialogue and dramatic monologue to capture the pitch and tone of American voices. In 1997 Williams was honored as the country's third inaugural poet, reading his poem Of History and Hope at the start of former President Bill Clinton's second term. He was the father of the singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams. As a child, Miller Williams exhibited more ability in science than in writing. Though he entered college as double major in English and foreign languages, an aptitude test revealed absolutely no aptitude in the handling of words, Miller has said in interviews. He changed his major to hard sciences to avoid embarrassing my parents. Williams earned a BS in biology from Arkansas State University and an MS in zoology from the University of Arkansas. He taught science at the college-level for many years before securing a job in the English department at LSU, partly with the help of his friend Flannery O'Connor. In an interview, Miller told the story: We became dear friends and in 1961, LSU advertised for a poet to teach in their writing program. Though I had only had three hours of freshman English formally, she saw the ad and, without mentioning it to me, wrote them and said the person you want teaches biology at Wesleyan College. They couldn't believe that, of course, but they couldn't ignore Flannery O'Connor. So they sent me word that said, ‘Would you send us some of your work?' And I did. Williams's appointment began a long career in academia: as a professor at Loyola University, he founded the New Orleans Review; while at the University of Arkansas, where he taught until his retirement in 2003, he founded the University of Arkansas Press, serving as director for 20 years. He also founded the MFA in Translation at the University of Arkansas. Williams has written, translated, or edited over 30 books, including a dozen poetry collections, such as Halfway from Hoxie: New and Selected Poems (1973); Living on the Surface: New and Selected Poems (1989), which received the Poets' Prize; Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems (1999); and Time and the Tilting Earth (2008). In a review of his collected poems, Some Jazz a While (1999), critic Lee Oser called Williams a poet of eloquent sanity and distinguished formal competence … a fine observer of the emotional and imaginative lives of his fellow citizens. In an interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth for PBS, Williams noted, I like to think that the best poetry is or involves a contest between ordinary conversation and ritual. There is something about the best poem that wants to set it in a pattern like a Gregorian chant. And there is something about the best poetry that makes it want to seem like a cocktail party conversation. It's partly in the tension between these two tendencies that a poem gets its energy and its life. Williams is also the author of Making a Poem: Some Thoughts about Poetry and the People Who Write It (2006). He edited Contemporary Poetry in America (1973) and Patterns of Poetry: An Encyclopedia of Forms (1986), and coedited How Does a Poem Mean? (1975) with with John Ciardi and later selected and arranged the poems in Ciardi's Stations of the Air: Thirty-Three Poems (1993). Williams also translated poetry by Nicanor Parra, Giuseppe Belli, and Pablo Neruda. His many honors include the Henry Bellman Award, the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, a Fulbright professorship at the National University of Mexico, the Prix de Rome for Literature, the Charity Randall Citation for Contribution to Poetry as a Spoken Art, the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence, and the National Arts Award. His daughter is the singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, and Williams himself has been compared to another great country musician. According to Williams: One of the best things that has ever been said about my work was said by a critic who wrote that ‘Miller Williams is the Hank Williams of American poetry. While his poetry is taught at Princeton and Harvard, it's read and understood by squirrel hunters and taxi drivers.' Williams died on January 1st, 2015, the same day Hank Williams had died on in 1953. A selection of his papers is archived in the Special Collections at the University of Arkansas library.
The purpose of this anthology of plays in translation is to draw attention to the very vital and important theatre in Latin America, for less attention has been devoted to its study or performance outside Latin America than the rich- ness of the material merits. It is a theatre of serious purpose devoted to commentary on contemporary values and problems. The playwrights, in their correlation of structure, character, and dialogue with the thematic importance of the work, exhibit a far better control of technique than at any previous period in the history of their craft. The six plays published in this volume have been selected as the best and most representative examples of current themes and techniques, and they admirably reveal the refinement and sophistication of the modern theatre In Latin America. Contents: RenE MarquEs: The Fanlights (1958, Puerto Rico); Alfredo Dias Gomes: Payment as Pledged (1960, Brazil); Osvaldo Dragün: And They Told Us We Were Immortal (1963, Argentina) ; Jorge Diaz: The Place Where the Mammals Die (1963, Chile); Jose Triana: The Criminals (1964, Cuba) ; Emilio Carballido: I Too Speak of the Rose ( 1966, Mexico).
George Woodyard (November 18, 1934 - November 7, 2010) was born in Charleston, Illinois, as the youngest of nine children. Woodyard received his bachelor's degree in education from Eastern Illinois University in 1954 and his master's degree in Spanish from New Mexico State University the following year. He received a Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Illinois in 1966. Woodyard was a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas from 1966 to 2005 and became the first dean of international studies in 1989. He founded an academic journal called the Latin American Theatre Review in 1967 and was its editor for more than 40 years. He won numerous awards, including the Ollantay Prize for Theatre in Venezuela and the Miami Teatro Avante lifetime achievement award.
MIRRORS OF WAR is a collection of prose and poetry that springs directly out of the movement for revolution in El Salvador, where a civil war has been raging since the 1970s. The literature vibrates with a sense of anger and irony, urgency and hope, against a backdrop of political oppression and inescapable brutality. The writers' themes - historical roots and conquest, the nature of war, social commitment, and the role of the writer - are a measure of the deep involvement of literature in the political arena. The editors are Salvadorean writers and activists living in exile. They have come of age during the war, and the collection mirrors that experience; the war - and not a variety of high points of Salvadorean literature - defines this volume. ‘When a people make a revolution, their entire culture becomes revolutionary This has been true of Nicaragua. It is also proving true in the case of El Salvador where a whole new literature (poetry and prose) is erupting directly out of the heroism of the people. This is what this book brings together And this, in my view is the historical importance of this book.' - Ernesto Cardenal . . . An extensive introduction by translator Keith Ellis locates this volume and its writers within the literature of revolutionary movements in Central America. Mirrors of War will thus be welcomed by people interested in the literature of Latin America and revolutionary movements, as well as those concerned about the war in Central America. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION by Keith Ellis; FOREWORD TO THE SPANISH EDITION; Tamales from Cambray by Claribel Alegria; The Battle of Acaxual by Roberto Quesada; from A Play Without a Name by Dimas Castellon-Mariano Espinoza; First Parcel by Jose Roberto Cea; from Ereguayquin by Roberto Torres; from Concerning Anastasio Martyr by Manuel Sorto; from Rebel Song for Anastasia Martyr by Jaime Suárez Quemain; from Organized Poetry by Roger Lindo; from A Play Without a Name by Dimas Castellon-Mariano Espinoza; from Izalco Ashes by Claribel Alegria; from Crumbs by Claudia Lars; from Anecdotes, Chronology and Obituary of Boots by Mercedes Durand; The Republic of Power by Alfonso Hernández; from Mythology of Cuzcatlán by Miguel Angel Espino; from Childhood Stories by Jose Maria Cuellar; from Riding Hood in the Red Zone by Manlio Argueta; from One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta; from Crumbs by Claudia Lars; from Casianga by Roberto Monterroza; from The Murder of the Polo Champion by Alfonso Quijada Urias; My Friends by Carlos Aragon; from Sniping by Jose Maria Mendez; A Song by Paco Barrios; In Memory of Comrade Juan Castro by Sonia Civallero; from Crumbs by Claudia Lars; from Organized Poetry by Roger Lindo; Testimony by Alfonso Hernández; The Highways That Led South by Gabriela Vanes; from Our Father by Alfonso Quijada Urias; from The Night of the Pursued by Salomon Rivera; Reasons for Surprise by Jose Lois Valle; From A way of Dying by Reyes Gilberto Arevalo; from Without Ceremony by Roberto Quesada; from The Infinite Heads by Eduardo Sancho Castaneda; from Making my Song by Miguel Huezo Mixco; from The Poet and his Wife by Julio Iraheta Santos; from Now That You Are Naked by Nelson Brizuela; from Life, Passion, and Death of the Anti-man by Pedro Geoffroy Bivas; Theory for Dying in Silence by Ricardo Castrorrivas; from I Stand Firm Here by Jaime Suârez Quemain; from Now That You Are Naked by Nelson Brizuela; from The Infinite Heads by Eduardo Sancho Castaneda; from As a Declaration of Principles by Roque Dalton; A Note from a Salvadorean Newspaper by La Prensa Grafica; from Concerning our Poetic Ethics by Roque Dalton; from The War We Are Going to Win by Manuel Sorto; from One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta; from Pulse by Ricardo Humano; from Some Sayings and Deeds by Nachin; from Epitaph by Rolando Costa; The Police and the Guards by Roque Dalton; from The Infinite Heads by Roberto Monterroza; Mamma Tina's Hands by Gabriela Yanes; from Hallelujah Floating Head by Roberto Monterroza; from Organized Poetry by Roger Lindo; from Crumbs by Claudia Lars; from Later Poems by Eduardo Sancho Castaneda; Get Up Juana Spirits by Alfonso Quijada Urias; Adviser by Horacio Castellanos Moya; The Day by Miguel Huezo Mixco; from Concerning Love by Lil Milagro Ramirez; from Song to Liberty and Happiness by Luiz Diaz; from For a Better Love by Roque Dalton; Well, Yes, Of Course! By Mauricio Marquina; from a novel in preparation by Manuel Sorto; from Fever by Miguel Huezo Mixco; from The War Chews Up the Days by Horacio Castellanos Moya; from an interview with Carlos Antonio Gomez; Litanies of the Holy Women by Rafael Mendoza; from The People Wash Their Faces by Paco Barrios; serenade for Refugee Children by Rafael Mendoza; from Los Torogoces by Los Torogoces de Morazán; Testimony of Comandante Sebastian by Carlos Aragon; Because I Want Peace by Claribel Alegria; from The War We Are Going to Win by Manuel Sorto; NOTES FOR THE INTRODUCTION; NOTES ON THE TEXT; BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.
Keith Ellis is author of CUBA'S NICOLAS GUILLEN: POETRY AND IDEOLOGY, and a professor of Spanish at the University of Toronto.
Here for the first time in one volume are the very best of the crime and detective stories of Latin America. Donald A. Yates, who was the first to present Jorge Luis Borges to American readers in the early 1960's, has here assembled a highly readable and wide-ranging collection of tales that date from the turn of the century till recently, and represent the cream of Argentinian, Chilean, Mexican, and other Latin writers. Prominent among the contributors are Borges himself, and two of his lifelong associates, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Manuel Peyrou. Each story is prefaced by a brief biblio-biographical note on the author, and the introduction by the editor outlines in full detail the emergence of the Latin detective story from its Anglophile origins to its present high literary distinctiveness and originality.
Donald A. Yates (1930–2017) was professor emeritus of Spanish American literature at Michigan State University (East Lansing). He is the translator of both novels and short stories by many Spanish American authors, including Labyrinths: Selected Writings of Jorge Luis Borges, edited and translated with James Irby (New Directions, 1962), and Adolfo Bioy Casares's celebrated novel Diary of the War of the Pig (McGraw-Hill, 1972). Labyrinths was the first collection of Borges's work to appear in English. Yates published his own fiction, poetry, articles, and book reviews, as well as translations, in many periodicals, including the Atlantic, Holiday, the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Post. He was a Fulbright Scholar and visiting lecturer in Argentina in 1962–63, 1964–65, 1967–68, and 1970, and, with the support of a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship.
"[A] well-defined, important primer on Latin American poetics." - Booklist. "When we read a book we put it in front of our eyes, not behind them, which is to say, more or less, that we open ourselves to a dimension of our future." - Raúl Zurita, from the introduction. This intensely focused bilingual anthology pinpoints the heart of Latin American self-identification. In selecting these fifteen essential poems, Chilean poet Raúl Zurita was guided by the question, "What poem, had it not been written, would have rendered the author another author and Latin American poetry something else?" This extraordinary gathering of talent - from Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda to Ernesto Cardenal and CEsar Vallejo - spans the twentieth century.
Raúl Zurita, winner of the Chilean National Prize for Literature, survived arrest and torture during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. He co-founded CADA (Colectivo de accion de arte), and has created huge poetic art pieces, including poems carved into cliffs that can only be read from the sky. Forrest Gander is a poet, translator, and professor at Brown University. His books have been named finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Award.
Oblivion is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written memorial to the author's father, HEctor Abad Gomez, whose criticism of the Colombian regime led to his murder by paramilitaries in 1987. Twenty years in the writing, it paints an unforgettable picture of a man who followed his conscience and paid for it with his life during one of the darkest periods in Latin America's recent history. PRAISE FOR OBLIVION: A MEMOIR… It is very difficult to summarize Oblivion without betraying it, because, like all great works, it is many things at once. To say that it is a heartrending memoir of the author's family and father - who was murdered by a hired assassin - is true, but paltry and infinitesimal, because the book is also a moving immersion into the inferno of Colombian political violence, into the life and soul of the city of Medellín, into the private life and public courage of a family, a true story that is also a superb fiction due to the way it is written and constructed, and one of the most eloquent arguments written in our time or any time against terror as an instrument of political action. - Mario Vargas Llosa. [Oblivion] emits a primal yet articulate howl . . . Mr. Abad's prose, in this translation by Anne McLean and Rosalind Harvey, is elastic and alive . . . In Spanish the verb ‘to remember' is ‘recordar,' the author reminds us, a word that derives from ‘cor,' the Latin for heart. This memoir is extravagantly big-hearted. It will be stocked, in good bookstores, in the nonfiction or belles-lettres sections. A wise owner might also place a copy under the sign that more simply reads: Parenting. - Dwight Garner, The New York Times. [An] admirable effort at speaking the unspeakable, at verbalizing the pain accumulated over decades, is HEctor Abad's extraordinary memoir Oblivion. It's been years since I read such a powerful meditation on loss . . . I confess not to have known of [Abad] before, even though this is his second book translated into English. This ignorance was actually beneficial, for it allowed me to submerge myself in the narrative without preconception. I emerged from that submersion hypnotized. Oblivion will remind you in equal measure of Vittorio de Sica's Italian neo-Realist movie The Bicycle Thief and Elie Wiesel's Holocaust novel Night . . . [Abad's] desire to explore the echoes of memory with meticulous care, to touch the wound of the past through lucid prose, is an act of valor. - Ilan Stavans, San Francisco Chronicle. A family memoir that deserves classic status . . . [Abad] not only pays radiant homage to a hero but champions the path of peaceful change he so steadfastly took. - Boyd Tonkin, The Independent. A tremendous and necessary book, devastatingly courageous and honest. At times I wondered how [Abad] was brave enough to write it. - Javier Cercas. A beautiful and profoundly moving work. - El País. [Oblivion] is a shattering chronicle of Colombia's violence. But it is also an inspiring tribute to tolerance and paternal love. - Giles Tremlett, The Guardian. A beautiful, authentic, and moving book. - Rosa Montero. [A] great and deeply moving testament. - Kate Saunders , The Times (London). An unbearably moving, eloquent tribute to the author's father - who was murdered by Colombian paramilitaries in 1987 - that is fit to burst with love and pride." - Holly Kyte, The Telegraph. I store up what I have read by Hector Abad like spherical, polished, luminous little balls of bread, ready for when I have to walk through a vast forest in the nighttime. - Manuel Rivas. "Colombian author Abad dedicates this loving and sentimental memoir to his father, Hector Abad Gomez, a professor and doctor devoted to his family, "moved to tears…by poetry and music," and committed to a better Colombia. The latter aspiration cost him his life when he was assassinated in 1987, and his son began writing this book five years later. Abad spends much of the book expressing his love for his father, but it is his discussion of Gomez's public health and human rights projects - such as founding "the Colombian Institute of Family Wellbeing, which built aqueducts and sewer systems in villages, rural districts, and cities" - that reveals what a remarkable educator, reformer, and activist the senior Abad was, and how his assassination was a tragedy for a family and a nation." - Publishers Weekly.
Hector Abad was born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1958. He was twelve when he wrote his first stories, going on to win the 1980 Colombian National Short Story Prize at just twenty-one. In 1987 his father was murdered by paramilitaries, and Abad was forced to flee to Italy. While in exile he published his first book, Malos Pensamientos (1991) but it was only upon returning to Colombia in 1993 that he became a fulltime writer. His autobiographical Oblivion: A Memoir has recently become available in English.
An idiosyncratic cookbook for the culinary enlightenment of mind and heart, combining perceptiveness with compassion and wisdom with sensuousness-for whenever we feel overwhelmed by our humanity. A book of ambiguous genre and delicate, playful wisdom, Recipes for Sad Women is not a novel and not a cookbook. But should you wish to know what food to prepare in the case of sobbing or of nervousness, what the closest thing to dinosaur meat is (and therefore the best remedy for guilt), or what to eat when you are perfectly healthy and enjoying reciprocated love, you will find no better collection of recipes on the market. An acclaimed novelist, essayist, journalist and translator, Abad's eccentric, sensual and wry guide is neither unserious, nor entirely plausible in its advice. Elegant, melancholic, funny and full of morsels of insight, it is deftly and movingly instructional on the proper appreciation of sadness. ‘I store up what I have read by Hector Abad like spherical, polished, luminous little balls of bread, ready for when I have to walk through a vast forest in the night-time.' –Manuel Rivas. ‘This is a book that quietly knows what it is to be human, and to bridge, or reconcile, the gap between body and mind.'–Nick Lezard, Guardian. ‘A passion for romantic Borgesianism will be satisfied by Hector Abad's Recipes for Sad Women, cute vignettes which address a darker sadness' –Nick Lezard, Guardian Books of the Year 2012.
Hector Abad was born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1958. He was twelve when he wrote his first stories, going on to win the 1980 Colombian National Short Story Prize at just twenty-one. In 1987 his father was murdered by paramilitaries, and Abad was forced to flee to Italy. While in exile he published his first book, Malos Pensamientos (1991) but it was only upon returning to Colombia in 1993 that he became a fulltime writer. His autobiographical Oblivion: A Memoir has recently become available in English.
Pilar, Eva, and Antonio Ángel are the last heirs of La Oculta, a farm hidden in the mountains of Colombia. The land provides the setting for the siblings' happiest memories, but it also reminds them of their struggle against the siege of violence and terror, restlessness and flight. In The Farm, Hector Abad illuminates the vicissitudes of a family and a people, as well as the voices of these three siblings, recounting their loves, fears, desires, and hopes, all against a dazzling backdrop. We enter their lives at the moment they are about to lose the paradise on which they built their dreams and reality.
Hector Abad was born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1958. He was twelve when he wrote his first stories, going on to win the 1980 Colombian National Short Story Prize at just twenty-one. In 1987 his father was murdered by paramilitaries, and Abad was forced to flee to Italy. While in exile he published his first book, Malos Pensamientos (1991) but it was only upon returning to Colombia in 1993 that he became a fulltime writer. His autobiographical Oblivion: A Memoir has recently become available in English.
A forty-year-old Brazilian journalist reduced to living in a dilapidated building inhabited by a bizarre human fauna-fortune-tellers, transvestites, tango-loving Argentinean hustlers-is called upon to track down and write the story of Dulce Veiga, a famous singer who disappeared twenty years earlier on the eve of her first big show. Thus begins a mad race through an underground, nocturnal São Paulo among rock bands with eccentric names, feline reincarnations of Vita Sackville-West, ex-revolutionaries turned junkies, gay Pietas, echoes of Afro-Brazilian religions, and intimations of AIDS. Constructed like a mystery, the novel unravels over a week, evoking a decadent and contaminated atmosphere in which the journalist's own search for meaning finds its expression in the elusive Dulce Veiga, who constantly appears to him as if in a dream, her arm pointing heavenward. Whatever Happened to Dulce Veiga? is a descent into the underworld of contemporary megalopolises where, like the inside of a huge TV, life intermingles with bits of music, film clips, and soap opera characters in a crazy and macabre dance, moving toward a possible catharsis.
Caio Fernando Abreu (September 12, 1948, Santiago, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil - February 25, 1996, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) was an award-winning journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and playwright who portrayed, as no other contemporary writer, the myriad contradictions of urban Brazil. His untimely death, as well as his courageous stand on AIDS and the growing popular interest in gay literature, will likely result in renewed attention to his playful yet urgent brand of postmodern writing. Adria Frizzi is a translator and critic who teaches in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Texas at Austin.
From the date of its original publication in Spanish, The Tattoo Hunter established itself as a new classic of the city by the Bay. Now in translation, this neo-noir novel is finally available to the English language reader. The Tattoo Hunter is a powerful account of the dark side of sexuality and its effects on human consciousness. Written in an enticing poetic style, this story of curiosity and seduction takes us from the very origins of the Cretan labyrinth to the labyrinth drawn on the soft skin of its most intriguing character, the Countess, in a desperate hunt for meaning. The elegant prose and provocative atmosphere immerse us in a world of velvet, Goth women, and red wine spilled on naked bodies, as we follow the steps of this unique, intellectual hunter.
Juvenal Acosta is a fiction writer, poet, and journalist born in Mexico in 1961. He has edited two anthologies of contemporary Mexican poetry published by City Lights Books. The original version of The Tattoo Hunter (El Cazador de Tatuajes), his first novel, was published in Mexico City to wide critical acclaim. This Fall, The Violence of Velvet (Terciopelo Violento), his second novel, will be released by Planeta Press. His essay on bullfighting, ‘The Gaze and the Blood,' was translated into English by Gregory Rabassa and published by Periplus Books in London as an introduction to Tauromachia, a book of photography. Acosta writes for Cambio, a weekly magazine published by Gabriel García Márquez in Mexico City, directs the M.F.A. in Writing and Consciousness at the New College of California, and teaches creative writing at the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco.
As a philosophical and social concept, alienation covers a broad range of mental states, both normal and abnormal. Correspondingly, a wide range of literary forms has been employed to deal with this important theme. In THREE AUTHORS OF ALIENATION, an exploration of the literary expression of alienation, M. Ian Adams discusses the works of three contemporary Latin American authors. The fiction of Maria Luisa Bombal, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Alejo Carpentier reflects alienation, disgust with life, and a feeling of nothingness arising from the conditions of modern society. However, each author treats the theme differently. In La Oltima niebla, Maria Luisa Bombal uses poetic imagery to create the emotional life of the protagonist. Juan Carlos Onetti portrays the schizoid extreme of alienation with a complex of symbols based on changes of vision caused by the mental states of his characters. In Los pasos perdidos, Alejo Carpentier presents the problem of the modern alienated artist who attempts to rid himself of his social alienation by changing times and cultures. In his close analysis of the works discussed, Adams considers each literary element in its context and also in terms of its relation to the larger artistic vision of the author. In addition, he places the works of the three authors in the greater perspective of modern social problems by discussing the concepts of social alienation proposed by Erich Fromm and Erich Kahler. His conclusion is that, although disgust with life and feelings of meaninglessness are at the heart of the experiences of the characters of all three authors, only in Alejo Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos are social conditions the major cause of alienation. In the works of Bombal and Onetti, alienation is a result not of social conditions, but of factors unique to the characters' personalities and circumstances. THREE AUTHORS OF ALIENATION is a solid contribution to criticism of contemporary Latin American narrative. Adams's projection of a social problem into the realm of aesthetic experience yields new interpretations of both the problem and the literature. Latin American Monographs, No.36.
M. Ian Adams received his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin in 1972. He is now a professor of Spanish at the University of Wyoming.
When Adán began composing THE CARDBOARD HOUSE at the age of eighteen, the neighborhood of Barranco for him was also fragments of memory, imagination, sensations, nostalgic yearnings. The resort, as he had known it, and his place in it, had ceased to exist. His family, aristocratic but in full economic decadence, had sold their Barranco chalet some years before to pay off debts. With the money that was left over, they purchased a Ford automobile so that Rafael's mother and aunts could ‘go to church in style'. Biographical information about Martin Adán is sparse and anecdotal. He was born in Lima in 1908. By the time he was a young adult, he had lost every member of his immediate family: his younger brother died when they were children, then his father, his mother, and finally the aunt and uncle under whose care he had been placed. He attended the German High School, where many of his classmates and teachers were or would become leading figures in Peru's artistic and intellectual life. When THE CARDBOARD HOUSE was published in 1928, it was received with high critical acclaim. Adán was hailed as a great innovator of Peruvian literature and the most promising young writer of his generation. For a while he moved in Lima's literary circles and marginally participated in the political and cultural debates that raged at that time. Soon thereafter, the traces of his life fade into an alcoholic haze. There are anecdotes about the coffee houses he visited, the odd scrapes of napkins on which he wrote his poetry, and his increasing isolation, an isolation that became absolute when he committed himself to a ‘house of rest,' less euphemistically called a psychiatric hospital. There he remained until 1985, when his physical condition necessitated his removal to a different kind of hospital. He died that same year. During his almost forty years of self-imposed confinement, he jealously guarded his solitude, shunning all public attention and only allowing visits from his editor, Juan Mejia Baca, and a few close friends. During one of the only interviews he ever granted - and this after the interviewer had spent years soliciting a meeting that Adán cut short after a few questions - he said he wrote THE CARDBOARD HOUSE to practice the rules his grammar professor, Emilio Huidobro, had given him. THE CARDBOARD HOUSE is the only piece of prose Martin Adán ever completed. Some six or seven volumes of poetry were published during his lifetime and this due largely to the painstaking and devoted labor of Mejia Baca, who collected the bits and pieces of paper Adán left strewn along his path. Though he never quite lived up to the expectations created by the brilliance of THE CARDBOARD HOUSE he is still commonly referred to as one of the greatest Latin American poets of all time. . Originally published in Spanish as La casa de carton.
Martín Adán (October 27, 1908, Lima, Peru - January 29, 1985, Lima), pseudonym of Rafael de la Fuente Benavides, was a Peruvian poet whose body of work is notable for its hermeticism and metaphysical depth. From a very young age Adán demonstrated great literary talent (talent he shared with classmates Emilio Adolfo Westphalen and Estuardo Núñez). As time passed, he lived with increasing economic difficulty and suffered from serious alcoholism. A good part of his final years were spent in sanitariums, until his death in 1985.
A collection of disturbing and beautiful stories from the noted Chilean poet and human rights activist. This is the first collections of her fiction to be published in English. ‘Pork Sausages' first appeared in Americas Magazine, ‘An Immense Black umbrella' first appeared in WHEN ANGELS GLIDE AT DAWN (Harper Collins, 1991), and ‘Prairies' and ‘The Gold Bracelet' first appeared in the Agni Review. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION; Prelude to a Literary Alliance - Elizabeth Horan; HAPPINESS - Slaves; Happiness; Fat; Braids; An Immense Black Umbrella; Adelina; Nana; Monserrat Ordonez; Emma; Wax Candles; THE FIESTA - Gypsy Women; North; Photographs; The Gold Bracelet; The Fiesta; Orphanages; The Seamstress from Saint Petersberg; The Eiderdown; Pisagua; The Hen; Pork Sausages; Itinerants; Water; Signs of Love; SIGNS OF LOVE - Love Letters; First Time to the Sea; Mirrors; Meditation on the Dead; Rio de la Plata; FORESTS - Blood; journey to the End of Coasts; Forests; Beds; Cartographies; The Dead; The Rubber Tree; LONG LIVE LIFE - Long Live Life; Prairies; Sargasso; Rivers; Distant Root of Autumn Loves; Naked; Houses by the Sea; The Dreams of Van Gogh.
Marjorie Agosín (born June 15, 1955) is an award-winning poet, essayist, fiction writer, activist, and professor. She is a prolific author: her published books, including those she has written as well as those she has edited, number over eighty. Two of her recent books are both poetry collections, The Light of Desire / La Luz del Deseo, translated by Lori Marie Carlson (Swan Isle Press, 2009), and Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juárez, translated by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman (White Pine Press, 2006), about the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez. She teaches Spanish language and Latin American literature at Wellesley College. She has won notability for her outspokenness for women's rights in Chile. The United Nations has honored her for her work on human rights. She also won many important literary awards. The Chilean government awarded her with the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor for Life Achievement in 2002. Agosín was born in 1955 to Moises and Frida Agosín in Chile, where she lived her childhood in a German community.
‘A wonderful collection of stories - full of the particulars of a people's encounter with America, told with persuasive grace, charm, [and] honesty. . .' - Robert Coles. DOMINOES & OTHER STORIES FROM THE PUERTO RICAN, the long-awaited debut collection of the fiction of playright and poet Jack Agueros, is a unique window on the untold stories of the lives of Puerto Rican-Americans. With a phenomenal richness of detail, Jack Agueros brings the reality of Puerto Rican experience in New York fully to life. In stories that span the decades of the 1940s through 1990s he recreates the barrio in all its multi-faceted immensity, with its candy stores, plaster saints, numbers collectors, tropical fruit vendors and sidewalk games of dominoes, its knife fights and junkies' raps and its successful stories of craftsmen and entrepeneurs. These stories convey hard, sometimes brutal, often bittersweet experiences, but throughout, Jack Agueros writes with artistry and unyielding compassion that gloriously affirm quiet moments of grace and triumph in common and ordinary struggles - the real stuff of literature. ‘I don't like the way Latinos often get portrayed. The lives of working people are unheard from because it's hard to write about them. But those lives are frequently heroic and have their drama, too. I'm also interested in what happens to them.' - Jack Agueros. Jack Agueros was born in New York City in 1934. Recipient of numerous awards, he has published poetry, plays and children's stories, and has written works broadcast on television, notably for Sesame Street and WNBC-TV Channel 4. For almost ten years he was director of the Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, the only Puerto Rican Museum in the U.S. .
Jack Agüeros (September 2, 1934 - May 4, 2014) was an American community activist, poet, writer, and translator, and the former director of El Museo del Barrio.
Petronio Rincon is the son of an assassinated politician and the follower of a revolutionary priest. As a youth, he organizes the masses to incite the residents of a poor neighborhood. A decade later, the untamed and ritualistic jungle becomes Petronio's habitat. Overthrown by his avaricious troops and exiled by the government, Petronio then lands in Paris, where he is forcibly interned in a hospital and suffers from insomnia and nightmares. One evening, he chances upon a stone staircase that spirals him into the bowels of the city, beginning a Dantesque experience plagued with nameless tortures and horrors. Near the end of the novel, Petronio encounters-in a cabaret-the withered figure of Simon Bolivar in a twist of fate that changes the novel's infernal mood. In the tradition of magic realism, Boulevard of Heroes blends the fantastic and the logical to create a lucid commentary of utopian failure, expertly translated by Jay Anthony Miskowiec and with an introduction by internationally renowned translator Gregory Rabassa.
EDUARDO GARCIA AGUILAR was born in the Andean city of Manizales, Colombia, in 1953. He has published three novels, three collections of short stories and two books of poetry. Mr. Aguilar has been Central American correspondent for Excelsior, Unomasuno and El Periodico de Mexico. Since 1980 he has been pursuing his writing career in Mexico City, where he is at present Associate Director of Agence France Press. JAY ANTHONY MISKOWIEC received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the City University of New York. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Hamline University in Saint Paul.
BABELANDIA is Demetrio Aguilera-Malta's wildly surreal, extravagantly comical story of the kidnapping of the corrupt and brutal General Jonas Pithecanthropus, chief military officer of an archetypal Latin-American dictatorship as monstrously deformed by its political and military authoritarianisms as any Orwell or Swift might imagine. Pithecanthropus, the General in question, is here truly an ape-man-murderously barbaric as an officer, savagely macho as a lover, but helplessly simian when confronting the ape-ambrosia of a banana. His kidnapping by a nonviolent but revolutionary band of guerrillas precipitates a terrible crisis among the leaders of Babelandia, who are opposed by: Captain Gleam, the equally archetypal embodiment of all good, a superman among the insurrectionists; The Amautas, the rebels who have taken their name from a mysterious tribe of ancient Incan sages, and who hold Pithy prisoner in the caldera of an extinct volcano; Theophilus Bright, a magic volcano-priest who reconciles nature, holiness, and prime causality in his cheshire-like manifestations and dematerializations; and of course the Party of Perpetual Opposition. As the tale unravels, we meet: Holofernes Verbophile, Babelandia's skeleton-dictator who disperses his bones at will, and harangues the people only via cassette; Wiley Warhorse, the Secretary of Defense who is often transmogrified directly into General Pithecanthropus' cavalry mount; Bacchus the Groveler, the obsequious Secretary of State, who hosts Lucullan feasts at the Embassy of Great Entanglements; Maria, Captain Gleam's unreachable love, who is as pure and virtuous (almost) as her Biblical namesake; Harpitune, Holofernes' wife, who lives in coiling, sinister embrace with the boa constrictor, Melopea, and searches fruitlessly for her lost son, the poet Sinbad; Father Polygamo, whose unholy sexual organ grows continually-wreaking havoc among all the women of Labyinthia - eventually to be buried in a coffin beside Polygamo's own, from whence it soon rises-transformed and beatific; Ludivina, a young woman tormented and defiled by Polygamo's unholy tendril, who eventually dies giving birth to a sulfurous green offspring, perhaps the devil himself; Doña Prudencia, Ludivina's vulturous dueña, who cannot in the end save her; Eneas Pioneer, Gleam's close friend, tipsy organist, and failed suitor of Ludivina; Piggy Rigoletto, the Secretary of the Interior, who plunders Babelandia's resources and commands 50,000 serpents in the search for the kidnapped Pithy; Voracia, Piggy's wife, who literally gobbles money while fantasizing the goods it could purchase; Narcissus Vaselino, the Chief of Protocol who behaves as slimily as his name suggests with; Disgusteaux, the imported Parisian chef; Pepita San Toro, who wears men down to the nub of widowhood several times over; Spongy Sumptuoso, owner of Babelandia's ‘elitiest' nightclub, where Pithecanthropus was to have been feted by ambassadors from around the world; Rory Notorioso, the investigative reporter who discovers and reveals Pithy's shameful family secrets; And many others whose painful but mordantly comic exertions continually enrich the tale. In this harsh but often hilarious grotesquerie, Demetrio Aguilera-Malta has created a timeless satire of a nightmarish world-a confused and horrifying Babel reincarnate-where all power gives way to brutal authoritarianism, where every coarse desire is monstrously realized, where the ultimate triumph of the forces of good emerges all too slowly. No one will soon forget the enduring gallery of felons and degenerates, of pure and virtuous revolutionary paladins, of follies and corruptions and deliverances that is so entertainingly portrayed here, in BABELANDIA - this hell driven, Rabelaision, but ultimately redeemable universe that overwhelmingly mirrors our own hearts and lives. . Widely acknowledged to be one of the brilliant pioneers of magic realism-the phantasmagorical style that uniquely characterizes so much of contemporary Latin American literature-Demetrio Aguilera-Malta, the legendary Ecuadorean writer, has in recent years begun to receive the long overdue attention and enthusiastic readership in the English-speaking world that his work so greatly deserves. The highly regarded translator, Gregory Rabassa, not long ago published a distinguished version of the author's fantastic novel from the 1960s, SEVEN MOONS AND SEVEN SERPENTS, and John and Carolyn Brushwood have also produced an equally striking version of DON GOYO (Humana Press), the author's classic and timeless first novel from the 1930s.
In his rich and varied career as a writer, Demetrio Aguilera-Malta (May 24, 1909, Guayaquil, Ecuador - December 28, 1981, Mexico City, Mexico) was a poet, essayist, and foreign correspondent; he wrote and directed films; he taught in several universities in the United States and elsewhere; he painted vigorously; and always he wrote novels of astonishing power, moral and social consciousness, and radical inventiveness. He died in 1981 while living in Mexico City, where he was serving as his country's Ambassador to Mexico. BABELANDIA was first published in 1973, and is here given an especially rich and inventive translation by the accomplished editor, scholar, and translator, Peter Earle. Once again, as in DON GOYO, the powerful wash drawings of George Bartko bring to life the book's many fantastic and intriguing characters.
DON GOYO is the magnificently sensual and vital first novel of the legendary Ecuadorean writer, Demetrio Aguilera-Malta. Its setting is an island community of cholo fisherfolk and mangrove cutters near Guayaquil, Ecuador. The book opens by relating the adventures of Cusumbo, a young cholo who journeys from the primitive freedom and easy dignity of his youth on a hacienda into knowledge of his father's broken rage at perpetual debt and peonage, a rage that soon leads to the murder of Cusumbo's mother. The story follows the neophyte's amusing sexual explorations, his increasing despair and bondage at the hacienda, where he has inherited his father's debts, his cuckolding by the white owner and subsequent revenge murder of his wife, his new life as a fisherman, his absurd and painful encounters with the whores of the big city, and his eventual learning to be a mangrove cutter because that alone will win him a new wife. Although Cusumbo leads a primal and sensuous life, Don Goyo, the 150-year-old patriarch whose enormous vigor and wisdom is fabled among the islanders now lives in a world of hallucinatory communion with the waters, the creatures of the sea, and above all the ancient mangroves. In a powerful vision, the trees speak to him of their brotherhood with the island people, and ask that Don Goyo prevent their destruction. Don Goyo's moral authority leads his people for a time away from the culling of the mangroves - and the obliteration of their way of life that this will inevitably bring. But they soon discover they can no longer survive from fishing alone, and when they seek out Don Goyo to tell him of their decision to return to cutting, he has already journeyed deep among the mangroves, to die transcendently even as the oldest and greatest of the trees falls nearby. Beautifully translated by John and Carolyn Brushwood and powerfully illustrated by George Bartko, Don Goyo proclaims itself clearly as a great early classic of the magic realism that has flowered so richly in modern Latin-American literature. DON GOYO is an archetypal work steeped in the anguish, joy, brutality, and wanton passion of life in a world beginning to be devoured into modern civilization, illuminating with its prodigal and harsh lyricism a process that confronts our humanity with its heartbreaking social convulsions everywhere today.
DEMETRIO AGUILERA-MALTA ((May 24, 1909, Guayaquil, Ecuador - December 28, 1981, Mexico City, Mexico), born in turn-of-the-century Ecuador, is a poet, playwright, essayist and novelist. Now recognized as one of the major literary influences in Latin America. Aguilera-Malta made a vital contribution to the development of ‘magical realism', a creative blend of fantasy and myth, imbued with the vision of social and political turmoil. In the 1930s, he was one of the Ecuadorian writers who formed the Grupo de Guayaquil to further social change. His early works were judged crude and violent, but they were a turning point in Ecuadorian literature and have had an obvious impact on younger Latin American writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. SEVEN SERPENTS AND SEVEN MOONS was first published in Mexico in 1970 and later in Spain and Italy. His other novels translated into English include MARCIELA (1967) and DON GOYO (1979).
Simon Bolivar (1783-1830), liberator of the countries now known as Peru, Ecuador, Boliva, Columbia, and Venezuela, inspired the present work, which is the first of a series of historical novels, Episodios Americanos, by the Ecuadorian author Demetrio Aguilera Malta. Now the story of Bolivar, the mighty warrior and eloquent statesman, and the woman who inspired him is made available to North American readers in Willis Knapp Jones's sensitive translation of Manuela (La caballeresa del sol). 'Caballeresa' in the novel's Spanish title refers to Manuela Sáenz, the beautiful woman who fell in love with Bolivar and helped him accomplish his dream of independence for the Spanish American colonies. Even before she met Bolivar, Manuela had received the Peruvian decoration of a 'caballeresa del sol' (the feminine counterpart of the masculine 'caballero del sol') for her efforts in lower Peru's struggle for independence, and she was thereafter known by the epithet 'Lady of the Sun.' Indeed, as she worked among all classes of society to win financial and political backing for Bolivar, she proved to be a fiery lady. Sustained and fortified by the devotion of Manuela Sáenz, Bolivar had the ability to inspire his followers, not only with his presence but with his ideals. An historical novel seldom displays the emotional verve that Manuela does, nor follows actual events as accurately as does this story of Simon Bolivar and Manuela Sáenz, lovers caught in the fortunes and misfortunes of South American war and political upheaval. Students of Spanish American history and literature will enjoy the factual development in the story; students of the drama and the novel will appreciate the dramatic and poetic presentation.
DEMETRIO AGUILERA-MALTA (May 24, 1909, Guayaquil, Ecuador - December 28, 1981, Mexico City, Mexico), born in turn-of-the-century Ecuador, was a poet, playwright, essayist and novelist. Now recognized as one of the major literary influences in Latin America. Aguilera-Malta made a vital contribution to the development of ‘magical realism', a creative blend of fantasy and myth, imbued with the vision of social and political turmoil. In the 1930s, he was one of the Ecuadorian writers who formed the Grupo de Guayaquil to further social change. His early works were judged crude and violent, but they were a turning point in Ecuadorian literature and have had an obvious impact on younger Latin American writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. SEVEN SERPENTS AND SEVEN MOONS was first published in Mexico in 1970 and later in Spain and Italy. His other novels translated into English include MARCIELA (1967) and DON GOYO (1979). WILLIS KNAPP JONES, professor emeritus of Spanish at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, had special insight in translating this novel because of a long friendship with Demetrio Aguilera Malta. He is a noted author in his own right and a student of Spanish and Spanish American theatre. J. CARY DAVIS is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages at Southern Illinois University. He is widely recognized for his research and publications in Latin American and Spanish studies.
Jesus Christ is alive and well and militant in South America, albeit a bit careworn and singed upon his cross. So is the epic spirit that reveals a people's tribulations and persistent survival. Demetrio Aguilera-Malta has combined these two age-old elements in his novel SEVEN SERPENTS AND SEVEN MOONS, set on the shores of Santoronton. This tropical village is inhabited by some exceptional beings: the vigorous, rough-hewn Father Cándido and his wry talking Jesus - a crucifix presented to him by pirates from out of the past; Colonel Candelario Mariscal, the despoiler who is said to be the son of the Devil and is seeking salvation through the honest love of the daughter of the witch doctor Bulu-Bulu; and Crisostomo Chalena, the outsider who gains control of the town s roofs and rainwater and eventually the entire village. These and many other equally protean figures cross paths and swords as Santoronton is torn between the Evil One and the Crucified One. The story is invested with a pervading sense of magic and with political meaning as well. The fantastic microcosm of Santoronton illustrates both symbolically and literally many of the essential problems that bedevil Latin America.
DEMETRIO AGUILERA-MALTA ((May 24, 1909, Guayaquil, Ecuador - December 28, 1981, Mexico City, Mexico), born in turn-of-the-century Ecuador, is a poet, playwright, essayist and novelist. Now recognized as one of the major literary influences in Latin America. Aguilera-Malta made a vital contribution to the development of ‘magical realism', a creative blend of fantasy and myth, imbued with the vision of social and political turmoil. In the 1930s, he was one of the Ecuadorian writers who formed the Grupo de Guayaquil to further social change. His early works were judged crude and violent, but they were a turning point in Ecuadorian literature and have had an obvious impact on younger Latin American writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. SEVEN SERPENTS AND SEVEN MOONS was first published in Mexico in 1970 and later in Spain and Italy. His other novels translated into English include MARCIELA (1967) and DON GOYO (1979). GREGORY RABASSA is internationally known as a master translator. He has won both the National Book Award for Translation and the American P.E.N. Translation Prize. He is the translator of Márquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude and Autumn of the Patriarch.
'A PRODIGAL TALE OF SURREALISTIC INTRIGUE' - Chicago Tribune Book World . . . In the coastal village of Santoronton, the battle between good and evil veers naturally into the unreal. Serving the power of good is Father Cándido, whose wooden Jesus is alive and ready to help. Evil is personified by the Colonel, a compulsive rapist, plunderer and murderer, who enacts his vilest deeds in the guise of a crocodile. Bedevilled by the lust of a woman unfortunately dead, he turns for salvation to the witch doctor's daughter. Another seductress of Santoronton entices and castrates in the cause of womankind. And, adding to the villainy afoot, a despotic don has traded his soul for control of the water supply. Within this deftly devised entertainment of myth and fantasy, poetic metaphor and comic parody, there is the outraged social consciousness of a celebrated Ecuadorian 'who deserves a rank;' says the Houston Chronicle, 'with the best of the older generation of South American writers'. 'Aguilera-Malta is an important writer. Some of the hallucinatory scenes in SEVEN SERPENTS AND SEVEN MOONS haunt us as powerfully as those in Cortazar and Garcia Márquez!' - Times (London) Literary Supplement.
DEMETRIO AGUILERA-MALTA, born in turn-of-the-century Ecuador,was a poet, playwright, essayist and novelist. Now recognized as one of the major literary influences in Latin America. Aguilera-Malta made a vital contribution to the development of ‘magical realism', a creative blend of fantasy and myth, imbued with the vision of social and political turmoil. In the 1930s, he was one of the Ecuadorian writers who formed the Grupo de Guayaquil to further social change. His early works were judged crude and violent, but they were a turning point in Ecuadorian literature and have had an obvious impact on younger Latin American writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. SEVEN SERPENTS AND SEVEN MOONS was first published in Mexico in 1970 and later in Spain and Italy. His other novels translated into English include MARCIELA (1967) and DON GOYO (1979).
Once considered a classic in Bolivia, Juan de la Rosa tells the story of a boy's coming of age during the violent and tumultuous years of Bolivia's struggle for independence. Indeed, in this remarkable novel, Juan's search for his personal identity functions as an allegory of Bolivia's search for its identity as a nation. Set in the early 1800s, this remarkable novel is narrated by one of the last surviving Bolivian rebels, octogenarian Juan de la Rosa. He commits his memories to paper in order to pass on that uniquely personal understanding of the past ‘with which serious historians never busy themselves.' Juan recreates his childhood in the rebellious town of Cochabamba, and with it a large cast of full-bodied, Dickensian characters both heroic and malevolent, from Juan's wise and self-sacrificing tutor, Brother Justo, to the ruthless colonial general Goyeneche. The larger cultural dislocations brought about by Bolivia's political upheaval are echoed in those experienced by Juan, whose mother's untimely death sets off a chain of unpredictable events that propel him into the fiery crucible of the South American Independence Movement. Outraged by Juan's outspokenness against Spanish rule and his awakening political consciousness, his loyalist guardians banish him to the countryside, where he witnesses firsthand the Spaniards' violent repression and rebels' valiant resistance that crystallize both his personal destiny and that of his country. Few novels combine historical scholarship, operatic drama, comic detail, and political fervor so seamlessly. In Sergio Gabriel Waisman's fluid translation, English readers have access to Juan de la Rosa for the very first time.
Nataniel Aguirre (1843-1888) was a Bolivian statesman who actively participated in events that shaped his country's character. Sergio Gabriel Waisman is completing his Ph.D. in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley. His translation of Ricardo Piglia's Nombre Falso won the Meritorious Achievement Award in the 1995 Eugene M. Kayden National Translation Contest. Alba Maria de la Paz Soldán is Professor of Latin American Literature, University of Buenos Aires.
An astounding novel from Argentina that is a meditation on the beautiful and the grotesque in nature, on the art of landscape painting, and on one experience in a man's life that became a lightning rod for inspiration. ‘If there is one contemporary writer who defies classification, it is CEsar Aira.' - Roberto Bolaño. ‘The author who nowadays is perhaps the most original and shocking, the most exciting and subversive Spanish narrative writer: CEsar Aira.' - Ignacio Echeverri. AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A LANDSCAPE PAINTER is the story of a moment in the life of the German artist Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858). Greatly admired as a master landscape painter, he was advised by Alexander von Humboldt to record the spectacular landscapes of Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. Rugendas did in fact become one of the best of the nineteenth-century European painters to venture into Latin America. However this is not a biography of Rugendas. This work of fiction weaves an almost surreal history around Rugendas' trips to Argentina where he strived to achieve in art the ‘physiognomic totality' of Humboldt's scientific vision of the whole. A brief and dramatic visit to the pampas gives him the chance to fulfill his ambition but a strange episode that he cannot avoid absorbing savagely into his own body interrupts the trip and irreversibly marks him for life.
Cesar Aira (born 23 February 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, and an exponent of Argentine contemporary literature. Aira has published over eighty short books of stories, novels and essays. In fact, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of writing and publication - two to four novella-length books each year. He has lectured at the University of Buenos Aires, on Copi and Arthur Rimbaud, and at the University of Rosario on Constructivism and Stephane Mallarme, and has translated and edited books from France, England, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela. Besides his fiction, and the translation work he does for a living, Aira also writes literary criticism, including monographic studies of Copi, the poet Alejandra Pizarnik, and the nineteenth-century British limerick and nonsense writer Edward Lear. He wrote a short book, Las tres fechas (The Three Dates), arguing for the central importance, when approaching some minor eccentric writers, of examining the moment of their lives about which they are writing, the date of completion of the work, and the date of publication of the work. Aira also was the literary executor of the complete works of his friend the poet and novelist Osvaldo Lamborghini (1940–1985). Aira has often spoken in interviews of elaborating an avant-garde aesthetic in which, rather than editing what he has written, he engages in a "flight forward" (fuga hacia adelante) to improvise a way out of the corners he writes himself into. Aira also seeks in his own work, and praises in the work of others (such as the Argentine-Parisian cartoonist and comic novelist Copi), the "continuum" (el continuo) of a constant momentum in the fictional narrative. As a result, his fictions can jump radically from one genre to another, and often deploy narrative strategies from popular culture and "subliterary" genres like pulp science fiction and television soap operas. He frequently refuses to conform to generic expectations for how a novel ought to end, leaving many of his fictions quite open-ended. While his subject matter ranges from Surrealist or Dadaist quasi-nonsense to fantastic tales set in his Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores, Aira also returns frequently to Argentina's nineteenth century (two books translated into English, The Hare and An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, are examples of this; so is the best-known novel of his early years, Ema la cautiva (Emma, the Captive)). He also returns regularly to play with stereotypes of an exotic East, such as in Una novela china, (A Chinese Novel); El volante (The Flyer), and El pequeño monje budista (The Little Buddhist Monk). Aira also enjoys mocking himself and his childhood home town, Coronel Pringles, in fictions such as Como me hice monja (How I Became a Nun), Como me reí (How I Laughed), El cerebro musical (The Musical Brain) and Las curas milagrosas del doctor Aira (The Miraculous Cures of Dr. Aira). His novella La prueba (1992) served as the basis - or point of departure, as only the first half-hour follows the novella - of Diego Lerman's film Tan de repente (Suddenly) (2002). His novel Como me hice monja (How I Became a Nun) was selected as one of the ten best publications in Spain in the year 1998.
GHOSTS revolves around an immigrant worker's family squatting on the haunted construction site of a luxury condominium building. All of the workmen and their wives and children see the ghosts, who literally hang around the place, but one teenage girl becomes the most curious. Her questions about the ghosts get so intense that her mother - in a chilling split-second - realizes her daughter's life hangs in the balance. Once you have started reading Aira, you don't want-to stop.' - Roberto Bolano. ‘Aira is firmly in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges and W. G. Sebald' - Mark Doty, Los Angeles Times.
Cesar Aira (born 23 February 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, and an exponent of Argentine contemporary literature. Aira has published over eighty short books of stories, novels and essays. In fact, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of writing and publication - two to four novella-length books each year. He has lectured at the University of Buenos Aires, on Copi and Arthur Rimbaud, and at the University of Rosario on Constructivism and Stephane Mallarme, and has translated and edited books from France, England, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela. Besides his fiction, and the translation work he does for a living, Aira also writes literary criticism, including monographic studies of Copi, the poet Alejandra Pizarnik, and the nineteenth-century British limerick and nonsense writer Edward Lear. He wrote a short book, Las tres fechas (The Three Dates), arguing for the central importance, when approaching some minor eccentric writers, of examining the moment of their lives about which they are writing, the date of completion of the work, and the date of publication of the work. Aira also was the literary executor of the complete works of his friend the poet and novelist Osvaldo Lamborghini (1940–1985). Aira has often spoken in interviews of elaborating an avant-garde aesthetic in which, rather than editing what he has written, he engages in a "flight forward" (fuga hacia adelante) to improvise a way out of the corners he writes himself into. Aira also seeks in his own work, and praises in the work of others (such as the Argentine-Parisian cartoonist and comic novelist Copi), the "continuum" (el continuo) of a constant momentum in the fictional narrative. As a result, his fictions can jump radically from one genre to another, and often deploy narrative strategies from popular culture and "subliterary" genres like pulp science fiction and television soap operas. He frequently refuses to conform to generic expectations for how a novel ought to end, leaving many of his fictions quite open-ended. While his subject matter ranges from Surrealist or Dadaist quasi-nonsense to fantastic tales set in his Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores, Aira also returns frequently to Argentina's nineteenth century (two books translated into English, The Hare and An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, are examples of this; so is the best-known novel of his early years, Ema la cautiva (Emma, the Captive)). He also returns regularly to play with stereotypes of an exotic East, such as in Una novela china, (A Chinese Novel); El volante (The Flyer), and El pequeño monje budista (The Little Buddhist Monk). Aira also enjoys mocking himself and his childhood home town, Coronel Pringles, in fictions such as Como me hice monja (How I Became a Nun), Como me reí (How I Laughed), El cerebro musical (The Musical Brain) and Las curas milagrosas del doctor Aira (The Miraculous Cures of Dr. Aira). His novella La prueba (1992) served as the basis - or point of departure, as only the first half-hour follows the novella - of Diego Lerman's film Tan de repente (Suddenly) (2002). His novel Como me hice monja (How I Became a Nun) was selected as one of the ten best publications in Spain in the year 1998.
With a preface by the irrepressible Patti Smith, The Divorce is a delightful book of several short amazing stories of chance meetings, bizarre circumstances, and even stranger visions of alternate realities written as only Cesar Aira can. The Divorce tells about a man who takes a vacation from Providence, R.I. in early December to avoid conflicts with his newly divorced wife and small daughter. He travels to Buenos Aires and there, one afternoon, he encounters a series of the most magical coincidences. While sitting at an outdoor cafe, absorbed in conversation with a talented video artist, a young man with a bicycle is thoroughly drenched by a downpour of water seemingly from rain caught the night before in the overhead awning. The video artist knows the cyclist, who knew a mad hermetic sculptor, whose family used to take the Hindu God Krishna for walks in the neighborhood. More meetings, more whimsical and clever stories continue to weave reality with the absurd until the final, brilliant, wonderful, cataclysmic ending.
Cesar Aira (born 23 February 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, and an exponent of Argentine contemporary literature. Aira has published over eighty short books of stories, novels and essays. In fact, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of writing and publication - two to four novella-length books each year. He has lectured at the University of Buenos Aires, on Copi and Arthur Rimbaud, and at the University of Rosario on Constructivism and Stephane Mallarme, and has translated and edited books from France, England, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela. Besides his fiction, and the translation work he does for a living, Aira also writes literary criticism, including monographic studies of Copi, the poet Alejandra Pizarnik, and the nineteenth-century British limerick and nonsense writer Edward Lear. He wrote a short book, Las tres fechas (The Three Dates), arguing for the central importance, when approaching some minor eccentric writers, of examining the moment of their lives about which they are writing, the date of completion of the work, and the date of publication of the work. Aira also was the literary executor of the complete works of his friend the poet and novelist Osvaldo Lamborghini (1940–1985). Aira has often spoken in interviews of elaborating an avant-garde aesthetic in which, rather than editing what he has written, he engages in a "flight forward" (fuga hacia adelante) to improvise a way out of the corners he writes himself into. Aira also seeks in his own work, and praises in the work of others (such as the Argentine-Parisian cartoonist and comic novelist Copi), the "continuum" (el continuo) of a constant momentum in the fictional narrative. As a result, his fictions can jump radically from one genre to another, and often deploy narrative strategies from popular culture and "subliterary" genres like pulp science fiction and television soap operas. He frequently refuses to conform to generic expectations for how a novel ought to end, leaving many of his fictions quite open-ended. While his subject matter ranges from Surrealist or Dadaist quasi-nonsense to fantastic tales set in his Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores, Aira also returns frequently to Argentina's nineteenth century (two books translated into English, The Hare and An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, are examples of this; so is the best-known novel of his early years, Ema la cautiva (Emma, the Captive)). He also returns regularly to play with stereotypes of an exotic East, such as in Una novela china, (A Chinese Novel); El volante (The Flyer), and El pequeño monje budista (The Little Buddhist Monk). Aira also enjoys mocking himself and his childhood home town, Coronel Pringles, in fictions such as Como me hice monja (How I Became a Nun), Como me reí (How I Laughed), El cerebro musical (The Musical Brain) and Las curas milagrosas del doctor Aira (The Miraculous Cures of Dr. Aira). His novella La prueba (1992) served as the basis - or point of departure, as only the first half-hour follows the novella - of Diego Lerman's film Tan de repente (Suddenly) (2002). His novel Como me hice monja (How I Became a Nun) was selected as one of the ten best publications in Spain in the year 1998.
The Indians he meets report recent sightings of the hare, but on further investigation, Clark finds in these sightings more than meets the eye. The Hare, the first novel by Cesar Aira to be translated into English, is a subtle reflection on love, language, and colonial dependency. CEsar Aira (born on February 23, 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, considered by many as one of the leading exponents of Argentine contemporary literature, in spite of his limited public recognition. He has published over fifty books of stories, novels and essays. Indeed, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of writing and publication –two to four novella-length books each year. Aira has often spoken in interviews of elaborating an avant-garde aesthetic in which, rather than editing what he has written, he engages in a ‘flight forward' (fuga hacia adelante) to improvise a way out of the corners he writes himself into. Aira also seeks in his own work, and praises in the work of others (such as the Argentine-Parisian cartoonist and comic novelist Copi), the ‘continuum' (el continuo) of a constant movement forward in the fictional narrative. As a result his fictions can jump radically from one genre to another, and often deploy narrative strategies from popular culture and ‘subliterary' genres like pulp science fiction and television soap operas; on the other hand, he frequently deliberately refuses to conform to generic expectations for how a novel ought to end, leaving many of his fictions quite open-ended. While his subject matter ranges from Surrealist or Dadaist quasi-nonsense to fantastic tales set in his Buenos Aires neighborhood in Flores, Aira also returns frequently to Argentina's nineteenth century (the two books translated into English, The Hare and An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, are examples of this; so is the best-known novel of his early years, ‘Ema la cautiva' (Emma, the Captive)). He also returns regularly to play with stereotypes of an exotic East (‘Una novela china', A Chinese Novel); ‘El volante' (The Flyer), and ‘El pequeño monje budista' (The Little Buddhist Monk)). Aira also enjoys mocking himself and his childhood home town Coronel Pringles in fictions such as ‘Como me hice monja' (How I Became a Nun), ‘Como me reí' (How I Laughed), ‘El cerebro musical' (The Musical Brain) and ‘Las curas milagrosas del doctor Aira' (The Miraculous Cures of Dr. Aira). His novel ‘Como me hice monja' (How I Became a Nun) was selected as one of the best 10 publications in Spain in the year 1998. Besides his fiction, and the translation work he does for a living, Aira also writes literary criticism, including monographic studies of Copi, the poet Alejandra Pizarnik, and the nineteenth-century British limerick and nonsense writer Edward Lear. He wrote a short book, Las tres fechas [The Three Dates], arguing for the central importance, when approaching some minor eccentric writers, of examining the moment of their lives about which they are writing , the date of completion of the work, and the date of publication of the work. Since publishing this theory Aira no longer includes the date of completion of his own works. Aira also was the literary executor of the complete works of his friend the scabrous poet-novelist Osvaldo Lamborghini (1940-1985). .
Cesar Aira (born 23 February 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, and an exponent of Argentine contemporary literature. Aira has published over eighty short books of stories, novels and essays. In fact, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of writing and publication - two to four novella-length books each year. He has lectured at the University of Buenos Aires, on Copi and Arthur Rimbaud, and at the University of Rosario on Constructivism and Stephane Mallarme, and has translated and edited books from France, England, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela. Besides his fiction, and the translation work he does for a living, Aira also writes literary criticism, including monographic studies of Copi, the poet Alejandra Pizarnik, and the nineteenth-century British limerick and nonsense writer Edward Lear. He wrote a short book, Las tres fechas (The Three Dates), arguing for the central importance, when approaching some minor eccentric writers, of examining the moment of their lives about which they are writing, the date of completion of the work, and the date of publication of the work. Aira also was the literary executor of the complete works of his friend the poet and novelist Osvaldo Lamborghini (1940–1985). Aira has often spoken in interviews of elaborating an avant-garde aesthetic in which, rather than editing what he has written, he engages in a "flight forward" (fuga hacia adelante) to improvise a way out of the corners he writes himself into. Aira also seeks in his own work, and praises in the work of others (such as the Argentine-Parisian cartoonist and comic novelist Copi), the "continuum" (el continuo) of a constant momentum in the fictional narrative. As a result, his fictions can jump radically from one genre to another, and often deploy narrative strategies from popular culture and "subliterary" genres like pulp science fiction and television soap operas. He frequently refuses to conform to generic expectations for how a novel ought to end, leaving many of his fictions quite open-ended. While his subject matter ranges from Surrealist or Dadaist quasi-nonsense to fantastic tales set in his Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores, Aira also returns frequently to Argentina's nineteenth century (two books translated into English, The Hare and An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, are examples of this; so is the best-known novel of his early years, Ema la cautiva (Emma, the Captive)). He also returns regularly to play with stereotypes of an exotic East, such as in Una novela china, (A Chinese Novel); El volante (The Flyer), and El pequeño monje budista (The Little Buddhist Monk). Aira also enjoys mocking himself and his childhood home town, Coronel Pringles, in fictions such as Como me hice monja (How I Became a Nun), Como me reí (How I Laughed), El cerebro musical (The Musical Brain) and Las curas milagrosas del doctor Aira (The Miraculous Cures of Dr. Aira). His novella La prueba (1992) served as the basis - or point of departure, as only the first half-hour follows the novella - of Diego Lerman's film Tan de repente (Suddenly) (2002). His novel Como me hice monja (How I Became a Nun) was selected as one of the ten best publications in Spain in the year 1998.
The Musical Brain & Other Stories consists of twenty stories about oddballs, freaks, and crazy people from the writer The New York Review of Books calls the novelist who can't be stopped. The author of at least eighty novels, most of them barely 96 pages each, with just nine of them so far published into English, Aira's work, and his fuga hacia adelante or flight forward into the unknown has already given us imponderables to ponder, bizarre and seemingly out of context plotlines to consider, thoughtful, and almost religious, certainly passionate takes on everyday reality. The Musical Brain is the best sampling of Aira's creativity so far, and a most exhilarating collection of characters, places, and ideas.
Cesar Aira (born 23 February 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, and an exponent of Argentine contemporary literature. Aira has published over eighty short books of stories, novels and essays. In fact, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of writing and publication - two to four novella-length books each year. He has lectured at the University of Buenos Aires, on Copi and Arthur Rimbaud, and at the University of Rosario on Constructivism and Stephane Mallarme, and has translated and edited books from France, England, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela. Besides his fiction, and the translation work he does for a living, Aira also writes literary criticism, including monographic studies of Copi, the poet Alejandra Pizarnik, and the nineteenth-century British limerick and nonsense writer Edward Lear. He wrote a short book, Las tres fechas (The Three Dates), arguing for the central importance, when approaching some minor eccentric writers, of examining the moment of their lives about which they are writing, the date of completion of the work, and the date of publication of the work. Aira also was the literary executor of the complete works of his friend the poet and novelist Osvaldo Lamborghini (1940–1985). Aira has often spoken in interviews of elaborating an avant-garde aesthetic in which, rather than editing what he has written, he engages in a "flight forward" (fuga hacia adelante) to improvise a way out of the corners he writes himself into. Aira also seeks in his own work, and praises in the work of others (such as the Argentine-Parisian cartoonist and comic novelist Copi), the "continuum" (el continuo) of a constant momentum in the fictional narrative. As a result, his fictions can jump radically from one genre to another, and often deploy narrative strategies from popular culture and "subliterary" genres like pulp science fiction and television soap operas. He frequently refuses to conform to generic expectations for how a novel ought to end, leaving many of his fictions quite open-ended. While his subject matter ranges from Surrealist or Dadaist quasi-nonsense to fantastic tales set in his Buenos Aires neighborhood of Flores, Aira also returns frequently to Argentina's nineteenth century (two books translated into English, The Hare and An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, are examples of this; so is the best-known novel of his early years, Ema la cautiva (Emma, the Captive)). He also returns regularly to play with stereotypes of an exotic East, such as in Una novela china, (A Chinese Novel); El volante (The Flyer), and El pequeño monje budista (The Little Buddhist Monk). Aira also enjoys mocking himself and his childhood home town, Coronel Pringles, in fictions such as Como me hice monja (How I Became a Nun), Como me reí (How I Laughed), El cerebro musical (The Musical Brain) and Las curas milagrosas del doctor Aira (The Miraculous Cures of Dr. Aira). His novella La prueba (1992) served as the basis - or point of departure, as only the first half-hour follows the novella - of Diego Lerman's film Tan de repente (Suddenly) (2002). His novel Como me hice monja (How I Became a Nun) was selected as one of the ten best publications in Spain in the year 1998.
The centrality of Jorge Luis Borges to the contemporary aesthetic imagination has been widely recognized, but no comprehensive study of his impact on the arts of our time has appeared. In the first book devoted to that topic, Edna Aizenberg brings together specially commissioned and translated essays from a variety of disciplines to provide a wide-ranging assessment of Borges's influence. Presenting the insights of critics from South America, France, and Germany as well as those from the United States, this collection views Borges as a redefiner of national literatures a forerunner of a new critical idiom, a dialogist with other writers, and a source of inspiration in the visual arts, particularly Latin American cinema and North American painting. Readers interested in contemporary literary theory will welcome the discussion of Borges's commonalities with major theorists such as Foucault, Derrida, De Man, and Eco, as well as the examination of Borgess impact on the fictions of Calvino, Barth, Coover, the Australian Carey, and the Latin Americans Elizondo and Sarduy. And many readers will find valuable the final section of the book, which contains two little-known lectures by Borges, translated into English for the first time; in them, Borges analyzes the Book of Job and the ideas of Baruch Spinoza, both of them fundamental to an appreciation of his literature. By offering a broad view of Borges's influence on postmodernism, deconstruction, and other contemporary intellectual currents, this collection goes far in explaining Borgess major role in contemporary culture. CONTENTS: Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Introduction by Edna Aizenberg; I. REDEFINING NATIONAL LITERATURES - Ana Maria Barrenechea/On the Diverse (South American) Intonation of Some (Universal) Metaphors; Marta Morello-Frosch/Borges and Contemporary Argentine Writers: Continuity and Change; Robert Ross/'It Cannot Not Be There': Borges and Australia's Peter Carey; Rafael Gutierrez Girardot/Borges in Germany: A Difficult and Contradictory Fascination; Francoise Collin/The Third Tiger; or, From Blanchot to Borges; II. A NEW CRITICAL IDIOM - Jaime Alazraki/Borges's Modernism and the New Critical Idiom; Gerry O'Sullivan/The Library Is on Fire: Intertextuality in Borges and Foucault; Suzanne Jill Levine/Borges and Emir: The Writer and His Reader; Emir Rodriguez Monegal/Borges and Derrida: Apothecaries; Herman Rapaport/Borges, De Man, and the Deconstruction of Reading; Christine de Lailhacar/The Mirror and the Encyclopedia: Borgesian Codes in Umberto Eco's THE NAME OF THE ROSE; III. IN DIALOGUE WITH OTHER WRITERS - Jerry Varsava/The Last Fictions: Calvino's Borgesian Odysseys; Geoffrey Green/Postmodern Precursor: The Borgesian Image in Innovative American Fiction; Malva F. Filer/Salvador Elizondo and Severo Sarduy: Two Borgesian Writers; IV. THE VISUAL ARTS - Richard Peña/ Borges and the New Latin American Cinema; Jules Kirschenbaum/Dream of a Golem; V. HEBRAISM AND POETIC INFLUENCE - Edna Aizenberg/Borges and the Hebraism of Contemporary Literary Theory; Edna Aizenberg/Introduction to Two Lectures by Borges; Jorge Luis Borges/The Book of Job; Jorge Luis Borges/Baruch Spinoza; About the Contributors; Index; Index to Works by forges Cited in Text.
Edna Aizenberg is Associate Professor of Spanish at Marymount Manhattan College. She is the author of THE ALEPH, WEAVER: BIBLICAL, KABBALISTIC AND JUDAIC ELEMENTS IN BORGES, which was published in Spanish translation in 1986, and of numerous articles on Latin American and comparative literature.
The Argentine fiction writer Julio Cortázar is one of the most universal of a generation of Spanish American writers who have changed the status of Spanish American literature in the world of letters, but he has received very little critical treatment in English. Students of contemporary Spanish literature at all levels need this collection of essays and texts by him and about his work. The original texts, unpublished before in book form, include a short story, ‘Second Time Around,' and essays on ‘The Present State of Fiction in Latin America' and ‘Politics and the Intellectual in Latin America.' Professor Alazraki's introduction provides an overview of Cortázar's work for new readers and initiates. The essays following by leading Cortázar specialists relate Cortázar to the other giants of contemporary Spanish American literature, Borges and Paz, and interpret his work in the light of such important contemporary movements as Laingian psychoanalysis, surrealism, and phenomenology. All of the important novels and major short stories are treated. The writer's position in European letters - he lived in Belgium till age four and took up residence in France during his middle years - is fully explored. A bibliography of works by and about Cortázar in all the major languages completes this exhaustive collection of critical material. A selection of photographs from Cortázar's personal files is an added ornament to the book. Contributors include: Jaime Alazraki, Lida Aronne Amestoy, Sara Castro-Klaren, Julio Cortázar, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, Malva E. Filer, Martha Paley Francescato, Evelyn Picon Garfield, Ana Maria Hernández, Gregory Rabassa, Margery A. Safir, Saul Sosnowski, & Saul Yurkievich.
JAIME ALAZRAKI (January 26, 1934, Argentina - February 9, 2014, Barcelona, Spain) was Professor of Romance Languages and Literature at Harvard University. IVAR IVASK is Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Oklahoma and Editor of World Literature Today. He is the editor of two other critical collections published by the University of Oklahoma Press, The Perpetual Present: The Poetry and Prose of Octavio Paz and The Cardinal Points of Borges (coedited with Lowell Dunham).
WINNER of Spain's prestigious Alfaguara Prize in Fiction, CARACOL BEACH is a gripping, kaleidoscopic novel about isolation, love, fear, and the collision of strangers' lives on one fateful night in a Florida town. On the outskirts of the quiet resort community of Caracol Beach, its unlikeliest-and perhaps most dangerous-resident plots his own demise. A Cuban veteran of the war in Angola, the sole survivor of an ambush that killed off the rest of his platoon, Beto MilanEs has for eighteen years been racked with guilt and grief and tormented by terrible visions. Determined to end his suffering but unable to take his own life, he sets out to find someone who will do it for him. So begins a night of madness, violence, and, ultimately, redemption. Drawn into the soldier's nightmare world are an improbable group of men and women, whose lives will never again be the same: an aging police chief with a penchant for pizza; a foulmouthed prostitute; a transvestite with a killer judo chop; a beautiful student haunted by her own ghosts; and two ill-fated would-be heroes. With audacity, humor, and deep insight into the human condition, Eliseo Alberto explores the horror of war, the pain of exile, the power of forgiveness, and the inescapable, sometimes cruel toll of destiny. The story that unfolds is at once shocking and comic, surprising and poignant, evoking classic tragedy and the absurdity of modern life. Combining the narrative power of a master storyteller with the phantasmagoric vision of a filmmaker, Eliseo Alberto has created a literary tour de force.
ELISEO ALBERTO, winner of the first International Alfaguara Prize in Fiction (1998), was born in Arroyo Naranjo, Cuba. He received a degree in journalism from the University of Havana, and was editor in chief of the literary gazette El Caiman Barbudo and assistant director of the magazine Cine Cubano. He has published three books of poems, Importard el trueno, Las cosas que yo amo, and Un instante en cada cosa, and he is the author of La fogata roja, a book for young adults that won the Cuban National Critics Prize; a novel, La eternidad por fin comienza un lunes; and a memoir, Informe contra ml mismo, winner of the Gabino Palma Prize in Spain. He has written screenplays for film and television, and has taught at the International Film School in San Antonio de los Baños in Cuba, the Center for Cinematographic Training of Mexico, and the Sundance Institute. He lives in Mexico City. EDITH GROSSMAN is the award-winning translator of major works by many of Latin America's most important writers, including Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Alvaro Mutis. Born in Philadelphia, she attended the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California at Berkeley before receiving her Ph.D. from New York University. Ms. Grossman is the author of The Antipoetry of Nicanor Parra and of many articles and book reviews. She lives in New York City.
In 1904 the first published collection of full-fledged short stories by a Peruvian author appeared, and in the following sixty years this form evolved into the most cultivated and significant type of fiction in Peru, Its steady growth stands out in sharp contrast to the relatively slow and irregular development of the novel, a discrepancy that has been explained in both psychological and economic terms. But the important fact is that the modern short story form clearly dominates contemporary Peruvian fiction, and it is through this form that one is able to trace Peru's major aesthetic and social currents. To provide a chronological view of this literary development, Professor Aldrich devotes each of five chapters to a significant phase in the maturation of this art form, He examines the short story in Peru as it evolves from a production studiedly cosmopolitan in nature, through one oriented along national lines, with the distinctive rural areas of Peru providing the settings for the action, and finally to its most recent stage in which emphasis is placed on the urban scene and on the more universal problems of modern man, Working from primary sources-published and unpublished stories by the writers discussed and biographical and historical material gained from Peruvian newspapers, journals, and magazines, as well as personal interviews with a number of the authors-Professor Aldrich brings to this subject a wealth of firsthand information, and he includes poignant biographical data as it relates to the specific works under consideration. Abundant quotations from the works discussed verify his observations and add life and pungency to the narrative. English translations appear in the text, but for readers of Spanish the original excerpts are given in a section at the end.
Earl M. Aldrich, Jr., Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Wisconsin is a contributing editor to the literary section of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, As Field Director of the Indiana University Junior Year Program to Peru in 1959-60, he did intensive research and was able to interview some of the authors in Peru. Two of the most prominent men, Ciro Alegria and Enrique Lopez Albujar, provided him with their manuscripts of unpublished stories and of ones difficult to find, The result of his scholarship is the first full-scale study of the modern short story in Peru, of value both to the literary world and to the field of Latin American studies.
This is the story of the people of Rumi, men of the Andes, whose community has followed its peaceful course time out of mind, bound to the fruitful soil and to the rhythm of life that the earth imposes. Under the cloak of the Law their way of life is overturned, they are dispossessed and withdraw to the barren uplands. Here they are still threatened by the ranchers and by the slavery of the mines. The younger members of the community go to seek a new life on the rubber plantations in the jungle or on the malaria-ridden plains where coca is grown; some go to join the bandits in the hills. Betrayed by the Law, where should men turn for Justice? This is the question that hangs over Ciro Alegria' s moving and evocative novel.
Ciro Alegría Bazán (November 4, 1909 - February 17, 1967) was a Peruvian journalist, politician, and novelist. Born in Huamachuco District, he exposed the problems of the native Peruvians while learning about their way of life. This understanding of how they were oppressed was the focus for his novels. He attended classes at the University of Trujillo, and worked briefly as a journalist for the newspaper El Norte. In 1930 Alegría joined the Aprista movement, dedicated to social reform as well as improving the welfare of native Peruvians. He was imprisoned several times for his political activities before finally being exiled to Chile in 1934. He remained in exile in both Chile and later the United States up until 1948. Later, he taught at the University of Puerto Rico, and wrote about the Cuban revolution while in Cuba. His most well known novel, Broad and Alien is the World (1941) or El mundo es ancho y ajeno, won the Latin American Novel Prize in 1941, and brought him international attention. It depicts an Andean community, living in the Peruvian highlands. The book was later published in the United States and has been reprinted many times, in multiple languages. Alegría returned to Peru in 1957. He joined President Fernando Belaúnde Terry's party (Accion Popular) and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1963. He died unexpectedly in Lima, Peru on February 17, 1967. After his death, his widow published many of his essays and reports he had written for various newspapers. He was 58 years old.
BROAD AND ALIEN IS THE WORLD one of the most impressive novels I've ever read in Spanish.'-JOHN DOS PASSOS . . . Ciro Alegria writes with passion and inspiration of things which he has seen and known. His language is simple and direct, his story is touched with the universality and human wisdom that make enduring literature in any country and in any language. High up in the mountains of Peru lay the small village of Rumi. It was a happy and industrious village where everyone had his job to do, both for himself and his community. The wants of the villagers were simple, their pleasures few, and their work hard but satisfying. There were few problems of government, but for those that did arise they had a mayor and four selectmen to speak for them. Rosendo Maqui was the mayor: a man of deep wisdom and understanding for his people. But one day Don Alvaro Amenabar, the rich and predatory ranch owner of the town in the valley, instituted a suit against the community, charging that the land it had occupied for so many generations rightfully belonged to him. The villagers of Rumi were panic-stricken. They had always lived in Rumi! So had their fathers and their fathers before them. It was Rosendo Maqui's respon- sibility to fight Don Alvaro in the courts and to save the village of Rumi from such despotism. Rosendo Maqui and his people, being good people, tried to fight the evil of Don Alvaro the way they had always fought everything, with hard work, perseverance, and honesty. In the life and death struggle of this small South American village to maintain its integrity, its dignity, its very existence against the lust for power, the reader cannot help but see the parallel to the bitter and total wars of today which are raging over the whole earth. The simple story of BROAD AND ALIEN IS THE WORLD can be the story of any community anywhere trying to conduct itself along the paths of truth, vision, and mutual well-being, and forced to fight for its life against the malignant forces of evil oppression and greed which suddenly seem to be loosed in such overwhelming numbers. And the outcome of the struggle, the final peace, lies only in the hand of God.
Ciro Alegría Bazán (November 4, 1909 - February 17, 1967) was a Peruvian journalist, politician, and novelist. Born in Huamachuco District, he exposed the problems of the native Peruvians while learning about their way of life. This understanding of how they were oppressed was the focus for his novels. He attended classes at the University of Trujillo, and worked briefly as a journalist for the newspaper El Norte. In 1930 Alegría joined the Aprista movement, dedicated to social reform as well as improving the welfare of native Peruvians. He was imprisoned several times for his political activities before finally being exiled to Chile in 1934. He remained in exile in both Chile and later the United States up until 1948. Later, he taught at the University of Puerto Rico, and wrote about the Cuban revolution while in Cuba. His most well known novel, Broad and Alien is the World (1941) or El mundo es ancho y ajeno, won the Latin American Novel Prize in 1941, and brought him international attention. It depicts an Andean community, living in the Peruvian highlands. The book was later published in the United States and has been reprinted many times, in multiple languages. Alegría returned to Peru in 1957. He joined President Fernando Belaúnde Terry's party (Accion Popular) and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1963. He died unexpectedly in Lima, Peru on February 17, 1967. After his death, his widow published many of his essays and reports he had written for various newspapers. He was 58 years old.
Ciro Alegria, the prizewinner of the Farrar & Rinehart 1941 Latin American Novel Contest, has given us a short and very human novel about the various and simple people who live along the banks of the Maranon River in Peru. THE GOLDEN SERPENT is the story of the natives who live and work and die along the banks of the tricky and unpredictable river that flows through their land; a river that is dishonest, strange, but nevertheless the lifeblood of the people to whom it belongs, something which they all love and worship with the same irresistible fascination of the sailor for the sea. There is the episode of the two river men who try to shoot the rapids during the flood stage and become caught in the treacherous swirls and eddies so fly their raft becomes on a projecting rock, They move. They have provisions a few days. The water is so full of floating debris, hidden whirlpools other dangers that it would be folly to try to swim to land, Even if they did this, there would be no place for them to go, for the river at this point is lined by nothing but steep canyon walls, The days pass. Their supply of the sweet intoxicant-coca-is almost gone; there is little food and rum left. Finally one of them decides to make a dash for it. These two men on the raft are brothers and they love each other very much - the one does not want his brother to try to swim for help, but cannot prevent it, And what happens is an exciting and breath-taking story. Then there is the episode of the man who falls in love with the village belle and of how he eventually marries her. This is a very short tale, very charming, graceful, and with intriguing descriptions of how fascinating a young Peruvian beauty of 18 is when she bathes in the river in the nude. . . ! THE GOLDEN SERPENT is a rich, warm, and human book that anyone will enjoy reading. It is authentic, lively, and with a very special quality that many South American books don't have, You will discover this when you begin reading.
Ciro Alegría Bazán (November 4, 1909 - February 17, 1967) was a Peruvian journalist, politician, and novelist. Born in Huamachuco District, he exposed the problems of the native Peruvians while learning about their way of life. This understanding of how they were oppressed was the focus for his novels. He attended classes at the University of Trujillo, and worked briefly as a journalist for the newspaper El Norte. In 1930 Alegría joined the Aprista movement, dedicated to social reform as well as improving the welfare of native Peruvians. He was imprisoned several times for his political activities before finally being exiled to Chile in 1934. He remained in exile in both Chile and later the United States up until 1948. Later, he taught at the University of Puerto Rico, and wrote about the Cuban revolution while in Cuba. His most well known novel, Broad and Alien is the World (1941) or El mundo es ancho y ajeno, won the Latin American Novel Prize in 1941, and brought him international attention. It depicts an Andean community, living in the Peruvian highlands. The book was later published in the United States and has been reprinted many times, in multiple languages. Alegría returned to Peru in 1957. He joined President Fernando Belaúnde Terry's party (Accion Popular) and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1963. He died unexpectedly in Lima, Peru on February 17, 1967. After his death, his widow published many of his essays and reports he had written for various newspapers. He was 58 years old.
Unpredictably swift and menacing, unfathomable in its nature, the 'Golden Serpent' inspires reverence and terror in the tiny, scattered communities that border its banks - villages of peons pitched between pagan recklessness and Christian despair. Hardy agrarians, these people are prone to supernatural fears that arise from total dependence upon a river that bestows great gifts and, at times, destroys all that it has given. Here are the Andean peaks, surging rapids, river men, flower girls, fiestas, and mournful pipes. Here are the victims of avalanche and flood, witch hunts and plagues that corrode the mind and body. Ciro Alegria's lyric eloquence has produced a hypnotic vision of the remorseless Marañon country of Peru. In the words of Harriet de Onis, 'He has created a world peopled by beings teeming with life, with their sorrows and joys, their aspirations and defeats, and all suffused with that poetry which comes from emotion recalled in tranquillity. And when progress has spanned the turbulent Maranon with bridges, has dammed and channeled its treacherous waters, and the boatmen of Calemar have disappeared, their work done, The Golden Serpent will remain as a monument to the days when it ran free and bold, tamed only by brave men.'
Ciro Alegría Bazán (November 4, 1909 - February 17, 1967) was a Peruvian journalist, politician, and novelist. Born in Huamachuco District, he exposed the problems of the native Peruvians while learning about their way of life. This understanding of how they were oppressed was the focus for his novels. He attended classes at the University of Trujillo, and worked briefly as a journalist for the newspaper El Norte. In 1930 Alegría joined the Aprista movement, dedicated to social reform as well as improving the welfare of native Peruvians. He was imprisoned several times for his political activities before finally being exiled to Chile in 1934. He remained in exile in both Chile and later the United States up until 1948. Later, he taught at the University of Puerto Rico, and wrote about the Cuban revolution while in Cuba. His most well known novel, Broad and Alien is the World (1941) or El mundo es ancho y ajeno, won the Latin American Novel Prize in 1941, and brought him international attention. It depicts an Andean community, living in the Peruvian highlands. The book was later published in the United States and has been reprinted many times, in multiple languages. Alegría returned to Peru in 1957. He joined President Fernando Belaúnde Terry's party (Accion Popular) and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1963. He died unexpectedly in Lima, Peru on February 17, 1967. After his death, his widow published many of his essays and reports he had written for various newspapers. He was 58 years old.
Written in two voices, ASHES OF IZALCO is the collaborative novel of Claribel Alegria and Darwin J. Flakoll based on the events of 1932 when thirty thousand Indians and peasants were massacred in Izalco, El Salvador. ASHES OF IZALCO brings together a Salvadoran woman and an American man who together struggle over issues of love, loyalty and socio-political injustices. About this book Claribel Alegria said in an interview: ‘ASHES OF IZALCO is a historical novel that my husband and I wrote together. It was based on what happened in 1932. I was a small child when it happened, but I still remember very well so many of these things. Thirty thousand campesinos were massacred in El Salvador in the name of anti-communism and it was a terrible thing. It was a thing that marred me as a child. The National Guard was right in front of my house and I saw when some of these peasants were brought in. And I heard when they were killed. I saw them go by with their thumbs tied behind their backs and then a little later I heard the shots. I started learning at a tender age about these terrible injustices. That was in 1932, but the sad thing is that right now the economic and the social injustices are just the same. The only difference now is that the people know better how to organize themselves. And so there is more hope for them. But this is why I think the novel is still very much alive.'
Clara Isabel Alegría Vides (born May 12, 1924) is a Nicaraguan poet, essayist, novelist, and journalist who is a major voice in the literature of contemporary Central America. She writes under the pseudonym Claribel Alegría. She was awarded the 2006 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Alegría was born in Estelí, Nicaragua and grew up in the Santa Ana area in western El Salvador. In 1943, she moved to the United States and in 1948 received a B.A. in Philosophy and Letters from George Washington University. Alegría was committed to nonviolent resistance. She had a close association with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle and took control of the Nicaraguan government in 1979. Alegría returned to Nicaragua in 1985 to aid in the reconstruction of Nicaragua. Alegría now lives in Managua, Nicaragua. Alegría's works of literature reflect the style of the popular literary current in Central America during the 1950s and 1960s, ‘la generacion comprometida' (the committed generation). Her works follow the practice of several poets of her generation who are critical of their societies and make claims for rights using a language which is often counter-literary. Alegría has published many books of poetry: Casting Off (2003), Sorrow (1999), Umbrales (1996), Fuga de Canto Grande (1992) and La Mujer del Río (1989). Alegría has published novels and children's stories.
DEATH OF SOMOZA reveals the inside story of the assassination of Somoza in Asuncion, Paraguay in 1980. Alegria and Flakoll, on the recommendation of Julio Cortázar, met ‘Ramon,' a leader in the Argentinian Revolutionary Workers' Party (PRT) and with his help were able to interview all the survivors of the commando team that carried out the ‘bringing to justice' of Somoza. Alegria and Flakoll then rewove these testimonies into a narrative that reads like an thriller, as well as giving a vivid picture of the political and social climate of the time. Enlivened by its colorful cast of characters, Death of Somoza is the definitive account of how Anastasio Somoza Debayle was brought to justice. This story is not an apology for terrorism, but rather the chronicle of a tyrannicide.
Clara Isabel Alegría Vides (born May 12, 1924) is a Nicaraguan poet, essayist, novelist, and journalist who is a major voice in the literature of contemporary Central America. She writes under the pseudonym Claribel Alegría. She was awarded the 2006 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Alegría was born in Estelí, Nicaragua and grew up in the Santa Ana area in western El Salvador. In 1943, she moved to the United States and in 1948 received a B.A. in Philosophy and Letters from George Washington University. Alegría was committed to nonviolent resistance. She had a close association with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle and took control of the Nicaraguan government in 1979. Alegría returned to Nicaragua in 1985 to aid in the reconstruction of Nicaragua. Alegría now lives in Managua, Nicaragua. Alegría's works of literature reflect the style of the popular literary current in Central America during the 1950s and 1960s, ‘la generacion comprometida' (the committed generation). Her works follow the practice of several poets of her generation who are critical of their societies and make claims for rights using a language which is often counter-literary. Alegría has published many books of poetry: Casting Off (2003), Sorrow (1999), Umbrales (1996), Fuga de Canto Grande (1992) and La Mujer del Río (1989). Alegría has published novels and children's stories.
LUISA IN REALITYLAND, an autobiographical prose/versenovel by Claribel Alegria, one of Central America's most highly acclaimed authors, is a retrospect of the real, surreal and magical memories of childhood in El Salvador, into which the ugly realities of war gradually intrude. LUISA IN REALITYLAND is printed on acid-free paper in an edition of 2500 copies by Curbstone Press of which 100 numbered copies are signed by the author and the translator.
Clara Isabel Alegría Vides (born May 12, 1924) is a Nicaraguan poet, essayist, novelist, and journalist who is a major voice in the literature of contemporary Central America. She writes under the pseudonym Claribel Alegría. She was awarded the 2006 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Alegría was born in Estelí, Nicaragua and grew up in the Santa Ana area in western El Salvador. In 1943, she moved to the United States and in 1948 received a B.A. in Philosophy and Letters from George Washington University. Alegría was committed to nonviolent resistance. She had a close association with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle and took control of the Nicaraguan government in 1979. Alegría returned to Nicaragua in 1985 to aid in the reconstruction of Nicaragua. Alegría now lives in Managua, Nicaragua. Alegría's works of literature reflect the style of the popular literary current in Central America during the 1950s and 1960s, ‘la generacion comprometida' (the committed generation). Her works follow the practice of several poets of her generation who are critical of their societies and make claims for rights using a language which is often counter-literary. Alegría has published many books of poetry: Casting Off (2003), Sorrow (1999), Umbrales (1996), Fuga de Canto Grande (1992) and La Mujer del Río (1989). Alegría has published novels and children's stories.
This is the triumphant story of the life and death of Commander Eugenia of the Salvadorean guerilla forces, as seen through the eyes of her comrades, and told by one of El Salvador's foremost writers.
Clara Isabel Alegría Vides (born May 12, 1924) is a Nicaraguan poet, essayist, novelist, and journalist who is a major voice in the literature of contemporary Central America. She writes under the pseudonym Claribel Alegría. She was awarded the 2006 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Alegría was born in Estelí, Nicaragua and grew up in the Santa Ana area in western El Salvador. In 1943, she moved to the United States and in 1948 received a B.A. in Philosophy and Letters from George Washington University. Alegría was committed to nonviolent resistance. She had a close association with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle and took control of the Nicaraguan government in 1979. Alegría returned to Nicaragua in 1985 to aid in the reconstruction of Nicaragua. Alegría now lives in Managua, Nicaragua. Alegría's works of literature reflect the style of the popular literary current in Central America during the 1950s and 1960s, ‘la generacion comprometida' (the committed generation). Her works follow the practice of several poets of her generation who are critical of their societies and make claims for rights using a language which is often counter-literary. Alegría has published many books of poetry: Casting Off (2003), Sorrow (1999), Umbrales (1996), Fuga de Canto Grande (1992) and La Mujer del Río (1989). Alegría has published novels and children's stories.
IN SPANISH - This is such a horsy book that it is hard to believe the author has ever done anything in his life except hang around racing stables. However, in his native Chile - and in France and Italy where this and other works by Alegria have appeared in translation - he is known and respected as an essayist, critic, novelist, short story writer, and poet. But indeed, he shows himself to be a poet in this very book, for surely few authors have ever described horses and horse races with more poetic feeling; and San Francisco owes Alegria a laurel crown, at least, for the many poetic descriptions of that Queen city of the West, whether glimpsed in early morning or late at night, in fog or sunshine. As one critic said, reviewing the novel when it first appeared in the original Spanish, ‘The uneasy fascination of this ‘town without a map,' poised at the dock's edge as if at any moment it might move on and leave one behind, is so potent that the narrator - a young Chilean who made his way to the States to study and instead finds himself washing dishes in a dreary restaurant - is driven to exclaim: ‘Why, you can be living in San Francisco and still feel homesick for it!'' (Dorothy Hayes de Huneeus, in Americas, September, 1958). Whether or not you have already fallen under the spell of horses and horse racing, you can read this novel with pleasure for the story of young romance that is a part of it, for the odd assortment of human beings that swarm in its pages, and for the wry humor, compassion, and poetic feeling brought to the telling of the tale, Alegria here gives us an unusual point of vantage from which to view the human comedy. And the translator has skillfully leapt the language barrier; this English version can be read with undiluted enjoyment. This is a story of a horse with an eccentric personality. You may not be crazy about horses; but you will be, about that crazy horse, Gonzalez. . FERNANDO ALEGRIA, who writes with such affection of San Francisco in the present novel, is no newcomer to the North American scene. In 1938, at the age of twenty, he was a delegate from his native Chile to the World Youth Congress held at Vassar College. A few years later, after completing his studies at the University of Chile, he returned to the States, to do post-graduate work at the University of California, from which he received his Ph.D. In 1943, his historical novel for juveniles, Lautaro, received first prize in the Second Latin-American Literary Contest (Segundo Concurso Literario Latinoamericano) sponsored jointly by Farrar & Rinehart and the Pan-American Union; this first book has been translated into English, Portuguese, Czech, and other European languages and is regarded as a classic. In 1947, on a Guggenheim scholarship, he wrote Watt Whitman en Hispano America, He is known and esteemed throughout Latin America as the author of several published collections of poems and literary essays, five novels, contributions to many magazines, and as one of the editors of Revista Iberoamericana, His writing career reached a peak with the publication of Cabalio de Copa, which we now present in English translation as My Horse, Gonzalez, for it was immediately awarded the most important prize any novel can receive in Chile (the Premio Municipal, conferred by the Academia Chilena de Ia Lenqua), and was a bestseller not only throughout Latin America but in France (where it was called tout Cheval), We confidently predict that this novel about horses and women, an often hilarious and always absorbing tale, will bring him the fame he deserves in his adopted land, the U.S.A. (original title: Cabalio de Copa).
Fernando Alegría (Santiago de Chile, 26 September, 1918 - Walnut Creek, California, October 29, 2005) was a Chilean poet, writer, literary critic and scholar. Alegría grew up in the Independencia barrio of the city. Poets from this barrio include Pablo Neruda, Violeta Parra and Volodia Teitelboim. He received an M.A. from Bowling Green State University in 1941 and a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, in 1947. From 1964-1967, Alegría was a professor at the University of California in Berkeley. From 1967 to 1998 he was a professor at Stanford University and for many years he was Chair of the Spanish and Portuguese Language Departments there. He sat on the Board of Trustees at the Western Institute for Social Research (WISR) for about twenty years beginning with its inception in 1975. Alegría served as cultural attachE from the government of Salvador Allende to the United States from 1970 to 1973. He was the representative of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language in the United States for many years. Among the many awards he received is the Latin American Prize of Literature. A documentary film about the life of Chile's revolutionary poet Alegría, ¡Viva Chile Mierda!, was produced in 2004. The documentary is a humanistic portrayal of one of the most influential figures from Chile and a key figure in the advancement of Latino culture in the United States of America. Alegría's ‘Viva Chile Mierda', the most recited poem of the Allende era, was written in the 1960s.
Set in 16th century Chile, this is the epic of Lautaro, an Araucanian Indian who fought bravely for the liberation of his people. LAUTARO was the juvenile prize winner in the Second Latin American Literary Prize Competition. Other winners have been CANAPE-VERT by Philippe Thoby-Marcelin & Pierre Marcelin, a novel of Haiti, and ENRIQUETA AND I, an autobiography by Argentina Diaz Lozano, from Honduras.
Fernando Alegría (Santiago de Chile, 26 September, 1918 - Walnut Creek, California, October 29, 2005) was a Chilean poet, writer, literary critic and scholar. Alegría grew up in the Independencia barrio of the city. Poets from this barrio include Pablo Neruda, Violeta Parra and Volodia Teitelboim. He received an M.A. from Bowling Green State University in 1941 and a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, in 1947. From 1964-1967, Alegría was a professor at the University of California in Berkeley. From 1967 to 1998 he was a professor at Stanford University and for many years he was Chair of the Spanish and Portuguese Language Departments there. He sat on the Board of Trustees at the Western Institute for Social Research (WISR) for about twenty years beginning with its inception in 1975. Alegría served as cultural attachE from the government of Salvador Allende to the United States from 1970 to 1973. He was the representative of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language in the United States for many years. Among the many awards he received is the Latin American Prize of Literature. A documentary film about the life of Chile's revolutionary poet Alegría, ¡Viva Chile Mierda!, was produced in 2004. The documentary is a humanistic portrayal of one of the most influential figures from Chile and a key figure in the advancement of Latino culture in the United States of America. Alegría's ‘Viva Chile Mierda', the most recited poem of the Allende era, was written in the 1960s.
This is such a horsy book that it is hard to believe the author has ever done anything in his life except hang around racing stables. However, in his native Chile - and in France and Italy where this and other works by Alegria have appeared in translation - he is known and respected as an essayist, critic, novelist, short story writer, and poet. But indeed, he shows himself to be a poet in this very book, for surely few authors have ever described horses and horse races with more poetic feeling; and San Francisco owes Alegria a laurel crown, at least, for the many poetic descriptions of that Queen city of the West, whether glimpsed in early morning or late at night, in fog or sunshine. As one critic said, reviewing the novel when it first appeared in the original Spanish, ‘The uneasy fascination of this ‘town without a map,' poised at the dock's edge as if at any moment it might move on and leave one behind, is so potent that the narrator - a young Chilean who made his way to the States to study and instead finds himself washing dishes in a dreary restaurant - is driven to exclaim: ‘Why, you can be living in San Francisco and still feel homesick for it!'' (Dorothy Hayes de Huneeus, in Americas, September, 1958). Whether or not you have already fallen under the spell of horses and horse racing, you can read this novel with pleasure for the story of young romance that is a part of it, for the odd assortment of human beings that swarm in its pages, and for the wry humor, compassion, and poetic feeling brought to the telling of the tale, Alegria here gives us an unusual point of vantage from which to view the human comedy. And the translator has skillfully leapt the language barrier; this English version can be read with undiluted enjoyment. This is a story of a horse with an eccentric personality. You may not be crazy about horses; but you will be, about that crazy horse, Gonzalez. FERNANDO ALEGRIA, who writes with such affection of San Francisco in the present novel, is no newcomer to the North American scene. In 1938, at the age of twenty, he was a delegate from his native Chile to the World Youth Congress held at Vassar College. A few years later, after completing his studies at the University of Chile, he returned to the States, to do post-graduate work at the University of California, from which he received his Ph.D. In 1943, his historical novel for juveniles, Lautaro, received first prize in the Second Latin-American Literary Contest (Segundo Concurso Literario Latinoamericano) sponsored jointly by Farrar & Rinehart and the Pan-American Union; this first book has been translated into English, Portuguese, Czech, and other European languages and is regarded as a classic. In 1947, on a Guggenheim scholarship, he wrote Watt Whitman en Hispano America, He is known and esteemed throughout Latin America as the author of several published collections of poems and literary essays, five novels, contributions to many magazines, and as one of the editors of Revista Iberoamericana, His writing career reached a peak with the publication of Cabalio de Copa, which we now present in English translation as My Horse, Gonzalez, for it was immediately awarded the most important prize any novel can receive in Chile (the Premio Municipal, conferred by the Academia Chilena de Ia Lenqua), and was a bestseller not only throughout Latin America but in France (where it was called tout Cheval), We confidently predict that this novel about horses and women, an often hilarious and always absorbing tale, will bring him the fame he deserves in his adopted land, the U.S.A. . (original title: Cabalio de Copa).
Fernando Alegría (Santiago de Chile, 26 September, 1918 - Walnut Creek, California, October 29, 2005) was a Chilean poet, writer, literary critic and scholar. Alegría grew up in the Independencia barrio of the city. Poets from this barrio include Pablo Neruda, Violeta Parra and Volodia Teitelboim. He received an M.A. from Bowling Green State University in 1941 and a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, in 1947. From 1964-1967, Alegría was a professor at the University of California in Berkeley. From 1967 to 1998 he was a professor at Stanford University and for many years he was Chair of the Spanish and Portuguese Language Departments there. He sat on the Board of Trustees at the Western Institute for Social Research (WISR) for about twenty years beginning with its inception in 1975. Alegría served as cultural attachE from the government of Salvador Allende to the United States from 1970 to 1973. He was the representative of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language in the United States for many years. Among the many awards he received is the Latin American Prize of Literature. A documentary film about the life of Chile's revolutionary poet Alegría, ¡Viva Chile Mierda!, was produced in 2004. The documentary is a humanistic portrayal of one of the most influential figures from Chile and a key figure in the advancement of Latino culture in the United States of America. Alegría's ‘Viva Chile Mierda', the most recited poem of the Allende era, was written in the 1960s.
THE MAYPOLE WARRIORS gives a spectral vision of the most impressive events of the 30s and 40s, focusing on the artistic revolution in Chile and the role played in it by legendary figures such as Pablo Neruda and Vicente Huidobro. The novel also analyzes in depth the crisis of two old Chilean families who live in their young progeny the consequences of their social displacement. In a strikingly contemporary approach, the novel presents Juan Luis and Elisa, who at a time and in a country weighted with the social consequences of abortion, make the decision that only they could make . . . ‘. . . [a] visionary new novel . . . Alegria's Chile is eerily akin to the Civil War-Spain in Man's Hope by Andre Malraux . . . Alegria's prose, however, is more lyrical . . . He is deft at finding the evocative metaphor, the searing image. In a stylish translation by Lozano, the book will capture both the reader's attention and conscience.' - Publishers Weekly. the novel allows us a glimpse of a country that is the home of the Nobel-laureate Pablo Neruda (who appears in its pages), that at one time had one of the oldest democracies in the Americas, but that has more recently [undergone] tumult.' - Booklist. Chilean novelist, essayist, poet and literary critic, FERNANDO ALEGRIA is currently Emeritus Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. Originally a realist, he has excelled in magic realism beginning with his novel The Maypole Warriors. Among others, his works include the critical volume Nueva historia de la novela hispanoamericana, the novel AMERIKA, AMERIKKA AMERIKKKA, and ALLENDE: A NOVEL, the fictionalized biography of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, recently published in English translation by Stanford University Press. Professor Alegria's work has been translated into numerous languages. Chilean novelist, essayist, poet and literary critic, FERNANDO ALEGRIA is currently Emeritus Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. Originally a realist, he has excelled in magic realism beginning with his novel The Maypole Warriors. Among others, his works include the critical volume Nueva historia de la novela hispanoamericana, the novel AMERIKA, AMERIKKA AMERIKKKA, and ALLENDE: A NOVEL, the fictionalized biography of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, recently published in English translation by Stanford University Press. Professor Alegria's work has been translated into numerous languages. . CARLOS LOZANO, author of Ruben Dario en España, is one of the most acknowledged translators of Pablo Neruda. His English version of Odas Elementales is a classic. He is also the translator of Caballo de copa by Fernando Alegria. . (original title: Manana los guerreros).
Fernando Alegría (Santiago de Chile, 26 September, 1918 - Walnut Creek, California, October 29, 2005) was a Chilean poet, writer, literary critic and scholar. Alegría grew up in the Independencia barrio of the city. Poets from this barrio include Pablo Neruda, Violeta Parra and Volodia Teitelboim. He received an M.A. from Bowling Green State University in 1941 and a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, in 1947. From 1964-1967, Alegría was a professor at the University of California in Berkeley. From 1967 to 1998 he was a professor at Stanford University and for many years he was Chair of the Spanish and Portuguese Language Departments there. He sat on the Board of Trustees at the Western Institute for Social Research (WISR) for about twenty years beginning with its inception in 1975. Alegría served as cultural attachE from the government of Salvador Allende to the United States from 1970 to 1973. He was the representative of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language in the United States for many years. Among the many awards he received is the Latin American Prize of Literature. A documentary film about the life of Chile's revolutionary poet Alegría, ¡Viva Chile Mierda!, was produced in 2004. The documentary is a humanistic portrayal of one of the most influential figures from Chile and a key figure in the advancement of Latino culture in the United States of America. Alegría's ‘Viva Chile Mierda', the most recited poem of the Allende era, was written in the 1960s.
It is a story that begins in the dusty archives of a library in twentieth-century Florence and ends four centuries in the past, in the heart of pre-Hispanic Mexico. From the obscure hieroglyphics of an ancient maguey scroll spills forth the fusion of reality and myth that is the Aztec empire at its height-a stunning mosaic of obsidian and jade, of Eagle Knights, noblemen, warriors, and priests. A society in which arts and sciences flourish in the grisly shadows of pyramids washed in sacrificial blood, ruled by a pantheon of mysterious and powerful gods whose existence is all too real. Here, too, is the intimate story of one man, Copilli, Aztec prince, of his rigorous training, trials, triumphs, loves, doubts, and dreams. And of the one compelling vision that possesses him - the building of a great Pyramid, to record in the indelible images of stone the rich history and traditions of his people . . . a vision that consumes him in both life and death. Part biography, part historical narrative, wholly novel, this fascinating account of the life of an Aztec nobleman re-creates the hallucinatory splendor of the Aztec civilization - a way of life swept into oblivion by the conquistadors, but echoing still through the corridors of history.
Miguel Alemán Velasco is the author of several previous novels, which have been published to an enthusiastic audience in his native Mexico. The Spanish edition of COPILLI was a bestseller. He is an expert in ancient languages and in the history and mythology of Mexico. This is his first book to appear in the United States.
‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a good character but no fortune must be in want of a wealthy husband - that is, if she is the heroine of a nineteenth-century novel. Senhora, by contrast, turns the tables on this familiar plot. Its strong- willed, independent heroine Aurelia uses newly inherited wealth to ‘buy back' and exact revenge on the fiance who had left her for a woman with a more enticing dowry. This exciting Brazilian novel, originally published in 1875 and here translated into English for the first time, raises intriguing questions about traditional gender relationships, the commercial nature of marriage, and the institution of the dowry. While true love and conventional marital roles triumph in the end, the novel still offers realistic insights into the social and economic structure of Rio de Janeiro in the mid-1800s. With its unexpected plot, it also opens new important perspectives on the nineteenth-century Romantic novel. ‘ . . . an extremely important novel. . . quite startling in its revelations of money and gender as key social mechanisms in nineteenth-century Brazilian life.' - Daphne Patai, professor of Spanish and Portuguese and of women's studies, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Texas Pan American Series . A journalist and politician who served as Minister of Justice under the Emperor Dom Pedro II, JOSE DE ALENCAR (1829-1877) is considered the father of Brazilian literature. He was the author of twenty novels and six plays, as well as many newspaper articles and speeches. . Translator CATARINA FELDMANN EDINGER is an associate professor of English at the William Paterson College of New Jersey.
Jose Martiniano de Alencar (May 1, 1829 - December 12, 1877) was a Brazilian lawyer, politician, orator, novelist and dramatist. He is considered to be one of the most famous and influential Brazilian Romantic novelists of the 19th century, and a major exponent of the literary tradition known as 'Indianism'. Sometimes he signed his works with the pen name Erasmo. He is patron of the 23rd chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Jose Martiniano de Alencar was born in what is today the bairro of Messejana, Fortaleza, Ceará, on May 1, 1829, to former priest (and later politician) Jose Martiniano Pereira de Alencar and his cousin Ana Josefina de Alencar. Moving to São Paulo in 1844, he graduated in Law at the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo in 1850 and started his career in law in Rio de Janeiro. Invited by his friend Francisco Otaviano, he became a collaborator for the journal Correio Mercantil. He also wrote many chronicles for the Diário do Rio de Janeiro and the Jornal do Commercio. Alencar would compile all the chronicles he wrote for these newspapers in 1874, under the name Ao Correr da Pena. It was in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro, during the year of 1856, that Alencar gained notoriety, writing the Cartas sobre A Confederação dos Tamoios, under the pseudonym Ig. In them, he bitterly criticized the homonymous poem by Gonçalves de Magalhães. Even the Brazilian Emperor Pedro II, who esteemed Magalhães very much, participated in this polemic, albeit under a pseudonym. Also in 1856, he wrote and published under feuilleton form his first romance, Cinco Minutos, that received critical acclaim. In the following year, his breakthrough novel, O Guarani, was released; it would be adapted into a famous opera by Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Gomes 13 years later. O Guarani would be first novel of what is informally called 'Alencar's Indianist Trilogy' - a series of three novels by Alencar that focused on the foundations of the Brazilian nation, and on its indigenous peoples and culture. The other two novels, Iracema and Ubirajara, would be published on 1865 and 1874, respectively. Although called a trilogy, the three books are unrelated in its plots. Alencar was affiliated with the Conservative Party of Brazil, being elected as a general deputy for Ceará. He was the Brazilian Minister of Justice from 1868 to 1870. He also planned to be a senator, but Pedro II never appointed him, under the pretext of Alencar being too young; with his feelings hurt, he would abandon politics later. He was very close friends with the also famous writer Machado de Assis, who wrote an article in 1866 praising his novel Iracema, that was published the year before, comparing his Indianist works to Gonçalves Dias, saying that 'Alencar was in prose what Dias was in poetry'. When Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1897, he chose Alencar as the patron of his chair. In 1864 he married Georgina Augusta Cochrane, daughter of an eccentric British aristocrat. They would have six children - Augusto (who would be the Brazilian Minister of External Relations in 1919, and also the Brazilian ambassador on the United States from 1920 to 1924), Clarisse, Ceci, Elisa, Mário (who would be a journalist and writer, and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters) and Adelia. (It is implied that Mário de Alencar was actually an illegitimate son of Machado de Assis, a fact that inspired Assis to write his famous novel Dom Casmurro). Alencar died in Rio de Janeiro in 1877, a victim of tuberculosis. A theatre in Fortaleza, the Theatro Jose de Alencar, was named after him. Translator Catarina Feldmann Edinger is an associate professor of English at the William Paterson College of New Jersey.
First edition in English of both of these novellas, translated by the Burtons during their stay in Sao Paulo in the late 1860's, but not published until later. These two stories were bound together in light biscuit-coloured paper wrappers, with border in black on front cover, enclosing title for both stories. Iracema is a kind of prose poem of the arrival of Portuguese colonists in Brazil and the unification of races and cultures there.
Jose Martiniano de Alencar (May 1, 1829 - December 12, 1877) was a Brazilian lawyer, politician, orator, novelist and dramatist. He is considered to be one of the most famous and influential Brazilian Romantic novelists of the 19th century, and a major exponent of the literary tradition known as 'Indianism'. Sometimes he signed his works with the pen name Erasmo. He is patron of the 23rd chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Jose Martiniano de Alencar was born in what is today the bairro of Messejana, Fortaleza, Ceará, on May 1, 1829, to former priest (and later politician) Jose Martiniano Pereira de Alencar and his cousin Ana Josefina de Alencar. Moving to São Paulo in 1844, he graduated in Law at the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo in 1850 and started his career in law in Rio de Janeiro. Invited by his friend Francisco Otaviano, he became a collaborator for the journal Correio Mercantil. He also wrote many chronicles for the Diário do Rio de Janeiro and the Jornal do Commercio. Alencar would compile all the chronicles he wrote for these newspapers in 1874, under the name Ao Correr da Pena. It was in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro, during the year of 1856, that Alencar gained notoriety, writing the Cartas sobre A Confederação dos Tamoios, under the pseudonym Ig. In them, he bitterly criticized the homonymous poem by Gonçalves de Magalhães. Even the Brazilian Emperor Pedro II, who esteemed Magalhães very much, participated in this polemic, albeit under a pseudonym. Also in 1856, he wrote and published under feuilleton form his first romance, Cinco Minutos, that received critical acclaim. In the following year, his breakthrough novel, O Guarani, was released; it would be adapted into a famous opera by Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Gomes 13 years later. O Guarani would be first novel of what is informally called 'Alencar's Indianist Trilogy' - a series of three novels by Alencar that focused on the foundations of the Brazilian nation, and on its indigenous peoples and culture. The other two novels, Iracema and Ubirajara, would be published on 1865 and 1874, respectively. Although called a trilogy, the three books are unrelated in its plots. Alencar was affiliated with the Conservative Party of Brazil, being elected as a general deputy for Ceará. He was the Brazilian Minister of Justice from 1868 to 1870. He also planned to be a senator, but Pedro II never appointed him, under the pretext of Alencar being too young; with his feelings hurt, he would abandon politics later. He was very close friends with the also famous writer Machado de Assis, who wrote an article in 1866 praising his novel Iracema, that was published the year before, comparing his Indianist works to Gonçalves Dias, saying that 'Alencar was in prose what Dias was in poetry'. When Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1897, he chose Alencar as the patron of his chair. In 1864 he married Georgina Augusta Cochrane, daughter of an eccentric British aristocrat. They would have six children - Augusto (who would be the Brazilian Minister of External Relations in 1919, and also the Brazilian ambassador on the United States from 1920 to 1924), Clarisse, Ceci, Elisa, Mário (who would be a journalist and writer, and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters) and AdElia. (It is implied that Mário de Alencar was actually an illegitimate son of Machado de Assis, a fact that inspired Assis to write his famous novel Dom Casmurro). Alencar died in Rio de Janeiro in 1877, a victim of tuberculosis. A theatre in Fortaleza, the Theatro Jose de Alencar, was named after him.
Iracema is one of the three indigenous novels by Jose de Alencar. It was first published in 1865. The story revolves around the relationship between the Tabajara indigenous woman, Iracema, and the Portuguese colonist, Martim, who was allied with the Tabajara nation's enemies, the Pitiguaras. Through the novel, Alencar tries to remake the history of the Brazilian colonial state of Ceará, with Moacir, the son of Iracema and Martim, as the first true Brazilian in Ceará. This pure Brazilian is born from the love of the natural, innocence (Iracema), culture and knowledge (Martim), and also represents the mixture (miscegenation) of the native race with the European race to produce a new caboclo race.
Jose Martiniano de Alencar (May 1, 1829 - December 12, 1877) was a Brazilian lawyer, politician, orator, novelist and dramatist. He is considered to be one of the most famous and influential Brazilian Romantic novelists of the 19th century, and a major exponent of the literary tradition known as 'Indianism'. Sometimes he signed his works with the pen name Erasmo. He is patron of the 23rd chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Jose Martiniano de Alencar was born in what is today the bairro of Messejana, Fortaleza, Ceará, on May 1, 1829, to former priest (and later politician) Jose Martiniano Pereira de Alencar and his cousin Ana Josefina de Alencar. Moving to São Paulo in 1844, he graduated in Law at the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo in 1850 and started his career in law in Rio de Janeiro. Invited by his friend Francisco Otaviano, he became a collaborator for the journal Correio Mercantil. He also wrote many chronicles for the Diário do Rio de Janeiro and the Jornal do Commercio. Alencar would compile all the chronicles he wrote for these newspapers in 1874, under the name Ao Correr da Pena. It was in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro, during the year of 1856, that Alencar gained notoriety, writing the Cartas sobre A Confederação dos Tamoios, under the pseudonym Ig. In them, he bitterly criticized the homonymous poem by Gonçalves de Magalhães. Even the Brazilian Emperor Pedro II, who esteemed Magalhães very much, participated in this polemic, albeit under a pseudonym. Also in 1856, he wrote and published under feuilleton form his first romance, Cinco Minutos, that received critical acclaim. In the following year, his breakthrough novel, O Guarani, was released; it would be adapted into a famous opera by Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Gomes 13 years later. O Guarani would be first novel of what is informally called 'Alencar's Indianist Trilogy' - a series of three novels by Alencar that focused on the foundations of the Brazilian nation, and on its indigenous peoples and culture. The other two novels, Iracema and Ubirajara, would be published on 1865 and 1874, respectively. Although called a trilogy, the three books are unrelated in its plots. Alencar was affiliated with the Conservative Party of Brazil, being elected as a general deputy for Ceará. He was the Brazilian Minister of Justice from 1868 to 1870. He also planned to be a senator, but Pedro II never appointed him, under the pretext of Alencar being too young; with his feelings hurt, he would abandon politics later. He was very close friends with the also famous writer Machado de Assis, who wrote an article in 1866 praising his novel Iracema, that was published the year before, comparing his Indianist works to Gonçalves Dias, saying that 'Alencar was in prose what Dias was in poetry'. When Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1897, he chose Alencar as the patron of his chair. In 1864 he married Georgina Augusta Cochrane, daughter of an eccentric British aristocrat. They would have six children - Augusto (who would be the Brazilian Minister of External Relations in 1919, and also the Brazilian ambassador on the United States from 1920 to 1924), Clarisse, Ceci, Elisa, Mário (who would be a journalist and writer, and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters) and AdElia. (It is implied that Mário de Alencar was actually an illegitimate son of Machado de Assis, a fact that inspired Assis to write his famous novel Dom Casmurro). Alencar died in Rio de Janeiro in 1877, a victim of tuberculosis. A theatre in Fortaleza, the Theatro Jose de Alencar, was named after him.
From the acclaimed international bestselling author of THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS and PAULA comes this dazzling new historical novel, her most ambitious work of fiction yet - a sweeping portrait of an unconventional woman carving her own destiny in an era marked by violence, passion, and adventure. An orphan raised in Valparaiso, Chile, by a Victorian spinster and her rigid brother, young, vivacious Eliza Sommers follows her lover to California during the Gold Rush of 1849 - a danger-filled quest that will become a momentous journey of transformation from innocence to independence. A masterful novel of love, adversity, spirit, and fulfillment, DAUGHTER OF FORTUNE once again demonstrates Isabel Allende's extraordinary literary gifts and confirms her place as one of the world's leading writers.
Isabel Allende (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the ‘magic realist‘ tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called ‘the world's most widely read Spanish-language author'. In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
In a very short time, Isabel Allende has won the allegiance and affection of readers and reviewers around the world-first with The House of the Spirits (praised by Alexander Coleman in The New York Tines Book Review as ‘a unique achievement, both personal witness and possible allegory of the past, present and future of Latin America'), followed closely by OF LOVE AND SHADOWS (of which Jonathan Yardley said in The Washington Post Book REVIEW, ‘The people . . . are so real, their triumphs and defeats are so faithful to the truth of human existence, that we see the world in miniature. This is precisely what fiction should do'). Now, in EVA LUNA, she has written her most ambitious and original work, a book that makes the foreign both familiar and welcoming, a book that confirms beyond any doubt her status as a major literary presence. ‘My name is Eva, which means ‘life,' according to a book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of these things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory.' This is the voice that carries us through Eva Luna, the assured voice of a naturally inventive storyteller, a woman who relates to us the picaresque tale of her own life (born poor, orphaned early, she will eventually rise to a position of unique influence) and of the people-from all levels of society-that she meets along the way. They include the rich and eccentric, for whom she works as a servant . . . the Lebanese emigrE who befriends her and takes her in . . . her unfortunate godmother, whose brain is addled by rum, and who believes in all the Catholic saints, some of African origin and a few of her own invention . . . a street urchin who grows into a petty criminal and, later a leader in the guerrilla struggle . . . a celebrated transsexual entertainer who instructs her, with great tenderness and insight, in the ways of the adult world . . . a young refugee whose flight from postwar Europe will prove crucial to Eva's fate . . . As Eva tells her story, Isabel Allende conjures up a whole complex South American nation-the rich, the poor, the simple, and the sophisticated- in a novel replete with character and incident, with drama and comedy and history, a novel that will delight and increase her devoted audience. . Born in Peru, Isabel Allende is Chilean. She was a journalist for many years and began to write fiction in 1981. The result was the worldwide bestseller THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS, which was followed two years later by the equally successful OF LOVE AND SHADOWS. Long a resident of Caracas, she now makes her home in San Rafael, California, where she is completing a new book.
Isabel Allende (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the ‘magic realist‘ tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called ‘the world's most widely read Spanish-language author'. In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
Rarely has a first novel catapulted a writer so suddenly to international attention and acclaim as Isabel Allende's THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS, the epic story of the large and tempestuous Trueba family. Now, with OF LOVE AND SHADOWS-itself a bestseller and critical success in Europe and Latin America-the promise of that auspicious debut is fulfilled. As in her first novel, Isabel Allende transports us to a world of large events, high drama, and rich emotions. Again we are in an unnamed Latin American country, this time in the grip of a military dictatorship. And at the center are two people, a woman and a man, who are fated, under the most desperate circumstances, to fall totally in love. She is Irene Beltrán, a daughter of the upper classes, a well-intentioned if somewhat naïve reporter for a women's magazine. He is Francisco Leal, son of Spanish exiles, a photographer and a clandestine worker in the resistance. Sent on a routine assignment, these two uncover a hideous crime, the revelation of which will challenge-and provoke-the official terrorism of the regime and will put their very lives at risk. OF LOVE AND SHADOWS gives us these people, their families, their country, and their agonized times with all the style and imagination, feeling and power that Isabel Allende's many passionate readers expect and recognize. And it should confirm her reputation as a major and original literary voice.
Isabel Allende (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the ‘magic realist‘ tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called ‘the world's most widely read Spanish-language author'. In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
Paula is a soul-baring memoir, which, like a novel of suspense, one reads without drawing a breath. The point of departure for these moving pages is a tragic personal experience. In December 1991, Isabel Allende's daughter, Paula, became gravely ill and shortly thereafter fell into a coma. During months in the hospital, the author began to write the story of her family for her unconscious daughter. In the telling, bizarre ancestors appear before our eyes; we hear both delightful and bitter childhood memories, amazing anecdotes of youthful years, the most intimate secrets passed along in whispers. Chile, Allende's native land, comes alive as well, with the turbulent history of the military coup of 1973, the ensuing dictatorship, and her family's years of exile. As an exorcism of death, in these pages Isabel Allende explores the past and questions the gods. The result is a magical book that carries the reader from tears to laughter, from terror to sensuality and wisdom. The glorious characters of Allende's fiction-clairvoyants, revolutionaries, and most of all the questing woman who makes her way through storytelling-populate this autobiography, perhaps Allende's finest work, and certainly her most revealing. In PAULA we understand that the miraculous world of THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS and EVA LUNA is the world Isabel Allende inhabits-it is her enchanted reality.
Isabel Allende (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the ‘magic realist‘ tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called ‘the world's most widely read Spanish-language author'. In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
Isabel Allende's sensuous novel about the mystery of memory In nineteenth-century Chile, Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that erases all recollections of the first five years of her life. Raised by her regal and ambitious grandmother Paulina del Valle, Aurora grows up in a privileged environment, but is tormented by horrible nightmares. When she is forced to recognize her betrayal at the hands of the man she loves, and to cope with the resulting solitude, she explores the mystery of her past.
Isabel Allende (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the ‘magic realist‘ tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called ‘the world's most widely read Spanish-language author'. In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
Already a best seller and critical success in Europe and Latin America, THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS is the magnificent epic of the Trueba family-their loves, their ambitions, their spiritual quests, their relations with one another, and their participation in the history of their times, a history that becomes destiny and overtakes them all. We begin-at the turn of the century, in an unnamed South American country-in the childhood home of the woman who will be the mother and grandmother of the clan, Clara del Valle. A warm-hearted, hypersensitive girl, Clara has distinguished herself from an early age with her telepathic abilities-she can read fortunes, make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and predict the future. Following the mysterious death of her sister, the fabled Rosa the Beautiful, Clara has been mute for nine years, resisting all attempts to make her speak. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce that she will be married soon. Her husband-to-be is Esteban Trueba, a stern, willful man, given to fits of rage and haunted by a profound loneliness. At the age of thirty-five, he has returned to the capital from his country estate to visit his dying mother and to find a wife. (He was Rosa's fiancE, and her death has marked him as deeply as it has Clara.) This is the man Clara has foreseen-has summoned to be her husband; Esteban, in turn, will conceive a passion for Clara that will last the rest of his long and rancorous life. We go with this couple as they move into the extravagant house he builds for her, a structure that everyone calls ‘the big house on the corner' which is soon populated with Clara's spiritualist friends, the artists she sponsors, the charity cases she takes an interest in, with Esteban's political cronies, and, above all, with the Trueba children . . . their daughter, Blanca, a practical, self-effacing girl who will, to the fury of her father, form a lifelong liaison with the son of his foreman . . . the twins, Jaime and Nicolás, the former a solitary, taciturn boy who becomes a doctor to the poor and unfortunate; the latter a playboy, a dabbler in Eastern religions and mystical disciplines . . . and, in the third generation, the child Alba, Blanca's daughter (the family does not recognize the real father for years, so great is Esteban's anger), a child who is fondled and indulged and instructed by them all. For all their good fortune, their natural (and supernatural) talents, and their powerful attachments to one another, the inhabitants of ‘the big house on the corner' are not immune to the larger forces of the world. And, as the twentieth century beats on . . . as Esteban becomes more strident in his opposition to Communism . . . as Jaime becomes the friend and confidant of the Socialist leader known as the Candidate . . . as Alba falls in love with a student radical . . . the Truebas become actors-and victims-in a tragic series of events that gives THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS a deeper resonance and meaning. It is the supreme achievement of this splendid novel that we feel ourselves members of this large, passionate (and sometimes exasperating) family, that we become attached to them as if they were our own. That this is the author's first novel makes it all the more extraordinary. THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS marks the appearance of a major international writer.
Isabel Allende (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the ‘magic realist‘ tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called ‘the world's most widely read Spanish-language author'. In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
THE INFINITE PLAN charts one man's spiritual progress against five decades of history and cultural change. Greg Reeves, the son of an itinerant preacher who claims that life is governed by an infinite plan, spends the latter part of his childhood in the L.A. barrio where his family settled when their father became ill. His best friend and soul mate there is Carmen Morales, the daughter of a hospitable Latino family. The novel follows Greg and Carmen through turbulent experiences as each searches for identity. Greg discovers several different kinds of racial discrimination in the crowded barrio. Later, he taps into the social and sexual revolution in Berkeley; and suffers through the crucible of Vietnam, from which he emerges determined to become rich and powerful no matter the cost in morality or peace of mind. He enters into disastrous marriages with two beautiful women, both of whom, he belatedly realizes, resemble his passive, remote mother; he also fails as a father. Allende's intensely imagined prose has clarity and dimension; she describes the exotic and the mundane with equal skill. Along the way Greg discovers that ‘there is no infinite plan, just the strife of living.'
Isabel Allende (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the ‘magic realist‘ tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called ‘the world's most widely read Spanish-language author'. In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
In 1988 Isabel Allende published EVA LUNA, a novel that recounted the adventurous life of a poor young Latin American woman who finds friendship, love and some measure of worldly success through her powers as a storyteller. Now in THE STORIES OF EVA LUNA, she again presents us with a treasure trove of such stories, showing us once more why Eva Luna (and her much-celebrated creator) has won such a large and devoted readership.
Isabel Allende (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the ‘magic realist‘ tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called ‘the world's most widely read Spanish-language author'. In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
In 1988 Isabel Allende published EVA LUNA, a novel that recounted the adventurous life of a poor young Latin American woman who finds friendship, love and some measure of worldly success through her powers as a storyteller. Her most ambitious novel to date, EVA LUNA was described by the Washington Post as a ‘cascade of stories [that] tumbles out before the reader, stories vivid, passionate and human.' Now in THE STORIES OF EVA LUNA, she again presents us with a treasure trove of such stories, showing us once more why Eva Luna (and her much-celebrated creator) has won such a large and devoted readership. We begin with Rolf CarlE, the European refugee, journalist and lover who figured so largely in her last book. Lying in bed with Eva Luna, he asks her to tell him a story. ‘What about?' she asks. ‘Tell me a story you have never told anyone before. Make it up for me.' And so she does, giving Rolf CarlE and the reader twenty-three vibrant, enchanting demonstrations of her artistry. Here are campesinos and rich people, guerrillas and fortune-tellers, great beauties and tyrants, the foreign rendered indelibly familiar. Here is Clarisa, ‘born before the city had electricity, she lived to see television coverage of the first astronaut levitating on the moon, and she died of amazement when the Pope came for a visit and was met in the street by homosexuals dressed up as nuns'. . . here is El Capitán, who waited for forty years before proposing to his dancing partner . . . Horacio Fortunato, a circus owner and entrepreneur, whose encounter with a languid foreign woman will force him to change his roguish ways even as he attempts to court her . . . Maurizia Rugieri, who abandons her husband and child for a young medical student, converting their life together into an opera of her own design . . . Nicholas Vidal, who ‘had always known that a woman would cost him his life' but never suspected that it would be the wife of Judge Hidalgo . . . Riad Halabi (whom readers will remember from Eva Luna), once again displaying his concern and wisdom for the people of Agua Santa . . . Marcia Lieberman, the wife of a European diplomat, whose brief affair with the President for Life of an unnamed Latin American country has startling rewards . . . Love, vengeance, nostalgia, compassion, irony - Isabel Allende leaves no emotion untouched in these stories. Opulently imagined, stirringly told, they confirm once more her place as one of the world's leading writers. . Born in Peru, Isabel Allende is Chilean. She worked as a journalist for many years and only began to write fiction in 1981. The result was the widely acclaimed international bestseller THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS, which was soon followed by the novels OF LOVE AND SHADOWS and EVA LUNA. She left her homeland after the coup of 1973 and lived for many years in Caracas. She now lives near San Francisco, where she is completing her fourth novel. . Originally published in Spanish as Cuentos de Eva Luna - Plaza y Janes, S.A., Barcelona, Spain.
Isabel Allende (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the ‘magic realist‘ tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called ‘the world's most widely read Spanish-language author'. In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
A swashbuckling adventure story that reveals for the first time how Diego de la Vega became the masked man we all know so well. Born in southern California late in the eighteenth century, he is a child of two worlds. Diego de la Vega's father is an aristocratic Spanish military man turned landowner; his mother, a Shoshone warrior. Diego learns from his maternal grandmother, White Owl, the ways of her tribe while receiving from his father lessons in the art of fencing and in cattle branding. It is here, during Diego's childhood, filled with mischief and adventure, that he witnesses the brutal injustices dealt Native Americans by European settlers and first feels the inner conflict of his heritage. At the age of sixteen, Diego is sent to Barcelona for a European education. In a country chafing under the corruption of Napoleonic rule, Diego follows the example of his celebrated fencing master and joins La Justicia, a secret underground resistance movement devoted to helping the powerless and the poor. With this tumultuous period as a backdrop, Diego falls in love, saves the persecuted, and confronts for the first time a great rival who emerges from the world of privilege. Between California and Barcelona, the New World and the Old, the persona of Zorro is formed, a great hero is born, and the legend begins. After many adventures-duels at dawn, fierce battles with pirates at sea, and impossible rescues-Diego de la Vega, a.k.a. Zorro, returns to America to reclaim the hacienda on which he was raised and to seek justice for all who cannot fight for it themselves.
Isabel Allende (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the ‘magic realist‘ tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called ‘the world's most widely read Spanish-language author'. In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
Everyone in Cape Verde knew Senhor da Silva Araujo. Successful entrepeneur, owner of the island's first automobile, a most serious, upright, and self-made businessman, Senhor da Silva Araujo was the local success story. Born an orphan, he never married, he never splurged-one good suit was good enough for him-and he never wandered from the straight and narrow. Or so everyone thought. But when his 387-page Last Will and Testament is read aloud-a marathon task on a hot afternoon which exhausts reader after reader-there is shocking news, and not just for the smug nephew so certain of inheriting all of Senhor da Silva Araujo's property. In his will, Senhor da Silva Araujo has left a memoir that is a touching web of elaborate self-deceptions. He desired so ardently to prosper, to be taken seriously, and to join (perhaps, if they would have him) the exclusive GrEmio country club. But most of all, he wanted to be a good man. And yet, shady deals, twists of fate, an illegitimate child: such is the lot of poor, self-critical Senhor da Silva Araujo. A bit like Calvino's Mr. Palomar in his attention to protocol and in his terror of life's passions; a bit like Svevo's Zeno (a little pompous, a little old-fashioned, and often hapless), Senhor da Silva Araujo moves along a deliciously blurry line between farce and tragedy: a self-important buffoon becomes a fully human, even tragic, figure in the arc of this wonderful novel-translated into Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, and Swedish, and now, at last, English.
Germano Almeida (born 1945 in Boa Vista) is a Cape Verdean author and lawyer. Born on the Cape island Boa Vista, Almeida studied law at the University of Lisbon and currently practices in Mindelo. His novels have been translated into several languages. He married Sam Stewart in 1970. Almeida founded the magazine Porto & Vírgula (1983-87) and Aguaviva. In 1989 he founded the IlhEu Editora publishing house and has since published 16 books (nine novels). His first work was O dia das calças roladas which was about an account of a strike on the island of Santo Antão, it was first written in 1982 and was published in 1983. He wrote the novel The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo which was about businessman turned philanthropist who leaves his fortune to his illegitimate daughter. As independence comes he is shown up to be a relic of colonialism. A motion picture would be made about the novel in 1997 and was directed by the Portuguese director Francisco Manso, it won the award at the Brazil's largest film festival, the Festival de Cinema de Gramado. He later published Dona Pura e os Camaradas de Abril in 1999, a story about the 1974 Carnation revolution in Portugal. Cabo Verde - Viagem pela historia das ilhas, published in 2003 was his historical presentation of all the nine inhabited islands that constitute Cape Verde. His recently published novels and works were Eva in 2006 and De Monte Cara vê-se o mundo in 2014. He has been awarded the Order of the Dragon Plant - First Class and the Portuguese Order of Merit. SHEILA FARIA GLASER is an editor at the New York Times Magazine and has translated Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation and Michel Serres's The Troubador of Knowledge. . .
Less a novel in the usual sense than a series of scenes of everyday life in Rio of the time. The enduring qualities of the Memoirs clearly reside in the realistic description of life as it was actually lived in 19th century Brazil - though always with an element of satirical caricature in Rio de Janeiro ‘in the time of the king', i.e. between 1803 and 1821, when Dom Joao VI, the King of Portugal, and his court resided in Brazil as a result of the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. Rio at that time, despite its growing trade and new political importance was still a sleepy colonial city of less than 100,000 inhabitants, with customs which, as the Memoirs clearly demonstrate, were almost rustic in their lack of sophistication. The realism of Manuel Antonio is the more remarkable because he wrote during period when romanticism was much in vogue in Brazil. Nonetheless, the Memoirs attained a certain popularity from the time of their publication. Criticism long considered the work a forerunner of naturalism and realism in Brazil. Modern critics of the stature of Mario de Andrade. Eduardo Frieiro. Eugënio Gomes and Josue Montelo have convincingly established that the work belongs instead to that of the picaresque novel, which had its origins in Spain. Manuel Antonio, who relates the behavior of his characters within a particular setting with little regard for their psychological motivation, does indeed create a pageant of Brazilian life of an earlier day in the best tradition of the picaresque novel. MEMOIRS OF A MILITIA SERGEANT is the fourth English translation in the Latin American Classics Series. Sponsored by UNESCO and the Organization of American States, the publication of the series is undertaken to introduce and spread knowledge of representative works of Latin American literature among English and French-speaking peoples.
Manuel Antônio de Almeida (November 17, 1831 - November 28, 1861) was a Brazilian satirical writer, medician and teacher. He is famous for the book Memoirs of a Police Sergeant, written under the pen name Um Brasileiro (English: A Brazilian). He is the patron of the 28th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Almeida was born in Rio de Janeiro, to lieutenant Antônio de Almeida and Josefina Maria de Almeida. Few things are known about his years of primary studies - although he entered at the Medicine course in 1849, graduating in 1855. Financial difficulties inspired him to dedicate himself to literature and journalism. His magnum opus, Memoirs of a Police Sergeant, was initially published in feuilleton form during the years 1852-1853, in the journal Correio Mercantil. In 1858, he became the administrator of Tipografia Nacional, where he met Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Trying to enter in the political career, he would go to the city of Campos dos Goytacazes, embarking in the ship Hermes, in order to start his political research. However, the ship wrecked off near the shores of Macae, and he died in the disaster.
In THE FIVE SEASONS OF LOVE, acclaimed Brazilian writer Joao Almino presents a compelling and sympathetic portrait of a woman whose life has not turned out as she anticipated, and whose once audacious dreams have been replaced by half-truths, failures, and frustration. To fulfill a pact made during her student days, fifty-five-year-old Ana Kauffman plans a party to celebrate the new millennium. As old friends resurface and the countdown to the new century draws near, Ana's past undergoes a series of unexpected revisions--beginning with the arrival of Berta, the newly minted post-op persona of Ana's former boyfriend Norberto. Set amidst the chaos of contemporary Brasilia, a place where even the most basic human affairs--love, friendship, sex, and work--can take unlikely shapes, Ana's story is both relentlessly modern and profoundly timeless. Winner of the Casa de las Americas 2003 Literary Award, THE FIVE SEASONS OF LOVE is an extraordinary novel by a writer at the height of his powers.
João Almino is a Brazilian novelist. He is the author of The Brasília Quintet, which consists of the novels Ideas on Where to Spend the End of the World, Samba-Enredo, The Five Seasons of Love (first published in Portuguese by Editora Record; published in Spanish by Alfaguara, MExico, and by Corregidor, in Argentina; in Italian by Editrice Il Sirente; Casa de las Americas 2003 Literary Award; in English by Host Publications, 2008); The Book of Emotions (shortlisted for the Zaffari & Bourbon Literary Award and the Portugal-Telecom Literary Award; Editora Record, 2008; Dalkey Archive Press, 2012) and Cidade Livre (Free City, Editora Record, 2010; Passo Fundo Zaffari & Bourbon Literary Award for best novel published in Portuguese from May 2009 to May 2011; shortlisted for the Jabuti Award 2011 and for the Portugal-Telecom Literary Award 2011; translated as Free City, it was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2013). His most recent novel was published in Brazil in 2015: Enigmas da Primavera (Enigmas of Spring), which was published in English in 2016 by Dalkey Archive Press. He has also authored books of philosophical and literary essays. He taught at the National Autonomous University of
An idyllic, romantic novelette set in rural village.
Ignacio Manuel Altamirano Basilio (November 13, 1834 - February 13, 1893) was a Mexican lawyer, writer, journalist, teacher and politician. He was born in Tixtla, Guerrero, into an indigenous family; his father was appointed mayor of Tixtla in 1848, which gave the boy Ignacio Manuel, who was 14 at the time, the opportunity to go to school. He learned to read and write in his hometown. He made his first studies in Toluca, thanks to a scholarship granted by Ignacio Ramírez, of whom he was a disciple. In 1849 he studied at the Literary Institute of Toluca, and later at the Colegio de San Juan de Letrán for law. He belonged to academic and literary associations such as the Mexican Drama Conservatory, the Nezahualcoyotl Society, the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics, the Liceo Hidalgo and the Álvarez Club. A great defender of liberalism, Altamirano took part in the Ayutla revolution in 1854 against santanismo, and later in the war of the Reformation.. He also fought against the French invasion in 1863. After this period of military conflicts, Altamirano dedicated himself to teaching, working as a teacher in the National Preparatory School, in the School of Commerce and Administration, and in the National School of Teachers. He also worked in the press, where together with Guillermo Prieto and Ignacio Ramírez he founded the Correo de MExico, and with Gonzalo A. Esteva the literary magazine El Renacimiento. El Renacimiento published writers of all literary, ideological, and political tendencies, its main mission was to provoke the revival of Mexican literature and promote the notion of national unity and identity. Altamirano founded several newspapers and magazines such as: El Correo de MExico, El Renacimiento, El Federalista, La Tribuna and La República. In 1861, he served as a deputy in the Congress of the Union for three terms, during which he advocated free, secular and compulsory primary education. He was also Attorney General of the Republic, prosecutor, magistrate and president of the Supreme Court, as well as senior officer of the Ministry of Development. He also worked in the Mexican diplomatic service, serving as consul in Barcelona and Paris. Altamirano founded the Liceo de Puebla and the Escuela Normal de Profesores de MExico and wrote several highly successful books in his time, in which he cultivated different literary styles and genres, cultivating the short story, criticism, history, the essay, chronicles, biography, bibliographic studies, poetry, the novel. His literary works portray the Mexican society of the time. His critical studies were published in literary magazines in Mexico. His speeches have also been published. Altamirano loved the legends, customs, and descriptions of landscapes in Mexico. In 1867 he began to stand out and oriented his literature towards the affirmation of national values, he also worked as a literary historian and critic. He died in Italy in 1893 , on a diplomatic mission. On the centenary of his birth, his remains were deposited in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons in Mexico City.
Emphasizes the equality of the mestizo and Indian compared to the Anglo-Saxon.
Ignacio Manuel Altamirano Basilio (November 13, 1834 - February 13, 1893) was a Mexican lawyer, writer, journalist, teacher and politician. He was born in Tixtla, Guerrero, into an indigenous family; his father was appointed mayor of Tixtla in 1848, which gave the boy Ignacio Manuel, who was 14 at the time, the opportunity to go to school. He learned to read and write in his hometown. He made his first studies in Toluca, thanks to a scholarship granted by Ignacio Ramírez, of whom he was a disciple. In 1849 he studied at the Literary Institute of Toluca, and later at the Colegio de San Juan de Letrán for law. He belonged to academic and literary associations such as the Mexican Drama Conservatory, the Nezahualcoyotl Society, the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics, the Liceo Hidalgo and the Álvarez Club. A great defender of liberalism, Altamirano took part in the Ayutla revolution in 1854 against santanismo, and later in the war of the Reformation.. He also fought against the French invasion in 1863. After this period of military conflicts, Altamirano dedicated himself to teaching, working as a teacher in the National Preparatory School, in the School of Commerce and Administration, and in the National School of Teachers. He also worked in the press, where together with Guillermo Prieto and Ignacio Ramírez he founded the Correo de MExico, and with Gonzalo A. Esteva the literary magazine El Renacimiento. El Renacimiento published writers of all literary, ideological, and political tendencies, its main mission was to provoke the revival of Mexican literature and promote the notion of national unity and identity. Altamirano founded several newspapers and magazines such as: El Correo de MExico, El Renacimiento, El Federalista, La Tribuna and La República. In 1861, he served as a deputy in the Congress of the Union for three terms, during which he advocated free, secular and compulsory primary education. He was also Attorney General of the Republic, prosecutor, magistrate and president of the Supreme Court, as well as senior officer of the Ministry of Development. He also worked in the Mexican diplomatic service, serving as consul in Barcelona and Paris. Altamirano founded the Liceo de Puebla and the Escuela Normal de Profesores de MExico and wrote several highly successful books in his time, in which he cultivated different literary styles and genres, cultivating the short story, criticism, history, the essay, chronicles, biography, bibliographic studies, poetry, the novel. His literary works portray the Mexican society of the time. His critical studies were published in literary magazines in Mexico. His speeches have also been published. Altamirano loved the legends, customs, and descriptions of landscapes in Mexico. In 1867 he began to stand out and oriented his literature towards the affirmation of national values, he also worked as a literary historian and critic. He died in Italy in 1893 , on a diplomatic mission. On the centenary of his birth, his remains were deposited in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons in Mexico City.
Emphasizes the equality of the mestizo and Indian compared to the Anglo-Saxon. (London:Folio Society, 1957).
Ignacio Manuel Altamirano Basilio (November 13, 1834 - February 13, 1893) was a Mexican lawyer, writer, journalist, teacher and politician. He was born in Tixtla, Guerrero, into an indigenous family; his father was appointed mayor of Tixtla in 1848, which gave the boy Ignacio Manuel, who was 14 at the time, the opportunity to go to school. He learned to read and write in his hometown. He made his first studies in Toluca, thanks to a scholarship granted by Ignacio Ramírez, of whom he was a disciple. In 1849 he studied at the Literary Institute of Toluca, and later at the Colegio de San Juan de Letrán for law. He belonged to academic and literary associations such as the Mexican Drama Conservatory, the Nezahualcoyotl Society, the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics, the Liceo Hidalgo and the Álvarez Club. A great defender of liberalism, Altamirano took part in the Ayutla revolution in 1854 against santanismo, and later in the war of the Reformation.. He also fought against the French invasion in 1863. After this period of military conflicts, Altamirano dedicated himself to teaching, working as a teacher in the National Preparatory School, in the School of Commerce and Administration, and in the National School of Teachers. He also worked in the press, where together with Guillermo Prieto and Ignacio Ramírez he founded the Correo de MExico, and with Gonzalo A. Esteva the literary magazine El Renacimiento. El Renacimiento published writers of all literary, ideological, and political tendencies, its main mission was to provoke the revival of Mexican literature and promote the notion of national unity and identity. Altamirano founded several newspapers and magazines such as: El Correo de MExico, El Renacimiento, El Federalista, La Tribuna and La República. In 1861, he served as a deputy in the Congress of the Union for three terms, during which he advocated free, secular and compulsory primary education. He was also Attorney General of the Republic, prosecutor, magistrate and president of the Supreme Court, as well as senior officer of the Ministry of Development. He also worked in the Mexican diplomatic service, serving as consul in Barcelona and Paris. Altamirano founded the Liceo de Puebla and the Escuela Normal de Profesores de MExico and wrote several highly successful books in his time, in which he cultivated different literary styles and genres, cultivating the short story, criticism, history, the essay, chronicles, biography, bibliographic studies, poetry, the novel. His literary works portray the Mexican society of the time. His critical studies were published in literary magazines in Mexico. His speeches have also been published. Altamirano loved the legends, customs, and descriptions of landscapes in Mexico. In 1867 he began to stand out and oriented his literature towards the affirmation of national values, he also worked as a literary historian and critic. He died in Italy in 1893 , on a diplomatic mission. On the centenary of his birth, his remains were deposited in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons in Mexico City.
Throughout the Dominican Republic and Central America it is a household ritual to offer a ‘cafecito' (a small cup of dark, rich, potent coffee) to any visitor, especially a stranger. Now, in a story spanning Latin America and Nebraska, Julia Alvarez offers us A CAFECITO STORY. In North America, coffee is the morning lifeline between waking and working. In Central and South America, coffee is an economic lifeline, after oil the most important export commodity. Especially when coffee is grown sustainably, it links the First and Third Worlds in ways that are surprising and often delightful. For instance, North American songbirds winter in southern habitats where their survival is directly dependent on coffee farming practices. With lyric simplicity, A CAFECITO STORY tells the complex tale of a social beverage that bridges nations and unites people in trade, in words, in birds, and in love. The story unfolds through the eyes of Joe, a man with farming in his blood but an increasing sense of displacement from the natural world. While on holiday in the Dominican Republic, Joe learns about how coffee is grown and traded from Miguel, a Dominican coffee farmer. It is from Miguel and the other campesinos that Joe comes to understand the role of coffee in global trade, environmental degradation, and endangered songbird habitat. Initially overwhelmed, Joe eventually learns to live compatibly with the natural world. Human communication, in the form of the written word, the spoken word, and the shared cup of coffee gives him the power to face life's challenges one cup at a time.
JULIA ALVAREZ was born, as she puts it, ‘by accident,' in New York City, but shortly thereafter her family moved back to their native Dominican Republic. She spent her childhood there until her family was forced to flee due to political pressure. Her first book of poems, HOMECOMING, appeared in 1984. Her first novel, HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, was published in 1990, followed four years later by IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has also the author of the novel IN THE NAME OF SALOME. She is a writer-in-residence at Middlebury College. She lives with her husband, Bill Eichner, in the Vermont countryside, but maintains close ties to her homeland through Alta Gracia, their organic coffee farm, established to demonstrate the ideas and principles of sustainable living. . BILL EICHNER, an ophthalmologist by trade, comes from Midwestern farm stock. He is also a gardener, chef, and the author of The New Family Cookbook (Chelsea Green, 2000). BELKIS RAMIREZ, who contributed the woodcuts for A CAFECITO STORY, is one of the most celebrated artists in the Dominican Republic.
The Garcías - Dr. Carlos (Papi), his wife Laura (Mami), and their four daughters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía - belong to the uppermost echelon of Spanish Caribbean society, descended from the conquistadores. Their family compound adjoins the palacio of the dictator's daughter. So when Dr. García's part in a coup attempt is discovered, the family must flee. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Dominican Republic. Papi has to find new patients in the Bronx. Mami, far from the compound and the family retainers, must find herself. Meanwhile, the girls try to lose themselves - by forgetting their Spanish, by straightening their hair and wearing fringed bell bottoms. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating being caught between the old world and the new, trying to live up to their father's version of honor while accommodating the expectations of their American boyfriends. Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez's brilliant and buoyant first novel sets the García girls free to tell their most intimate stories about how they came to be at home - and not at home - in America. It's a long way from Santo Domingo to the Bronx, but if anyone can go the distance, it's the Garcia girls. Four lively latinas plunged from a pampered life of privilege on an island compound into the big-city chaos of New York, they rebel against Mami and Papi's old-world discipline and embrace all that America has to offer.
Julia Alvarez is the author of five previous books of fiction, including HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS and IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES; a book of essays; five collections of poetry; and five books for children. She received the Hispanic Heritage Award in 2002. She lives in Vermont, where she is writer-in-residence at Middlebury College.
The Garcías - Dr. Carlos (Papi), his wife Laura (Mami), and their four daughters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía - belong to the uppermost echelon of Spanish Caribbean society, descended from the conquistadores. Their family compound adjoins the palacio of the dictator's daughter. So when Dr. García's part in a coup attempt is discovered, the family must flee. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Dominican Republic. Papi has to find new patients in the Bronx. Mami, far from the compound and the family retainers, must find herself. Meanwhile, the girls try to lose themselves - by forgetting their Spanish, by straightening their hair and wearing fringed bell bottoms. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating being caught between the old world and the new, trying to live up to their father's version of honor while accommodating the expectations of their American boyfriends. Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez's brilliant and buoyant first novel sets the García girls free to tell their most intimate stories about how they came to be at home - and not at home - in America. It's a long way from Santo Domingo to the Bronx, but if anyone can go the distance, it's the Garcia girls. Four lively latinas plunged from a pampered life of privilege on an island compound into the big-city chaos of New York, they rebel against Mami and Papi's old-world discipline and embrace all that America has to offer.
Julia Alvarez is the author of five previous books of fiction, including HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS and IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES; a book of essays; five collections of poetry; and five books for children. She received the Hispanic Heritage Award in 2002. She lives in Vermont, where she is writer-in-residence at Middlebury College.
This novel tells the story of two women - mother and daughter, one a poet, the other a teacher - and how they confronted the machismo in two Caribbean revolutions. Set in the politically chaotic Dominican Republic of the late nineteenth century; on the campuses of three American universities, and in the idealistic Communist Cuba of the 1960s, this story is based on the real lives of a volatile, opinionated, romantic, intrigue-loving family. SalomE Urena's fervent patriotic poems turned her - at seventeen - into the Dominican Republic's national icon. In stark contrast, her daughter, Camila, shy and self-effacing, bent to accommodate the demands of her father and brothers (a president, an ambassador, an international literary star)-trying to hide her preference for women, to stay out of the spotlight, and to offend no one. Whereas her mother dedicated her brief life to educating Dominican girls to serve their turbulent new nation, Camila spent her career anonymously explaining the Spanish pluperfect to upper-class American girls. We meet Camila in 1960 when she is sixty-five years old and about to retire from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. This is Camila's last chance to choose a final destiny for herself In the process of deciding, Camila uncovers first the reality of her mother's tragic personal life and, finally, where she must place her own kind of passion and commitment. Latina poet and university professor Alvarez brings many common bonds to this novel based on ‘La musa de la patria,' SalomE Ureña, and her daughter, Profesora Camila Henriquez-Urena. Not the least of these is an undaunted female stance from inside a powerful Caribbean family. . JULIA ALVAREZ is the author of HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES (a National Book Award finalist), and YO! She has also published three collections of poetry and, most recently, SOMETHING TO DECLARE, a collection of essays. She lives in Vermont and in the Dominican Republic, where she and her husband run a coffee plantation. . .
Julia Alvarez is the author of five previous books of fiction, including HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS and IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES; a book of essays; five collections of poetry; and five books for children. She received the Hispanic Heritage Award in 2002. She lives in Vermont, where she is writer-in-residence at Middlebury College.
It is November 25, 1960, and the bodies of three beautiful, convent-educated sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. El Caribe, the official newspaper, reports their deaths as an accident. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Raphael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship. It doesn't have to. Everyone knows of Las Mariposas - ‘The Butterflies.' Now, three decades later, Julia Alvarez, also a daughter of the Dominican Republic and long haunted by these sisters, immerses us in a tangled and dangerous moment in Hispanic Caribbean history to tell their story in the only way it can truly be understood - through fiction. In this brilliantly characterized novel, the voices of all four sisters - Minerva, Patria, Maria Teresa, and DedE - speak across the decades, to tell their own stories - from hair ribbons to gunrunning to prison torture - and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo's rule. The Butterflies were extraordinary women. Minerva, once the object of the dictator's desire, had dared to publicly slap his face. Devout Patria found her calling to the uprising through the church. Alluring - and vain - Maria Teresa joined in pursuit of romance. Only DedE, the practical one, the most diligent in her duty to family and tradition, kept apart. And only she survived to see that their names were remembered. Now, through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez's imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again. And DedE joins them as a heroine of equal courage.
Julia Alvarez was ten years old when her parents were forced to emigrate to the United States from the Dominican Republic, shortly before Trujillo was assassinated. Her first novel, HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, published in 1991, was received with delight and acclaim. It was listed by Library Journal as one of the best books of the year, was named a Notable Book of 1991 by the New York Times Book Review and by the ALA, and was awarded the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature. A professor of English at Middlebury College, Alvarez lives with her husband in Vermont.
Latina novelist Alma Huebner is suffering from writer's block and is years past the completion date for yet another of her bestselling family sagas. Her husband, Richard, works for a humanitarian organization dedicated to the health and prosperity of developing countries and wants her help on an extended AIDS assignment in the Dominican Republic. But Alma begs off joining him: the publisher is breathing down her neck. She promises to work hard and follow him a bit later. The truth is that Alma is seriously sidetracked by a story she has stumbled across. It's the story of a much earlier medical do-gooder. Spaniard Francisco Xavier Balmis, who in 1803 undertook to vaccinate the populations of Spain's American colonies against smallpox. To do this, he required live ‘carriers' of the vaccine. Of greater interest to Alma is Isabel Sendales y Gomez, director of La Casa de Expositos, who was asked to select twenty-two orphan boys to be the vaccine carriers. She agreed - with the stipulation that she would accompany the boys on the proposed two-year voyage. Her strength and courage inspire Alma, who finds herself becoming obsessed with the details of Isabel's adventures. This resplendent novel-within-a-novel spins the disparate tales of two remark- able women, both of whom are swept along by machismo. In depicting their confrontation bf the great scourges of their respective eras, Alvarez exposes the conflict between altruism and ambition.
Julia Alvarez is the author of five previous books of fiction, including HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS and IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES; a book of essays; five collections of poetry; and five books for children. She received the Hispanic Heritage Award in 2002. She lives in Vermont, where she is writer-in-residence at Middlebury College.
Julia Alvarez's three bestselling novels-HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES, and YO! - have sold over a half million copies in the United States and have been translated into nine foreign languages. Her three prizewinning volumes of poetry have established her as a major American poet. And her remarkably openhearted articles that appear regularly in many national magazines have made her singular voice familiar to many. Now, in her first book of nonfiction, Julia Alvarez offers two dozen personal essays about the two major (and interlocking) issues of her life-growing up with one foot in each of two cultures, and writing. In 1960, when Alvarez was ten years old, her father's participation in a failed coup attempt against Rafael Trujillo, the repressive dictator of the Dominican Republic, resulted in the family's self-imposed exile to New York City, where Dr. Alvarez set up a medical practice in the Bronx while his wife and four daughters set about the serious business of assimilation. That uprooting formed the thematic basis for two of Julia Alvarez's novels. Her father's revolutionary ties inspired the third, the story of one of Trujillo's most infamous atrocities. SOMETHING TO DECLARE is about the influences those experiences have had on her work, and about the practical lessons she's learned on her way to becoming the internationally acclaimed writer she now is. ‘Customs,' the first half of SOMETHING TO DECLARE, examines the specific effects of exile-surviving the shock of New York City public school life; yearning to fit in; watching the Miss America contest for clues to ‘beauty,' American-style; worrying about reactions to her published writing back on the Island. The essays in the second half, ‘Declarations,' are about the writing and range from confession of how she supported her writing habit early on to the gritty details of her own actual writing process. One of the most revealing is ‘In the Name of the Novel' in which she takes the reader along on a scouting trip in search of the subject of her next book. What's unexpected is that she lets us watch as the project falters and then fails. . As an experienced teacher of creative writing, Julia Alvarez is a popular speaker on college campuses and famous for her receptivity to probing questions from her audiences and for her generous responses. Something to Declare captures the unique rapport between a writer and her readers. Julia Alvarez lives in Vermont with her husband. A professor of English literature at Middlebuty College, she has also taught at the University of Illinois, George Washington University, and at the Breadloaf Writers Conference. Her novels have received many honors, including ALA Notable Book of the Year and designation as a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. . .
Julia Alvarez is the author of five previous books of fiction, including HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS and IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES; a book of essays; five collections of poetry; and five books for children. She received the Hispanic Heritage Award in 2002. She lives in Vermont, where she is writer-in-residence at Middlebury College.
Yolanda Garcia - Yo, for short - is the literary one in the family. Her first published novel, in which she made ‘characters' out of her three sisters, her Mami and Papi, her grandparents, tias, tios, cousins, housemaids, and husbands was a big success. Now she's famous and basking in the spotlight while her ‘characters' find their naked and very recognizable selves dangling in that same blinding light. So what happens? Turnabout is fair play. Yolanda Garcia's family and friends get their chance to tell the truth about Yo: how she's always had to be center stage; that she's been telling lies since the day she was born; about the year she went into therapy with her best friend and how Yo swore off sex; how her college professor kept trying to keep her from ruining her life and throwing away her talent; how she stole a plot for a short story from one of her students; how she fills the house her third husband built for her with voodoo offerings-'little things he mustn't touch'-we]l, you get the idea. Everyone, from her sisters to her fame-obsessed stalker, rips into her. In the process, they create endearing self-portraits, while Yo (which also means ‘I') is herself denied the privilege of speaking in her own defense. This zesty, daring novel is about what happens when an author really does ‘write what she knows.' At once funny and poignant, intellectual and gossipy, lighthearted and layered in meaning, Yo! is, ironically and above all, a portrait of the artist. And with its bright colors, passion, and penchant for controversy, it's a portrait that could come only from the palette of Julia Alvarez. ‘YO! works the same beguiling combination as HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS - a lively and good-natured surface over depths of serious questioning. Sisterhood, daughterhood, friendship, the pain of political exile, the complications of fame, all the hard questions are churned up in the wake of the writer's central paradox: that she must betray secrets on the way to honesty, and tell dangerous lies if she is going to dare approach the truth.' - ROSELLEN BROWN . . . . JULIA ALVAREZ is the author of two previous novels, HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, which won the PEN Oakland/ Josephine Miles Award, and IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES, an American Library Association Notable Book and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, Julia Alvarez has also published three highly acclaimed books of poetry. Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared in many magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, Allure, The New Yorker, Hispanic Magazine, and USA Weekend. She lives with her husband in Vermont and teaches at Middlebury College. . .
Julia Alvarez is the author of five previous books of fiction, including HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS and IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES; a book of essays; five collections of poetry; and five books for children. She received the Hispanic Heritage Award in 2002. She lives in Vermont, where she is writer-in-residence at Middlebury College.
THE LITTLE BANDITS OF BAHIA - They call themselves ‘Captains of the sands,' a gang of orphans and runaways who live by their wits and daring in the slums and sleazy back alleys of Bahia. Led by fifteen-year-old ‘Bullet,' the band-including a crafty liar named ‘Legless,' the intellectual ‘Professor,' and the sexually precocious ‘Cat' - pulls off heists and escapades against the rich and privileged of Brazil. But when a public outcry demands the capture of the ‘little criminals,' the fate of these children becomes a poignant, intensely moving drama of love and freedom in a shackled land. Available for the first time in English, Jorge Amado's classic - the sixth and final book of the early series he called his Bahian Novels'- captures the rich culture, vivid emotions, and wild landscape of Bahia with penetrating authenticity, and brilliantly displays the genius of Brazil's most acclaimed author. ‘AMADO IS BRAZIL'S MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND VENERABLE NOVELIST.' - The New York Times.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands is a wonder - a book, a story, a heroine to fall in love with. Dona Flor is (literally) an adorable woman - with a body made for love, a mind of her own, a cozy disposition, a witty tongue, a kissable face, high moral principles - and she can cook, too. (Her cooking school is all the rage in Salvador.) One wants her to have everything. One wants her to escape from her monumental dragon of a mother into the arms of the best of husbands. One wants her to have - because she deserves it - all the honey and spice of life, ecstasy in bed, respect at all times, tenderness and tickles, a comfortable income, laughter, a sense of being always cared for. And she gets it all-but, alas, from two different men! The question: is it possible for a moral woman like Flor to enjoy two husbands at once? Yes! Thanks to the genius of Amado, who has found a way for Dona Flor to have both her husbands - without offending her own delicate scruples, or ours. How this is accomplished is told in a novel that is alive with joy and erotic hilarity, with the piquant color of life in Bahia, with hundreds of marvelous characters, from prominent ladies of high life and low life to political kingpins, underworld kings, poets, professors, babes, bouncers, and the devoted members of the Bahia Amateur Symphony Orchestra. And most marvelous, at its very center, Dona Flor herself - and her two husbands!
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
‘POETICAL, COMIC, HUMAN!'- The Washington Post. In this extraordinary adventure by Brazil's foremost novelist, one wants Flor to have everything - including her roguish, passionate husband who died of his exertions; and her new husband, a considerate gentleman. In a country of many gods and even occasional miracles, Flor approaches the divine Exu and stirs up more than old memories. And only she knows she has two husbands - one living, one dead - each consummately skilled in his way in the infinite art of love. ‘Bawdy, brilliant, human and humorous, it is a novel full of unexpected delights. . . . It is everything a modern novel should be . . . . It would appear high time for Brazil's Jorge Amado to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.'- Denver Post.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
In 1925-26, Ilheus was booming. There was a record cacao crop, but because of a sandbar in the harbor, shipments could not be made direct but had to clear through and pay tribute to the larger port to the north, Bahia. The controversy over the removal of this sandbar is one of the threads that runs through the story and gives you a wonderful picture of politics in a provincial Brazilian city. And then, too, it was the year that Colonel Mendonça lived up to the inviolable unwritten law and, shot his wife and her lover when he caught them in flagrante delicto. But above all, it was the year that Gabriela moved in from the backlands, one of a flock of dirty, bedraggled migrant workers -but what a girl she turned out to be. Nacib, the Arab owner of the most popular cafe-restaurant in town, was in really serious trouble-he had lost his cook. Gabriela proved to be a superb cook and, once scrubbed and decently clothed, a great beauty as well. Nacib's business boomed and, fat and foolish though he was, he found himself the happy possessor of a mistress who loved him and who soon became the most sought-after woman in the town. In this skillfully plotted novel there is a lusty and often humorous echo of the sly political machinations that control the life of every town, and the story crackles with intrigue as progress threatens the entrenched landowners and their hired assassins, just as it threatens the town's social and sexual mores. And Gabriela moves serenely through it all. She wields her increasing power to enchant until that age-old prerogative heretofore exercised by the cuckolded is no longer de rigueur or even legal.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
GABRIELA came to llheus from the backlands of Brazil, one of a flock of dirty, bedraggled migrant workers. Nacib, owner of the town's most popular cafe, was so desperate to replace his cook that he hired Gabriela immediately. She soon proved to be not only an excellent chef, but - once scrubbed and decently clothed - a great beauty as well. And Nacib found himself owner of the most prosperous business and the most sought-after woman in town. ‘Enchanting,' The Atlantic Monthly Press called Gabriela, the charm of this story is its pace and verisimilitude . . . a comedy vivid, believable, and entertaining.'
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
IN PORTUGUESE - GABRIELA came to llheus from the backlands of Brazil, one of a flock of dirty, bedraggled migrant workers. Nacib, owner of the town's most popular cafe, was so desperate to replace his cook that he hired Gabriela immediately. She soon proved to be not only an excellent chef, but - once scrubbed and decently clothed - a great beauty as well. And Nacib found himself owner of the most prosperous business and the most sought-after woman in town. ‘Enchanting,' The Atlantic Monthly Press called Gabriela, the charm of this story is its pace and verisimilitude . . . a comedy vivid, believable, and entertaining.'
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
GOOD-NATURED, incompetent, friendly, and lustful-at sixty the crony of college students and high-living officials-Vasco Moscoso de Aragâo laments that his life as the son of a wealthy merchant has brought him no rank, degree, or title. So-though Vasco has never made a sea voyage-a friend gets him a license as a ship's captain. Moving to Periperi in the suburbs of Bahia, he takes up with relish the life of an honored, retired old sea dog surrounded by nautical instruments, sea-going uniforms, and listeners eager for his reminiscences' of the oceans and exotic lands that he has visited. Vasco is so endlessly and colorfully inventive that only a few of his canniest neighbors begin to suspect the truth. When the northbound good ship Ita comes into Bahia with her captain dead, Vasco-the only licensed captain in the area-is dragooned into completing the voyage up the coast to BelEm as master (with the understanding that he will be free to call on the first mate for all important decisions). On the voyage. Vasco enjoys himself, whiling away the time in social activities and in pursuing a lady passenger of forty, to whom he becomes engaged. But deceiving sailors turns out not to be so easy as dazzling landlubbers, and what happens then and thereafter is almost (but not quite) beyond belief. Written with the narrative grace, humor, ribaldry, compassion, tenderness, and constant inventiveness of Jorge Amado's popular GABRIELA, CLOVE AND CINNAMON, HOME IS THE SAILOR likewise rests (with Amado's thistledown touch) on a kind of philosophical or metaphysical background. ‘What is truth, what reality?
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
ADVENTURES BEYOND BELIEF. . . The sleepy Brazilian beach resort needed a hero. And when retired Captain Vasco Moscoso de Aragao arrives, the townspeople are enthralled by his tales of exploits and exotic romance on the five oceans. Through these vicarious voyages they meet dangers they had never taken on, and sinful, voluptuous women they, alas, had never bedded down. Only Chico Pacheco, the local hero whose storytelling eminence has been undermined, delves into the captains past-and discovers that he has never set foot on an oceangoing deck. But when the ship Ito comes into Bahia with her captain dead-and Captain Vasco is pressed into her service-the landlocked dreamer begins an adventure in love and seamanship that surpasses his fantasies. ‘Amado's humor is fresh, innocent, and inventive, and his altogether delightful comedy, which has some profound things to say about the human desire for importance, has been given an exceptionally good translation by Harriet de Onis.' - The New Yorker.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
‘AMADO HAS PROFOUND THINGS TO SAY' - The New Yorker. Amado's powerful new novel of emancipation and betrayal, set in Bahia in the early 1930s, pulses with the exotic tropical imaginings and passionate desires that have made Amado internationally renowned. JUBIABA is the story of Antonio Balduino, a street urchin who abandons a desperate life as a champion circus boxer and a balladeer to join the local workers in their struggle against oppression. The spirit of JIJBIABA, the medicine man who inspires Antonio in his youth, follows Antonio's physical and spiritual odyssey through tragedy and despair, teaching him to ‘love all those. . .who were shaking off the fetters of slavery.' ‘Amado's strange and wonderful characters. . . his humanism, and his considerable powers of description' result in a richness and warmth that are impossible to resist.' - Washington Post. ‘Amado is Brazil's most illustrious and venerable novelist.' - New York Times.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
It is 1940. In Rio de Janeiro, a crisis is brewing. The brilliant womanizing poet, Antonio Bruno, has just died, and his seat in the Brazilian Academy of Letters is vacant. Who will replace him? Colonel Agnaldo Sampaio Pereira, chief of security of the New State Dictatorship, who welcomed Nazi control with unqualified joy, resolves it shall be he. But he does not count on the resistance organized by two intrepid octogenarians who rally to their standard a powerful group as determined to keep the colonel out of the Academy as he is to get in. Thus battle is engaged, in which the international forces of Nazism and the national forces of reaction and totalitarianism unite against two old men and four remarkable women-a typically fiery actress, a dressmaker who is not averse to a little part-time paid companionship, the wife of one of Brazil's richest men, and an industrialist's radical daughter-all former mistresses of the poet Bruno. Amado subtitled his novel ‘A Fable to Kindle a Hope.' It is a just description, because this book, with its great, glorious doses of wit, is a ferocious and heartening cry for freedom.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of IlhEus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of IlhEus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to IlhEus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer ZElia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter IlhEus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the CandomblE, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
It is 1940. In Rio de Janeiro, a crisis is brewing. The brilliant womanizing poet, Antonio Bruno, has just died, and his seat in the Brazilian Academy of Letters is vacant. Who will replace him? Colonel Agnaldo Sampaio Pereira, chief of security of the New State Dictatorship, who welcomed Nazi control with unqualified joy, resolves it shall be he. But he does not count on the resistance organized by two intrepid octogenarians who rally to their standard a powerful group as determined to keep the colonel out of the Academy as he is to get in. Thus battle is engaged, in which the international forces of Nazism and the national forces of reaction and totalitarianism unite against two old men and four remarkable women-a typically fiery actress, a dressmaker who is not averse to a little part-time paid companionship, the wife of one of Brazil's richest men, and an industrialist's radical daughter-all former mistresses of the poet Bruno. Amado subtitled his novel ‘A Fable to Kindle a Hope.' It is a just description, because this book, with its great, glorious doses of wit, is a ferocious and heartening cry for freedom. ON JORGE AMADO: ‘Amado's strange and wonderful characters. his humanism, and his considerable powers of description result in a richness and warmth that are impossible to resist.' - THE WASHINGTON POST. ‘It would be hard to find an English counterpart to Candide in Voltaire's time, and hard to find a writer in English-at least since the death of James Thurber-with as gay an imagination and as fond a sense of the absurd as the Brazilian, Jorge Amado.' - THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW. ‘[Amado] has the narrative art to a superlative degree, the ability to create three-dimensional characters, a deep awareness of the problems of his country and his epoch, a style as flexible and colorful as it is lyrical . . . . One hardly knows what to admire most: the dexterity with which Amado can keep half a dozen plots spinning; the gossamer texture of the writing; or his humor, tenderness, and humanity.' - THE SATURDAY REVIEW. ‘No other Latin American writer is more genuinely admired by his peers, nor has any other exerted so great a creative influence on the course of Latin American fiction.' - THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
‘BRAZILS LEADING MAN OF LETTERS. . . JORGE AMADO IS ADORED AROUND THE WORLD!' Newsweek. Here in SEA OF DEATH are the sea's unconquerable mysteries and the robust yearnings of seafaring men- a world of storms and smugglers, of reckless passion and star-crossed love. Set in Amado's lush Bahia, Brazil, in the early 1930s, SEA OF DEATH tells the story of Guma and Livia, lovers whose triumphs and tribulations mirror the dark imperatives of the world around them. ‘The men from dockside only have one path in life,' Amado writes, ‘the path of the sea. They follow it, it's their fate. The sea owns all of them: ' ‘Amado has profound things to say: ' The New Yorker. ‘Amado's strange and wonderful characters . . . his humanism, and his considerable powers of description result in a richness and warmth that are impossible to resist: ' Washington Post.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
This new novel by the brilliantly entertaining Brazilian author of Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon is set in his beloved Bahia. It is a swarming tale of raffish folk-prostitutes, cardsharpers, and pimps, drunks and homeless Don Juans and Messalinas in the teeming life of a tropical port. It tells three interlinked and cumulating stories: that of a marriage, that of a christening, and that of a siege. What happens in Shepherds of the Night was what was certain to happen when the cleverest of the Bahian Don Juans married an out-of-town prostitute who soon bored him and restricted his life, when an unmarried mother insisted upon having her fatherless child christened in a church, and when a group of homeless Bahians erected their shacks on private property. SHEPHERDS OF THE NIGHT is at once funny and sad. It is full of laughter and nostalgia, of macumba and candomble (Brazilian voodoo), of charms and incantations and wild song. It is full of Jorge Amado's untamed Rabelaisian poetry, of crooked laughing characters, of the sounds, smells, sights, tastes, and touches of GABRIELA, OF HOME IS THE SAILOR, of THE TWO DEATHS OF QUINCAS WATERYELL, of the world that has made Jorge Amado an esteemed and popular teller of tales.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
‘MAGIC AT WORK' - Saturday Review . . . On the Bahian waterfront the days are sun-blazed and languorous, the nights are filled with the struggles of men and the caresses of women - and only the prostitutes hold regular jobs. SHEPHERDS OF THE NIGHT is . . . . ‘an epic journey into passion, music, gambling, a bit of fighting and all manner of discursive side trips . . . it ripples with the special inner music that has made Amado's work popular the world over. Like all Amado's novels, this one is filled with the coppery women of Bahia and the men who chase them through nights of song and stars.' - Time.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
‘MAGIC AT WORK!' Saturday Review On the Bahian waterfront, days are sun-blazed and languorous, nights are filled with the struggles of men and the caresses of women - and only the prostitutes hold regular jobs. ‘An epic journey into passion.it ripples with the special inner music that has made Amado's work popular the world over. Like all Amado's novels, this one is filled with coppery women and the men who chase them through nights of song and stars.' - Time Magazine.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
SHOWDOWN is a novel of audacious scope. Its central character is Tocaia Grande, a city in the Bahian backlands of Brazil's cacao region, the scene of four previous Amado novels. But the master is full of playful surprises. Everything in Showdown is seen from a new perspective, as dozens of individual lives develop into the collective story of a community. Tocaia Grande was born when the henchman of a cacao plantation ambushed a rival colonel vying for power at the start of this century, in a time when honor took precedence over law, and courage came before power. It was a renegade beginning, in its grittiness, violence, pettiness and feel of dirt and blood, not unlike the birth of our great American West. In this paradise of the frontier that Amado has created live wonderful characters culled from the author's childhood-prostitutes, murderers, fugitives, migrant workers and even a flimflamming Turk. All of them are placed under the leadership of Natário da Fonseca, a gunslinger who is eventually appointed captain of the National Guard. These are the men and women Amado knows intimately, and has great faith in. He takes us into their very souls, chronicling their passions and their desires. And through their story, the story of the miraculous growth of a truly singular town is revealed. SHOWDOWN is the most daring novel in Jorge Amado's long and distinguished career. In it he opens his heart, and leaves us with a tale that will live long in our memories.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
Bahia - home of Dona Flor and Gabriela, land of heroic talkers, daring doers, Lucullan cooks, inexhaustible lovers, beautiful black women, beautiful white women, and mulatas exquisite beyond the praise of poets-is at its most gloriously Bahian, as Jorge Amado plies us with love, food, voodoo, wit and wonder, surrounds us with a cast of hundreds . . . (INCLUDING: fiery Black Doroteia, who has the heart of a turtledove; indomitable Major Damião de Souza; Fausto Pena, unrequited lover and poetl; Ana Mercedes, undulating reportress in mini-skirt and mini-blouse; capoeira artists, policemen, professors, drunks, whores, directors of tourism, devotees of African gods, members of the Society of Medical Writers) . . . and introduces us to his richest creation. Behold him! The late, lovable-roguish Pedro Archanjo, street-corner Socrates, passionate anthropologist, candomble practitioner, acknowledged dean of the living university of Bahia's demimonde and author of the momentous works in defense of miscegenation whose ‘discovery' by James D. Levenson (great gringo scholar, lover, and Nobel Prize winner) has plunged Bahia into the fantastic intrigue and carnival of the Archanjo Centennial Celebration. As the celebrants pour forth from every street and house, as all doors fly open unlocking the secret life of Bahia, the novel moves back into the misty past (especially into the Tent of Miracles, once the living heart of Salvador, presided over by Lidio Corro, miracle painter, vendor of voodoo and vaudeville, tooth-yanker, impresario of the magic lantern) and forward into the intoxicating present, in search of the true Pedro Archanjo. Savant? Seducer? Riffraff? Redeemer? Like DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS, like GABRIELA, CLOVE AND CINNAMON, this new novel by Brazil's most famous and beloved writer embraces the reader. in its generous, ebullient vision of earth and man.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
Bahia - home of Dona Flor and Gabriela, land of heroic talkers, daring doers, Lucullan cooks, inexhaustible lovers, beautiful black women, beautiful white women, and mulatas exquisite beyond the praise of poets-is at its most gloriously Bahian, as Jorge Amado plies us with love, food, voodoo, wit and wonder, surrounds us with a cast of hundreds . . . (INCLUDING: fiery Black Doroteia, who has the heart of a turtledove; indomitable Major Damião de Souza; Fausto Pena, unrequited lover and poetl; Ana Mercedes, undulating reportress in mini-skirt and mini-blouse; capoeira artists, policemen, professors, drunks, whores, directors of tourism, devotees of African gods, members of the Society of Medical Writers) . . . and introduces us to his richest creation. Behold him! The late, lovable-roguish Pedro Archanjo, street-corner Socrates, passionate anthropologist, candomble practitioner, acknowledged dean of the living university of Bahia's demimonde and author of the momentous works in defense of miscegenation whose ‘discovery' by James D. Levenson (great gringo scholar, lover, and Nobel Prize winner) has plunged Bahia into the fantastic intrigue and carnival of the Archanjo Centennial Celebration. As the celebrants pour forth from every street and house, as all doors fly open unlocking the secret life of Bahia, the novel moves back into the misty past (especially into the Tent of Miracles, once the living heart of Salvador, presided over by Lidio Corro, miracle painter, vendor of voodoo and vaudeville, tooth-yanker, impresario of the magic lantern) and forward into the intoxicating present, in search of the true Pedro Archanjo. Savant? Seducer? Riffraff? Redeemer? Like DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS, like GABRIELA, CLOVE AND CINNAMON, this new novel by Brazil's most famous and beloved writer embraces the reader. in its generous, ebullient vision of earth and man.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
‘A MOST ENJOYABLE ROMP' - Gregory Rabassa, The New York Times. . . ‘A very rich and exotic novel . . . TENT OF MIRACLES tells the story of Pedro Archanjo, mestizo, self-taught ethnologist, apostle of miscegenation, laborer, cult priest, and bon vivant . . . Amado's joyous, exuberant, almost magical descriptions of festivals, puppet shows, African rituals, local legends, fascinating customs, strange and wonderful characters . . . his enthusiasm for his subject, his proficiency in its lore, his humanism, and his considerable powers of description result in a richness and warmth that are impossible to resist.' - The Washington Post. . . ‘TENT OF MIRACLES may well be Amado's masterpiece.' - The Christian Science Monitor.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
No writer alive has given us more enchanting heroines. First, Gabriela-all spice, all clove and cinnamon. Next the modest Dona Flor-deservedly adored (and at the same time!) by her two husbands. And now, with all the gusto for the human carnival, all the comicality and warmth that have endeared this most famous of Brazilian novelists to American readers, Jorge Amado adds a crowning jewel to his (and Bahia's) diadem of splendid women. Behold her, Tereza Batista-inspiration to painters, poets, and sculptors (not to mention sailors on shore leave), teacher of the ignorant, lover of the powerful (and powerful lover), healer of the sick, champion of the downtrodden, seasoned veteran-at the peak of her beauty-of life's wars. No wonder the people of Bahia call her, in awe and delight, Tereza of the Thousand Nicknames-all complimentary! Gaze on Tereza ‘with her honey sweetness, her swaying walk, her joy in living, her color like copper.' Follow Tereza from her birth into direst poverty and bad luck (orphaned before she knew her parents, enslaved at the age of 12) to the great day when she turns the tables on that most splenetic and sadistic of slaveholders, the black-hearted Captain Justo Duarte da Rosa. From her education in grammar, love, and self-esteem as last mistress (established in a mansion fit for a millionairess) of the noble patriarch, Dr. Emiliano Guedes. From her Lysistratan strategies as chief-of-staff of the armies of heroic whores on strike, defying a police order formally entided ‘Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, It's Back to Work We Go,' to her ultimate recognition as Bahia's best- beloved, blazing Empress of the Brazilian Samba, marvelous Muse, Protectress, Font of Wisdom, the most desired and admired courtesan of city and environs, her own woman, honored by all. Tereza Batista-rebounding from every buffet stronger (and more delicious) than before. Trier progress is told in a novel bursting with ebullient episodes and erotic hilarity, with compassion and color and, best of all, with just about the entire (and entirely fascinating) population of Bahia. Once again Jorge Amado-celebrating beauty and Bahia-has given us a woman, a world, a view of life, to fall in love with.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
AH, TEREZA! Her story unfolds with brilliance and luminous intensity, a masterpiece of contemporary literature written by Brazil's foremost novelist. It is the story of Tereza, the twelve-year-old girl who is sold into slavery by her aunt. It is the story of Tereza, the young woman, who is jailed for defending her lover only to find him untrue. And it is the story of Tereza, reigning goddess of love - inspiration to poets, painters, and sailors on leave; mistress of a noble patriarch; chief-of-staff to the armies of whores on strike; and triumphant Queen of the Samba - desired, admired, and honored by all. ‘Amado has the narrative art to a superlative degree. . . . One hardly knows what to admire most: the dexterity with which he can keep half a dozen plots spinning, the gossamer texture of his writing, or his humor, tenderness, and humanity.' - Saturday Review.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
For the first time in English: legendary Brazilian author Jorge Amado's spirited novella about Arab immigrants to South America - published for the centennial of Amado's birth. Two Arab immigrants - 'Turks,' as Brazilians call them - arrive in the rough Brazilian frontier on the same ship in 1903, hoping to find a future. They rub shoulders with gunslingers and plantation owners, and also tangle with merchants, one of whom is desperate to marry off his impossible daughter. Thus ensues a farcical drama that produces, in a humorous twist, the unlikeliest of suitors in this whimsical Brazilian take on The Taming of the Shrew. ‘Delightful. . . A wonder of the art of narration [by] the voice, the feeling, and the joy of Brazil.' - Jose Saramago, from the Foreword.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
The colonials who survived the violent early days of cacao farming thirty years past have since grown prosperous and respectable. But avarice and blood still nourish the rich, fertile soil of Bahia. A dangerous cabal of exporters has set out to ruin the wealthy plantation owners by pandering to their insatiable lusts - a pitiless strategy that will ensnare all whose lives depend on the golden crop . . . from exploited migrant workers and embittered intellectuals to idle playboys, their faithless wives and faithful whores. And as crooked business deals and secret alliances destroy families and fortunes, battle lines are drawn in the violent land of plenty - setting friend against friend, brother against brother . . . and reluctant saint against willing sinner.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
It all happened in the region of Piranhas, Alagoas state, on the banks of the São Francisco River, home to Captain Lindolfo Ezequiel and his wife, Sabô. The Captain was famous for his prowess as a gunslinger and for having wed the most desired woman in the region, all of which demanded a great deal of physical vigor and constant nurturing of his reputation as a killer. One day, along came Ubaldo Capadocio, a tall and good-looking caboclo with a deft hand at the arts of literature and popular music. In addition to authoring cordel poetry, at a push he could play harmonica like no other. The poet was in hot demand the length and breadth of the region to animate baptisms, weddings and even funerals. He was also given to philandering, breaking hearts wherever he went, and was known to keep two families, one in Bahia and another in Sergipe, having sired nine children with his three wives. In Piranhas, Ubaldo Capadocio falls head-over-heels for the wife of Lindolfo Ezequiel. Oblivious to the danger, he ends up in bed with Sabô while the Captain is away on business. But Ezequiel comes back early, and in order to save his hide and become the hero of this famous tale, Ubaldo Capadocio has to call on the support of numerous witnesses, a flock of birds and just a little help from Providence. In THE MIRACLE OF THE BIRDS, Jorge Amado turns a well-loved oral folk tale into the stuff of literature. This brief narrative, somewhere between a short story and a novella, is a tale of infidelity and dishonour typical of the popular tradition of the northeastern hinterlands. With his customary good humour and narrative flair, the author recovers and eternalizes this raucous tale, which had long enjoyed the ear of the people and done the rounds of backlands.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
What a fine world this would be if a swallow could tall in love with a stray cat and the two of them could live happily ever after. In this marvelous dreamworld there is no prejudice at all between creatures or people high and low Jorge Amado, the internationally best-selling Brazilian novelist has written a delightful fable that could become the favorite gift between star-crossed lovers everywhere. Although this is indeed a fantasy in which Dawn and Morning and Spring and The Wind are memorable characters along with Miss Swallow and the Striped Cat the Reverend Parrot and the Old Owl, Amado fans will be cheered by the same storyteller's art, the wild imagination, the lusty humor, and the philosophical asides of the master himself. Jorge Amado brings a richness of meaning to the simple tale of long ago when the Swallow and the Tom Cat fell in love.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
An apparently ‘correct' and mild-mannered civil servant in Bahia, Joaquim Scares da Cunha, suddenly leaves home, a terrnagant wife, and a daughter who is growing up to be like her mother-and embarks on a bibulous life in the teeming slums of the city. A sore disgrace to his extremely proper family, he consorts with bums, pimps, prostitutes, and fishermen. He dies. The family has his body divested of its filthy, tattered clothes and dressed as Joaquim Scares da Cunha would have dressed in his proper days. But his second self (called Quincas Wateryell by his cronies after a famous occasion on which, drinking water in the belief that it was white rum, he let out a long-remembered yell of ‘Waaaaaaaaaater!') gradually reasserts itself, First his daughter, standing vigil beside his coffin, notices that he is smiling. Then she believes that he has spoken to her. Then four of his special cronies take over the vigil. They pour white rum into the corpse's mouth, steal his ‘proper' clothes, re-dress him in his tatters, and take him on a wild tour of his old haunts, believing Mm to be still alive. It all ends on a fishing boat during a thunderstorm (Quincas had predicted that he would die at sea), when the corpse appears to stand up and dive overboard to a watery death. In reality, this is a paean to natural life as against false bourgeois standards. The members of the family, Quincas Wateryell himself, and his male and numerous female cronies-all are convincingly and amusingly portrayed. The voluptuous, dirty, noisy, stinking human atmosphere of the Bahia underworld is magnificently evoked. It is a tale that would have delighted Mark Twain.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
KING OF THE HONKY-TONKS . . . After a merry decade of dissipation and revelry among the bums, the pimps, and the prostitutes, Quincas Wateryell, king of the voluptuous lowlife of Bahia, dies. His prim family loses no time in rechaining the corpse to the yoke of respectability. But even in his tight clothes and middle-class coffin, Quincas still sneers at them. And when four of his cronies and a bottle of rum arrive at the wake and take over the vigil. Quincas decides the party might be too good to miss. Once again, Jorge Amado, the man The New York Times has called ‘the most significant of contemporary Brazilian novelists,' magnificently evokes the raw and raunchy flavor of Bahia, and serves up the spirited notion that all is not over when all is over.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
THE VIOLENT LAND is a novel in which striking individuals clash and merge. The unrelenting and often bloody struggle between Colonel Horacio da Silveira and the Badaro brothers for an area of virgin forest involves the boom town of Ilheos and the surrounding countryside. Amado recounts the course oL that war between titans in a novel peopled by dozens of astonishing figures, packed with fascinating incident, and pervaded with a sinister and gripping atmosphere. Brazilian critics regard it as a great novel; there will be a multitude of readers here to agree with them. In the opening up of southern Bahia, Brazil experienced a ‘cacao-rush' that more than matched California's gold rush in drama, tragedy, and brawling humor. That pell-mell drive to be first to harvest gold from the unbelievably fertile cacao-producing lands was taken by Jorge Amado-an outstanding novelist of Brazil's active literary world-as the background for his famous novel, Terras do sem fim. In Samuel Putnam, Senhor Amado has found a translator who deserves to be called a re-creator. The result is a lusty, credible, and sometimes breathless picture of a now lost way of life that readers in the United States will find at once strange for its tropical lushness and familiar for its frontier flavor.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
In THE VIOLENT LAND, which Knopf first published in English in 1945, the author of GABRIELA, CLOVE AND CINNAMON wrote a a novel in which avid and ruthless individuals clash and merge. The unrelenting and often bloody struggle between Colonel Horacio da Silveira and the Badard brothers for an area of virgin forest involves the boom town of Ilheus and its surrounding countryside. Amado recounts the course of that war between titans in a narrative peopled by dozens of remarkable men and women, a narrative packed with incident and pervaded by a sinister and gripping atmosphere. Brazilian critics long have regarded it as a great novel. In the opening up of the southern part of Bahia, Brazil experienced a ‘cacao rush' that matched California's gold rush in drama, tragedy, and brawling humor. That pell-mell drive to be the first to harvest gold and its fruits from the unbelievably fertile cacao-producing soil was taken by Amado as the background of THE VIOLENT LAND. In the late Samuel Putnam, he found a translator deserving to be called a re-creator. The result is a lusty, credible, sometimes breathless picture of a now lost way of life which readers in our more temperate zone will find both strange for its tropical lushness and overt passions and familiar for its frontier flavor. It has always been ranked with Amado's best work.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
CHOCOLATE GOLD . . . The siren-song of the lush, cocoa-growing forests of Bahia lures them all-the adventurers, the assassins, the gamblers, the brave and beautiful women. It is not a gentle song, but a song of greed, madness, and blood. It is a song that promises riches untold, or death for the price of a swig of rum, a song most cannot resist-until it is too late-not Margot, the golden blonde prostitute who comes for love; not Cabral, the talented, unscrupulous lawyer who works for one of the cacao colonels'; and not Juca, whose ruthless quest to reap the jungle's harvest plants the seeds of his own destruction. Against the violent, colorful backdrop of Brazil's ‘cacao-rush-a phenomenon that rivals California's gold rush in drama, tragedy, and humor-Jorge Amado weaves together the fates of two landowning families involved in a bloody feud over a tract of virgin forest to which neither has a rightful claim. In his foreword to this edition, the author has written, ‘No other of my books is as dear to me; in it lie my roots; it is of the blood from which I was created.'
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
The internationally acclaimed author of SHOWDOWN and DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS, Jorge Amado has been hailed as Brazil's foremost novelist and one of the great writers of our time. Now, in The War of the Saints, he invites us into an exuberant and extraordinary tale in which freedom rises in the face of fear, love triumphs over a reign of terror, and the mundane turns mystical in the blink of a beautiful woman's eye. The statue of Saint Barbara of the Thunder, most holy of icons, is bound for the city of Bahia to be enshrined at the Museum of Sacred Art. Despite all precautions, however, the unthinkable has happened: The lovely statue has vanished. His reputation on the line, the curator of the exhibit cries foul. But the truth is that the image has not been stolen. As the boat that was to deliver her reached port, the image was transformed into a living, breathing woman. At the dock the awakened Saint Barbara stepped into the milling crowd on the quay and disappeared into the city. Like Saint Barbara herself, the festival comes to life in the streets of Bahia. Amid the cinnamon and tobacco, amid the sound of singing and berimbau drums, rumors fly, scandals erupt, intrigues swirl, and passions burn hotly . . . In another part of the city, a young girl named Manela suffers at the hands of her pious aunt Adalgisa, a woman willing to crack her niece's skull to save her soul. Manela has slipped away from her repressive aunt to spend a few hours with the handsome Miro. But a glorious afternoon of feasting, drinking, and dancing at a religious festival that winds through the sunny streets of Bahia instantly turns sour when Aunt Adalgisa catches Manela red- handed. She locks up Manela in the Cloister of the Penitents, there to languish. But as Saint Barbara's magical influence begins to cast its spell over the city, no one's life will remain unchanged. Jorge Amado's prodigious gifts as a storyteller, the richness of his detail, and the sheer force of his language combine in a narrative as seductive and enchanting as Saint Barbara herself- a novel that is at once a sensual adventure and a comic masterpiece. Skillfully weaving together the lives of his characters with insight into the nature of love and religion, Amado demonstrates, with charm and compassion, that his ultimate cause is humanity.
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
In the delectable tradition of Jorge Amado's spirited, sexy, adorable heroines - Dona Flor and Gabriela among them - here is Tieta, lustrous, sparkling, a thorough Brazilian beauty. At forty-four a widow, a vision of feminine charm and modernity, she takes the town by storm - her native town of Agreste in Bahia, to which she has just returned after a twenty-six-year absence. She is amiable, talkative, generous. And she is rich. She has been - her family doesn't know, no one in Agreste knows - the madam of a splendid brothel frequented by tycoons, politicos, men of power. And when an unscrupulous industrial giant plots to build a factory that will certainly pollute Tieta's lovely demi-paradisal birthplace, her Big Political Connections stand her in good stead-a boon to her fellow townspeople. The intrigues that follow, entangling virtually the entire (high and low) population of Agreste, are in counterpoint to Tieta's own tender idyll with her innocent seminarian nephew, Ricardo, as well as the whirling flirtations of the young ‘stepdaughter' she has brought back with her from Sao Paulo. All is told in the uniquely exhilarating Amado manner-comic and moving, bawdy and sweet. And by the time the facts of Tieta's checkered past slip out, and the hounds of propriety (and greed) are baying at her heels, she has become so dear to the reader, it seems unthinkable that her adventures should come to anything short of a completely satisfactory (if not, perhaps, altogether respectable) conclusion!
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER. Banished for promiscuity, Tieta returns to the seaside village of Agreste after twenty-six years. Thinking she's now a rich, respectable widow, her mercenary family welcomes her with open arms. But when a group of entrepreneurs tries to erect a factory on the paradisical beaches of Agreste, Tieta is forced to reveal her true identity For the only way she can save the town is to call upon her close connections in Sao Paulo's highest political and financial circles-as only the Madam of the city's ritziest bordello can. Tieta is a heroine to be treasured with Jorge Amado's other extraordinary women: Dona Flor, Tereza Batista, Gabriela. A fully realized character, practically jumping off the pages,' said Book list, ‘Amado is as marvelous as ever.'
Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia. Amado was born in a fazenda (‘farm') in the inland of the city of Itabuna, in the southern part of the Brazilian state of Bahia, son of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm Amado was born in was precisely located on the village of Ferradas, which though today is a district of Itabuna, at the time was administered by the town of Ilheus. That is why he considered himself a citizen of Ilheus. In the large cocoa plantation, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the earth, living in almost slave conditions, which were to be a theme always present in his later works (for example, the notable Terras do Sem Fim of 1944). When he was only one year old the family moved to Ilheus, a coastal city, where he spent his childhood. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. During that period Amado began to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist ‘Rebels' Academy'. Amado published his first novel, O País do Carnaval, in 1931, at age 18. Later he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. Amado's leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas: in 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus. Being a militant, from 1941 to 1942 Amado was compelled to go into exile to Argentina and Uruguay. When he returned to Brazil he separated from Matilde Garcia Rosa. In 1945 he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, as a representative of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) (he received more votes than any other candidate in the state of São Paulo). He signed a law granting freedom of religious faith. The same year he remarried, this time to the writer Zelia Gattai. In 1947 he had a son, João Jorge. The same year his party was declared illegal, and its members arrested and persecuted. Amado chose exile once again, this time in France, where he remained until he was expelled in 1950. His first daughter, Lila, had died in 1949. From 1950 to 1952 Amado lived in Czechoslovakia, where another daughter, Paloma, was born. He also travelled to the Soviet Union, winning the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. On his return to Brazil in 1955, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later: from that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘the best example of a folk novel': Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was much to the scandal of the 1950s Brazilian society: for several years Amado could not even enter Ilheus, where the novel was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women. On April 6, 1961 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Literature. He received the title of Doctor honoris causa from several Universities in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France, as well as other honors in almost every South American country, including Obá de Xangô (santoon) of the Candomble, the traditional Afro-Brazilian religion of Bahia. Amado's popularity as a writer never decreased. His books were translated into 49 languages in 55 countries, were adapted into films, theatrical works, and TV programs. They even inspired some samba schools of the Brazilian Carnival. In 1987, the House of Jorge Amado Foundation was created, in Salvador. It promotes the protection of Amado's estate and the development of culture in Bahia. Amado died on August 6, 2001. His ashes were spread in the garden of his house four days later.
TRASH (A Bagaceira) is probably the most important novel in modern Brazilian literature. Its publication in 1928 sparked off a literary revolution whose effects are still felt today. Jose Americo de Almeida and the writers who followed him turned their backs on the traditional European models and developed an independent, indigenous Brazilian literature, celebrating the language, landscape and climate of the Brazilian countryside and at the same time exposing the poverty and misery of the inhabitants of Brazil's north-east. Set on a sugar-cane plantation, TRASH is a tale of love and revenge. During one of the periodic droughts that lay waste to the highlands, Valentim, a ruined cattle rancher, and his daughter Soledade come down to seek shelter on the plantation. The owner, Dagoberto, despite his traditional lowlander's antipathy to the highlander, gives them work. Soledade has a mesmerizing effect on Dagoberto's son Lücio, but as their relationship develops it becomes clear that the protagonists are caught up in a drama that has its roots in the not so distant past. Jose America's style is dense and evocative, combining lyrical descriptions of nature with the rough, colloquial idioms of. the workers on the plantation. Such is its richness and complexity that R. L Scott- Buccleuch's translation is the first to appear in any language.
JOSE AMERICO DE ALMEIDA was born in 1887 and now lives in retirement in Joao Pessoa. His long life has been devoted almost entirely to public service and literature. His first novel A Bagacei'ra (Trash, 1928) enjoyed enormous success, but he continued his political career, supporting Getulio Vargas in the 1930 revolution in Brazil and subsequently holding such offices as Minister of Public Works and Ambassador to the Vatican. In 1937 he was a candidate for the Presidency of Brazil. He has served as senator and governor of the state of Paraiba. In 1966 he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters. In addition to A Bagaceira Jose AmErico has written two other novels, 0 Boquirao (1935) and Coiieiras (1936), and various volumes of memoirs, the most recent of which was published in 1976.
This vivid, colorful, and realistic novel of the vast pampas of South America introduces to North American readers a novelist who is well known throughout his own continent, and whose works have been translated into French and German, but who, with this novel, makes his first appearance in English. The action of ‘The Horse and His Shadow' takes place in Uruguay, and through the symbolic figure of the stallion, Don Juan, there are combined the two leading themes of the plot. One theme concerns the war of the Polish refugees struggling for existence in their new country against the feudalistic owners of the great ‘estancias'; the other is concerned with the lonely inarticulate girl ‘La Gaucha' who works as a servant in the house of Nico Azara, owner of the stallion, and who remains after his tragic death to live on the remnant of the once great ‘estancia,' and, with her child, watch the mares plowing the fields and the stallion's colt trotting in the furrow after his mother. The strength of the novel lies not only in its absorbing story, but also in its complete realization of the picturesque and striking gaucho types. Not only are the gauchos themselves fully realized but also the aristocratic Azara family appears with almost photographic fidelity. ‘The Horse and His Shadow' will introduce North American readers to a scene unfamiliar until now and filled with beauty and color. It is a book not only for any one who likes a good story but also for the increasing number of readers who find especial interest in books on South American themes.
Enrique Amorim (July 25, 1900 - July 28, 1960) was an Uruguayan novelist and writer, best known for his story Las quitanderas whose plot centres on rural prostitution; also known for his left-wing politics. Born in Salto, Uruguay, his parents were wealthy cattle ranchers. His father was from a Portuguese background, his mother Basque. Amorim travelled extensively in Europe and Latin America, developing acquaintanceships and friendships with many of the leading literary figures of his time. He eventually had a house built in Salto, designed by Le Corbusier. In the 1920s Amorim wrote for the Argentinian leftist magazine Los Pensadores and published with the press Claridad, both associated with the left-leaning Buenos Aires-based Boedo group. In 1947 Amorim officially joined the Communist Party of Uruguay. He was also responsible for the erection of a monument in Salto to commemorate Federico García Lorca, the poet and playwright killed by Francisco Franco's forces in the opening weeks of the Spanish Civil War. About the Translators - Translating, if it has to be combined with soldiering, is not for a man of a sedentary disposition. When Richard O'Connell first began collaborating with James Graham Lujan on ‘The Horse and His Shadow,' he was Sergeant O'Connell. His translating had to be done on weekend leaves or else at camp late at night, sometimes by flashlight. Even a ninety days' stretch at officers' candidate school did not completely stop work on the book. He finished his task at a mountain training center as Lieutenant O'Connell of the field artillery. James Graham Luján is of Mexican and Scotch descent. His interest in translating is based on a wide acquaintance with Mexican and South American writers. In this field, he has worked with the Committee on Cultural Relations with Latin America, and in the theatre. Lt. O'Connell and Graham Lujan first collaborated on a translation of five plays by Spain's great young playwright, Federico Garcia Lorca. Their book, ‘From Lorca's Theatre,' made a distinguished body of plays known to American readers. They have also worked together on stories and magazine articles, and have translated from the poetry of Leopoldo Marechal, Pablo Neruda, and Gabriela Mistral, among others.
At a party in 1970s Chile, Cayetano Brule meets Pablo Neruda, the great poet and national hero, at the height of his fame. But the elderly poet is full of secrets - one is that he's dying, and he recruits Cayetano to help him resolve another. And so Cayetano takes on his first case as a private detective to solve Neruda's last great mystery; the young man must travel around the globe and through Neruda's life and past in search of answers. Neruda's hidden agenda is slowly revealed on Cayetano's worldwide whirlwind expedition, which ends back in Chile, where Pinochet's coup plays out against the final revelations of the journey. Set against the fraught politics of pre-Pinochet Chile, and perilous behind-the-wall East Berlin, The Neruda Case spans countries, cultures, and political movements. Roberto Ampuero's richly atmospheric novels starring the wonderfully rougish detective Cayetano Brule are an international sensation but have never before been translated into English. Evocative, romantic, and full of intrigue, The Neruda Case is both an intimate glimpse into the life of Pablo Neruda as death approaches and a gripping political thriller that unfolds during the fiercely convulsive end of an era.
Roberto Ampuero (Valparaíso, Chile, 1953) is a Chilean author, columnist, and a university professor. His first novel ¿QuiEn mato a Kristián Kustermann? was published in 1993 and in it he introduced his private eye, Cayetano BrulE, winning the Revista del Libro prize of El Mercurio. Since then the detective has appeared in five novels. In addition he has published an autobiographical novel about his years in Cuba titled Nuestros Años Verde Olivo (1999) and the novels Los Amantes de Estocolmo (Book of the Year in Chile, 2003 and the bestseller of the year in Chile )) and Pasiones Griegas (chosen as the Best Spanish Novel in China, 2006). His novels have been published in Latin America and Spain, and have been translated into German, French, Italian, Chinese, Swedish, Portuguese, Greek, Croatian, and English. In Chile his works have sold more than 40 editions. Ampuero now resides in Iowa where he is a professor at the University of Iowa in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. He was a columnist of La Tercera and the New York Times Syndicate and since March 2009 has been working as a columnist for El Mercurio. Between 2013 and 2014 he was Minister of Culture in the Conservative government of Sebastián Piñera.
It is Switzerland, 1816. Percy Shelley and his wife Mary, and Byron's physician Dr Polidori are ensconced in the Villa Diodati. Polidori enters a Faustian pact with Annette Legrand, where she will produce a vampire tale for him. What can he, in return, offer this ghostly female predator?
Federico Andahazi (born June 6, 1963) is an Argentine writer. Federico Andahazi was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at Congreso, a central neighborhood of the city. He is the son of Bela Andahazi, Hungarian poet and psychoanalyst, and Juana Merlín. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Psychology (University of Buenos Aires); he practiced psychoanalysis a few years, while he was working on his short stories. His books have been translated to many languages. In the United States, he has been published by Doubleday, in England by Transworld, in France by Laffont, in Italy by Frassinelli, in China by China Times, in Japan by Kadokawa, in Germany by Krüger, and by publishing houses in other countries. He gave lectures in the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences of the University of Moscow, Russia, and the University of Santos Ossa of Antofagasta, Chile. He also gave talks in Stockholm, London, Paris, Istanbul and other cities of Europe, Latin America, and The United States. He had participated in literary congresses in France, Finland, and several cities in Spain among others. He was invited to book fairs in Guadalajara, Moscow, Pula, Istanbul, Madrid, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires and most cities of Argentina. He has written articles published by Clarín, La Nacion, Perfil, Noticias, VeintitrEs, Lamujerdemivida, Brando, V de Vian, and others in Argentina, USA, Portugal, Colombia. In 1996 he won the First Prize of the Segunda Bienal de Arte Joven de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires with his short story "Almas misericordiosas". The same year he received the First Prize of the Concurso Anual desde la Gente with his short story "El sueño de los justos". Towards the end of 1996, he was awarded the CAMED Prize for the short story Por Encargo. In 1996, while Andahazi was the finalist of the Planeta Awards, his novel The Anatomist won the First Prize of the Fundacion Fortabat. However, the mentor and financial supporter of the contest, María Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, announced her "disagreement" with the decision of the jury, through a request published in most newspapers of Buenos Aires, in which she stated that the novel "does not contribute to [the] exalt[ation of] the most high values of the human spirit". The Fundacion respected and implemented the decision of the jury, which included María AngElica Bosco, Raúl Castagnino, Jose María Castiñeira de Dios, María Granata and Eduardo Gudiño Kieffer, but the jury was subsequently dismissed by Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat and the literary competitions organized by the Fundacion Fortabat have not been held again. The Anatomist was published by Editorial Planeta in 1997, translated into over thirty languages, and has sold millions of copies worldwide. His second novel, The Merciful Women, was published in 1998. In 1998 the publishing house Temas published a small volume with some of the short stories awarded titled El árbol de las tentaciones. There are three short stories that begin in the same way and they are located in similar settings (nineteenth-century Argentina). In 2000 he published El príncipe and in 2002 El secreto de los flamencos. Errante en la sombra was published in 2004; Andahazi wrote more than forty tangos for this story, in which singer Carlos Gardel takes part. During the summer of 2005, Andahazi and his readers collectively wrote a newspaper serial called Mapas del fin del mundo published by the newspaper Diario Clarín. The author wrote the beginning of a text, giving the place to the readers to continue the story, creating characters, proposing plots, solving riddles, to be sent by e-mail. Therefore, in an unprecedented work, reading and answering thousands of e-mails per week, Andahazi built the story with the various inputs and points of view. Every Saturday a new chapter was added to the novel, increasing the participation and the expectation of readers converted into co-authors. The novel La ciudad de los herejes was also published in 2005. In 2006, Federico Andahazi won the Planeta Prize with his novel El conquistador. He participated in numerous anthologies, among which are: Las palabras pueden: Los escritores y la infancia (2007, to UNICEF and World Food Program) with authors like Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Ernesto Sábato, Juan Gelman, Mario Benedetti and Mario Vargas Llosa. Líneas aEreas (1999, published by Lengua de trapo, Spain) with writers such as Jorge Volpi, Santiago Gamboa and Edmundo Paz Soldán. A Whistler in the nightworld, short fiction from the Latin Americas (2002, published by Plume, USA) Laura Restrepo and Ángeles Mastretta among others. La Seleccion Argentina (2000, published by Tusquets). El libro de los nuevos pecados capitales (2001, Norma Publishing Group). He also participated in the book Homage to Diego Maradona (2001, SAF) in the company of Roberto Fontanarrosa and Pacho O'Donnell.
Fiction from the noted Argentinian novelist. Anderson-Imbert is best known for his brief "microcuentos" in which he blends fantasy and magical realism. His story "Sala de espera" is taken from The Cheshire Cat, written in 1965; he is also the author of the 1966 short story entitled "Taboo." He also penned the short stories "El Leve Pedro", "El Fantasma", and "Vudu".
Enrique Anderson-Imbert (February 12, 1910– December 6, 2000) was an Argentine novelist, short-story writer and literary critic. Born in Cordoba, Argentina, Anderson-Imbert graduated from the University of Buenos Aires. From 1940 until 1947 he taught at the University of Tucumán. In 1947, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954. He became the first Victor S. Thomas Professor of Hispanic Literature at Harvard University in 1965. Anderson-Imbert remained at Harvard until his retirement in 1980. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967. He died on December 6, 2000 in Buenos Aires.
This book is both history and literature. Unlike other histories of literature, it is not simply an historical synthesis of names, titles, and dates; it is, in addition, a critical, analytical appraisal of the verse, prose, and drama written in Spanish in the Americas from the time of the Conquistadors up to the present. Not only is this history the most complete and up-to-date account of Spanish-American literature available, but it is discriminating as well, distinguishing between major and minor authors and works. Although chronicles abound, as do interpretations of specific great works, only here is there history and literature. Originally published in Spanish in three editions, this work was recognized as a significant contribution to the intellectual and cultural life of North America. Consequently, the Rockefeller Foundation, as part of its Latin-American Translation Program, provided funds so that this worthwhile book could be translated and made available to an English-speaking public.
Enrique Anderson-Imbert (February 12, 1910– December 6, 2000) was an Argentine novelist, short-story writer and literary critic. Born in Cordoba, Argentina, Anderson-Imbert graduated from the University of Buenos Aires. From 1940 until 1947 he taught at the University of Tucumán. In 1947, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954. He became the first Victor S. Thomas Professor of Hispanic Literature at Harvard University in 1965. Anderson-Imbert remained at Harvard until his retirement in 1980. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967. Anderson-Imbert is best known for his brief ‘microcuentos' in which he blends fantasy and magical realism. His story ‘Sala de espera' is taken from The Cheshire Cat, written in 1965; he is also the author of the 1966 short story entitled ‘Taboo.' He also penned the famous short stories ‘El Leve Pedro', ‘El Fantasma', and ‘Vudu'. He died on December 6, 2000 in Buenos Aires.
Although Enrique Anderson Imbert is little known in this country, he is recognized in Latin America as a writer of great talent. This collection of short stories, translated from his El grimorio, is a blend of the fantastic and the real. The opening story's main character becomes more and more buoyant until one morning he floats away; in another story a man is dissolved by the air. One finds that reality is only apparent reality. The stories that seem most real have surprise endings which bring the reader up short and make him rearrange his whole concept of the story's situation. The author enjoys the idea that things could different from what they are, and he tries to duplicate that enjoyment by writing stories dedicated to readers who appreciate the possible more than the real. A story may begin with a perfectly realistic situation only to come to an utterly fantastic conclusion; the supernatural is accepted matter-of-factly into the natural world. Isabel Reade, who worked closely with Anderson on these translations, points out that irony is another principal characteristic of his stories. ‘The monk who longed for sanctity as union with God finds that it is precisely his sanctity that has separated him from God (‘A Saint in the New World'); a man's desperate attempt to kill himself succeed only in killing other people (‘The Suicide'); the noisy celebration of the birth of a prince causes the infant's death (‘The Prince'). Anderson's sense of beauty as well as his lively imagination are apparent in ‘Ash Moon', a story of Buenos Aires blanketed by volcanic ash which is likened to soft snow, and in his description of a dream valley in ‘Patrick O'Hara, the Liberator'. The great majority of translations from Latin American literature are of realistic novels. Here we have a collection of the opposite. Isabel Reade has translated this book to share the imaginative stories, the often nonrealistic, philosophical, or poetic stories with all readers, but they are of special consequence to aficionados of Latin American writing and to persons interested in experiments with techniques and themes in literature. This collection of short stories is translated from El grimorio.
Enrique Anderson-Imbert (February 12, 1910– December 6, 2000) was an Argentine novelist, short-story writer and literary critic. Born in Cordoba, Argentina, Anderson-Imbert graduated from the University of Buenos Aires. From 1940 until 1947 he taught at the University of Tucumán. In 1947, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954. He became the first Victor S. Thomas Professor of Hispanic Literature at Harvard University in 1965. Anderson-Imbert remained at Harvard until his retirement in 1980. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967. Anderson-Imbert is best known for his brief ‘microcuentos' in which he blends fantasy and magical realism. His story ‘Sala de espera' is taken from The Cheshire Cat, written in 1965; he is also the author of the 1966 short story entitled ‘Taboo.' He also penned the famous short stories ‘El Leve Pedro', ‘El Fantasma', and ‘Vudu'. He died on December 6, 2000 in Buenos Aires.
Argentinian scholar and writer Enrique Anderson-Imbert is familiar to many North American students for his La Literatura de America Latina I and II, which are widely used in college Spanish courses. But Anderson-Imbert is also a noted creative writer, whose use of ‘magical realism' helped pave the way for such writers as Borges, Cortázar, Sábato, and Ocampo. In this anthology, Carleton Vail and Pamela Edwards-Mondragon have chosen stories from the period 1965 to 1985 to introduce English-speaking readers to the creative work of Enrique Anderson-Imbert. Representative stories from the collections The Cheshire Cat, The Swindler Retires, Madness Plays at Chess, Klein's Bottle, Two Women and One Julián, and The Size of the Witches illustrate Anderson-Imbert's unique style and world view. Many are ‘short short' stories, which Anderson-Imbert calls casos (instances). The range of subjects and points of view varies widely, challenging such ‘realities' as time and space, right and wrong, science and religion. In a prologue, Anderson-Imbert tells an imaginary reader, ‘Each one of my stories is a closed entity, brief because it has caught a single spasm of life in a single leap of fantasy. Only a reading of all my stories will reveal my world-view.' The reader asks, ‘And are you sure that it is worth the trouble?' Anderson-Imbert replies, ‘No.' The unexpected, ironic ending is one of the great pleasures of reading Enrique Anderson-Imbert.
Enrique Anderson-Imbert (February 12, 1910– December 6, 2000) was an Argentine novelist, short-story writer and literary critic. Born in Cordoba, Argentina, Anderson-Imbert graduated from the University of Buenos Aires. From 1940 until 1947 he taught at the University of Tucumán. In 1947, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954. He became the first Victor S. Thomas Professor of Hispanic Literature at Harvard University in 1965. Anderson-Imbert remained at Harvard until his retirement in 1980. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967. Anderson-Imbert is best known for his brief ‘microcuentos' in which he blends fantasy and magical realism. His story ‘Sala de espera' is taken from The Cheshire Cat, written in 1965; he is also the author of the 1966 short story entitled ‘Taboo.' He also penned the famous short stories ‘El Leve Pedro', ‘El Fantasma', and ‘Vudu'. He died on December 6, 2000 in Buenos Aires. Carleton Vail is an independent scholar and translator. Pamela Edwards-Mondragon is head of the English and Spanish departments at Converse International School of Languages in San Diego, California.
From the publisher's preface: ‘Anyone meeting Fraulein Elsa Schumann in the streets of the foreign city where she had found a refuge, would have been impressed by her sensitive, beautiful, and intelligent face. It would have been impossible to guess that in the household where she served as governess her chief duty was not to teach the languages and accomplishments she knew, but to initiate the eldest son into the mysteries of love. That was her strange profession, to prepare wealthy young men for their love life and to save them from the physical and spiritual perils of the underworld. How she entered this profession, what the teaching of love did to her own love life, how it affected her career, makes a story as heart-stirring as it is unusual.'
Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (October 9, 1893 - February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Pauliceia Desvairada (Hallucinated City) in 1922. He has had an enormous influence on modern Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist - he was a pioneer of the field of ethnomusicology - his influence has reached far beyond Brazil. Andrade was the central figure in the avant-garde movement of São Paulo for twenty years. Trained as a musician and best known as a poet and novelist, Andrade was personally involved in virtually every discipline that was connected with São Paulo modernism, and became Brazil's national polymath. His photography and essays on a wide variety of subjects, from history to literature and music, were widely published. He was the driving force behind the Week of Modern Art, the 1922 event that reshaped both literature and the visual arts in Brazil, and a member of the avant-garde ‘Group of Five.' The ideas behind the Week were further explored in the preface to his poetry collection Pauliceia Desvairada, and in the poems themselves. After working as a music professor and newspaper columnist he published his great novel, Macunaíma, in 1928. Work on Brazilian folk music, poetry, and other concerns followed unevenly, often interrupted by Andrade's shifting relationship with the Brazilian government. At the end of his life, he became the founding director of São Paulo's Department of Culture, formalizing a role he had long held as the catalyst of the city's - and the nation's - entry into artistic modernity.
A Brazilian masterpiece, now in English for the first time: a playfully profound chronicle of an urban sophisticate’s misadventures in the Amazon. My life’s done a somersault, wrote Mário de Andrade in a letter, on the verge of taking a leap. After years of dreaming about Amazonia, and almost fifty years before Bruce Chatwin ventured into one of the most remote regions of South America in In Patagonia, Andrade, the queer mixed-race pope of Brazilian modernism and author of the epic novel Macunaíma, finally embarks on a three-month steamboat voyage up the great river and into one of the most dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful corners of the world. Rife with shrewd observations and sparkling wit, and featuring more than a dozen photographs, The Apprentice Tourist not only offers an awed and awe-inspiring fish-out-of-water account of the Indigenous peoples and now-endangered landscapes of Brazil that he encounters (and, comically, sometimes fails to reach), but also traces his internal metamorphosis: The trip prompts him to rethink his ingrained Eurocentrism, challenges his received narratives about the Amazon, and alters the way he understands his motherland and the vast diversity of cultures found within it.
Mário de Andrade (1893–1945) was a Brazilian modernist from São Paulo. A polymath of his era, he was trained as a musician but became equally influential in fiction, poetry, photography, and art criticism. He served as the founding director of São Paulo’s Department of Culture and helped organize and participated in the Semana de Arte Moderna (Week of Modern Art) in 1922, an event that would be regarded as the birth of modernism in Brazil.
THE TRIUMPH OF CENSORSHIP. In one of the most controversial novels to emerge from modern Brazil, Ivan Angelo tells of the strange reality of Latin America as revealed by the omissions of censorship. The time is the evening of March 30th, 1970, when a group of wealthy people gather for a birthday celebration. Simultaneously a group of migrant workers is halted from settling in the town by the police. In time the two groups become involved with each other, and the police begin their investigation, their degradation, and their torture of the workers and party-goers. If is only in the long final chapter, ‘After the Celebration,' that the police and the reader are able to construct the horrifying climax. Upon its publication in 1976, Ivan Angelo said, ‘I hope to make the reader an accomplice not only in shaping the actual text, but in determining ifs significance, since my intention has been to provide wider participation in the terrible problems we face at the moment, in Brazil.'
IVAN ANGELO was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1936. He is a professional journalist. managing editor of the Jornal do Tarde, the influential evening daily in São Paulo. He has published a collection of short stories. DUAS FACES (TWO SIDES), which won the principal literary prize of his home state and launched his literary career. A second work, CASA DE VIDRO (HOUSE OF GLASS), appeared in 1979, and he is now at work on a novel about a Brazilian politician's career. THE CELEBRATION has been published in France as well as by Avon-Bard in the United States. THOMAS COLCHIE is well known for his translations of Puig, Drummond, Ramos, and Souza, whose first novel, THE EMPEROR OF THE AMAZON, was praised upon its first publication by Avon-Bard.
A CAPTIVITY OF THE SOUL - Five interlocking tales create a singular, powerful account of a nation in turmoil - and a prophetic warning about an oppressive government's need to control not just the society but the mind. Through symbolism, wry humor, and outrageous sexual frankness, Ivan Angelo tells of businessmen and whores, poor working people and Death Squads, truth and illusion, and the methods of political manipulation and terror. From the gritty, bawdy story of Bete the streetwalker to the Kafkaesque portrait of a prison made of glass, these five fictional pieces glitter with the brilliance of masterful wordplay and shocking truth . . . as an accomplished storyteller challenges our intelligence and our principles with a monumental work of art. . IVAN ANGELO was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil in 1936. He is a professional journalist, managing editor of the Jornal da Tarde, the influential evening daily in Sao Paulo. He has published a collection of short stories, DUAS FACES (TWO SIDES), which won the principal literary prize of his home state and launched his literary career. A second work, THE TOWER OF GLASS, appeared in 1979, and he is now at work on a novel about a Brazilian politician's career.
IVAN ANGELO was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1936. He is a professional journalist. managing editor of the Jornal do Tarde, the influential evening daily in São Paulo. He has published a collection of short stories. DUAS FACES (TWO SIDES), which won the principal literary prize of his home state and launched his literary career. A second work, CASA DE VIDRO (HOUSE OF GLASS), appeared in 1979, and he is now at work on a novel about a Brazilian politician's career. THE CELEBRATION has been published in France as well as by Avon-Bard in the United States. THOMAS COLCHIE is well known for his translations of Puig, Drummond, Ramos, and Souza, whose first novel, THE EMPEROR OF THE AMAZON, was praised upon its first publication by Avon-Bard.
On the shore of the great sea which is the cradle of civilization, under the shadow of towering cedars, lies the rubble of a once majestic city. The gazes of native eyes, friend and enemy, calculate the tricks of living in a hot zone of the Cold War. Strange, imponderable loves rise in a falling city, and the death gong tolls with the sounds of timeless song. The Levant. An ancient land of battle and deception. After ten years of civil war, U.S. Marines land in the chaos. Factional fighting rips the city, and the Marines hold out in the cross fire. For Cazetti, a young Intelligence man with a bad record, it is a world of the war-wise: spies and survivors, innocents and wounded. Those like Hitman Hitchins, a loose agent with a lurking in his heart; Sardine, a treacherous vamp; Philomena, a direct, endearing nun determined to save Cazetti's soul; Cercio, a playboy lieutenant; and Minovich and Davey, hanging on since Vietnam to do it all again. With enemy artillery raining down on all sides, and the perimeter lines pinned down, nothing, it seems, can save these men from the apocalyptic specter they know is coming. A dramatic, vivid story of love and war in a devious and bloody world, THE CADILLAC OF SIX-BY'S brings you into the hearts of men who lived and died by fire, in a place and time now faint in the wake of history.
Reverge Anselmo was born in Mexico City in 1962. He served three years in the U.S. Marine Corps and is a survivor of the Expedition sent to Lebanon. He graduated the Erv Malnarich Outfitters and Guides School in Hamilton, Montana, and attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He lived for many years in Paris and was a businessman in Europe and Latin America. He is the son of the late Rene Anselmo, the communications tycoon. THE CADILLAC OF SIX-BY'S is his first novel.
Published now in ten countries to extraordinary acclaim and available in English for the first time, THE BALLAD OF JOHNNY SOSA depicts an ordinary man trying to live out his dreams in a dreary provincial town in central Uruguay while suffocating in the tentacles of military oppression. Every night, Johnny Sosa, a poor, young, black musician, sings melancholic soul music in the small bar in the town's brothel, dreaming of a life beyond his confining world, and for a few hours each day ignoring the secretive and oppressive military regime - a dictatorship not so much seen as felt-that has taken over his country. He attracts the attention of the local military leader who uses Sosa for his own political ends and, for a while, Johnny is permitted to sing and to imagine that he will perform at the national festival, where discovery and success may well be waiting for him. However, as his friends mysteriously start to disappear, Johnny begins to realize the price of his dream, and he must decide if he will pay it. The stripped-down quality of its prose, deft ironies, and tragi-comic insight into the strength of human nature under adversity all contribute to the prolonged impact of this penetrating novel from a country now reclaiming its literary tradition. Masterfully subversive and utterly brilliant, THE BALLAD OF JOHNNY SOSA is a finely honed parable on human dignity.
MARIO DELGADO APARAIN is a novelist and short story writer as well as a journalist and university professor. He first became famous in Uruguay for his short stories, which depicted the contrast between country and city life of Uruguayans. He lives in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he works at the Department of Culture, which he previously headed.
Alfonso Reyes, the great humanist and man of letters of contemporary Spanish America, began his literary career just before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He spearheaded the radical shift in Mexico's cultural and philosophical orientation as a leading member of the famous ‘Athenaeum Generation.' The crucial years of his literary formation, however, were those he spent in Spain (1914-1924). He arrived in Madrid unknown and unsure of his future. When he left, he had achieved both professional maturity and wide acclaim as a writer. This book has, as its basis, the remarkable correspondence between Reyes and some of the leading spirits of the Spanish intellectual world, covering not only his years in Spain but also later exchanges of letters. Although Reyes always made it clear that he was a Mexican and a Spanish American, be became a full-fledged member of the closed aristocracy of Spanish literature. It was the most brilliant period in Spain's cultural history since the Golden Age, and is richly represented here by Reyes' association with five of its most important figures: Miguel de Unamuno and Ramon del Valle-Inclan were of the great ‘Generation of 98', among the younger writers were Jose Ortega y Gasset, essayist and philosopher, the Nobel poet Juan Ramon Jimenez, and Ramon Gomez de la Serna, a precursor of surrealism. Alfonso Reyes maintained lifelong friendships with these men, and their exchanges of letters are of a dual significance. They reveal how the years in Spain allowed Reyes to pursue his vocation independently, thereby prompting him to seek universal values. Coincidentally, they provide a unique glimpse in to the inner world of those friends - and their dreams of a new Spain.
Barbara Bockus Aponte, associate professor of Spanish at Temple University and Co-Chairman of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, has studied in Mexico in addition to collecting material there for this book. She has previously published several articles on Reyes in scholarly journals.
‘ . . . one can reduce the whole enigma of the tropics to the fragrance of a rotten guava. ‘I remember when I was a very small boy in Aracataca, my grandfather took me to the circus to see a dromedary. Another day, when I told him I hadn't seen the ice on show, he took me to the banana company's settlement and asked them to open up a crate of frozen mullet and made me put my hand in. The whole of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE began with that one image.' - Gabriel Garcia Marquez. . . The Nobel Prize awarded to Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982, merely confirmed his importance in reshaping the map of Latin American literature. This book presents an unusual portrait of the great ‘magic realist'. In conversation with Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza - himself a distinguished Colombian novelist - Marquez reflects on literature, the violent contrasts of South America, his family and politics. He discusses in detail the two works that are central to his reputation: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE and THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH. His commitment to the liberation struggles of Central and South America is revealed in his firm support for the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, and his solidarity with Cuba. These conversations between two friends, relaxed and uninhibited, will fascinate and reward Marquez's English-speaking readers.
Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza (born 1932) is a Colombian journalist, writer, and diplomat. Mendoza was named in honour to the Roman authors Pliny the Younger and Apuleius. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza born in Tunja, Boyacá in 1932, son of the lawyer and politic Plinio Mendoza Neira, who was witness to the murder of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán. He studied Politic Sciences at The Sorbonne in Paris. He is very well known for his close friendship with the literature Nobel prize winner Gabriel García Márquez. Mendoza and García Márquez spent time in Europe during the early 60s. Mendoza published a biographical novel regarding the life and anecdotes of García Márquez and their circle of friends, poets, and writers during those years in Europe. The book was entitled "The Fragrance of the Guava". Mendoza served as First Secretary of the Colombian Embassy in France, writing newspaper articles for several international publications at the same time. After returning to Colombia in 1959, he became a full-time writer and journalist.
CANAAN is a novel of the emigration of a young German to Brazil in the 1920s that deals with issues of race and ethnicity and how these influence notions of nationalist purity and pride. The novel's narration takes the form of a dialogue between two German immigrants. In it Aryan purity is pitted against the potential harmony of Brazil's racial admixture. The novel is a bitter and truceless struggle between old Brazil and the European immigrants.
Jose Pereira da Graça Aranha (June 21, 1868 - January 26, 1931) was a Brazilian writer and diplomat, considered to be a forerunner of the Modernism in Brazil. He was also one of the organizers of the Brazilian Modern Art Week of 1922. He founded and occupied the 38th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1897 until his death in 1931. However, he would break all his relations with the Academy in 1924, accusing it of being "old-fashioned". Graça Aranha was born in São Luís, to a rich and cultured family, son of journalist Temístocles da Silva Maciel Aranha and Maria da Gloria da Graça. He was a prodigy, having completed his secondary studies when 13 years old, and went to study Law in Recife. He graduated with honours in 1886 and travelled to the South to work. He became a judge in Porto do Cachoeiro, a village in the backlands of the state of Espírito Santo. This experience was used by him in one of his best known novels, Canaã, a great editorial success in 1902. The novel explored the conflicts of the Brazilian immigrants. According to author Raymond Leslie Williams: 'Along with Os Sertões (by Euclides da Cunha), Canaã was one of the most widely read and discussed books in Brazil in the early part of the century. Canaã is a work of ideas rather than actions, and one of the central ideas that Graça Aranha promotes is that culture in the broadest sense (cultura) is the ultimate answer to society's ills.' Without having published any books, Graça Aranha was invited to be one of the 40 founding members of the Brazilian Academy of Letter in 1897, by Machado de Assis, Joaquim Nabuco and Lúcio de Mendonça. In 1900, he was admitted to the Foreign Service as a career diplomat. He worked as such for the next 20 years. While he was stationed in Paris, France, he wrote another success in 1911, the theater drama Malazarte. He retired as a diplomat in 1919 and returned to Brazil in 1921. Graça Aranha sponsored modernism in the letters and arts and had several personality clashes with the traditionalists at the Academy, headed by writer Coelho Neto. He allied himself to other budding modernists of São Paulo and organized the revolutionary Week of Modern Art in February 1922. He opened the week under booing of an hostile audience, with a conference titled "The aesthetic emotion in modern art". Shortly before the "Week", Graça Aranha published in 1921 an influential theoretical essay, "Estetica da Vida" (An Aesthetics of Life), where he analysed the relationship of Brazilian soul with nature, a recurrent theme at the time. He argued that the three main races had formed the "soul" or essence of the Brazilian people by adding three basic emotions to culture: the Portuguese's melancholy, African childishness and "cosmic terror", and the Indians' "metaphysics of terror", or the use of ghosts. He proposed that Brazilian culture should strive to achieve a new relationship to nature, based on the incorporation of such feelings into art and by overcoming the ethnic differences by means of an integration between the I and the cosmos. Due to his participation, Graça Aranha was ostracised in the Academy, but he persisted, to the point even that on June 19, 1924 he stated in a conference, titled "The modern spirit" at the Academy, that its creation had been an error. A few months later, on October 18, he resigned from the Academy. In the same year, he founded with Renato Almeida a modernist literature review and magazine, Movimento Brasileiro, which lasted until just after his death. His last novel, published in 1929 was A Viagem Maravilhosa (The Marvelous Journey), which was not so well received by the critics. He also wrote an incomplete autobiography, which was published posthumously in 1931. After his death, a group of intellectuals and friends established the Graça Aranha Foundation, a project which was devised by him. One of the Foundation's aims was to award prized in the arts and literature to distinguished Brazilians who excelled in these fields. Among the most famous awardees were writers Jorge Amado, Rachel de Queiroz, Jose Lins do Rego, Erico Verissimo, Clarice Lispector, Lêdo Ivo and Alphonsus de Guimaraens Filho. The Foundation, which was maintained by Nazareth Prado, closed down only a year later, when funds for awarding prizes were exhausted.
For Luis Enrique Ferro, the Cuban Revolution was love like a hundred thousand doves. He thought: ‘A country in revolution is like a striptease on a circular stage. Each spectator discovers a different part of the performer's anatomy. But who discovers her soul?' For Enrique Yánez, hero of the Revolution, it was ‘just as if Batista were still in power. The Reds are stealing our Revolution right out from under us.' For Mercedes, the counter-revolutionary who would do anything for love, the Revolution was a time of hatred. Her voice was soft, wrapped in violins, when she asked Luis: ‘Do you remember the last night we were together? I almost gave myself to you that night.' For Manolo the Revolution was a force that must show no mercy. His credo was: ‘Against counter - revolutionary terror, we must wield revolutionary terror.' For Esteban, the dedicated engineer who was Luis Enrique's brother, the Revolution meant closed horizons. He thought: ‘Fidel is always crowing, and Luis repeats him like a parrot, that the Revolution has opened limitless horizons for the youth. But for me there is no opportunity for advancement, except by getting involved in politics.' For Esteban's wife, Consuelo, the Revolution was a cancer poisoning their lives. For ChE Guevara, the ogre of the counterrevolution, the enigmatic Argentinian about whom a thousand stories circulated, Fidel's eminence grise, the reddest Red in the whole government, the Revolution meant learning a job of which he knew nothing when he was appointed. The drama of their lives flashed against a backdrop of the lonely nights on militia watch, the secret trysts of love, the magic of Old Havana, the bureaucratic intrigues of the glass factory, the sweat and camaraderie of the cane-cutting expeditions, the white sands of Varadero Beach. Then came the invasion. And for all of them the Revolution confirmed in some harsh, inexorable way what they had somehow always known.
JUAN ARCOCHA (November 7, 1927 - May 7, 2010) was born in the Havana he writes about: As a gifted student he won a fellowship to study in Paris where he lived for six years. Then, when Batista fell in 1959, he returned to Havana. There he became staff writer and editorial assistant to Carlos Franqui, one of the early revolutionaries and the editor of the newspaper Revolucion. In 1961 he was sent to Moscow as correspondent for Russia and lived there for about a year. A subsequent marriage to a Russian girl failed and was part of his disillusionment with the USSR: there was no confidence even between husband and wife: she lied to him constantly about political matters. He returned to Havana but Fidel Castro assigned him to Paris as cultural attachE for the Cuban government. A year ago he visited Cuba to talk out his problems with Castro. Castro told him to do whatever he wanted to do and said, ‘I ask of you only one thing. Tell the truth.' Arcocha no longer works for the Cuban government but does work in Paris on a contract basis for UNESCO and other United Nations agencies. A CANDLE IN THE WIND shows Arcocha's dilemma. Like many of the characters in the book he is a partisan of the Revolution but feels strongly the paradox and doubts which followed the metamorphosis from a middle class to a communist culture. This is his second book but the first published in English. His first novel has been contracted for by Feltrinelli, the original publishers of DR. ZHIVAGO.
This fast-paced, compact novel reveals more about the Cuban revolution than any number of serious editorials and articles. Based on an actual incident, THE SUN BEATS DOWN tells how a group of young revolutionists kidnaps a famous Mexican prize fighter from the lobby of Havana's busiest hotel. Frantically the Batista police comb the city. The young wife of one of the group is seized and brutally tortured; one of the revolutionists is shot down by the police; another escapes after a desperate chase through the back alleys of the city. But, in the end, after the prize fight is canceled, the fighter is ‘returned' unharmed to the Mexican Embassy. Here is an exciting, thrill-packed novella that will leave the reader breathless. The author is a young Cuban, now living in New York. He knows both Fidel and Raul Castro, and has been in close touch with the anti-Batista movement since its inception. . .
Humberto Arenal (January 15, 1926, Havana, Cuba - January 26, 2012, Havana, Cuba) was a Cuban writer, playwright and theater director. During his career Arenal was the director of major cultural institutions on the island, such as the Teatro Nacional, the Teatro Musical de La Habana, the Conjunto Dramatico of Matanzas and the Teatro Lirico Nacional de Cuba. The author of El sol a plomo (1959), Los animales sagrados (1967) and Quien mato a Ivan Ivanovich? (1995), Arenal won the National Prize for Literature in 2007. He is still remembered for the great success of his open-air staging of the play Aire frio, by Virgilio Piñera, in 1962. Humberto Arenal died January 26, 2012 in Havana at the age of 85.
‘In Autoepitaph, Reinaldo Arenas soars above death, conquers terror, and sees himself reflected in the face of his lover, the Cuban sea.'--Flora González Mandri, coeditor and cotranslator of In the Vortex of the Cyclone: Selected Poems by Excilia Saldaña. ‘A powerful tribute to Arenas, a poet who explores the meaning of our ethical standing in the world as well as the transient nature of our souls. In this collection, we journey with Arenas into his struggles and victories, accompanied by his voice, filled with fortitude and hope. The English translation pays tribute to the original Spanish text.'--Marjorie Agosín, author of Of Earth and Sea: A Chilean Memoir. Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990) remains one of the most famous Cuban writers in exile. His work constitutes a monument of resistance literature, but much of the focus has been on his novels and his autobiobiography, Before Night Falls, chosen as one of the ten best books of 1993 by the New York Times. Because his poetic output has not been widely translated, Autoepitaph will be the only volume currently in print of Arenas's poetry in translation in any language. This bilingual volume includes narrative poems, sonnets, excerpts from Arenas's prose poems, and previously unpublished works from his papers at Princeton University. Both the Spanish originals as well as English translations seamlessly capture the poet's sarcasm, humor, and powerful rhythms. Camelly Cruz-Martes provides an outline for Arenas's major poetic strategies, as well as context for the themes that unite his poems: resistance against colonialism, political and personal repression, existential alienation, and the desire for transcendence through art.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943, Oriente Province, Cuba - December 7, 1990, New York City, NY) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright. Camelly Cruz-Martes is associate professor of Spanish at Walsh University. Kelly Washbourne is associate professor of Spanish translation at Kent State University. He has translated six books from Spanish to English and is the author of Manual of Spanish-English Translation.
‘BEAUTIFUL IS THE FIGURE OF THE NAKED INDIAN IN THE LONGED FOR LAND OF MY DREAMS.' A young dreamer, still only a teenager, finds himself conscripted by the current regime and assigned to exhausting labor at a Cuban sugar mill. There, breathing the sweet odor of boiling sugar and cut cane, he is haunted by visions of a past that is both irrevocably lost and star-tingly present . . . terrifying scenes that resurrect memories of awesome brutality, sexual mistreatment, and horrors that chill the blood . . . a bitter history that captures both the eternal beauty of an earthly paradise - and the source of its continuing pain. In a moving prose epic, vibrant with symbolism, satire, and scathing social commentary, an extraordinary poet brings to life today's complex Cuba: A troubled island whose people dare to dream and sing . . . but like the caged bird, from the depths of their despair and desire for freedom.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. Cuba will be free. I already am.'
Sixteen years ago, Reinaldo Arenas began writing FAREWELL TO THE SEA, a novel that Severo Sarduy describes as ‘one of the greatest novels that our country has produced, at once one of the most critical and one of the most Cuban.' The manuscript was confiscated twice by the Cuban authorities, and twice the author rewrote it from memory In this extraordinary and deeply shocking novel we meet Hector, a disillusioned poet and disenchanted revolutionary who leaves the dreariness of Havana and retreats with his wife and baby to a small seaside cabin for six days. There they hope to recapture the passion, desire, and carefree spirit that once united them. In a stunning juxtaposition of narrative voices, they each tell their own story. The wife (nameless throughout) speaks first: of the child she must care for; of a life filled with paranoia; of the emptiness of religion; of a marriage disrupted by curious sexual tensions and unacknowledged infidelities. Hector then recalls the valiant struggle against Batista, the promise of the early Castro years, the disillusionment that came afterward - and laments the artistic and sexual freedom (the ability to live openly as a homosexual) that has been denied him. Rich in hallucination, myth, and fantasy FAREWELL TO THE SEA is a brilliant apocalyptic vision of today's Cuba, by a writer whom Octavio Paz calls ‘remarkable.'
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. Cuba will be free. I already am.'. ANDREW HURLEY is a professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico at San Juan. He has translated works of Jorge Luis Borges and Heberto Padilla, and is at work on the translation of Cantando en el pow. (original title: Otra Vez El Mar, 1982 - Editorial Argos Vergara, S.A.).
‘A GREAT LOVE IS, ABOVE ALL, A GREAT PROVOCATION . . . ‘ A beautiful young mulatto in long-ago Havana, Cuba, takes a white man into her bed. In itself, this act of love was more commonplace than remarkable. But Cecilia ValdEs was the illegitimate daughter of don Cándido, a wealthy slave trader arid coffee baron. Her inamorato was Leonardo, don Cándido's son. Such can be the stuff of tragedy. For highly acclaimed exiled Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, it is the jumping-off place for hilarious farce-risque, absurd, wildly funny, and quintessentially irreverent. Arenas, whose searing prose has exposed the brutalities and haunting beauty of his native land in his earlier works, tells here a tale filled with heartbreak; touches it with magic; and creates a fantastic, bittersweet tragicomedy that captures the essence of the bondage of the human heart. ‘A remarkable writer as much for his talent as for his intellectual dignity. I am his reader and his admirer!' - Octavio Paz.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. Cuba will be free. I already am.'
Reinaldo Arenas, at twenty-seven, became one of the most powerful writers in Cuba and, indeed, Latin America. This novel (El mundo alucinante) is the hallucinatory history of Friar Servando Teresa de Mier, a Mexican friar whose famous heretical sermon on the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe (now seen as an outburst of the passion which led to the independence of Mexico early in the nineteenth century) resulted in his lifelong persecution. Ingeniously merging fact and fantasy, the novel records the friar's wildly improbable exploits as he escapes from prison to prison, narrowly avoiding immolation, rape and marriage, travelling Europe on foot, a witness to the excesses of debauched clerics and corrupt revolutionaries. He voyages in the three lands of love in Madrid, is caged by a wealthy jewess in Bayonne, witnesses the triumph of Napoleon in Paris, meets Lady Hamilton and Virginia Woolf's hermaphrodite Orlando in England's ‘remote and misty land', picks cotton in the American South and flnally returns to applause and welcome in newly liberated Mexico, Whether incarcerated in spray-drenched castle, slave ship or rat-infested dungeon, or wandering the labyrinth of vice and deceit in a worlc of changing tyrannies, the intrepid friar retains his faith and chastity, holding fast to his obsessively utopian vision of a truly free society. The hypnotic pace and imaginative brilliance of this fantastic tale have already won acclaim in France and Mexico, although its disenchanted view of revolution has so far precluded publication in the author's native Cuba, Gordon Brotherston's distinguished translation highlights all the humour, vigour and sparkling invention of the original.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. Cuba will be free. I already am.'
This inventive, spirited and hilarious novel is imaginary biography, philosophical fable, historical fresco and political parable. A blend of the serious and the burlesque, surreal truth and invention, it is the story of Friar Servando Teresa de Mier, a Mexican friar whose famous heretical sermon on the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe (now seen as an outburst of the passion which led to the independence of Mexico early in the nineteenth century) resulted in his lifelong persecution. Ingeniously merging fact and fantasy, the novel records the friar's wildly improbable exploits as he escapes from prison to prison, narrowly avoiding immolation, rape and marriage, traveling Europe on foot, a witness to the excesses of debauched clerics and corrupt revolutionaries. He voyages in the three lands of love in Madrid, is caged by a wealthy Jewess in Bayonne, witnesses the triumph of Napoleon in Paris, meets Lady Hamilton and Virginia Woolf's hermaphrodite, Orlando, in England's ‘remote and misty land,' picks cotton in the American south and finally returns to applause and welcome in newly liberated Mexico. Whether incarcerated in spray-drenched castle, slave ship or rat-infested dungeon, or wandering the labyrinth of vice and deceit in a world of changing tyrannies, the intrepid friar retains his faith and chastity, holding fast to his obsessively utopian vision of a truly free society. The pace and brilliance of this picaresque tale have already won acclaim in France and Mexico, although its disenchanted view of revolution has so far precluded publication in the author's native Cuba. Gordon Brotherston's distinguished translation highlights all the humor, vigor and sparkling adventure of the original.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. Cuba will be free. I already am.'
This inventive, spirited and hilarious novel is imaginary biography, philosophical fable, historical fresco and political parable. A blend of the serious and the burlesque, surreal truth and invention, it is the story of Friar Servando Teresa de Mier, a Mexican friar whose famous heretical sermon on the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe (now seen as an outburst of the passion which led to the independence of Mexico early in the nineteenth century) resulted in his lifelong persecution. Ingeniously merging fact and fantasy, the novel records the friar's wildly improbable exploits as he escapes from prison to prison, narrowly avoiding immolation, rape and marriage, traveling Europe on foot, a witness to the excesses of debauched clerics and corrupt revolutionaries. He voyages in the three lands of love in Madrid, is caged by a wealthy Jewess in Bayonne, witnesses the triumph of Napoleon in Paris, meets Lady Hamilton and Virginia Woolf's hermaphrodite, Orlando, in England's ‘remote and misty land,' picks cotton in the American south and finally returns to applause and welcome in newly liberated Mexico. Whether incarcerated in spray-drenched castle, slave ship or rat-infested dungeon, or wandering the labyrinth of vice and deceit in a world of changing tyrannies, the intrepid friar retains his faith and chastity, holding fast to his obsessively utopian vision of a truly free society. The pace and brilliance of this picaresque tale have already won acclaim in France and Mexico, although its disenchanted view of revolution has so far precluded publication in the author's native Cuba. Gordon Brotherston's distinguished translation highlights all the humor, vigor and sparkling adventure of the original.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. Cuba will be free. I already am.'
The two stories of this terrifying and beautiful novel converge on a single charged point in the lives of a Cuban mother and son. We first meet Old Rosa in the blazing ruins of her farmhouse, weeping tears that seem to have no beginning or end. As the fire spreads, her life passes before her, and we see her as a young woman, shy but firm in her chastity, then as a bride, mother, and mistress of her prosperous farm. Tall, proud, shrewd, she is always in control-of her husband, her children, her workers, her land, even her God. But when her oldest son runs off to join Fidel Castro's rebels, her world begins to crumble, and when she finds her youngest son, Arturo, her favorite, her ‘brightest star,' in bed with another boy, her despair burns more fiercely than the encroaching flames that drive this powerful story from present to past and back again. The second story, ‘The Brightest Star,' finds this son imprisoned in one of Castro's camps for homosexuals, where his life is unrelieved, mind-numbing labor and brutality. To survive, Arturo writes, on anything he can find, on paper bags and torn-off scraps of political posters and in the margins of stolen official documents. He writes to open a window of freedom, to preserve a dream of beauty and love, with such passion and soaring poetry that we can see the magnificent castles, the lush hanging gardens, the crystal palaces of his imagination - which always revolve, and dissolve, around the image of Old Rosa, their fateful confrontation, the house in flames, the charred body of his mother, the one who loved him enough to kill him.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. Cuba will be free. I already am.'
SINGING FROM THE WELL is a powerful novel of growing up in a world where nightmare has become reality and fantasy provides the only escape. His mother piously talks of the heaven that awaits the good, and disciplines her son with an ox-prod. His grandmother burns his treasured crosses for kindling. His cousins meet on the rooftop of their home to plot their grandfather's death. The children at school taunt him as a ninny, a ‘queer.' Yet in the hills surrounding his home, another reality exists, a place where his mother wears flowers in her hair, and his cousin Celestino, a poet who inscribes verse on the trunks of trees, understands his every word and sees, unquestioning, his visions. In this extraordinary novel, by turns explosively crude and breathtakingly lyrical, Reinaldo Arenas uses the emotionally charged rage of childhood to express the horrors and the hopes of the revolutionary spirit raised against authority and oppression.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. Cuba will be free. I already am.' ANDREW HURLEY is a professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, in San Juan. He has translated works of Jorge Luis Borges and Heberto Padilla, and is at work on the translation of El Palacio de las Blanquisinias Mofetas, the second book in the sequence.
The author of the brilliant and highly acclaimed memoir, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, Reinaldo Arenas concluded his sequence of five novels - at once a ‘secret history of Cuba' and a writer's autobiography - with an allegorical satire. In The Assault, he paints a harrowing, yet at times boldly entertaining, Kafkaesque picture of a dehumanized people and the despair of an observer/narrator himself clinging to sanity. This profane narrative, filled with righteous rage, takes us on a surreal journey through a blackly humorous shadowland where philosophical discussion, homosexuality, and forgetting the words to heroic anthems are comparable crimes-and a cockroach hunt makes a national holiday. With echoes of Rabelais, Swift, Orwell, and the films of Luis Buñuel, The Assault crowns the work of one of the most visionary writers to have emerged from Castro's Cuba, a writer whom Octavio Paz called ‘remarkable . . . as much for his intellectual dignity as for his talent.'
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. . . . I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. . . Cuba will be free. I already am.' ANDREW HURLEY is Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan. He has translated Reinaldo Arenas's ‘Pentagonia' novels and other writings by Arenas, as well as works by Jorge Lois Borges, Heberto Padilla, Gustavo Sainz, Ernesto Sabato, Fernando Arrabal, and the Puerto Rican writer Ana Lydia Vega.
The final work from ‘one of the few truly great writers to come out of Latin America in this century' (Chicago Tribune). Critics worldwide have praised Reinaldo Arenas's writing. His extraordinary memoir, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, was chosen by the editors of The New York Times Book Review as one of the fourteen ‘Best Books of 1993' and was hailed by Mario Vargas Llosa as ‘one of the most shattering testimonials ever written.' His fiction ‘reveals a profoundly original writer . . . Reading Arenas is like witnessing a bare consciousness in the process of assimilating the most universal, but powerful, human experiences and turning them into literature' (The New York Tmes Book Review). THE COLOR OF SUMMER, Arenas's finest comic achievement, is the fourth novel in a quintet he called the Pentagonia. Although it is the penultimate chapter in his ‘secret history of Cuba,' it was, in fact, the last book Arenas wrote before his death in 1990. (The final volume, THE ASSAULT, was written first and published in 1994.) In THE COLOR OF SUMMER we are transported to a carnival held in honor of the fiftieth year in power of a certain Caribbean dictator, named Fifo. The citizens have ‘come out'- both literally and figuratively-to celebrate, and the result is a hilarious inversion of the island's power structure and social order. A Rabelaisian tale of survival by wits and wit, The Color of Summer is ultimately a powerful and passionate story about the triumph of the human spirit over the forces of political and sexual repression.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. . . . I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. . . Cuba will be free. I already am.' ANDREW HURLEY is a professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan. He has translated all of the novels in Arenas's Pentagonia, and is also the translator of Jorge Luis Borges's Collected Fictions.
Reinaido Arenas is the most widely read, most highly acclaimed writer of Cuba's post-revolutionary generation. For his earlier works, such as SINGING FROM THE WELL (which he wrote when he was twenty-three) and Old Rosa, Arenas was praised as a prodigious, explosive talent. THE DOORMAN, his first work set in the United States, breaks new ground with the extraordinary and tragic story of Juan, a young Cuban refugee who becomes a doorman at a luxury apartment building in Manhattan. In his impeccable uniform, Juan opens the door fix a variety of characters, among them the Supreme Pastor of the Church of Love of Christ Through Friendly and Constant Contact; a young woman hell-bent on suicide (with whom Juan is secretly in love); an advocate of the totally prosthetic body; a pair of nearly identical gay lovers both named Oscar Times (but known as Oscar Times One and Oscar Times Evo); and a host of others whom Juan zealously endeavors to show ‘the true door to happiness?' He fails miserably, but his own life takes a sudden turn when the tenants' pets-including a bear, a rattlesnake, an orangutan, golden fish, cats, dogs, and so on - begin to talk to him. Not only do the animals talk to Juan, but they are in fact determined to recruit him to their cause: a revolt against humans and human society, and a mass flight to liberty. Fantastic, satirical, dizzyingly inventive, THE DOORMAN is a bittersweet parable about freedom and community, told with a profound sense of humanity.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. Cuba will be free. I already am.'
Meet Father Servando Teresa de Mier, Catholic priest, Mexican revolutionary - and roguish hero of this wonderfully picaresque work by the acclaimed Cuban writer-in-exile, Reinaldo Arenas. A novel filled with linguistic pyrotechnics and dazzling leaps of the imagination, THE ILL-FATED PEREGRINATIONS OF FRAY SERVANDO continues the tradition of DON QUIXOTE, PANTAGRUEL, and CANDIDE, as the irrepressible priest wanders the vice-ridden capitals of Europe, slips in and out of jails, escapes the clutches of a marriage-minded female, and outwits bloodthirsty inquisitors, a slaveship captain, an American planter, and the King of Spain! Funny, irreverent, profound, this is literature at its quintessential best-a black comedy with the power to make readers question . . . and understand. A RABELAISIAN EXTRAVAGANZA . . . a steadily surprising and provocative book!' - Atlantic Monthly Press. ‘A BAROQUE ALLEGORY OF THE ANGUISHED BUT NO LESS UNCOMPROMISING SPIRIT OF THE REVOLUTIONARY' - New Statesman.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. . . . I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. . . Cuba will be free. I already am.'. (original title: El mundo alucinante, 1966). A Re-Translation Of ‘Hallucinations'.
Reinaldo Arenas is one of the most intoxicating voices in modern Latin American letters today, and one of the most extraordinary writers Cuba has given us since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. He has been described by Octavio Paz as ‘a remarkable writer as much for his talent as for his intellectual dignity,' and by his fellow countrymen Jose Lezama Lima and Severo Sarduy as ‘a young Cuban writer of tremendous talent . . . a force of nature, someone born to write,' and ‘one of the truly great writers our country has produced.' Born into a peasant family in Oriente province, Arenas published his first novel, SINGING FROM THE WELL, in 1967 at the age of twenty-four. It was subsequently banned and Arenas has not been published in Cuba since. His second novel, HALLUCINATIONS, first published in Mexico, received enormous acclaim and was awarded, in 1969, joint first prize for best foreign novel of the year in France (an accolade he shared with Gabriel Garcia Marquez for ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE). Both books, written before Arenas was twenty-three, showed his ability to reimagine the awakening of adolescence and to re-create history on many levels of reality. They also alerted Cuban authorities to a ‘counter-revolutionary.' From 1970 to 1980, when he managed to escape to Florida in the Mariel exodus, he spent time under house arrest, in labor camps, and in prison. Arenas continued to write, eluding Castro's straitjacket and upsetting literary convention. For him, as for Jorge Luis Barges, there were no barriers between reality and fantasy. With the publication of Singing from the Well, his central theme of literary creation was firmly established. That book marked the beginning of a prodigious enterprise - a sequence of five novels which would be both ‘a secret history of Cuba' and a writer's autobiography. THE PALACE OF THE WHITE SKUNKS, the second volume of his quintet, tells the story of Fortunato, a young man who escapes the constant cruelties and cacophony of his grandparents' home to join the rebel forces against the Batista regime. The story is narrated through a chorus of voices-of both the living and the dead-and through dialogue, monologue, advertisements, newspaper articles, and propaganda proclamations. It is a brilliant and disturbing portrait of Cuba as Castro prepared to take power and establish a new dictatorship, a period of Cuba's history that Arenas eloquently describes in FAREWELL TO THE SEA, the third novel in the quintet.
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 - December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government. Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). (Soto 1998) Interestingly, his Hallucinations was awarded ‘first Honorable Mention' in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year (Colchie 2001). His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of ‘ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. His Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a ‘secret history' of post revolutionary Cuba. It includes the poetical Farewell to the Sea, Palace of the White Skunks and the Rabelaisian Color of Summer. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative to absurd satiric humor. He traces his own life story in what to him is the absurd world of Castro's Cuba. In each of the novels Arenas himself is a major character, going by a number of pseudonyms. His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS, but he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban Exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: ‘Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression it causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life. . . . I want to encourage the Cuban people out of the country as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. . . Cuba will be free. I already am.' ANDREW HURLEY is a professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan. He has translated Singing from the Well and Farewell to the Sea and other writings by Reinaldo Arenas, as well as works by Jorge Luis Borges, Heberto Padilla, Gustavo Sainz, Ernesto Sábato, and Fernando Arrabal.
These are songs and tales of the Quechua people, the ‘singing mountaineers' of Peru, the heirs of the Incas, for the first time made available to the English-speaking world in a book of genuine beauty and charm. Unique and unusual richness is the folklore of the Quechua people, but its treasures have long been hidden from the outside world, principally because Quechua is an unwritten language. Only in our own time has the barrier begun to be broken. One of the most important leaders in the movement to collect and record the folk heritage of the Quechua people is Jose Maria Arguedas, head of the Institute de Estudios Etnologicos del Museo Nacional de Historia, in Lima. It was a fortunate circumstance indeed which brought him several years ago into touch with the American novelist and poet, Ruth Stephan. Entranced by the beauty of the Andes, the nature of the Indians, and the haunting purity of the songs Arguedas had gathered, she resolved to present in English a collection of Quechua folk songs and tales. The result is the present volume. Presented herein are thirty songs, collected by Jose Maria Arguedas, translated from Quechua into Spanish by him, and given their final beautiful English form by Ruth Stephan. Here also are her English translations of two essays by Arguedas (one dealing with the Indians and their Andean fiestas and the other with their songs and tales) and of eleven ‘Threshing Songs,' collected and translated into Spanish from Huanca, a Quechua dialect, by Maria Lourdes Valladares, a teacher of Angasmayo. The nine remarkable folk tales included were collected by Father Jorge A. Lira, translated into Spanish by Arguedas, and then into English by the noted translators Kate and Angel Flores. All this folklore came from the people of the Andean region near Cuzco, a people singularly untouched by outside influences, holding through the centuries to the customs and the character of the Incas, singing the same songs, telling the same tales. The whole has been edited by Ruth Stephan, who has supplied notes, a bibliography, and an introduction which admirably sets the scene for the songs and tales, with their background in which, ‘like brilliant steady stars, or, perhaps, like the mountains the Quechua people live upon, are the centuries of civilizations from which they have emerged. . . .' Donald Weismann, head of the University of Texas Department of Art, who has long been interested in the folk art of the Americas, has supplied a series of delightful and appropriate drawings. . . A Tribute to The Singing Mountaineers BY DR. Luis E. VALCARCEL, Dean of the Faculty of Letters of the University of San Marco, Director of the Peruvian National Museum of History, President of the International Committee of Folklore, and author of numerous works on Peruvian history, ethnology, archaeology, and art - ‘We must be grateful to Ruth Stephan for having translated these songs of the Quechua people compiled by Jos4 Maria Arguedas, since it puts them within reach of the readers of the broad English-speaking world. ‘There will be revealed a poetry of profound humanity that overcomes misery and emits a radiance of the best that man has, that which is everlasting and universal, that which is not exclusive to a group nor the privilege of a race. In these songs the men of Peru, the towns of Peru, are joined with all men and all towns, because their motivation comes from the root of the species. They who sing the songs in this manner are the Peruvians of yesterday and of today; however, they are the ones who preserve in their spirit the unconfused Andean relationship, not those others who have lost it and flutter like loose leaves unfastened from the nourishing tree. ‘It is not vain to repeat that the more men may be bound to the earth, to their earth, the more universal will be their artistic expression. ‘In these pages will be found the proof.'. .
Jose María Arguedas Altamirano (18 January 1911 - 28 November 1969) was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. Arguedas was a mestizo of Spanish and Quechua descent who wrote novels, short stories, and poems in both Spanish and Quechua. Generally remembered as one of the most notable figures of 20th century Peruvian literature, Arguedas is especially recognized for his intimate portrayals of indigenous Andean culture. Key in his desire to depict indigenous expression and perspective more authentically was his creation of a new language that blended Spanish and Quechua and premiered in his debut novel Yawar Fiesta. Jose Maria Arguedas was born in Andahuaylas, a province in the southern Peruvian Andes. He was born into a well-off mestizo family, but his mother died when he was two years old. Because of the absence of his father, a lawyer who travelled frequently, and his bad relationship with his step-mother and step-brother, he comforted himself in the care of the family's indigenous servants, allowing him to immerse himself in the language and customs of the Andes, which came to form an important part of his personality. He went to primary school in San Juan de Lucana, Puquio, and Abancay, and completed his secondary studies in Ica, Huancayo, and Lima. He began studying at The University of San Marcos (Lima) in 1931; there he graduated with a degree in Literature. He later took up studies in Ethnology, receiving his degree in 1957 and his doctorate in 1963. Between 1937 and 1938 he was sent to prison for his protesting an envoy sent to Peru by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Arguedas also worked for the Ministry of Education, where he into practice his interests in preserving and promoting Peruvian culture, in particular traditional Andean music and dance. He was the director of the Casa de la Cultura (1963) and Director of the National Museum of History (1964–1966). Arguedas shot himself in the head on November 29, 1969 in his office at the Agrarian University in La Molina, leaving behind very specific instructions for his funeral, a diary depicting his depression, and a final unfinished manuscript, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below). This work includes portions of Arguedas' diary, memories of his distressing childhood, thoughts on Peruvian culture, and his reasons for suicide. He depicts his struggle between his desire to authentically illuminate the life of the Andean Indians and his personal anguish trapping him in depression. The title of the book originates in a Quechua myth that Arguedas translated into Spanish earlier in his life. ‘El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo' refers to the Quechua symbols for life and death, and modernity and tradition. Arguedas began his literary career by writing short stories about the indigenous environment familiar to him from his childhood. He wrote in a Spanish highly influenced by Quechua syntax and vocabulary. By the time he published his first novel in 1941, Yawar Fiesta (‘Blood Festival'), he had begun to explore the theme that would interest him for the rest of his career: the clash between Western ‘civilization' and the indigenous, ‘traditional' way of life. He was thus considered part of the Indigenista movement in South American literature, and continued to explore this theme in his next two books Los Ríos Profundos (‘Deep Rivers') (1958) and Todas las Sangres (1964). Yet he also was conscious of the simplistic portrayal of the indigenous peoples in other Indigenista literature and worked hard to give the Andean Indians a true voice in his works. This effort was not always successful as some critics contend that Arguedas portrayed Indian characters as too gentle and childlike. Another theme in Arguedas' writing is the struggle of mestizos of Indian-Spanish descent and their navigation between the two seemingly separate parts of their identity. Many of his works also depicted the violence and exploitation of race relations in Peru's small rural towns and haciendas, Arguedas was moderately optimistic about the possibility of a rapprochement between the forces of ‘tradition' and the forces of ‘modernity' until the 1960s, when he became more pessimistic. In his last (unfinished) work, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (‘The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below') (1969), he abandoned the realism of his earlier works for a more postmodern approach. This novel expressed his despair, caused by his fear that the 'primitive' ways of the Indians could not survive the onslaught of modern technology and capitalism. At the same time that Arguedas was becoming more pessimistic about race relations in his country, younger indigenist intellectuals became increasingly militant, often criticizing his work in harsh terms for his poetic, romanticized treatment of indigenous and rural life.
This powerful, poetic novel, set in the Peruvian Andes, has long resisted translation; its publication in English is truly a literary event. Jose Maria Arguedas draws upon his own Peruvian boyhood in portraying ‘the sad and powerful current that buflets children who must face, all alone, a world fraught with monsters and fire, and great rivers. Ernesto, the narrator of DEEP RIVERS, is a child with origins in two worlds. The son of a wandering country lawyer, he is brought up by Indian servants until he enters a Catholic boarding school at age 14. In this urban Spanish environment he is a misfit and a loner. The conflict of the Indian and the Spanish cultures is acted out within him as it was in the life of Arguedas. For the author, the final resolution was his suicide in 1969. For the boy Ernesto, salvation is his world of dreams and memories. The games, music, insects, and flowers of his Andean childhood are more vividly alive for Emesto than the disturbing world of the present. This nostalgia helps to explain the novel's lyrical purity and its poetic, reminiscent tone. A major theme in Deep Rivers is the boy's strong link with the natural world, which is humanized to an extent that surpasses simple metaphor and becomes almost magical. Two of the novel's main episodes-the insurrection of the marketwomen and the suffering of the Indians during a typhus plague-involve conflict between the Indians and their Spanish masters. Ernesto observes these events, bewildered by the violence with which the two cultures clash. As Mario Vargas Llosa points out in the afterword, DEEP RIVERS records historical events and social problems at a personal level, ‘the only way literary testimony can be living and not crystallize into dead symbols.' Texas Pan American Series. CONTENTS: TRANSLATOR'S NOTE; INTRODUCTION by John V. Mutra; THE OLD MAN; Deep rivers; THE LEAVE-TAKING; THE HACIENDA; BRIDGE OVER THE WORLD; THE JOURNEYS; ZUMBAYLLU; THE INSURRECTION; DEEP CANYON; STONE AND LIME; YAWAR MAYU; THE COLONOS; AFTERWORD; DREAMS AND MAGIC IN JOSE MARIA ARGUEDAS by Mario Vargas Llosa; GLOSSARY. . Jose Maria Arguedas was an ethnologist, a poet, a folk musicologist, and the major Indianist novelist of our time. He was born in 1911 in Andahuaylas in rural Peru and, like Emesto, was raised by Indian servants whom he deeply loved. He earned his doctorate in anthropology at the University of San Marcos in Lima, where he was head of the Anthropology Department at the time of his death. While Arguedas' poetry was published in Quechua, he invented a language for his novels in which he used native syntax with Spanish vocabulary. This makes translation into other languages extremely difficult. Frances Horning Barraclough teaches Spanish at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, and has spent almost twenty years living and working in Chile and other parts of Latin America.
Jose María Arguedas Altamirano (18 January 1911 - 28 November 1969) was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. Arguedas was a mestizo of Spanish and Quechua descent who wrote novels, short stories, and poems in both Spanish and Quechua. Generally remembered as one of the most notable figures of 20th century Peruvian literature, Arguedas is especially recognized for his intimate portrayals of indigenous Andean culture. Key in his desire to depict indigenous expression and perspective more authentically was his creation of a new language that blended Spanish and Quechua and premiered in his debut novel Yawar Fiesta. Jose Maria Arguedas was born in Andahuaylas, a province in the southern Peruvian Andes. He was born into a well-off mestizo family, but his mother died when he was two years old. Because of the absence of his father, a lawyer who travelled frequently, and his bad relationship with his step-mother and step-brother, he comforted himself in the care of the family's indigenous servants, allowing him to immerse himself in the language and customs of the Andes, which came to form an important part of his personality. He went to primary school in San Juan de Lucana, Puquio, and Abancay, and completed his secondary studies in Ica, Huancayo, and Lima. He began studying at The University of San Marcos (Lima) in 1931; there he graduated with a degree in Literature. He later took up studies in Ethnology, receiving his degree in 1957 and his doctorate in 1963. Between 1937 and 1938 he was sent to prison for his protesting an envoy sent to Peru by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Arguedas also worked for the Ministry of Education, where he into practice his interests in preserving and promoting Peruvian culture, in particular traditional Andean music and dance. He was the director of the Casa de la Cultura (1963) and Director of the National Museum of History (1964–1966). Arguedas shot himself in the head on November 29, 1969 in his office at the Agrarian University in La Molina, leaving behind very specific instructions for his funeral, a diary depicting his depression, and a final unfinished manuscript, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below). This work includes portions of Arguedas' diary, memories of his distressing childhood, thoughts on Peruvian culture, and his reasons for suicide. He depicts his struggle between his desire to authentically illuminate the life of the Andean Indians and his personal anguish trapping him in depression. The title of the book originates in a Quechua myth that Arguedas translated into Spanish earlier in his life. ‘El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo' refers to the Quechua symbols for life and death, and modernity and tradition. Arguedas began his literary career by writing short stories about the indigenous environment familiar to him from his childhood. He wrote in a Spanish highly influenced by Quechua syntax and vocabulary. By the time he published his first novel in 1941, Yawar Fiesta (‘Blood Festival'), he had begun to explore the theme that would interest him for the rest of his career: the clash between Western ‘civilization' and the indigenous, ‘traditional' way of life. He was thus considered part of the Indigenista movement in South American literature, and continued to explore this theme in his next two books Los Ríos Profundos (‘Deep Rivers') (1958) and Todas las Sangres (1964). Yet he also was conscious of the simplistic portrayal of the indigenous peoples in other Indigenista literature and worked hard to give the Andean Indians a true voice in his works. This effort was not always successful as some critics contend that Arguedas portrayed Indian characters as too gentle and childlike. Another theme in Arguedas' writing is the struggle of mestizos of Indian-Spanish descent and their navigation between the two seemingly separate parts of their identity. Many of his works also depicted the violence and exploitation of race relations in Peru's small rural towns and haciendas, Arguedas was moderately optimistic about the possibility of a rapprochement between the forces of ‘tradition' and the forces of ‘modernity' until the 1960s, when he became more pessimistic. In his last (unfinished) work, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (‘The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below') (1969), he abandoned the realism of his earlier works for a more postmodern approach. This novel expressed his despair, caused by his fear that the 'primitive' ways of the Indians could not survive the onslaught of modern technology and capitalism. At the same time that Arguedas was becoming more pessimistic about race relations in his country, younger indigenist intellectuals became increasingly militant, often criticizing his work in harsh terms for his poetic, romanticized treatment of indigenous and rural life.
This powerful, poetic novel, set in the Peruvian Andes, has long resisted translation; its publication in English is truly a literary event. Jose Maria Arguedas draws upon his own Peruvian boyhood in portraying ‘the sad and powerful current that buffets children who must face, all alone, a world fraught with monsters and fire and great rivers. . .' Ernesto, the narrator of DEEP RIVERS, is a child with origins in two worlds. The son of a wandering country lawyer, he is brought up by Indian servants until he enters a Catholic boarding school at age 14. In this urban Spanish environment he is a misfit and a loner. The conflict of the Indian and the Spanish cultures is acted out within him as it was in the life of Arguedas. For the author, the final resolution was his suicide in 1969. For the boy Ernesto, salvation is his world of dreams and memories.While Arguedas' poetry was published in Quechua, he invented a language for his novels in which he used native syntax with Spanish vocabulary. This makes translation into other languages extremely difficult, and Frances Horning Barraclough has done a masterful job, winning the 1978 Translation Center Award from Columbia University for her efforts.
Jose María Arguedas Altamirano (18 January 1911 - 28 November 1969) was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. Arguedas was a mestizo of Spanish and Quechua descent who wrote novels, short stories, and poems in both Spanish and Quechua. Generally remembered as one of the most notable figures of 20th century Peruvian literature, Arguedas is especially recognized for his intimate portrayals of indigenous Andean culture. Key in his desire to depict indigenous expression and perspective more authentically was his creation of a new language that blended Spanish and Quechua and premiered in his debut novel Yawar Fiesta. Jose Maria Arguedas was born in Andahuaylas, a province in the southern Peruvian Andes. He was born into a well-off mestizo family, but his mother died when he was two years old. Because of the absence of his father, a lawyer who travelled frequently, and his bad relationship with his step-mother and step-brother, he comforted himself in the care of the family's indigenous servants, allowing him to immerse himself in the language and customs of the Andes, which came to form an important part of his personality. He went to primary school in San Juan de Lucana, Puquio, and Abancay, and completed his secondary studies in Ica, Huancayo, and Lima. He began studying at The University of San Marcos (Lima) in 1931; there he graduated with a degree in Literature. He later took up studies in Ethnology, receiving his degree in 1957 and his doctorate in 1963. Between 1937 and 1938 he was sent to prison for his protesting an envoy sent to Peru by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Arguedas also worked for the Ministry of Education, where he into practice his interests in preserving and promoting Peruvian culture, in particular traditional Andean music and dance. He was the director of the Casa de la Cultura (1963) and Director of the National Museum of History (1964–1966). Arguedas shot himself in the head on November 29, 1969 in his office at the Agrarian University in La Molina, leaving behind very specific instructions for his funeral, a diary depicting his depression, and a final unfinished manuscript, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below). This work includes portions of Arguedas' diary, memories of his distressing childhood, thoughts on Peruvian culture, and his reasons for suicide. He depicts his struggle between his desire to authentically illuminate the life of the Andean Indians and his personal anguish trapping him in depression. The title of the book originates in a Quechua myth that Arguedas translated into Spanish earlier in his life. ‘El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo' refers to the Quechua symbols for life and death, and modernity and tradition. Arguedas began his literary career by writing short stories about the indigenous environment familiar to him from his childhood. He wrote in a Spanish highly influenced by Quechua syntax and vocabulary. By the time he published his first novel in 1941, Yawar Fiesta (‘Blood Festival'), he had begun to explore the theme that would interest him for the rest of his career: the clash between Western ‘civilization' and the indigenous, ‘traditional' way of life. He was thus considered part of the Indigenista movement in South American literature, and continued to explore this theme in his next two books Los Ríos Profundos (‘Deep Rivers') (1958) and Todas las Sangres (1964). Yet he also was conscious of the simplistic portrayal of the indigenous peoples in other Indigenista literature and worked hard to give the Andean Indians a true voice in his works. This effort was not always successful as some critics contend that Arguedas portrayed Indian characters as too gentle and childlike. Another theme in Arguedas' writing is the struggle of mestizos of Indian-Spanish descent and their navigation between the two seemingly separate parts of their identity. Many of his works also depicted the violence and exploitation of race relations in Peru's small rural towns and haciendas, Arguedas was moderately optimistic about the possibility of a rapprochement between the forces of ‘tradition' and the forces of ‘modernity' until the 1960s, when he became more pessimistic. In his last (unfinished) work, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (‘The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below') (1969), he abandoned the realism of his earlier works for a more postmodern approach. This novel expressed his despair, caused by his fear that the 'primitive' ways of the Indians could not survive the onslaught of modern technology and capitalism. At the same time that Arguedas was becoming more pessimistic about race relations in his country, younger indigenist intellectuals became increasingly militant, often criticizing his work in harsh terms for his poetic, romanticized treatment of indigenous and rural life.
PITTSBURGH EDITIONS OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE. ‘Frances Horning Barraclough's fine translation of Jose Maria Arguedas's complex novel about life and death is a major contribution to making important works of Latin American fiction known to an international audience. The original introduction and insightful essays by renowned critics of Arguedas's work included here with the novel make this an ideal text for classroom use.' - Marcia Stephenson, Purdue University. ‘An epochal novel, at the chronological heart of the Latin American Boom but not a part of it; a witness to an ‘other' writing intense enough to arrest our world, and any world. The Fox in its unfinished yet terminally finished state, in its passionate yet unwilled witnessing of dissolution and loss, but also in its intimations of a possible dawn, will remain a decisive if enigmatic event in Latin American history.' - Alberto Moreiras, Duke University. The last novel by Peruvian writer Jose Maria Arguedas, set in the booming port city of Chimbote, is an expression of the human costs of rapid modernization. Tragically, the malaise of the society is reflected in the literal self-destruction of the author, a process chronicled in four diaries woven into the novel itself Arguedas shot himself to death, closing his own life but deliberately leaving his novel open. Fittingly, the forces of destruction in this rich and fascinating work are wondrously transformed by language and emotion, by faith and redemption. As with the other Pittsburgh Editions of Latin American Literature, The Fox from Up Above and the Fox from Down Below contains critical essays providing background and analyses of the text for classroom use. Cover illustration by Gerardo Chavez. Frances Horning Barradough, Translator. Julio Ortega, Editor.
Jose María Arguedas Altamirano (18 January 1911 - 28 November 1969) was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. Arguedas was a mestizo of Spanish and Quechua descent who wrote novels, short stories, and poems in both Spanish and Quechua. Generally remembered as one of the most notable figures of 20th century Peruvian literature, Arguedas is especially recognized for his intimate portrayals of indigenous Andean culture. Key in his desire to depict indigenous expression and perspective more authentically was his creation of a new language that blended Spanish and Quechua and premiered in his debut novel Yawar Fiesta. Jose Maria Arguedas was born in Andahuaylas, a province in the southern Peruvian Andes. He was born into a well-off mestizo family, but his mother died when he was two years old. Because of the absence of his father, a lawyer who travelled frequently, and his bad relationship with his step-mother and step-brother, he comforted himself in the care of the family's indigenous servants, allowing him to immerse himself in the language and customs of the Andes, which came to form an important part of his personality. He went to primary school in San Juan de Lucana, Puquio, and Abancay, and completed his secondary studies in Ica, Huancayo, and Lima. He began studying at The University of San Marcos (Lima) in 1931; there he graduated with a degree in Literature. He later took up studies in Ethnology, receiving his degree in 1957 and his doctorate in 1963. Between 1937 and 1938 he was sent to prison for his protesting an envoy sent to Peru by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Arguedas also worked for the Ministry of Education, where he into practice his interests in preserving and promoting Peruvian culture, in particular traditional Andean music and dance. He was the director of the Casa de la Cultura (1963) and Director of the National Museum of History (1964–1966). Arguedas shot himself in the head on November 29, 1969 in his office at the Agrarian University in La Molina, leaving behind very specific instructions for his funeral, a diary depicting his depression, and a final unfinished manuscript, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below). This work includes portions of Arguedas' diary, memories of his distressing childhood, thoughts on Peruvian culture, and his reasons for suicide. He depicts his struggle between his desire to authentically illuminate the life of the Andean Indians and his personal anguish trapping him in depression. The title of the book originates in a Quechua myth that Arguedas translated into Spanish earlier in his life. ‘El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo' refers to the Quechua symbols for life and death, and modernity and tradition. Arguedas began his literary career by writing short stories about the indigenous environment familiar to him from his childhood. He wrote in a Spanish highly influenced by Quechua syntax and vocabulary. By the time he published his first novel in 1941, Yawar Fiesta (‘Blood Festival'), he had begun to explore the theme that would interest him for the rest of his career: the clash between Western ‘civilization' and the indigenous, ‘traditional' way of life. He was thus considered part of the Indigenista movement in South American literature, and continued to explore this theme in his next two books Los Ríos Profundos (‘Deep Rivers') (1958) and Todas las Sangres (1964). Yet he also was conscious of the simplistic portrayal of the indigenous peoples in other Indigenista literature and worked hard to give the Andean Indians a true voice in his works. This effort was not always successful as some critics contend that Arguedas portrayed Indian characters as too gentle and childlike. Another theme in Arguedas' writing is the struggle of mestizos of Indian-Spanish descent and their navigation between the two seemingly separate parts of their identity. Many of his works also depicted the violence and exploitation of race relations in Peru's small rural towns and haciendas, Arguedas was moderately optimistic about the possibility of a rapprochement between the forces of ‘tradition' and the forces of ‘modernity' until the 1960s, when he became more pessimistic. In his last (unfinished) work, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (‘The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below') (1969), he abandoned the realism of his earlier works for a more postmodern approach. This novel expressed his despair, caused by his fear that the 'primitive' ways of the Indians could not survive the onslaught of modern technology and capitalism. At the same time that Arguedas was becoming more pessimistic about race relations in his country, younger indigenist intellectuals became increasingly militant, often criticizing his work in harsh terms for his poetic, romanticized treatment of indigenous and rural life.
Named Jose Maria Arguedas' best novel by fellow writer Mario Vargas Llosa, YAWAR FIESTA dramatically portrays the clash of cultures in the small highland town of Puquio, Peru, where Arguedas himself lived in early childhood and adolescence. The incidents described in YAWAR FIESTA take place in the 1930s, soon after Peru's national government issued an edict forbidding the traditional Indian-style bullfight, in which crowds of Indians, armed with only poncl~ and sticks of dynamite, enter a makeshift bullring to fight a wild bull. In one way or another most of the landowners and other town aristocrats, the members of Puquio's four Indian communities, the citizens of mixed blood, and even some of the townspeople who have emigrated to the city wish openly or secretly to perpetuate the traditional contest, but their basic agreement does not preclude conflict. That conflict illustrates with unusual clarity the social, cultural, and racial characteristics of the various classes and groups in Puquio. Far from being fictionalized sociology, however, the novel glows with luminous descriptions of its ruggedly majestic highland setting and vivid portraits of the peoples who inhabit it. This first English-language translation of Yawar Fiesta is published with Puquio: A Culture in Process of Change, Arguedas' essay describing the Indian communities of Puquio as they existed some eighteen years after the time of his novel. Readers of this essay and the fictional work may therefore perceive the same society from Arguedas' viewpoints as anthropologist and as creative artist. The essay also reflects its author's musicological interests and expertise, as it includes the lyrics and some of the music from Indian religious chants and a secular love theme. Texas Pan American Series. CONTENTS: Translator's Note; Preliminary Note; The Novel and the Proble; YAWAR FIESTA - 1. Indian Town; 2. The Dispossession; 3. Wakawak'ras, Trumpets of the Earth; 4. K'ayau; 5. The Edict; 6. The Authority; 7. The Highlanders; 8. Misitu; 9. The Day Before; 10. The Auki; 11. Yawar Fiesta; Puquio: A Culture in Process of Change; Glossary.
Jose María Arguedas Altamirano (18 January 1911 - 28 November 1969) was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. Arguedas was a mestizo of Spanish and Quechua descent who wrote novels, short stories, and poems in both Spanish and Quechua. Generally remembered as one of the most notable figures of 20th century Peruvian literature, Arguedas is especially recognized for his intimate portrayals of indigenous Andean culture. Key in his desire to depict indigenous expression and perspective more authentically was his creation of a new language that blended Spanish and Quechua and premiered in his debut novel Yawar Fiesta. Jose Maria Arguedas was born in Andahuaylas, a province in the southern Peruvian Andes. He was born into a well-off mestizo family, but his mother died when he was two years old. Because of the absence of his father, a lawyer who travelled frequently, and his bad relationship with his step-mother and step-brother, he comforted himself in the care of the family's indigenous servants, allowing him to immerse himself in the language and customs of the Andes, which came to form an important part of his personality. He went to primary school in San Juan de Lucana, Puquio, and Abancay, and completed his secondary studies in Ica, Huancayo, and Lima. He began studying at The University of San Marcos (Lima) in 1931; there he graduated with a degree in Literature. He later took up studies in Ethnology, receiving his degree in 1957 and his doctorate in 1963. Between 1937 and 1938 he was sent to prison for his protesting an envoy sent to Peru by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Arguedas also worked for the Ministry of Education, where he into practice his interests in preserving and promoting Peruvian culture, in particular traditional Andean music and dance. He was the director of the Casa de la Cultura (1963) and Director of the National Museum of History (1964–1966). Arguedas shot himself in the head on November 29, 1969 in his office at the Agrarian University in La Molina, leaving behind very specific instructions for his funeral, a diary depicting his depression, and a final unfinished manuscript, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below). This work includes portions of Arguedas' diary, memories of his distressing childhood, thoughts on Peruvian culture, and his reasons for suicide. He depicts his struggle between his desire to authentically illuminate the life of the Andean Indians and his personal anguish trapping him in depression. The title of the book originates in a Quechua myth that Arguedas translated into Spanish earlier in his life. ‘El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo' refers to the Quechua symbols for life and death, and modernity and tradition. Arguedas began his literary career by writing short stories about the indigenous environment familiar to him from his childhood. He wrote in a Spanish highly influenced by Quechua syntax and vocabulary. By the time he published his first novel in 1941, Yawar Fiesta (‘Blood Festival'), he had begun to explore the theme that would interest him for the rest of his career: the clash between Western ‘civilization' and the indigenous, ‘traditional' way of life. He was thus considered part of the Indigenista movement in South American literature, and continued to explore this theme in his next two books Los Ríos Profundos (‘Deep Rivers') (1958) and Todas las Sangres (1964). Yet he also was conscious of the simplistic portrayal of the indigenous peoples in other Indigenista literature and worked hard to give the Andean Indians a true voice in his works. This effort was not always successful as some critics contend that Arguedas portrayed Indian characters as too gentle and childlike. Another theme in Arguedas' writing is the struggle of mestizos of Indian-Spanish descent and their navigation between the two seemingly separate parts of their identity. Many of his works also depicted the violence and exploitation of race relations in Peru's small rural towns and haciendas, Arguedas was moderately optimistic about the possibility of a rapprochement between the forces of ‘tradition' and the forces of ‘modernity' until the 1960s, when he became more pessimistic. In his last (unfinished) work, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (‘The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below') (1969), he abandoned the realism of his earlier works for a more postmodern approach. This novel expressed his despair, caused by his fear that the 'primitive' ways of the Indians could not survive the onslaught of modern technology and capitalism. At the same time that Arguedas was becoming more pessimistic about race relations in his country, younger indigenist intellectuals became increasingly militant, often criticizing his work in harsh terms for his poetic, romanticized treatment of indigenous and rural life.
Named Jose Maria Arguedas' best novel by fellow writer Mario Vargas Liosa, YAWAR FIESTA dramatically portrays the clash of cultures in the small highland town of Puquio, Peru, where Arguedas himself lived in early childhood and adolescence. This first English-language translation of YAWAR FIESTA is published with ‘Puquio: A Culture in Process of Change,' Arguedas' essay describing the Indian communities of Puquio as they existed some eighteen years after the time of his novel. Readers of this essay and the fictional work may therefore perceive the same society from Arguedas' viewpoints as anthropologist and as creative artist. The essay also reflects its author's musicological expertise, as it includes the lyrics and some of the music from Indian religious chants and a secular love theme.
Born in 1911 in Andahuaylas in rural Peru, Jose Maria Arguedas was an ethnologist poets folk musicologist, and the major Indianist novelist of our time. He earned his doctorate in anthropology at the University of San Marcos in Lima where he was head of the anthropology department at the time of his death in 1969. While his poetry was published in Quechua, Arguedas invented a language for his novels in which he used native syntax with Spanish vocabulary. For this reason, translation of his work into other languages is extremely difficult. Frances Horning Barraclough has proven herself more than equal to this task, however, in her accomplished translations of both YAWAR FIESTA and DEEP RIVERS, also published by the University of Texas Press and presented the Columbia University Translation Center Award in 1978.
In every decade a book appears which radically alters our understanding of the real tragedy behind the daily news headlines. ONE DAY OF LIFE is such a book: it is the story of El Salvador, a tour-de-force describing a day in the life of a typical peasant family caught up in the all-too-ordinary terror of an appalling civil war. We are in Chalate, a small rural town. Lupe, a Salvadorean peasant woman, married at fifteen, mother and grandmother, awakens at five thirty to the light that enters between the sticks of her wooden house. By the time we leave her at five that afternoon in the hands of the brutal Civil Guard, who are searching for her granddaughter Adolfina, we have been awed and moved by the strength and dignity with which she faces a life hard enough without political repression and barbarism. Manlio Argueta, perhaps Central America's foremost novelist, has evoked the harsh reality of peasant life in a country groaning under fifty years of military exploitation. It is one of those rare works of political fiction which reveals, triumphantly, the meaning of a nation's turmoil in its truest terms - those of the human lives caught up within it. . Manlio Argueta was born in El Salvador in 1935. He now lives in Costa Rica; all his work is banned in his native land. He is a poet as well as a novelist, and was awarded the Ruben Dario poetry prize in 1968. He has also won the prestigious Casa de las Americas literary prize. ONE DAY OF LIFE is the first of his novels to appear in English.
Manlio Argueta (November 24, 1935-) is a Salvadoran writer, critic, and novelist born in 1935. Although he considers himself first and foremost a poet, he is known in the English speaking world for his book One Day of Life. Argueta was born in San Miguel (El Salvador) on November 24, 1935. Argueta has stated that his exposure to ‘poetic sounds' began during his childhood and that his foundation in poetry stemmed from his childhood imagination. Argueta's interest in literature was strongly influenced by the world literature he read as a teenager. Argueta began his writing career by the age of 13 as a poet. He cites Pablo Neruda and García Lorca as some of his early poetic influences. Although he was relatively unknown at the time, Argueta won a national prize for his poetry around 1956, which gained him some recognition among Salvadoran and Central American poets. As he became more involved with the literary community of El Salvador, Argueta became a member of the ‘Committed Generation'. Because of his writings criticizing the government, Argueta was exiled to Costa Rica in 1972 and was not able to return to El Salvador until the 1990s. Argueta currently lives in El Salvador where he holds the position of Director of the National Public Library. He belonged to a literary group by the name of Generacion Comprometida (Committed Generation, referring to political and social commitment), also known as Círculo Literario Universitario (University Literary Circle), created by Italo Lopez Vallecillos (1932–1986). Other members of the group included Roque Dalton (1935–1975), Álvaro Menen Desleal (1931–2000), Waldo Chávez Velasco (1932), Irma Lanzas (1933), Orlando Fresedo (1932–1965), Mercedes Durand (1932–1998), Ricardo Bogrand (1930-2012), and Mauricio de la Selva. Members of the group were revolutionary in both their writing and their political views, though some members claim that ‘Generacion Comprometida' and ‘Círculo Literario Universitario' were two different groups, it's been said that ‘Generacion Comprometida' would be formed three or four years after the ‘50's Generation', a group which would be formed by those writers whom started publishing between 1950 and 1952 and had been members of the ‘Cenáculo de Iniciacion Literaria' such as Mercedes Durand, Irma Lanzas, Orlando Fresedo, Italo Lopez Vallecillos, Waldo Chávez Velasco, Álvaro Menendez Leal, Mauricio de la Selva and Ricardo Bogrand. The group sought to create social change in terms of the treatment of the lower class. But they also initiated rediscovery of cultural heritage to a certain extent. Manlio Argueta and his Committed Generation were heavily influenced by the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre and his existentialist ideas. Existentialism is an outlook on life that emphasizes the existence, freedom, and actions of the individual. This perspective tends to be atheistic and stress human freedom and experience as a definition of existence as opposed to scientific definitions. Existentialists also do not believe in the existence of objective moral values. The political and social significance of existentialism will be discussed in the next section as it relates to Argueta's novel One Day of Life. Some of Argueta's works include El valle de las Hamacas (Editorial Ariel, Buenos Aires, 1977), Un hombre por la patria (poetry, Editorial Universitaria, San Salvador, 1968), En el costado de la luz (poetry, EU, San Salvador, 1968), Caperucita en la zona roja / Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District (Casa de las AmEricas Prize 1977, various editions), Un día en la vida / One Day of Life (1980), Cuzcatlán, donde bate la mar del sur / Cuzcatlán, Where the Southern Sea Beats (1986), Milagro de la Paz / A Place Called Milagro de Paz (San Salvador, Istmo Editores, 1995) Siglo de O(G)ro (San Salvador, DPI, 1997). A characteristic of Argueta's writing style present in the majority of his works is the use of Salvadoran Spanish vernacular and slang. Argueta considers this a way to express and preserve some of El Salvador's cultural identity. Argueta is best known for his book One Day of Life, which has been translated into over 12 languages. The book takes the reader through one day of the life of Lupe, the main character. Lupe is a grandmother in a small village of El Salvador. Although she is not very educated, she relates her personal observations, as well accounts of friends and relatives, to paint a picture of the brutality with which the Salvadoran army treated the lower class during this time period. Existentialism played a role in the novel and in Salvadoran history by counteracting religion, which had been used to oppress the masses of El Salvador. Quite the opposite of existentialist teachings, priests in El Salvador extolled the virtues of the meek and complacent. By accepting their role in life, the overworked and underpaid lower class would supposedly receive a place in heaven. But through existentialism, the peasants come to realize that what matters is how they are treated in the present. Because of its negative portrayal of the Salvadoran government and its perceived ability to incite rebellious activity, One Day of Life was banned from El Salvador. Argueta had to publish his work from Argentina after fleeing to Costa Rica. Despite the ban, One Day of Life could be found in Catholic bookstores and some hotels.
CUZCATLAN (the aboriginal name of El Salvador) moves from 1936 to 1981 as it recreates the history of a family all the while dramatizing the folklore of the Salvadoran people, their relation to the land and nature, their near-feudal poverty, and their perseverance in the face of brutal military authority. In his masterwork, Manilo Argueta gives us a highly engaging and deeply affecting work of literary imagination that forces us to empathize with a people whose political history is inextricably linked to our own.
Manlio Argueta (November 24, 1935-) is a Salvadoran writer, critic, and novelist born in 1935. Although he considers himself first and foremost a poet, he is known in the English speaking world for his book One Day of Life. Argueta was born in San Miguel (El Salvador) on November 24, 1935. Argueta has stated that his exposure to ‘poetic sounds' began during his childhood and that his foundation in poetry stemmed from his childhood imagination. Argueta's interest in literature was strongly influenced by the world literature he read as a teenager. Argueta began his writing career by the age of 13 as a poet. He cites Pablo Neruda and García Lorca as some of his early poetic influences. Although he was relatively unknown at the time, Argueta won a national prize for his poetry around 1956, which gained him some recognition among Salvadoran and Central American poets. As he became more involved with the literary community of El Salvador, Argueta became a member of the ‘Committed Generation'. Because of his writings criticizing the government, Argueta was exiled to Costa Rica in 1972 and was not able to return to El Salvador until the 1990s. Argueta currently lives in El Salvador where he holds the position of Director of the National Public Library. He belonged to a literary group by the name of Generacion Comprometida (Committed Generation, referring to political and social commitment), also known as Círculo Literario Universitario (University Literary Circle), created by Italo Lopez Vallecillos (1932–1986). Other members of the group included Roque Dalton (1935–1975), Álvaro Menen Desleal (1931–2000), Waldo Chávez Velasco (1932), Irma Lanzas (1933), Orlando Fresedo (1932–1965), Mercedes Durand (1932–1998), Ricardo Bogrand (1930-2012), and Mauricio de la Selva. Members of the group were revolutionary in both their writing and their political views, though some members claim that ‘Generacion Comprometida' and ‘Círculo Literario Universitario' were two different groups, it's been said that ‘Generacion Comprometida' would be formed three or four years after the ‘50's Generation', a group which would be formed by those writers whom started publishing between 1950 and 1952 and had been members of the ‘Cenáculo de Iniciacion Literaria' such as Mercedes Durand, Irma Lanzas, Orlando Fresedo, Italo Lopez Vallecillos, Waldo Chávez Velasco, Álvaro Menendez Leal, Mauricio de la Selva and Ricardo Bogrand. The group sought to create social change in terms of the treatment of the lower class. But they also initiated rediscovery of cultural heritage to a certain extent. Manlio Argueta and his Committed Generation were heavily influenced by the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre and his existentialist ideas. Existentialism is an outlook on life that emphasizes the existence, freedom, and actions of the individual. This perspective tends to be atheistic and stress human freedom and experience as a definition of existence as opposed to scientific definitions. Existentialists also do not believe in the existence of objective moral values. The political and social significance of existentialism will be discussed in the next section as it relates to Argueta's novel One Day of Life. Some of Argueta's works include El valle de las Hamacas (Editorial Ariel, Buenos Aires, 1977), Un hombre por la patria (poetry, Editorial Universitaria, San Salvador, 1968), En el costado de la luz (poetry, EU, San Salvador, 1968), Caperucita en la zona roja / Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District (Casa de las AmEricas Prize 1977, various editions), Un día en la vida / One Day of Life (1980), Cuzcatlán, donde bate la mar del sur / Cuzcatlán, Where the Southern Sea Beats (1986), Milagro de la Paz / A Place Called Milagro de Paz (San Salvador, Istmo Editores, 1995) Siglo de O(G)ro (San Salvador, DPI, 1997). A characteristic of Argueta's writing style present in the majority of his works is the use of Salvadoran Spanish vernacular and slang. Argueta considers this a way to express and preserve some of El Salvador's cultural identity. Argueta is best known for his book One Day of Life, which has been translated into over 12 languages. The book takes the reader through one day of the life of Lupe, the main character. Lupe is a grandmother in a small village of El Salvador. Although she is not very educated, she relates her personal observations, as well accounts of friends and relatives, to paint a picture of the brutality with which the Salvadoran army treated the lower class during this time period. Existentialism played a role in the novel and in Salvadoran history by counteracting religion, which had been used to oppress the masses of El Salvador. Quite the opposite of existentialist teachings, priests in El Salvador extolled the virtues of the meek and complacent. By accepting their role in life, the overworked and underpaid lower class would supposedly receive a place in heaven. But through existentialism, the peasants come to realize that what matters is how they are treated in the present. Because of its negative portrayal of the Salvadoran government and its perceived ability to incite rebellious activity, One Day of Life was banned from El Salvador. Argueta had to publish his work from Argentina after fleeing to Costa Rica. Despite the ban, One Day of Life could be found in Catholic bookstores and some hotels.
Transposed to Chalate, a small town in rural El Salvador, you are intrigued from 530 AM, when you meet Lupe-the grandmother of the Guardado family and chief narrator of One Day of Life-who is up and about doing her chores, until 5: 00 PM., when you arrive at the disturbing resolution of the Civil Guard's search for and interrogation of Lupe's adolescent granddaughter, Adolfina. Told almost entirely from the point of view of the resilient women of the family, this novel is not only an affecting and inspiring evocation of the nitty-gritty of peasant life in El Salvador after fifty years of military rule. It is also a mercilessly accurate dramatization of the relationship of the peasants to both the Catholic Church and the State. In view of the deeply disturbing rise of political violence in El Salvador, and the highly controversial increase of U.S. involvement in that country's civil war, ONE DAY OF LIFE is as timely a novel as there could ever be. Awesome for the authenticity of its vernacular style and for the incandescence of its lyricism, this compact tour de force goes beyond geopolitical rant to describe one day in the life of a typical peasant family caught up in the all-too-ordinary tenor and corruption, the sheer bad news, of El Salvador today. In ONE DAY OF LIFE-written by a Salvadoran who was forced into exile by his government as a result of this book, which has already been published in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands-the collective voice of the people of El Salvador, terrifying and irrepressible, sings about hope for social justice in the future.
Manlio Argueta (November 24, 1935-) is a Salvadoran writer, critic, and novelist born in 1935. Although he considers himself first and foremost a poet, he is known in the English speaking world for his book One Day of Life. Argueta was born in San Miguel (El Salvador) on November 24, 1935. Argueta has stated that his exposure to ‘poetic sounds' began during his childhood and that his foundation in poetry stemmed from his childhood imagination. Argueta's interest in literature was strongly influenced by the world literature he read as a teenager. Argueta began his writing career by the age of 13 as a poet. He cites Pablo Neruda and García Lorca as some of his early poetic influences. Although he was relatively unknown at the time, Argueta won a national prize for his poetry around 1956, which gained him some recognition among Salvadoran and Central American poets. As he became more involved with the literary community of El Salvador, Argueta became a member of the ‘Committed Generation'. Because of his writings criticizing the government, Argueta was exiled to Costa Rica in 1972 and was not able to return to El Salvador until the 1990s. Argueta currently lives in El Salvador where he holds the position of Director of the National Public Library. He belonged to a literary group by the name of Generacion Comprometida (Committed Generation, referring to political and social commitment), also known as Círculo Literario Universitario (University Literary Circle), created by Italo Lopez Vallecillos (1932–1986). Other members of the group included Roque Dalton (1935–1975), Álvaro Menen Desleal (1931–2000), Waldo Chávez Velasco (1932), Irma Lanzas (1933), Orlando Fresedo (1932–1965), Mercedes Durand (1932–1998), Ricardo Bogrand (1930-2012), and Mauricio de la Selva. Members of the group were revolutionary in both their writing and their political views, though some members claim that ‘Generacion Comprometida' and ‘Círculo Literario Universitario' were two different groups, it's been said that ‘Generacion Comprometida' would be formed three or four years after the ‘50's Generation', a group which would be formed by those writers whom started publishing between 1950 and 1952 and had been members of the ‘Cenáculo de Iniciacion Literaria' such as Mercedes Durand, Irma Lanzas, Orlando Fresedo, Italo Lopez Vallecillos, Waldo Chávez Velasco, Álvaro Menendez Leal, Mauricio de la Selva and Ricardo Bogrand. The group sought to create social change in terms of the treatment of the lower class. But they also initiated rediscovery of cultural heritage to a certain extent. Manlio Argueta and his Committed Generation were heavily influenced by the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre and his existentialist ideas. Existentialism is an outlook on life that emphasizes the existence, freedom, and actions of the individual. This perspective tends to be atheistic and stress human freedom and experience as a definition of existence as opposed to scientific definitions. Existentialists also do not believe in the existence of objective moral values. The political and social significance of existentialism will be discussed in the next section as it relates to Argueta's novel One Day of Life. Some of Argueta's works include El valle de las Hamacas (Editorial Ariel, Buenos Aires, 1977), Un hombre por la patria (poetry, Editorial Universitaria, San Salvador, 1968), En el costado de la luz (poetry, EU, San Salvador, 1968), Caperucita en la zona roja / Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District (Casa de las AmEricas Prize 1977, various editions), Un día en la vida / One Day of Life (1980), Cuzcatlán, donde bate la mar del sur / Cuzcatlán, Where the Southern Sea Beats (1986), Milagro de la Paz / A Place Called Milagro de Paz (San Salvador, Istmo Editores, 1995) Siglo de O(G)ro (San Salvador, DPI, 1997). A characteristic of Argueta's writing style present in the majority of his works is the use of Salvadoran Spanish vernacular and slang. Argueta considers this a way to express and preserve some of El Salvador's cultural identity. Argueta is best known for his book One Day of Life, which has been translated into over 12 languages. The book takes the reader through one day of the life of Lupe, the main character. Lupe is a grandmother in a small village of El Salvador. Although she is not very educated, she relates her personal observations, as well accounts of friends and relatives, to paint a picture of the brutality with which the Salvadoran army treated the lower class during this time period. Existentialism played a role in the novel and in Salvadoran history by counteracting religion, which had been used to oppress the masses of El Salvador. Quite the opposite of existentialist teachings, priests in El Salvador extolled the virtues of the meek and complacent. By accepting their role in life, the overworked and underpaid lower class would supposedly receive a place in heaven. But through existentialism, the peasants come to realize that what matters is how they are treated in the present. Because of its negative portrayal of the Salvadoran government and its perceived ability to incite rebellious activity, One Day of Life was banned from El Salvador. Argueta had to publish his work from Argentina after fleeing to Costa Rica. Despite the ban, One Day of Life could be found in Catholic bookstores and some hotels.
Transposed to Chalate, a small town in rural El Salvador, you are intrigued from 530 AM, when you meet Lupe-the grandmother of the Guardado family and chief narrator of One Day of Life-who is up and about doing her chores, until 5: 00 PM., when you arrive at the disturbing resolution of the Civil Guard's search for and interrogation of Lupe's adolescent granddaughter, Adolfina. Told almost entirely from the point of view of the resilient women of the family, this novel is not only an affecting and inspiring evocation of the nitty-gritty of peasant life in El Salvador after fifty years of military rule. It is also a mercilessly accurate dramatization of the relationship of the peasants to both the Catholic Church and the State. In view of the deeply disturbing rise of political violence in El Salvador, and the highly controversial increase of U.S. involvement in that country's civil war, ONE DAY OF LIFE is as timely a novel as there could ever be. Awesome for the authenticity of its vernacular style and for the incandescence of its lyricism, this compact tour de force goes beyond geopolitical rant to describe one day in the life of a typical peasant family caught up in the all-too-ordinary tenor and corruption, the sheer bad news, of El Salvador today. In ONE DAY OF LIFE-written by a Salvadoran who was forced into exile by his government as a result of this book, which has already been published in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands-the collective voice of the people of El Salvador, terrifying and irrepressible, sings about hope for social justice in the future.
Manlio Argueta (November 24, 1935-) is a Salvadoran writer, critic, and novelist born in 1935. Although he considers himself first and foremost a poet, he is known in the English speaking world for his book One Day of Life. Argueta was born in San Miguel (El Salvador) on November 24, 1935. Argueta has stated that his exposure to ‘poetic sounds' began during his childhood and that his foundation in poetry stemmed from his childhood imagination. Argueta's interest in literature was strongly influenced by the world literature he read as a teenager. Argueta began his writing career by the age of 13 as a poet. He cites Pablo Neruda and García Lorca as some of his early poetic influences. Although he was relatively unknown at the time, Argueta won a national prize for his poetry around 1956, which gained him some recognition among Salvadoran and Central American poets. As he became more involved with the literary community of El Salvador, Argueta became a member of the ‘Committed Generation'. Because of his writings criticizing the government, Argueta was exiled to Costa Rica in 1972 and was not able to return to El Salvador until the 1990s. Argueta currently lives in El Salvador where he holds the position of Director of the National Public Library. He belonged to a literary group by the name of Generacion Comprometida (Committed Generation, referring to political and social commitment), also known as Círculo Literario Universitario (University Literary Circle), created by Italo Lopez Vallecillos (1932–1986). Other members of the group included Roque Dalton (1935–1975), Álvaro Menen Desleal (1931–2000), Waldo Chávez Velasco (1932), Irma Lanzas (1933), Orlando Fresedo (1932–1965), Mercedes Durand (1932–1998), Ricardo Bogrand (1930-2012), and Mauricio de la Selva. Members of the group were revolutionary in both their writing and their political views, though some members claim that ‘Generacion Comprometida' and ‘Círculo Literario Universitario' were two different groups, it's been said that ‘Generacion Comprometida' would be formed three or four years after the ‘50's Generation', a group which would be formed by those writers whom started publishing between 1950 and 1952 and had been members of the ‘Cenáculo de Iniciacion Literaria' such as Mercedes Durand, Irma Lanzas, Orlando Fresedo, Italo Lopez Vallecillos, Waldo Chávez Velasco, Álvaro Menendez Leal, Mauricio de la Selva and Ricardo Bogrand. The group sought to create social change in terms of the treatment of the lower class. But they also initiated rediscovery of cultural heritage to a certain extent. Manlio Argueta and his Committed Generation were heavily influenced by the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre and his existentialist ideas. Existentialism is an outlook on life that emphasizes the existence, freedom, and actions of the individual. This perspective tends to be atheistic and stress human freedom and experience as a definition of existence as opposed to scientific definitions. Existentialists also do not believe in the existence of objective moral values. The political and social significance of existentialism will be discussed in the next section as it relates to Argueta's novel One Day of Life. Some of Argueta's works include El valle de las Hamacas (Editorial Ariel, Buenos Aires, 1977), Un hombre por la patria (poetry, Editorial Universitaria, San Salvador, 1968), En el costado de la luz (poetry, EU, San Salvador, 1968), Caperucita en la zona roja / Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District (Casa de las AmEricas Prize 1977, various editions), Un día en la vida / One Day of Life (1980), Cuzcatlán, donde bate la mar del sur / Cuzcatlán, Where the Southern Sea Beats (1986), Milagro de la Paz / A Place Called Milagro de Paz (San Salvador, Istmo Editores, 1995) Siglo de O(G)ro (San Salvador, DPI, 1997). A characteristic of Argueta's writing style present in the majority of his works is the use of Salvadoran Spanish vernacular and slang. Argueta considers this a way to express and preserve some of El Salvador's cultural identity. Argueta is best known for his book One Day of Life, which has been translated into over 12 languages. The book takes the reader through one day of the life of Lupe, the main character. Lupe is a grandmother in a small village of El Salvador. Although she is not very educated, she relates her personal observations, as well accounts of friends and relatives, to paint a picture of the brutality with which the Salvadoran army treated the lower class during this time period. Existentialism played a role in the novel and in Salvadoran history by counteracting religion, which had been used to oppress the masses of El Salvador. Quite the opposite of existentialist teachings, priests in El Salvador extolled the virtues of the meek and complacent. By accepting their role in life, the overworked and underpaid lower class would supposedly receive a place in heaven. But through existentialism, the peasants come to realize that what matters is how they are treated in the present. Because of its negative portrayal of the Salvadoran government and its perceived ability to incite rebellious activity, One Day of Life was banned from El Salvador. Argueta had to publish his work from Argentina after fleeing to Costa Rica. Despite the ban, One Day of Life could be found in Catholic bookstores and some hotels.
An Ambassador's daughter who entertains the hero in the nude but won't let him touch her, a hero whose chronic skin rash reflects the torment of a whole country, prostitutes who disrupt the army by disrobing, and a revolutionary bicyclist - these are some of the characters you meet in AFTER THE BOMBS. Exciting and strange as the plot is, it is equaled by the symbolic substructure which raises universal questions about the nature of freedom and the human need for artistic and spiritual expression. The fable-like adventures and the flow of the narrative, set against the background of the dramatic historical events of 1954, place this novel firmly in the tradition of Isabel Allende, Miguel Angel Asturias, and Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
Arturo Arias (Guatemala City, 1950) is a Guatemalan novelist and critic, who is currently a professor of 20th-century Spanish-American Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught courses specializing in: Central American literature; Indigenous literatures; social and critical theory; race, gender and sexuality in post-colonial societies; cultural studies, and ethnographic approaches. Professor Arias has previously taught at San Francisco State University and the University of Redlands in Southern California,and he is a past president of the Latin American Studies Association. Dr. Arias holds a PhD in Sociology of Literature, from L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Paris, France. (1978) He has published seven novels and four academic books. He received the Casa de las Americas prize for his novel Itzam Na (1981), the Anna Seghers award for his novel Jaguar en llamas 1990), and the Casa de las Americas prize in essay for his book Ideología, Literatura y Sociedad durante the Revolucion Guatemalteca, 1944-1954 (1979). His most recent novel is Arias de Don Giovanni (FyG Editores, 2010). His books in English includeThe Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, Taking their Word, After the Bombs, and Rattlesnake. Asa Zatz has had a long and distinguished career as a translator, which began in Mexico with the translation of The Children of Sanchez and five other works by Oscar Lewis. Since his return to New York in 1982, he has continued translating major authors from Spanish, including Garbiel Garcia Márquez, Tomás Eloy Martinez and Alejo Carpentier. This translation of After the Bombs was completed with the aid of a New York State Council for the Arts Grant for Translation.
An Ambassador's daughter who entertains the hero in the nude but won't let him touch her, a hero whose chronic skin rash reflects the torment of a whole country, prostitutes who disrupt the army by disrobing, and a revolutionary bicyclist - these are some of the characters you meet in AFTER THE BOMBS. Exciting and strange as the plot is, it is equaled by the symbolic substructure which raises universal questions about the nature of freedom and the human need for artistic and spiritual expression. The fable-like adventures and the flow of the narrative, set against the background of the dramatic historical events of 1954, place this novel firmly in the tradition of Isabel Allende, Miguel Angel Asturias, and Gabriel Garcia Márquez. . Arturo Arias was born in Guatemala in 1950. He is co-author of the film script for El Norte and the author of three novels, of which Itzam Na won the 1981 Casa de las Americas Award for Best Novel. Arturo Arias is currently a professor at The University of Texas in Austin. He holds an M.A. in English from Boston University and a Ph.D. in sociology of literature from the Ecole des Hautes en Science Sociales, Paris, A specialist on ethnic issues, a subject that is a central theme. In both his fiction and his anthropological work, Arias has written numerous books and articles about his country and the ordeal of his people. His third novel, Jaquar en Llamas, appeared in Spanish in 1989. Among his latest work is an opera libretto, The Roads to Paradise, with music by Richard Cameron. Wolfe, which will be presented to the public for the first time in 1991, He is also preparing a photo journal on Guatemala with Richard Lord. . Asa Zatz has had a long and distinguished career as a translator, which began in Mexico with the translation of The Children of Sanchez and five other works by Oscar Lewis. Since his return to New York in 1982, he has continued translating major authors from Spanish, including Garbiel Garcia Márquez, Tomás Eloy Martinez and Alejo Carpentier. This translation of After the Bombs was completed with the aid of a New York State Council for the Arts Grant for Translation. . The Spanish edition, Des puEs de las bombas, was published in 1979 by Editorial Joaquin Mortiz, S.A., Mexico. .
Arturo Arias (Guatemala City, 1950) is a Guatemalan novelist and critic, who is currently a professor of 20th-century Spanish-American Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught courses specializing in: Central American literature; Indigenous literatures; social and critical theory; race, gender and sexuality in post-colonial societies; cultural studies, and ethnographic approaches. Professor Arias has previously taught at San Francisco State University and the University of Redlands in Southern California,and he is a past president of the Latin American Studies Association. Dr. Arias holds a PhD in Sociology of Literature, from L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Paris, France. (1978) He has published seven novels and four academic books. He received the Casa de las Americas prize for his novel Itzam Na (1981), the Anna Seghers award for his novel Jaguar en llamas 1990), and the Casa de las Americas prize in essay for his book Ideología, Literatura y Sociedad durante the Revolucion Guatemalteca, 1944-1954 (1979). His most recent novel is Arias de Don Giovanni (FyG Editores, 2010). His books in English includeThe Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, Taking their Word, After the Bombs, and Rattlesnake.
In this stunning spy novel, Tom Wright, a CIA agent, is sent to Guatemala to rescue an Australian banker abducted by guerillas. There he encounters Sandra Herrera, the first love of his life, who has since married into one of Guatemala's most powerful families. His involvement with her exposes him to internal turmoil and a host of dangers. Like Graham Greene and Lawrence Durrell, Arias is a master at capturing complex political and personal situations. Rattlesnake is replete with surprising plots and counterplots, and with people whose identities and affiliations we can never completely trust. At times, Rattlesnake makes you explode with laughter with a bull 's-eye kind of cultural humor not often seen in the United States and, at other times, it leaves you gasping in horror.
Arturo Arias (Guatemala City, 1950) is a Guatemalan novelist and critic, who is currently a professor of 20th-century Spanish-American Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught courses specializing in: Central American literature; Indigenous literatures; social and critical theory; race, gender and sexuality in post-colonial societies; cultural studies, and ethnographic approaches. Professor Arias has previously taught at San Francisco State University and the University of Redlands in Southern California,and he is a past president of the Latin American Studies Association. Dr. Arias holds a PhD in Sociology of Literature, from L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Paris, France. (1978) He has published seven novels and four academic books. He received the Casa de las Americas prize for his novel Itzam Na (1981), the Anna Seghers award for his novel Jaguar en llamas 1990), and the Casa de las Americas prize in essay for his book Ideología, Literatura y Sociedad durante the Revolucion Guatemalteca, 1944-1954 (1979). His most recent novel is Arias de Don Giovanni (FyG Editores, 2010). His books in English includeThe Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, Taking their Word, After the Bombs, and Rattlesnake.
Already a worldwide bestseller, 1492, by one of Mexico's leading poets and novelists, has been hailed as a literary masterpiece, a compelling and moving story, and an extraordinarily rich reconstruction of history. Set in fifteenth-centurv Spain, when its rulers, with the aid of the Inquisition, were seizing Jewish estates to finance the wars with the Moors and the new voyages of discovery, 1492 is the story of one Juan Cabezon, a descendant of converted Jews. Orphaned at an early age by a series of bizarre accidents, and taken in hand by Pero Menique, a blind man, Cabezon leads a picaresque life among the rogues and vagabonds of Madrid until he falls in love with Isabel de la Vega, a young converted Jewess condemned in absentia to be burned at the stake. When one day she vanishes, bearing his child, Cabezon sets off on a desperate search for her which takes him across Spain, into the heart of the Jewish communities, and constantly into the path of the horrors of the Inquisition - a journey that stamps itself indelibly on the reader's mind.
Homero Aridjis (born April 6, 1940) is a Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalist and diplomat known for his independence. Aridjis was born in Contepec, Michoacán, Mexico, on April 6, 1940, to a Greek father and a Mexican mother; he was the youngest of five brothers. His father fought in the Greek army during World War I and the Greco-Turkish War, when his family was forced to flee from their home in Tire, southeast of Smyrna, in Asia Minor. His mother grew up in Contepec amidst the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution. After nearly losing his life at age ten in a shotgun accident Aridjis became an avid reader and began to write poetry. In 1959 he was awarded a scholarship at the Rockefeller Foundation-supported Mexico City Writing Center (Centro Mexicano de Escritores), the youngest writer to have received the award in the Center's 55-year history. Aridjis has published 42 books of poetry and prose, many of them translated into a dozen languages. His achievements include: the Xavier Villarrutia Prize for best book of the year for Mirándola dormir, in 1964, the youngest writer to receive the prize; the Diana-Novedades Literary Prize for the outstanding novel in Spanish, for Memorias del nuevo mundo, in 1988; and the Premio Grinzane Cavour, for best foreign fiction, in 1992, for the Italian translation of 1492, Vida y tiempos de Juan Cabezon de Castilla. 1492 The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He received the Prix Roger Caillois in France for his poetry and prose and Serbia's highest literary honor, the Smederevo Golden Key Prize, for his poetry. In 2005 the state of Michoacan awarded him the first Erendira State Prize for the Arts. Twice the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, Aridjis was named Doctor Honoris Causa by Indiana University. He has been a visiting professor at Indiana University, New York University and Columbia, and held the Nichols Chair in Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of California, Irvine. He has been an editorial page columnist at the Mexican newspapers La Jornada, Reforma and El Universal since 1985, publishing hundreds of articles about environmental, political and literary topics. Homero Aridjis has served as Mexico's ambassador to the Netherlands and Switzerland and to the UNESCO in Paris. For six years he was President of International PEN, the worldwide association of writers. In 1965, Aridjis married Betty Ferber. They have two daughters, Eva Aridjis, a filmmaker in New York (Niños de la calle, La Santa Muerte, The Favor) and writer Chloe Aridjis, in London (Books of Clouds, Topografía de lo insolito).
Part picaresque novel, part moving romance, part historical document, this extraordinary reconstruction of fifteenth-century Spain, by one of Mexico's leading literary figures, has been acclaimed throughout Europe and Latin America. This was the century that changed the face of Spain, and of the world - the century of the wars with the Moors, which led to the end of Moorish Spain; the voyages of discovery, which culminated in Columbus's enterprise; and, perhaps above all, the century of the Inquisition, which financed both the wars and the voyages by seizing the fortunes of condemned Jews, and which led inexorably to the Expulsion. Here these events are seen through the eyes of one Juan Cabezon, a descendant of converted Jews, who is orphaned at an early age by a series of bizarre accidents and taken in hand by Pero Menique, a clever blind man, who uses him as a guide through the rich street life of Castile It is Menique who brings him beautiful young Isabel de la Vega, sentenced to death by the Inquisition, and begs him to hide her in his house. Juan and Isabel fall in love, but as time passes, Isabel is driven close to madness by her forced seclusion in Juan's house and her constant fear of death. One day she vanishes, and Juan sets off on a desperate search for her which takes him across Spain, into the heart of the Jewish communities, and constantly into the path of the Inquisition's autos-da-fë - a journey that stamps itself indelibly on the reader's mind. HOMERO ARIDJIS is one of Mexico's foremost poets and novelists. He has published more than twenty books of poetry and prose and won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize for best book of the year in 1964 and the 1988 Diana- Novedades Literary Prize for the outstanding novel in Spanish for the sequel to 1492, Memorias del nuevo mundo. Two volumes of his poetry have been published in English, Blue Spaces and Exaltation of Light, as well as a novel, PERSEPHONE. Twice the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and the University of Indiana. he has been Mexican Ambassador to the Netherlands and Switzerland and is the president of the Group of 100, Mexico's leading environmental organization. He lives in Mexico City
Homero Aridjis (born April 6, 1940) is a Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalist and diplomat known for his independence. Aridjis was born in Contepec, Michoacán, Mexico, on April 6, 1940, to a Greek father and a Mexican mother; he was the youngest of five brothers. His father fought in the Greek army during World War I and the Greco-Turkish War, when his family was forced to flee from their home in Tire, southeast of Smyrna, in Asia Minor. His mother grew up in Contepec amidst the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution. After nearly losing his life at age ten in a shotgun accident Aridjis became an avid reader and began to write poetry. In 1959 he was awarded a scholarship at the Rockefeller Foundation-supported Mexico City Writing Center (Centro Mexicano de Escritores), the youngest writer to have received the award in the Center's 55-year history. Aridjis has published 42 books of poetry and prose, many of them translated into a dozen languages. His achievements include: the Xavier Villarrutia Prize for best book of the year for Mirándola dormir, in 1964, the youngest writer to receive the prize; the Diana-Novedades Literary Prize for the outstanding novel in Spanish, for Memorias del nuevo mundo, in 1988; and the Premio Grinzane Cavour, for best foreign fiction, in 1992, for the Italian translation of 1492, Vida y tiempos de Juan Cabezon de Castilla. 1492 The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He received the Prix Roger Caillois in France for his poetry and prose and Serbia's highest literary honor, the Smederevo Golden Key Prize, for his poetry. In 2005 the state of Michoacan awarded him the first Erendira State Prize for the Arts. Twice the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, Aridjis was named Doctor Honoris Causa by Indiana University. He has been a visiting professor at Indiana University, New York University and Columbia, and held the Nichols Chair in Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of California, Irvine. He has been an editorial page columnist at the Mexican newspapers La Jornada, Reforma and El Universal since 1985, publishing hundreds of articles about environmental, political and literary topics. Homero Aridjis has served as Mexico's ambassador to the Netherlands and Switzerland and to the UNESCO in Paris. For six years he was President of International PEN, the worldwide association of writers. In 1965, Aridjis married Betty Ferber. They have two daughters, Eva Aridjis, a filmmaker in New York (Niños de la calle, La Santa Muerte, The Favor) and writer Chloe Aridjis, in London (Books of Clouds, Topografía de lo insolito).
Internationally acclaimed as the pre-eminent Mexican poet of his generation, Homero Aridjis here gives us his stunning American literary debut: PERSEPHONE. Extraordinary for its searing lyricism, this poetic erotic novel, or novelistic erotic poem, poignantly retells the myth of Persephone for our times, even as it richly depicts and ruthlessly dissects the vicissitudes of sexual passion. Virgin and whore, she was goddess of fertility and queen of the underworld. While she was still a maiden, Pluto seized her and held her captive in his underworld. She was released only on condition that she return to Hades for six months every year. When Persephone returns to earth, life blossoms. When she leaves, winter sets, everything dies. Now, in a brilliant feat of literary imagination, Homero Aridjis has transposed the myth of Persephone to the infernal underside of Mexico today, a sexual poetry astonishing for its precision and incandescence.
Homero Aridjis (born April 6, 1940) is a Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalist and diplomat known for his independence. Aridjis was born in Contepec, Michoacán, Mexico, on April 6, 1940, to a Greek father and a Mexican mother; he was the youngest of five brothers. His father fought in the Greek army during World War I and the Greco-Turkish War, when his family was forced to flee from their home in Tire, southeast of Smyrna, in Asia Minor. His mother grew up in Contepec amidst the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution. After nearly losing his life at age ten in a shotgun accident Aridjis became an avid reader and began to write poetry. In 1959 he was awarded a scholarship at the Rockefeller Foundation-supported Mexico City Writing Center (Centro Mexicano de Escritores), the youngest writer to have received the award in the Center's 55-year history. Aridjis has published 42 books of poetry and prose, many of them translated into a dozen languages. His achievements include: the Xavier Villarrutia Prize for best book of the year for Mirándola dormir, in 1964, the youngest writer to receive the prize; the Diana-Novedades Literary Prize for the outstanding novel in Spanish, for Memorias del nuevo mundo, in 1988; and the Premio Grinzane Cavour, for best foreign fiction, in 1992, for the Italian translation of 1492, Vida y tiempos de Juan Cabezon de Castilla. 1492 The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He received the Prix Roger Caillois in France for his poetry and prose and Serbia's highest literary honor, the Smederevo Golden Key Prize, for his poetry. In 2005 the state of Michoacan awarded him the first Erendira State Prize for the Arts. Twice the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, Aridjis was named Doctor Honoris Causa by Indiana University. He has been a visiting professor at Indiana University, New York University and Columbia, and held the Nichols Chair in Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of California, Irvine. He has been an editorial page columnist at the Mexican newspapers La Jornada, Reforma and El Universal since 1985, publishing hundreds of articles about environmental, political and literary topics. Homero Aridjis has served as Mexico's ambassador to the Netherlands and Switzerland and to the UNESCO in Paris. For six years he was President of International PEN, the worldwide association of writers. In 1965, Aridjis married Betty Ferber. They have two daughters, Eva Aridjis, a filmmaker in New York (Niños de la calle, La Santa Muerte, The Favor) and writer Chloe Aridjis, in London (Books of Clouds, Topografía de lo insolito).
Homero Aridjis has always said that he was born twice. The first time was to his mother in April 1940 and the second time was as a poet, in January 1951. His life was distinctly cleaved in two by an accident. Before that fateful Saturday he was carefree and confident, the youngest of five brothers growing up in the small Mexican village of Contepec, Michoacán. After the accident - in which he nearly died on the operating table after shooting himself with a shotgun his brothers had left propped against the bedroom wall - he became a shy, introspective child who spent afternoons reading Homer and writing poems and stories at the dining room table instead of playing soccer with his classmates. After the accident his early childhood became like a locked garden. But in 1971, when his wife became pregnant with their first daughter, the memories found a way out. Visions from this elusive period started coming back to him in astonishingly vivid dreams, giving shape to what would become The Child Poet. Aridjis is joyously imaginative. The Child Poet has urgency but still takes its time, celebrating images and feelings and the strangeness of childhood. Readers will love being in the world he has created. Aridjis paints the pueblo of Cotepec -- the landscape, the campesinos, the Church, the legacy of the Mexican Revolution -- through the eyes of a sensitive child.
Homero Aridjis (born April 6, 1940) is a Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalist and diplomat known for his independence. Aridjis was born in Contepec, Michoacán, Mexico, on April 6, 1940, to a Greek father and a Mexican mother; he was the youngest of five brothers. His father fought in the Greek army during World War I and the Greco-Turkish War, when his family was forced to flee from their home in Tire, southeast of Smyrna, in Asia Minor. His mother grew up in Contepec amidst the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution. After nearly losing his life at age ten in a shotgun accident Aridjis became an avid reader and began to write poetry. In 1959 he was awarded a scholarship at the Rockefeller Foundation-supported Mexico City Writing Center (Centro Mexicano de Escritores), the youngest writer to have received the award in the Center's 55-year history. Aridjis has published 42 books of poetry and prose, many of them translated into a dozen languages. His achievements include: the Xavier Villarrutia Prize for best book of the year for Mirándola dormir, in 1964, the youngest writer to receive the prize; the Diana-Novedades Literary Prize for the outstanding novel in Spanish, for Memorias del nuevo mundo, in 1988; and the Premio Grinzane Cavour, for best foreign fiction, in 1992, for the Italian translation of 1492, Vida y tiempos de Juan Cabezon de Castilla. 1492 The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He received the Prix Roger Caillois in France for his poetry and prose and Serbia's highest literary honor, the Smederevo Golden Key Prize, for his poetry. In 2005 the state of Michoacan awarded him the first Erendira State Prize for the Arts. Twice the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, Aridjis was named Doctor Honoris Causa by Indiana University. He has been a visiting professor at Indiana University, New York University and Columbia, and held the Nichols Chair in Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of California, Irvine. He has been an editorial page columnist at the Mexican newspapers La Jornada, Reforma and El Universal since 1985, publishing hundreds of articles about environmental, political and literary topics. Homero Aridjis has served as Mexico's ambassador to the Netherlands and Switzerland and to the UNESCO in Paris. For six years he was President of International PEN, the worldwide association of writers. In 1965, Aridjis married Betty Ferber. They have two daughters, Eva Aridjis, a filmmaker in New York (Niños de la calle, La Santa Muerte, The Favor) and writer Chloe Aridjis, in London (Books of Clouds, Topografía de lo insolito).
As the world hovers perilously on the brink of a new millennium, Spanish monk Alfonso de Leon takes a bloody comet as a sign of the coming of the Antichrist and a portent of the end of time. Miracles and monstrous infants abound. Soon Moorish and Christian armies will clash in an apocalyptic battle for control of Spain. The war of two civilizations is embodied in a poignant duel to the death between twin brothers born to a concubine in a harem at Cordoba: Alfonso, scribe and illuminator of the Book of Revaltion, and Abd Allah, the Black Rider, ruthless captain of al-Mansur's troops. Face-to-face after years of separation, each strives to free himself from the other's uncanny hold. Two women, Jimena and Almarada, share the brothers' destinies. Meanwhile, another contest is under way, as the burgeoning Spanish language struggles to emerge from its Latin roots. Using his lyrical and narrative powers and a keen eye for doomsday terrors and superstitions, Aridjis conjures up a panoply of compelling characters - the false messiah Isidoro the First, who does a brisk trade in spurious relics; wandering minstrels Sancho Saborejo and Oro Maria; the hermaphrodite Dona Miguel; saintly virgins, wistful eunuchs, hermits, monks and nuns - while contrasting the military might and sensuous splendor of the Cordoban caliphate with the austerity and religious fervor of the Christian kingdoms to the north. This vivid fresco of a turning point in history blends imagination, historical accuracy, and an extraordinary wealth of detail into a spellbinding revelation of a time both unlike and like our own.
Homero Aridjis (born April 6, 1940) is a Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalist and diplomat known for his independence. Aridjis was born in Contepec, Michoacán, Mexico, on April 6, 1940, to a Greek father and a Mexican mother; he was the youngest of five brothers. His father fought in the Greek army during World War I and the Greco-Turkish War, when his family was forced to flee from their home in Tire, southeast of Smyrna, in Asia Minor. His mother grew up in Contepec amidst the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution. After nearly losing his life at age ten in a shotgun accident Aridjis became an avid reader and began to write poetry. In 1959 he was awarded a scholarship at the Rockefeller Foundation-supported Mexico City Writing Center (Centro Mexicano de Escritores), the youngest writer to have received the award in the Center's 55-year history. Aridjis has published 42 books of poetry and prose, many of them translated into a dozen languages. His achievements include: the Xavier Villarrutia Prize for best book of the year for Mirándola dormir, in 1964, the youngest writer to receive the prize; the Diana-Novedades Literary Prize for the outstanding novel in Spanish, for Memorias del nuevo mundo, in 1988; and the Premio Grinzane Cavour, for best foreign fiction, in 1992, for the Italian translation of 1492, Vida y tiempos de Juan Cabezon de Castilla. 1492 The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He received the Prix Roger Caillois in France for his poetry and prose and Serbia's highest literary honor, the Smederevo Golden Key Prize, for his poetry. In 2005 the state of Michoacan awarded him the first Erendira State Prize for the Arts. Twice the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, Aridjis was named Doctor Honoris Causa by Indiana University. He has been a visiting professor at Indiana University, New York University and Columbia, and held the Nichols Chair in Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of California, Irvine. He has been an editorial page columnist at the Mexican newspapers La Jornada, Reforma and El Universal since 1985, publishing hundreds of articles about environmental, political and literary topics. Homero Aridjis has served as Mexico's ambassador to the Netherlands and Switzerland and to the UNESCO in Paris. For six years he was President of International PEN, the worldwide association of writers. In 1965, Aridjis married Betty Ferber. They have two daughters, Eva Aridjis, a filmmaker in New York (Niños de la calle, La Santa Muerte, The Favor) and writer Chloe Aridjis, in London (Books of Clouds, Topografía de lo insolito).
Mad Toy, Arlt's most acclaimed novel, is set against the chaotic background of Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century. Set in the badlands of adolescence, where acts of theft and betrayal become metaphors for creativity. Mad Toy is equal parts pulp fiction, realism, detective story, expressionist drama, and creative memoir. An immigrant son of a German father and an Italian mother, Arlt as a youth was poor, often hungry, and dropped out of school in the third grade. In MAD TOY he brings his personal experience to bear on the lives of his characters. Published in 1926 as El Juguete Rabioso, the novel follows the adventures of Silvio Artier, a poverty-striken and frustrated youth who is drawn to gangs and a life of petty crime. As Silvio struggles to bridge the gap between exuberant imagination and the sordid reality around him, he becomes fascinated with weapons, explosives, vandalism, and thievery, despite a desperate desire to rise above his origins. Flavored with a dash of romance, a hint of allegory, and a healthy dose of irony, the novel's language varies from the cultured idiom of the narrator to the dialects and street slang of the novel's many colorful characters. MAD TOY has appeared in numerous Spanish editions and has been adapted for the stage and for film. It is the second of his novels to be translated into English. ‘Roberto Arlt is the greatest Argentine writer of the twentieth century. ‘- Ricardo Piglia.
Roberto Arlt (1900–1942) was an Argentine writer. He was born Roberto Godofredo Christophersen Arlt in Buenos Aires on April 2, 1900. His parents were both immigrants: his father Karl Arlt was a Prussian from Posen (now Poznan in present-day Poland) and his mother was Ekatherine Iobstraibitzer, a native of Trieste and Italian speaking. German was the language commonly used at their home. His relationship with his father was stressful, as Karl Arlt was a very severe and austere man, by Arlt's own account. The memory of his oppressive father would appear in several of his writings. For example, Remo Erdosain (a character at least partially based on Arlt's own life) often recalls his abusive father and how little if any support he would give him. After being expelled from school at the age of eight, Arlt became an autodidact and worked at all sorts of different odd jobs before landing a job on at a local newspaper: as clerk at a bookstore, apprentice to a tinsmith, painter, mechanic, welder, manager in a brick factory, and dock worker. His first novel, El juguete rabioso (1926) (‘Mad Toy‘), was the semi-autobiographical story of Silvio, a dropout who goes through a series of adventures trying to be ‘somebody.' Narrated by Silvio's older self, the novel reflects the energy and chaos of the early 20th century in Buenos Aires. The narrator's literary and sometimes poetic language contrasts sharply with the street-level slang of Mad Toy's many colorful characters. Arlt's second novel, the popular Los siete locos (The Seven Madmen) was rough, brutal, colloquial and surreal, a complete break from the polite, middle-class literature more typical of Argentine literature (as exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Jorge Luis Borges, however innovative his work was in other respects). Los lanzallamas (The Flame-Throwers) was the sequel, and these two novels together are thought by many to be his greatest work. What followed were a series of short stories and plays in which Arlt pursued his vision of bizarre, half-mad, alienated characters pursuing insane quests in a landscape of urban chaos. In 1932 he published El amor brujo. During his lifetime, however, Arlt was best known for his ‘Aguafuertes' (‘Etchings'), the result of his contributions as a columnist - between 1928 and 1942 - to the Buenos Aires daily ‘El Mundo‘. Arlt used these columns to comment, in his characteristically forthright and unpretentious style, on the peculiarities, hypocrisies, strangeness and beauty of everyday life in Argentina's capital. These articles included occasional exposEs of public institutions, such as the juvenile justice system (‘Escuela primaria de delincuencia', 26–29 September 1932) or the Public Health System. Some of the ‘Aguafuertes' were collected in two volumes under the titles Secretos femeninos. Aguafuertes inEditas and Tratado de delincuencia. Aguafuertes inEditas which were edited by Sergio Olguín and published by Ediciones 12 and Página/12 in 1996. Between March and May 1930, Arlt wrote a series of ‘Aguafuertes' as a correspondent to ‘El Mundo' in Rio de Janeiro. In 1935 he spent nearly a year writing as he traveled throughout Spain and North Africa, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. At the time of his death, Arlt was hoping to be sent to the United States as a correspondent. Worn out and exhausted after a lifetime of hardships, he died from a stroke on July 26, 1942. His coffin was lowered from his apartment by an operated crane, an ironic end, considering his bizarre stories. Arlt has been massively influential on Latin American literature, including the 1960s ‘Boom' generation of writers such as Gabriel García Márquez. Analogues in English literature are those who avoid literary 'respectability' by writing about the poor, the criminal and the mad: writers like William Burroughs, Iceberg Slim, and Irvine Welsh. Arlt, however, predated all of them. He is widely considered to be one of the founders of the modern Argentine novel; among those contemporary writers who claim to have been influenced by Arlt are Abelardo Castillo, Ricardo Piglia and CEsar Aira. At least two Argentine movies were based on his novels, Los siete locos (1974) and El juguete rabioso (1985). Michele McKay Aynesworth is Assistant Professor of English at Huston-Tillotson College.
Here, for the first time in English, is a seminal masterpiece of Latin American literature: Roberto Arlt's novel, THE SEVEN MADMEN, a swirling story as vital today as when it first exploded in Buenos Aires. Behind the flood of recent Latin American novels, behind Borges, Márquez, Fuentes, Sábato, and others, lies the work of Roberto Arlt, who died in 1942. THE SEVEN MADMEN, written in the years Joyce was bringing out Ulysses piecemeal, and first published in 1929, is a fundamental modern book. Arlt said of his novel, in one of those deft ironical ripostes artists sometimes use to deflect questions about their work, that in it he has ‘done nothing more than reproduce a state of anarchy latent in the breast of every misfit or crackpot.' Remo Erdosain, a bill collector, has embezzled six hundred pesos and six centavos. On the same day he is found out, his wife leaves him. Demoralized, frantic for someone to front him the money he needs to avoid jail, he falls in with a revolutionary plot led by the Astrologer, a weird and muddled fanatic. The proposed scheme - a terrorist conspiracy to help the unemployed that will lure workers to mountain stronghold factories and enslave them - is mad but plausible. For start-up capital, a chain of bordellos is proposed. To finance these, the murder of Erdosain's wife's rich cousin is planned. But to summarize even part of the plot of this bizarre masterwork trivializes it. The book swirls, coils, sets off bombs in the mind. THE SEVEN MADMEN has long since taken its rightful place in European letters; it has been translated into several major European languages. To publish it at last in a fine American translation is an homage to a great writer and a belated gift to English-speaking readers the world around. ‘If ever a writer of genius lived in our part of the world, his name was Roberto Arlt . . . All Buenos Aires, at the very least, read THE SEVEN MADMEN. The intellectuals turned from their dry martinis to shrug and intone piously that Arlt didn't know how to write. He didn't, it's true, and he disdained the language of the Mandarins; but he knew and worked the language and problems of millions of Argentines. Arlt translated Dostoevsky into the street slang of Buenos Aires.' - Juan Carlos Onetti. ‘Somehow Arlt and I were always alone each with the other, and during my youth I read him passionately. There was a vital hook- up between author and reader, a reader who came to be an author, too, and who wishes he'd had the chance to have Arlt read his work, even if it might mean the famous, terrible yell, ‘Get out of here, you bum!' - Julio Cortázar. ‘I'm on the streets of Buenos Aires, saying ‘This is the street the Melancholy Ruffian walked down, on this block is one of the seedy boarding houses where Hipolita, the Cross-Eyed Girl, or Erdosain ended up.' If there's one person in my country I feel close to, it's Roberto Arlt. His characters keep on having the same immediacy and impact that made me suffer along with them back then . . . . Arlt's love of the extreme, evident from the first page of the book, is the one great driving force that builds inexorably, keeping the dramatic tension high, so that the characters seize hold of the reader as if they held him in the grips of demonic possession.' - Julio Cortazar on THE SEVEN MADMEN. ‘Roberto Arlt's THE SEVEN MADMEN is one of those books that went unrecognized at the time of its publishing and then proved to be the seed of a very large and bountiful tree that gave its full fruits in the sixties and seventies in Latin America. . . One might say that the modern fiction of Latin America has its beginnings with two rather obscure Uruguayan writers, Horacio Quiroga and Felisberto Hernandez, then springs forth, or rather pounces like a tiger, with Arlt, then finds its fuller expression with the works of Borges, Asturias, and Carpentier. The true children of Arlt will be Cortazar, Onetti, and then, of course, the younger writers in the continent.' - Carlos Fuentes.
Roberto Arlt (1900–1942) was an Argentine writer. He was born Roberto Godofredo Christophersen Arlt in Buenos Aires on April 2, 1900. His parents were both immigrants: his father Karl Arlt was a Prussian from Posen (now Poznan in present-day Poland) and his mother was Ekatherine Iobstraibitzer, a native of Trieste and Italian speaking. German was the language commonly used at their home. His relationship with his father was stressful, as Karl Arlt was a very severe and austere man, by Arlt's own account. The memory of his oppressive father would appear in several of his writings. For example, Remo Erdosain (a character at least partially based on Arlt's own life) often recalls his abusive father and how little if any support he would give him. After being expelled from school at the age of eight, Arlt became an autodidact and worked at all sorts of different odd jobs before landing a job on at a local newspaper: as clerk at a bookstore, apprentice to a tinsmith, painter, mechanic, welder, manager in a brick factory, and dock worker. His first novel, El juguete rabioso (1926) (‘Mad Toy‘), was the semi-autobiographical story of Silvio, a dropout who goes through a series of adventures trying to be ‘somebody.' Narrated by Silvio's older self, the novel reflects the energy and chaos of the early 20th century in Buenos Aires. The narrator's literary and sometimes poetic language contrasts sharply with the street-level slang of Mad Toy's many colorful characters. Arlt's second novel, the popular Los siete locos (The Seven Madmen) was rough, brutal, colloquial and surreal, a complete break from the polite, middle-class literature more typical of Argentine literature (as exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Jorge Luis Borges, however innovative his work was in other respects). Los lanzallamas (The Flame-Throwers) was the sequel, and these two novels together are thought by many to be his greatest work. What followed were a series of short stories and plays in which Arlt pursued his vision of bizarre, half-mad, alienated characters pursuing insane quests in a landscape of urban chaos. In 1932 he published El amor brujo. During his lifetime, however, Arlt was best known for his ‘Aguafuertes' (‘Etchings'), the result of his contributions as a columnist - between 1928 and 1942 - to the Buenos Aires daily ‘El Mundo‘. Arlt used these columns to comment, in his characteristically forthright and unpretentious style, on the peculiarities, hypocrisies, strangeness and beauty of everyday life in Argentina's capital. These articles included occasional exposEs of public institutions, such as the juvenile justice system (‘Escuela primaria de delincuencia', 26–29 September 1932) or the Public Health System. Some of the ‘Aguafuertes' were collected in two volumes under the titles Secretos femeninos. Aguafuertes inEditas and Tratado de delincuencia. Aguafuertes inEditas which were edited by Sergio Olguín and published by Ediciones 12 and Página/12 in 1996. Between March and May 1930, Arlt wrote a series of ‘Aguafuertes' as a correspondent to ‘El Mundo' in Rio de Janeiro. In 1935 he spent nearly a year writing as he traveled throughout Spain and North Africa, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. At the time of his death, Arlt was hoping to be sent to the United States as a correspondent. Worn out and exhausted after a lifetime of hardships, he died from a stroke on July 26, 1942. His coffin was lowered from his apartment by an operated crane, an ironic end, considering his bizarre stories. Arlt has been massively influential on Latin American literature, including the 1960s ‘Boom' generation of writers such as Gabriel García Márquez. Analogues in English literature are those who avoid literary 'respectability' by writing about the poor, the criminal and the mad: writers like William Burroughs, Iceberg Slim, and Irvine Welsh. Arlt, however, predated all of them. He is widely considered to be one of the founders of the modern Argentine novel; among those contemporary writers who claim to have been influenced by Arlt are Abelardo Castillo, Ricardo Piglia and CEsar Aira. At least two Argentine movies were based on his novels, Los siete locos (1974) and El juguete rabioso (1985).
First published in 1929. THE SEVEN MADMEN perfectly captures the conflict of Argentine society at a crucial moment in its history. Arlt's exploration of the still mysterious city of Buenos Aires, its street slang, crowded tenements, crazy juxtapositions, and anguish are at the core of this novel. In this seething, hostile city, Erdosain wanders the streets, trying to decipher the teeming life going on behind dark doors. He searches, literally, for his soul which is causing him so much pain, wondering what it might look like. This translation of Arlt's masterpiece makes available to English - speaking audiences the work of a writer who is the founder of the contemporary Latin American novel and a giant of 20th - century literature. ‘If great means anything at all, then Arlt is surely a great writer . . . He is Latin America's first truly urban novelist. . . This is the power which inspired literature possesses' - Martin Seymour-Smith .
Roberto Arlt (1900–1942) was an Argentine writer. He was born Roberto Godofredo Christophersen Arlt in Buenos Aires on April 2, 1900. His parents were both immigrants: his father Karl Arlt was a Prussian from Posen (now Poznan in present-day Poland) and his mother was Ekatherine Iobstraibitzer, a native of Trieste and Italian speaking. German was the language commonly used at their home. His relationship with his father was stressful, as Karl Arlt was a very severe and austere man, by Arlt's own account. The memory of his oppressive father would appear in several of his writings. For example, Remo Erdosain (a character at least partially based on Arlt's own life) often recalls his abusive father and how little if any support he would give him. After being expelled from school at the age of eight, Arlt became an autodidact and worked at all sorts of different odd jobs before landing a job on at a local newspaper: as clerk at a bookstore, apprentice to a tinsmith, painter, mechanic, welder, manager in a brick factory, and dock worker. His first novel, El juguete rabioso (1926) (‘Mad Toy‘), was the semi-autobiographical story of Silvio, a dropout who goes through a series of adventures trying to be ‘somebody.' Narrated by Silvio's older self, the novel reflects the energy and chaos of the early 20th century in Buenos Aires. The narrator's literary and sometimes poetic language contrasts sharply with the street-level slang of Mad Toy's many colorful characters. Arlt's second novel, the popular Los siete locos (The Seven Madmen) was rough, brutal, colloquial and surreal, a complete break from the polite, middle-class literature more typical of Argentine literature (as exemplified, perhaps, by the work of Jorge Luis Borges, however innovative his work was in other respects). Los lanzallamas (The Flame-Throwers) was the sequel, and these two novels together are thought by many to be his greatest work. What followed were a series of short stories and plays in which Arlt pursued his vision of bizarre, half-mad, alienated characters pursuing insane quests in a landscape of urban chaos. In 1932 he published El amor brujo. During his lifetime, however, Arlt was best known for his ‘Aguafuertes' (‘Etchings'), the result of his contributions as a columnist - between 1928 and 1942 - to the Buenos Aires daily ‘El Mundo‘. Arlt used these columns to comment, in his characteristically forthright and unpretentious style, on the peculiarities, hypocrisies, strangeness and beauty of everyday life in Argentina's capital. These articles included occasional exposEs of public institutions, such as the juvenile justice system (‘Escuela primaria de delincuencia', 26–29 September 1932) or the Public Health System. Some of the ‘Aguafuertes' were collected in two volumes under the titles Secretos femeninos. Aguafuertes inEditas and Tratado de delincuencia. Aguafuertes inEditas which were edited by Sergio Olguín and published by Ediciones 12 and Página/12 in 1996. Between March and May 1930, Arlt wrote a series of ‘Aguafuertes' as a correspondent to ‘El Mundo' in Rio de Janeiro. In 1935 he spent nearly a year writing as he traveled throughout Spain and North Africa, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. At the time of his death, Arlt was hoping to be sent to the United States as a correspondent. Worn out and exhausted after a lifetime of hardships, he died from a stroke on July 26, 1942. His coffin was lowered from his apartment by an operated crane, an ironic end, considering his bizarre stories. Arlt has been massively influential on Latin American literature, including the 1960s ‘Boom' generation of writers such as Gabriel García Márquez. Analogues in English literature are those who avoid literary 'respectability' by writing about the poor, the criminal and the mad: writers like William Burroughs, Iceberg Slim, and Irvine Welsh. Arlt, however, predated all of them. He is widely considered to be one of the founders of the modern Argentine novel; among those contemporary writers who claim to have been influenced by Arlt are Abelardo Castillo, Ricardo Piglia and CEsar Aira. At least two Argentine movies were based on his novels, Los siete locos (1974) and El juguete rabioso (1985).
Ines Arredondo (1928-1989) published just three slim volumes of stories over twenty-three years, yet her reputation as a great writer, 'a necessary writer', is firmly established in Mexico. Her works dwell on obsessions: erotic love, evil, purity, perversion, prostitution, tragic separation, and death. Most of her characters are involved in ill-fated searches for the Absolute through both excessively passionate and sadomasochistic relationships. Inevitably, the perfect, pure dyad of two youthful lovers is interrupted or corrupted through the interference of a third party (a rival lover or a child), aging, death, or public morality. Set at the beginning of the twentieth century in the tropical northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, the stories collected in "Underground River and Other Stories" focus on female subjectivity. Arredondo's adult male characters are often predators, depraved collectors of adolescent virgins, like the plantation owners in "The Nocturnal Butterflies" and "Shadows in the Shadows" and the dying uncle in "The Shunammite", who is kept alive by incestuous lust. Since the young female protagonists rarely have fathers to protect them, the only thing standing between them and these lechers are older women. Perversely, these older women act as accomplices-along with the extended family and the Roman Catholic Church-in the sordid age-old traffic in women. "Underground River and Other Stories" is the first appearance of Arredondo's stories in English. Cynthia Steele is an associate professor of Romance languages at the University of Washington and the author of "Politics, Gender, and the Mexican Novel", "1968-1988: Beyond the Pyramid". Elena Poniatowska, who helped Steele choose these stories, is one of the most renowned of Mexico's new generation of writers. Among her works translated into English are "Frida Kahlo: The Camera Seduced", "Massacre in Mexico", and "Dear Diego". CONTENTS: Introduction by Cynthia Steele; Foreword by Elena Poniatowska; The Shunammite; Mariana; The Sign; New Year's Eve; Underground River; The Silent Words; Orphanhood; The Nocturnal Butterfly; The Brothers; The Mirrors; On Love; Shadow in the Shadows.
Ines Arredondo (1928-1989) was the most important Mexican woman short-story writer of the twentieth century. She published just three slim volumes of stories over a period of twenty-three years, yet her reputation as a great writer, ‘a necessary writer,' is firmly established in Mexico. Her works dwell on a few central obsessions: erotic love, evil, purity, perversion, prostitution, tragic separation, and death. Most of her characters are involved in ill-fated searches for the absolute, through both excessively passionate and sadomasochistic relationships. Inevitably the perfect, pure dyad of two youthful lovers is interrupted or corrupted, through the interference of a third party (a rival lover or a child - ‘Great lovers don't have children'), aging, death, or public morality (in the cases of incest and homosexuality). Time and again, excess - whether of love, passion, possessiveness, or narcissism-has tragic consequences for both the lovers and the innocent people around them. Arredondo wrote sparingly, publishing little more than thirty short stories in twenty-three years. She once told an interviewer that she waited for the holy ghost to spit on her as a sign that she should write a new story; but since he was a ghost, he didn't have much saliva. She told me that one of her most enigmatic stories, ‘The Brothers,' a dreamlike reflection on passion, female virginity, and male honor, was dictated to her by a voice in the shower. ‘Shadow in the Shadows,' in which she explored every conceivable sort of sexual perversion in order to demonstrate the impossibility of distinguishing between purity and prostitution, came to her as she sat sipping coffee under the arches on the idyllic main plaza in Oaxaca. Despite the brevity of Arredondo's work, her elegant, crystalline style and her disturbing, highly original vision of the human condition, and of gender and power relations in northern Mexico at the beginning of the twentieth century, establish her as one of contemporary Mexico's most significant authors.
This biting commentary on the follies of man by a noted Mexican author cuts deeply, yet leaves the reader laughing - at himself as well as at his neighbors. With his surgical intelligence, Juan Jose Arreola exposes the shams and hypocrisies, the false values and vices, the hidden diseases of society. CONFABULARIO TOTAL, 1941-1961, of which this book is a translation, combines three earlier books - Varia Invencion (1949), Confabulario (1952), Punta de Plata (1958) - and numerous new pieces. The glittering satire of CONFABULARIO TOTAL is expressed in a veritable smorgasbord of literary forms - short stories, fables, vignettes, parodies, diaries, sketches, letters. Some of the author's assaults on the almost infinite ability of human beings to rationalize are frontal and obvious; some are devious and subtle; some aie surprise sallies aimed at unsuspected weak spots in the human defense. The kind of language used by Arreola also makes its contribution to effective expression of his attitudes - his detestation of human frailties and his scornful view of many human relationships - as, by turns, it bites, stings, slashes, rasps with ironic irritation, devastates with an unanswerable and disdainful laugh, soothes, persuades with an artful grin. The strategy is always effective, the style delightful. Although some of the pieces have a noticeably Mexican orientation, most of them transcend strictly regional themes to interpret the social scene in aspects common to all civilized cultures. Arreola's view is not limited; much of his sophistication comes from his broad, deep, and varied knowledge of present and past, and from his almost casual use both of this knowledge and of his insight into its meaning for mankind. His familiarity with many generally little-known arts and sciences, numerous literatures, history, anthropology, and psychology, and his telling allusions to this rich lode of fact increase the reader's delight in his learned but witty, scalding but poetic, satire. . One of the group of talented contemporary Mexican writers who have greatly enriched Mexican literature, Arreola has made his own unique contribution, a contribution fully represented in this volume. . Professor George D. Schade, of the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Texas, now has a share in this contribution, too - as translator of Confabulario Total, 1941-1961. In the creative act of transferring a literary artist's thought from his own language to that of a foreign people Professor Schade has manifested the essential qualities of the translator as creative artist: perceptiveness, imagination, breadth of sympathy, literary skill. Kelly Fearing, noted Southwestern artist and Professor of Art at the University of Texas, has provided the illustrations. The Arreola-Schade-Fearing combination is a delightful experience for the sophisticated reader.
Juan Jose Arreola Zúñiga (September 21, 1918 - December 3, 2001) was a Mexican writer and academic. He is considered Mexico's premier experimental short story writer of the twentieth century. Arreola is recognized as one of the first Latin American writers to abandon realism; he uses elements of fantasy to underscore existentialist and absurdist ideas in his work. Although he is little known outside his native country, Arreola has served as the literary inspiration for a legion of Mexican writers who have sought to transform their country's realistic literary tradition by introducing elements of magical realism, satire, and allegory. Alongside Jorge Luis Borges, he is considered one of the masters of the hybrid subgenre of the essay-story. He published only one novel, La feria (The Fair; 1963). Arreola was born in Ciudad Guzmán, in the state of Jalisco. He was the fourth son out of fourteen of Felipe Arreola and Victoria Zúñiga. In 1930, he began working as a bookbinder, which led to a series of other jobs. In 1937, he relocated to Mexico City, where he entered the Theatrical School of Fine Arts (Escuela Teatral de Bellas Artes).He later was found to be related to JOSE ALFREDO ZUNIGA. In 1941, while working as a professor, he published his first work, Sueño de Navidad (‘Christmas Dream'). In 1942 he also wrote a short story called ‘Un Pacto con el Diablo' (‘A Pact with the Devil'). In 1943, while working as a journalist, he published his second work, Hizo el bien mientras vivio (‘He did well as long as he lived'). In 1945, he collaborated with Juan Rulfo and Antonio Alatorre to publish the literary journal Pan. Shortly afterward, he traveled to Paris at the invitation of Louis Jouvet. During this time, he became acquainted with Jean-Louis Barrault and Pierre Renoir. A year later he returned to Mexico. In 1948, he worked as an editor for the journal Fondo de Cultura Economica, and obtained a grant from El Colegio de MExico. His first collection of short stories, Varia invencion, was published in 1949. Around 1950, he began collaborating on the anthology Los Presentes, and received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1952, Arreola published Confabulario, widely considered to be his first great work. It was awarded the Jalisco Literary Prize in 1953. The following year, Arreola published La hora de todos. The year after that, he published a revised Confabulario and won the Premio del Festival Dramático from the National Institute of Fine Arts. In 1958, he published Punta de plata, and in 1962, Confabulario total. In 1962, he published The Switchman (El Guardagujas). In 1959 he was the founding director of the Casa del Lago, the first off-campus Cultural Center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, now called the Casa del Lago Juan Jose Arreola. In 1963, he received the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize. The same year, he published La feria, a work dense with references to his native Zapotlán, which would be remembered as one of his finest literary accomplishments. The following year, he edited the anthologies Los Presentes and El Unicornio, and became a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In 1967, he appeared in the controversial Alejandro Jodorowsky film Fando y Lis, which was eventually banned in Mexico. In 1969, Arreola was recognized by the Jose Clemente Orozco Cultural Group of Ciudad Guzmán. In 1971, Confabulario, Palindroma, La feria, and Varia invencion were republished as part of a series of his greatest works, Obras de Juan Jose Arreola. Around 1972, he published Bestiario, a follow-up to 1958's Punta de plata. The following year, he published La palabra educacion, and in 1976, Inventario. In 1979, he received the National Prize in Letters (Premio Nacional en Letras) in Mexico City. In 1989, he was awarded the Jalisco Prize in Letters and in 1992 the Literatura Latinoamericana y del Caribe Juan Rulfo Prize. In 1997, he received the Alfonso Reyes Prize; and in 1998, the Ramon Lopez Velarde Prize. In 1999, on his eightieth birthday, he was named favorite son of Guadalajara.
This wry and remarkable book is unique in modern Latin American fiction. Although THE FAIR must be defined as a novel, it is in fact a variegated fabric of interwoven stories, vignettes, lamentations, sardonic observations, confessions, diatribes, documentary fragments, and still lifes. The warp that supports this tapestry is the fictional Mexican town of Zapotlán, which is also the original name of Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco, where Arreola was born in 1918. The Fair contains eight narrative themes, which rise to the surface and fall again into the background like figures in a fugue: the Indians' unending struggle to reclaim their lands; the ill-starred career of a shoemaker turned corn farmer; the death of a moneylender; the removal of the town's whore houses to a zone of tolerance; an earthquake; the local Atheneum's dogged pursuit of Culture; the building of the largest cast/I/o ever seen; and the troubled celebration in honor of Zapotlán's patron, the Patriarch Saint Joseph. Like FINNEGANS WAKE, THE FAIR is a gallery of voices, an oral history. Events are related in brief, nonsequential bursts by speakers who are variously angry, amused, wistful, cynical, desperate, or drunk. Texas Pan American Series. Arreola, one of Mexico's most important contemporary writers, is a skillful satirist who takes a gloomy view of the antics of the human animal. His style is terse, forceful, and often comic. John Upton also translated Cumboto, Jarano, San Jose de Gracia, and IN THE MAGIC LAND OF PEYOTE for the University of Texas Press.
Juan Jose Arreola Zúñiga (September 21, 1918 - December 3, 2001) was a Mexican writer and academic. He is considered Mexico's premier experimental short story writer of the twentieth century. Arreola is recognized as one of the first Latin American writers to abandon realism; he uses elements of fantasy to underscore existentialist and absurdist ideas in his work. Although he is little known outside his native country, Arreola has served as the literary inspiration for a legion of Mexican writers who have sought to transform their country's realistic literary tradition by introducing elements of magical realism, satire, and allegory. Alongside Jorge Luis Borges, he is considered one of the masters of the hybrid subgenre of the essay-story. He published only one novel, La feria (The Fair; 1963). Arreola was born in Ciudad Guzmán, in the state of Jalisco. He was the fourth son out of fourteen of Felipe Arreola and Victoria Zúñiga. In 1930, he began working as a bookbinder, which led to a series of other jobs. In 1937, he relocated to Mexico City, where he entered the Theatrical School of Fine Arts (Escuela Teatral de Bellas Artes).He later was found to be related to JOSE ALFREDO ZUNIGA. In 1941, while working as a professor, he published his first work, Sueño de Navidad (‘Christmas Dream'). In 1942 he also wrote a short story called ‘Un Pacto con el Diablo' (‘A Pact with the Devil'). In 1943, while working as a journalist, he published his second work, Hizo el bien mientras vivio (‘He did well as long as he lived'). In 1945, he collaborated with Juan Rulfo and Antonio Alatorre to publish the literary journal Pan. Shortly afterward, he traveled to Paris at the invitation of Louis Jouvet. During this time, he became acquainted with Jean-Louis Barrault and Pierre Renoir. A year later he returned to Mexico. In 1948, he worked as an editor for the journal Fondo de Cultura Economica, and obtained a grant from El Colegio de MExico. His first collection of short stories, Varia invencion, was published in 1949. Around 1950, he began collaborating on the anthology Los Presentes, and received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1952, Arreola published Confabulario, widely considered to be his first great work. It was awarded the Jalisco Literary Prize in 1953. The following year, Arreola published La hora de todos. The year after that, he published a revised Confabulario and won the Premio del Festival Dramático from the National Institute of Fine Arts. In 1958, he published Punta de plata, and in 1962, Confabulario total. In 1962, he published The Switchman (El Guardagujas). In 1959 he was the founding director of the Casa del Lago, the first off-campus Cultural Center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, now called the Casa del Lago Juan Jose Arreola. In 1963, he received the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize. The same year, he published La feria, a work dense with references to his native Zapotlán, which would be remembered as one of his finest literary accomplishments. The following year, he edited the anthologies Los Presentes and El Unicornio, and became a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In 1967, he appeared in the controversial Alejandro Jodorowsky film Fando y Lis, which was eventually banned in Mexico. In 1969, Arreola was recognized by the Jose Clemente Orozco Cultural Group of Ciudad Guzmán. In 1971, Confabulario, Palindroma, La feria, and Varia invencion were republished as part of a series of his greatest works, Obras de Juan Jose Arreola. Around 1972, he published Bestiario, a follow-up to 1958's Punta de plata. The following year, he published La palabra educacion, and in 1976, Inventario. In 1979, he received the National Prize in Letters (Premio Nacional en Letras) in Mexico City. In 1989, he was awarded the Jalisco Prize in Letters and in 1992 the Literatura Latinoamericana y del Caribe Juan Rulfo Prize. In 1997, he received the Alfonso Reyes Prize; and in 1998, the Ramon Lopez Velarde Prize. In 1999, on his eightieth birthday, he was named favorite son of Guadalajara.
Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is the great Brazilian writer, author of Philosopher or Dog? and Epitaph of a Small Winner, whose work is admired by Salman Rushdie, Carlos Fuentes, Woody Allen, and Susan Sontag, among others. The stories in this book. many published in English for the first time, are taken from his mature period. They echo Poe and Gogol, anticipate Joyce, and have been compared to contemporary works by Chekhov, Maupassant and Henry James, yet they are not quite like any of these: they are - well - pure Machado de Assis. For example, two gentlemen standing outside a church in Rio de Janeiro see a respectable lady emerge - one of them has an unexpected, and to him inexplicable story to tell about her past life as a prostitute; a popular composer of polkas burns the midnight oil in a desperate attempt to create great classical music; a teenager finds himself captivated by the sight of the bare arms of an older woman who lives with his employer; an impoverished, lazy young man turns to the lucrative trade of catching runaway slaves; while the title story, beginning with a mock-heroic invocation ('Muse, sing of the anger of Mariana, the wife of the lawyer Conrado Seabra, that morning in April 1879'), tells of a bored wife who has a tiff with her husband about the hat he wears to work each day, and decides to go out on the town with a more daring, flirtatious friend to see what other ‘male and female hats' get up to. John Gledson's sparkling translations of a master story-writer are pure pleasure to read.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Born in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, of American mother and Brazilian father, Albert I. Bagby, Jr., grew up speaking both Portuguese and English. After eighteen years in Brazil, he came to the United States and entered Baylor University. Following graduation from Baylor, he continued his studies at the universities of Missouri, where he received his M.A., at North Carolina, and at Vanderbilt University; in 1968 he received a doctoral degree in Spanish literature from the University of Kentucky. Presently Mr. Bagby is chairman of the Romance Languages Department at the University of Corpus Christi, Texas. Among his writing plans are translations of Assis' three other early novels.
This carefully crafted story, the last of Machado de Assis' nine novels, is set in the Rio de Janeiro of 1888-1889, the tumultuous period of Brazil's emancipation of the slaves. It is a sequel to his Esau and Jacob in that it too is a composition by the fictional Ayres, although its narrative revolves around another set of characters. It purports to be an excerpt from the diary in which the retired diplomat Ayres recorded his witty observations on his friends' actions and on other events taking place around him in Rio. In particular, Ayres' jottings follow the love story of a charming young widow, Fidelia, the daughter of a plantation-owner who cursed her and her first marriage (a comic Romeo-and-Juliet affair in Ayres' version) to the son of a political enemy. Ayres, though he protests that he has no curiosity in his makeup, avidly follows the courtship of Fidelia by a young physician with political ambitions and observes her vain attempts to remain true to her dead Romeo, whose grave she has visited daily during the two years since his death. Paralleling the widow's ‘resurrection from the dead' to life and love is Ayres' own regeneration as a human being-the rekindling of warmth in a heart that had grown cold pursuing a career in cold foreign climes. Retirement, he says, has restored him to himself. In addition to its literary excellence, the novel possesses biographical and historical interest. Both the widow and Ayres are aided in their return to love by the example and friendship of a loving couple, Carmo and Aguiar. Machado admitted to friends that Carmo was a portrait of his dead wife Carolina; Aguiar, we may assume, is a portrait of Assis himself. The widow's emancipation from her bonds-to-the-dead and Ayres' from the petty deceits and cynicism of his diplomatic career are reflected in Brazil's actual emancipation of the slaves (proclaimed during the course of the novel, on May 13, 1888). Glimpses of plantation life and attitudes, rumors of the coming abolition, its arrival, and first effects appear as brief prose poems in the narrative. Machado was emotionally and intellectually equipped as perhaps no other man to present these scenes impartially and to infuse his account with the emotion that attended them. His happy story of a hopeful period in Brazilian history displays Machado de Assis at his most mellow and ingratiating.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. HELEN CALDWELL is Senior Lecturer in Classics, Emeritus of the University of California, Los Angeles. The University of California Press has published five of her previous books: The Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis: A Study of Dom Casmurro (1960); Machado de Assis's The Psychiatrist and Other Stories (co-translator with William L. Grossman, 1963), available in cloth and paperback editions; Esau and Jacob (a Machado translation, 1985); Dom Casmurro (a Machado translation, 1966); and Machado de Assis: The Brazilian Master and His Novels (1970). She was decorated in 1959 by the Brazilian government with the Order of the Southern Cross.
DOM CASMURRO, the carefully crafted story of the struggle between love and jealousy for possession of a man's heart, is one of the finest works by the Brazilian writer Machado de Assis. The author has long been recognized as a master of Portuguese prose and the most original spirit to come out of Brazil's rich, four-century-long literary tradition; DOM CASMURRO shows his genius at its finest flowering. This novel of love and suspected betrayal traces the flowering and destruction of a childhood romance. In Portuguese, casmurro means a morose, tight-lipped man, withdrawn within himself. Bento Santiago, hero and narrator of this novel, is such a person, ironically called ‘Dom Casmurro' by his friends. The darkness and shadows of the present dissipate as Bento sketches his memories of youth. We are introduced to his childhood friend Capitu, (with her beautiful hair and ‘her eyes like the tide') and we see her change from playmate to sweetheart. The dilemma of young love is made poignant through the efforts of the young people to resist Bento's mother's intention to make him a priest. The quarrels, the desire for each other, so clumsy and youthful, the complex evasion of adult watchfulness, are described so adroitly that the reader feels his own life being told. But Bento's tragedy is already implicit in these apparently idyllic moments. He is a man born to be deceived or to deceive himself. The startlingly original denouement of this novel permits either interpretation. Those who read DOM CASMURRO will not easily forget it.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. The Translator, HELEN CALDWELL, is a member of the Department of Classics of the University of California. Her varied career includes such positions as lecturer on Anthropology for the Los Angeles Board of Education and dancer with Michio Ito and Company. She was awarded first prize in a translation contest sponsored by Mademoiselle in conjunction with the Committee on Cultural Relations with Latin America and the Pan-American Union. Format by Sidney Solomon.
This novel is regarded as the finest work of Brazil's illustrious writer, Machado de Assis. Earlier this year we introduced the English reader to EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER, a novel which revealed Machado's piquant sense of burlesque and his superb gift as a story-teller. Not only does he paint the passing show with wit and wry humour, but he delves into the human mind with insight and precision. DOM CASMURRO is a novel written in the form of the intimate memoirs of an old lawyer, known as ‘Grumpy', a nickname which gives the book its title. He was not always the disillusioned cynic he now appears. Once he was an eager child thrilled at the joy of riding in a chaise, or engrossed in games of make-believe with the little girl next door; once he was an enthusiastic undergraduate; once a lover newly wed, proud of his wife's beauty and jealous of her charms. That was before he even suspected the secret that was to rob him of all happiness. The story is a moving and penetrating portrait of a man's innermost thoughts, written by a shrewd student of human nature. With a Chaucerian delight in storytelling, Machado creates characters that linger long after the tale is told. His prose style has a rare quality. The curious world of nineteenth-century Brazil about which Machado writes is remote and fascinatingly strange, but the vitality and charm of his original writing has been preserved in this excellent translation.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died.
Considered by many Machado's greatest work, DOM CASMURRO is a novel of love and suspected betrayal. It traces the flowering and destruction of a childhood romance. In Portuguese, casmurro means a morose, tight-lipped man, withdrawn within himself. Bento Santiago, hero and narrator of this novel, is such a person, ironically called ‘Dom Casmurro' by his friends. The darkness and shadows of the present dissipate as Bento sketches his memories of youth. We are introduced to his childhood friend Capitu, (with her beautiful hair and ‘her eyes like the tide') and we see her change from playmate to sweetheart. The dilemma of young love is made poignant through the efforts of the young people to resist Bento's mother's intention to make him a priest. The quarrels, the desire for each other, so clumsy and youthful, the complex evasion of adult watchfulness, are described so adroitly that the reader feels his own life being told. But Bento's tragedy is already implicit in these apparently idyllic moments. He is a man born to be deceived or to deceive himself. The startlingly original denouement of this novel permits either interpretation. Those who read DOM CASMURRO will not easily forget it.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. The Translator, HELEN CALDWELL, is a member of the Department of Classics of the University of California. Her varied career includes such positions as lecturer on Anthropology for the Los Angeles Board of Education and dancer with Michio Ito and Company. She was awarded first prize in a translation contest sponsored by Mademoiselle in conjunction with the Committee on Cultural Relations with Latin America and the Pan-American Union. Format by Sidney Solomon.
LORD CURMUDGEON - So nicknamed by his friends for his morose bearing and aristocratic airs, an old man reflects on the life he lived in the affluent suburbs of Rio - of the happiness he won in the marriage of his childhood sweetheart and how he lost it all to his own suspicions. ‘No satirist, not even Swift, is less merciful in his exposure of the pretentiousness and the hypocrisy that lurk in the average good man and woman. Machado, in his deceptively amiable way, is terrifying. I do not see how a man who has thoughtfully read Dam Casmurro can ever be quite the same as he was before.' - Dudley Fitts in the NEW REPUBLIC.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died.
DOM CASMURRO (1899) is the masterpiece of Brazil's greatest novelist Machado de Assis The narrator Bentinho, now a taciturn lawyer, looks back and tells the story of the sweet anticipations of his youth, his childhood friendship and adolescent love affair with Capitu, their secret meetings and ardent pledges. Escaping from a career in the priesthood favoured by his mother, Bentinho pursued his true vocation in marriage to Capitu. But her infidelity, or so he perceived it, made the marriage a phantom edifice, ‘a castle in the air'. Assis is the master of a wonderfully subtle narrative art, vivid, discursive and enriched with many-layered irony. Like Othello, Bentinho may have been deluded by his own passionate jealousy, but this possibility merely gives a greater intensity to Assis's tragedy of love and painful disillusionment. ‘Brazil's greatest novelist. . . comparable with Stendhal or Sterne' - V. S. Pritchett.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died.
‘A Palmtree, seeing me troubled and divining the cause, murmured in its branches that there was nothing wrong with fifteen-year-old boys getting into corners with girls of fourteen; quite the contrary, youths of that age have no other function, and corners were made for that very purpose. It was an old palm tree, and I believed in old palm trees even more than in old books. Birds, butterflies, a cricket trying out its summer song, all the living things of the air were of the same opinion.' So begins this extraordinary love story between Bento and Capitu, childhood sweethearts who grow up next door to each other in Rio de Janeiro in the 1850s. Like other great nineteenth-century novels - THE SCARLET LETTER, ANNA KARENINA, MADAME BOVARY - Machado de Assis's DOM CASMURRO explores the themes of marriage and adultery. But what distinguishes Machado's novel from the realism of its contemporaries, and what makes it such a delightful discovery for English-speaking readers, is its eccentric and wildly unpredictable narrative style. Far from creating the illusion of an orderly fictional ‘reality,' DOM CASMURRO is told by a narrator who is disruptively self-conscious, deeply subjective, and prone to all manner of marvelous digression. As he recounts the events of his life from the vantage of a lonely old age, Bento continually interrupts his story to reflect on the writing of it: he examines the aptness of an image or analogy, considers cutting out certain scenes before taking the manuscript to the printer, and engages in a running, and often hilarious, dialogue with the reader. If all this seems a little emphatic, irritating reader,' he says, ‘it's because you have never combed a girl's hair, you've never put your adolescent hands on the young head of a nymph . . . ‘ But the novel is more than a performance of stylistic acrobatics. It is an ironic critique of Catholicism, in which God appears as a kind of divine accountant whose ledgers may be balanced in devious as well as pious ways. It is also a story about love and its obstacles, about deception and self-deception, and about the failure of memory to make life's beginning fit neatly into its end. First published in 1900, DOM CASMURRO is one of the great unrecognized classics of the turn of the century by one of Brazil's greatest writers. The popularity of Machado de Assis in Latin America has never been in doubt and now, with the acclaim of such critics and writers as Susan Sontag, John Barth, and Tony Tanner, his work is finally receiving the worldwide attention it deserves. Newly translated and edited by John Gledson, with an afterword by João Adolfo Hansen, this Library of Latin America edition is the only complete, unabridged, and annotated translation available of one of the most distinctive novels of the last century.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. John Gledson is Professor Emeritus, Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Liverpool. He has written two books and numerous articles on Machado de Assis. Joao Adolfo Hansen is a highly regarded Brazilian literary critic.
Satirical, witty, completely human in feeling, EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER is that rarest of works, a book which is at the same time both profound and thoroughly delightful. It tells the story of Braz Cubas, a wealthy Carioca, or rather it is Braz, now dead, who tells his story. For EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER is a posthumous memoir, the memories of a ghost, a man who now beyond life can view it with dispassion - the illicit love affairs, the political ambitions, the jealousies and hatreds which comprised his sixty-four years. But though the grave has given Braz distance, it has not dampened his sense of humor. On the contrary, it has sharpened it; Braz Cubas is certainly the wittiest ghost in literature. Most ghosts take themselves far too seriously; but not Braz. If he has returned to haunt mankind, it is by means of laughter. He is the spirit of satire moving among us, pointing out our idiosyncrasies and foibles. ‘Machado de Assis, son of a poor mulatto of Rio, became the most illustrious of Brazilian writers. His work brings to mind at once Anatole France and Lawrence Sterne, yet is nonetheless original.' - AndrE Maurois. ‘A master of psychology and of an ironic brand of humour.' - Samuel Putnam.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. The translator, Dr. William L. Grossman, is of all things an authority on transportation law and economics. Called to Brazil in 1948 as head of the economics department of a Brazilian college, he learned Portuguese, and, fascinated by the works of Machado de Assis, spent his academic holidays translating Epitaph of a Small Winner. Dr. Grossman has returned to this country as a transportation consultant and professor at New York University.
FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, a witty and cynical ghost recalls his life - his illicit love affairs, his political ambitions, his personal jealousies - and decides that, though dead, he is still ahead of the game. ‘Machado de Assis was not only the most eminent, and the most honored man of letters in Brazil; he was a literary force, transcending nationality and language, comparable certainly to Flaubert, to Hardy, or to James . . . . EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER is clearly one of those books we can call definitive . . . a major contribution to American literature.' - The New York Times . . . ‘A classic comedy of ideas as fascinating as it is delightful.' - The New Yorker . . . ‘The novel well deserves its place in world literature . . . a superb English version. - The Commonweal.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. The translator, Dr. William L. Grossman, is of all things an authority on transportation law and economics. Called to Brazil in 1948 as head of the economics department of a Brazilian college, he learned Portuguese, and, fascinated by the works of Machado de Assis, spent his academic holidays translating Epitaph of a Small Winner. Dr. Grossman has returned to this country as a transportation consultant and professor at New York University.
This novel, the next to last Machado de Assis wrote before his death in 1908, is set in the Rio de Janeiro of 1869-1894 during the tumultuous period of the emancipation of the slaves, the revolt against the Emperor Dom Pedro II, the formation of the Republic, and the counterrevolution - events Machado witnessed and reported on in the local press. Using the skeptical and career-hardened old diplomat Ayres as his narrator and hero, Machado gives us an absorbing political novel that is also a timeless and deeply conceived allegory. The work is full of Machado's satirical view of human nature and Brazilian society. Although his characters have a double symbolical significance, they also have a permanent life of their own as the a reader will discover when he encounters the warring, identical twins, Paulo the liberal and Pedro the conservative, fighting over the lovely and baffling Flora; Santos, the twins' father, a hardheaded and unscrupulous banker who, as a Spiritualist, was willing to believe he was the father of reincarnated Aposties; Baptista, Flora's father, a politician who heard the voices of certain carioca witches tempting him to change his political party; his Lady Macbeth-like wife who rejoiced to hear her husband called a bloodthirsty tyrant even though she knew he had a pigeon's heart; the wealthy nabob who started his fortune by stealing two milreis from the collection plate; and, both above and through it all, Ayres, pursuing his strange, purposeful narration.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Helen Caldwell, Lecturer in Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of The Brazilian Othello of MACHADO DE ASSIS: A STUDY OF DOM CASMURRO (University of California Press, 1960), the translator of Machado's DOM CASMURRO (1953), and co-translator, with William L. Grossman, of The PSYCHIATRIST AND OTHER STORIES (University of California Press, 1963). She has been honored by the American Association of University Women, decorated in 1959 by the Brazilian government with the Order of the Southern Cross, and awarded the Machado de Assis Medal in 1963 by the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
From the time they were in their Mother's womb, the Santos twins Pedro and Paulo were fierce rivals. They fought for the right to enter the world first, then competed to see who could suckle at the breast with greater hunger and determination. Soon politics entered their lives and stoked the fire of their antagonism. But it was not until they met Flora, the beautiful but ‘inexplicable' daughter of a neighboring couple, that their lifelong rivalry found its greatest contest-and encountered its most profound suffering. ESAU AND JACOB, the fourth of Machado de Assis's five great novels, braids meaning into many different levels. Here, the story of twin brothers in love with one woman intertwines with the story of Brazil itself, a country caught between the traditional and the modern and between monarchical and republican ideals. But in contrast to the heroic biblical pair of the title, Machado de Assis's twin Sons have trouble escaping the petty squabbles, conflicting ambitions, doubts and insecurities that define the human condition and plague society. And so, with Machado de Assis charting their development, Pedro and Paulo live out the conflicts of a nation trying to reconcile itself with the inexorable demands of progress.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Dain Borges is a Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego and is author of The Family in Bahia. Carlos Felipe Moises is a Brazilian poet and literary critic. Elizabeth Lowe is the author of The City in Brazilian Literature.
HELENA is a novel that has enthralled Brazilians for generations and was especially dear to its author. Originally published in 1876, it was Machado de Assis's third novel and is being translated into English for the first time. Set in Rio de Janeiro in 1850, it is a suspenseful story of mystery and romance. Helena is the presumed illegitimate daughter of an upper-class Brazilian, and after his death she is brought to live in the family home. She is a proud, beautiful, and vivacious woman - but her past is cloaked in mystery. Her half-brother, Estacio, tries to solve the mystery of Helena but falls more and more in love with her. The underlying implication of an incestuous relationship creates a profound tension throughout the novel, and this tension rises and culminates in a highly dramatic and unexpected conclusion. The wit and satire that distinguishes all of Machado de Assis's work is piercingly directed at many of the other characters who inhabit the novel. Most of them are members of Brazilian high society, and their avariciousness, pettiness, hypocrisy, and outright villainy contrast with the selflessness of Helena. The effect is often one of comic relief as well as a penetrating insight into Brazilian society in the nineteenth century.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Helen Caldwell has written an illuminating introduction to Helena. She once again demonstrates her consummate skills as the major critic-translator of Machado de Assis's work. This will be her fifth translation of his works for the University of California Press and she-has also authored two books of literary criticism. Her remarkable abilities have done much to give Machado de Assis the recognition he deserves as a writer of world stature. For her contributions she has been decorated by the Brazilian government with the Order of the Southern Cross.
The last of four novels that precede Assis's famous trilogy of realistic masterpieces, IAIA GARCIA belongs to what critics have called the Brazilian author's ‘romantic' phase. But it is far more than that implies. Like his other early works, laid Garcia foreshadows the themes and characters of Assis's most masterful novels. IAIA GARCIA intertwines the lives of three characters in a subtly and wryly developing relationship. While the youthful Iaiá is growing into womanhood, a tentative love affair occurs between the aristocratic Jorge and the prideful Estela. This affair is afflicted by ironic shifts of fortune and in time the maturing Iaia becomes a rival for Jorge's attentions. Assis's portrayal of the relationship among these three characters is a perceptive study of uncompromising pride, thwarted love, jealousy, misunderstanding, bewilderment, and attainment. As the translator, Albert I. Bagby, Jr., contends, the story of Iaiá, Jorge, and Estela refleets the formula that Assis saw as fundamental to human life: ‘Will and ambition, when they truly dominate, can struggle with other feelings, but they are the weapons of the strong, and victory belongs to the strong.' In Assis's view success comes to the strong and failure to the weak. But both inhabit a world that is neutral - neither helping one nor hindering the other. The outcome of events in laid Garcia may not seem entirely optimistic, but neither is it pessimistic. And Mr. Bagby concludes, ‘Perhaps to understand the optimism of Assis one needs only to be . . . a hard, pragmatic realist . . . Whether hard realists or unregenerate romantics, readers of this novel will find it a compelling tale of love lost and won. Like his earlier translation of Assis's THE HAND & THE GLOVE, Mr. Bagby's English rendering of laia Garcia from the original Portuguese is done with both accuracy and sensitivity.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Albert I. Bagby, Jr., was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil to an American mother and a Brazilian father. At the age of eighteen he came to the United States, where he studied at Baylor, Missouri, North Carolina, and Vanderbilt universities. He received a Ph.D. in Spanish literature from the University of Kentucky in 1968. Presently he is an associate professor of Portuguese and Spanish at the University of Texas at El Paso.
PHILOSOPHER OR DOG? is in a loose sense a sequel to EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER. It tells the story of Rubiao, a provincial schoolteacher who almost by accident inherits a large fortune. Rubiao's benefactor is Quincas Borba, the mad philosopher of Epitaph, who on dying names Rubiao his sole heir upon condition that the latter take care of Quincas' dog. Oddly enough the name of the dog is also Quincas Borba, and hence the doubt as to whether the philosopher or the dog gives his name to the book. The problem of the simple, Rubiao, suddenly become a man of wealth, is perfect material for Machado, the supreme ironist. He exhibits Rubiao as lover, patron, politician - a pathetic, egotistical clown bent on creating his own comic downfall. This is Machodo at his wittiest, and those who have read Epitaph already know how witty Machado can be. To quote the New York Times Book Review, ‘His is a highly personal brew of compassion, pessimism and devastating psychological insight.' Already Machado has a large American following; the publication of this book, the only one of his three masterpieces still unavailable in English, should do much to solidify and increase his reputation.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Clotilde Wilson, the translator of PHILOSOPHER OR DOG?, teaches romance languages at The University of Wisconsin.
PHILOSOPHER OR DOG? WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? Quincas Borba, rich eccentric philosopher and leading man in EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER, has named his dog Quincas Borba, because - as he explains to his friend Rubiao - Quincas the man is going to die first. And though he will be immortalized in history for his famous philosophy, he will also be remembered by the illiterates through his dog. Quincas the man does die first, leaving his fortune to Rubiao, provided that he take care of the dog. Rubiao, heretofore a not-too-bright teacher, suddenly becomes a wealthy man, with stocks and homes and investments and servants. But Rubiao is hardly the worldly cosmopolitan type. And when he forsakes his hometown of Barbacena for Quincas' mansion in Rio, he's in for a whole new world of experiences . . . including insanity. ‘Machado de Assis is still caviar - delicious caviar'. - Saturday Review.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Clotilde Wilson, the translator of PHILOSOPHER OR DOG?, teaches romance languages at The University of Wisconsin.
Machado de Assis’s classic novel, the precursor of Latin American fiction, is finally rendered as a stunningly relevant work for twenty-first-century readers. I passed away at two o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday in August in 1869, in my beautiful mansion in the Catumbi district of the city. So begins Machado de Assis’s Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, told eerily from beyond the grave. First appearing in Brazil in 1881, this remarkably experimental novel was never intended by its author to be a popular run-of-the-mill-novel. Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, the son of a mulatto father and a washerwoman, and the grandson of freed slaves, was not, originally, expecting literary encomiums in his lifetime, especially not for Brás Cubas. And yet, his prodigious output of novels, plays, and stories would influence generations of South American writers. Now, with this coruscating new translation of one of his most compelling novels, esteemed translators Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson reveal a pivotal moment in Machado’s career, as his flights of the surreal became his literary hallmark. In eloquent, contemporary prose, Costa and Patterson breathe new life into the dynamic character of Brás Cubas and reveal the vivid, tempestuous Rio de Janeiro of his time. The recently deceased Cubas narrates his life story, admitting glibly: I am not so much a writer who has died, as a dead man who has decided to write. His life, therefore, is relayed out of order, beginning with his funeral, and then stepping back to offer a brief genealogical sketch. An enigmatic, amusing and frequently insufferable anti-hero, Cubas describes his childhood spent tormenting household slaves and meddling cheekily in adult affairs, through his bachelor years navigating his own torrid affairs, up to his final days obsessing over nonsensical poultices. Fantastical in structure and enthralling in tone, Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas is a deeply human story of a somber life?how much of it reflects the author’s own personality we will never know. At once a work of uproarious mockery and great sympathy, this is Machado de Assis at his most pathbreaking: an incisive observer of the human condition, and a founding father of modernist fiction. "The most modern, most startlingly avant-garde novel I read this year was originally published in 1881. Jull Costa and Patterson offer a peerless translation of this comic masterpiece." ?Parul Sehgal, New York Times.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Margaret Jull Costa, who has translated Javier Marías and José Saramago, lives in England. Robin Patterson has translated José Luandino Vieira and lives in England.
Along with THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRAS CUBAS and DOM CASMURRO, QUINCAS BORBA is one of Machado de Assis' major works and indeed one of the major works of nineteenth-century fiction. With his uncannily postmodern sensibility, his delicious wit, and his keen insight into the political and social complexities of the Brazilian Empire, Machado opens a fascinating world to English-speaking readers. When the mad philosopher Quincas Borba dies, he leaves to his friend Rubião the entirety of his wealth and property, with a single stipulation: Rubião must take care of Quincas Borba's dog, who is also named Quincas Borba, and who may indeed have assumed the soul of the dead philosopher. Flush with his newfound wealth, Rubião heads for Rio de Janeiro and plunges headlong into a world where fantasy and reality become increasingly difficult to keep separate. We encounter roses that speak to each other, discussing the character and actions of their owner, Sofia; even the stars above occasionally comment, sarcastically, on the humans below. When Rubião falls in love with the wife of his best friend, we see adultery as yet another betrayal of reality. Rubião's own hold on reality becomes ever more tenuous as he makes elaborate plans for his marriage, even though he has no bride, and fantasizes that he has become Napoleon III. The very nature of reality, the novel seems to be saying, is an agreed-upon fiction told by an unreliable narrator. Brilliantly translated by Gregory Rabassa, QUINCAS BORBA is a masterful satire not only on life in Imperial Brazil but the human condition itself.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), widely considered one of the most innovative Latin American authors, is best known for his two masterpiece novels, Memorias Postumas de Bras Cubas and Dom Casmurro. This self-taught intellectual, born into a modest family in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, wrote nine novels, over two hundred short stories, plays and poetry. He was also the founding president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (1896), a position he held throughout the rest of his life. Referred to as a ‘miracle' by both Harold Bloom and Carlos Fuentes, Machado de Assis's literature is at once profoundly thought-provoking and entertaining. RESURRECTION (1872), Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis's first novel in its debut English translation, visits themes the author developed exquisitely throughout his career including marriage, memory, and perspective. In this insightful translation by Karen Sherwood Sotelino, and with an elucidating introduction by Jose Luiz Passos, RESURRECTION reveals the author's early experiment in drawing out psychological and sociological issues of his time. Readers familiar with his mature works will recognize the progression from infatuation, through passion, doubt, and toxic jealousy, as experienced by protagonists Felix and Livia in 19th century Rio de Janeiro. ‘Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis(1839-1908) is universally recognized as Brazil's greatest writer. RESURRECTION was his first novel, and this is its first publication in English - a most welcome event. This is no tentative beginning, but an original, carefully observed study of a jealous man, set amongst the Rio de Janeiro middle class. In particular, it looks forward to Machado's greatest and most popular novel, DOM CASMURRO, in which he returns (obsessively?) to the same favorite type.' - John Gledson. ‘Long relegated to the shelf of ‘immature works', Ressurreição/Resurrection resurfaces, in this fine English version, as what it has always been: a sophisticated comment on the green-eyed monster's roamings in a tropical Europeanized society, whose denizens, like Ingmar Bergman's characters, will reappear in later novels, under different names, always intently turned upon their own feelings, fears, and foibles.' - Milton M. Azevedo. ‘In many aspects, Machado de Assis's debut novel foretells the genius found in his later works. Within the restricted limits of the reigning decorum, the daring of the moral analysis is substantial and highly unconventional. It is a novel for sophisticated readers.' - Roberto Schwarz.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died.
Featuring ten stories never before translated, dating from 1878 to 1886 (regarded as Joaquim Machado de Assis s most radically experimental period), this selection of short fiction by Brazil s greatest author ranges in tone from elegiac and philosophical to impishly ironic. Including the author s classic essay on world literature also appearing in English for the first time and with pieces chosen from his vast body of work for their playfulness, pathos, and stylistic subversion, this collection is an ideal introduction to one of world literature s greatest talents.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Born in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, of American mother and Brazilian father, Albert I. Bagby, Jr., grew up speaking both Portuguese and English. After eighteen years in Brazil, he came to the United States and entered Baylor University. Following graduation from Baylor, he continued his studies at the universities of Missouri, where he received his M.A., at North Carolina, and at Vanderbilt University; in 1968 he received a doctoral degree in Spanish literature from the University of Kentucky. Presently Mr. Bagby is chairman of the Romance Languages Department at the University of Corpus Christi, Texas. Among his writing plans are translations of Assis' three other early novels.
Accompanied by a thorough introduction to Brazil's Machado, Machado's Brazil, these vibrant new translations of eight of Machado de Assis's best-known short stories bring nineteenth-century Brazilian society and culture to life for modern readers.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Born in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, of American mother and Brazilian father, Albert I. Bagby, Jr., grew up speaking both Portuguese and English. After eighteen years in Brazil, he came to the United States and entered Baylor University. Following graduation from Baylor, he continued his studies at the universities of Missouri, where he received his M.A., at North Carolina, and at Vanderbilt University; in 1968 he received a doctoral degree in Spanish literature from the University of Kentucky. Presently Mr. Bagby is chairman of the Romance Languages Department at the University of Corpus Christi, Texas. Among his writing plans are translations of Assis' three other early novels.
A landmark event, the complete stories of Machado de Assis appear in English for the first time in this extraordinary new translation. A progenitor of twentieth-century Latin American fiction, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), was hailed in his lifetime as Brazil's greatest writer. This majestic translation combines all his short-story collections appearing in his lifetime and reintroduces de Assis as a literary giant who must be integrated into the world literary canon. To Machado, your identity and the contours of your world are formed not just by your circumstances but by what you think about habitually. You are what you contemplate, so choose wisely. These stories are a spectacular place to start. - The New York Times.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Gregory Rabassa is the acclaimed translator of One Hundred Years of Solitude and many other works of Latin American fiction. Enylton de Sá Rego is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin. Gilberto Pinheiro Passos is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of São Paulo.
The modern Brazilian short story begins with the mature work of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), acclaimed almost unanimously as Brazil's greatest writer. Collectively, these nineteen stories are representative of Machado's unique style and world view, and this translation doubles the number of his stories previously available in English. The stories in this volume reflect Machado's post-1880 emphasis on social satire and experimentation in psychological realism. If he had continued to produce the moralistic love stories and parlor intrigues of his earlier fiction, Machado's legacy would have been an entertaining but inconsequent body of work. However, by 1880 he had begun a devastating satirical assault on society through his fiction. In spite of his ruthlessness, Machado does at times reveal an ironic sympathy for his characters. He is not indifferent to human conflict but uses humor and irony to stress the absurdity of these conflicts, acted out against the backdrop of an indifferent universe. Such a spectacle creates a sense of helplessness that can only inspire wistful amusement. In his technical mastery of the short story, Machado was decades ahead of his contemporaries and can still be considered more modern than most of the modernists themselves. That his stories elicit such strong and diverse reactions today is a tribute to their richness, complexity, and significance.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Jack Schmitt is assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese at California State University, Long Beach. Lone lshimatsu is a graduate student and associate instructor in Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University.
The later novels of Machado de Assis - notably DOM CASMURRO and ESAU AND JACOB - are well known in this country, but the earlier novels have never been translated. Here, in THE HAND AND THE GLOVE (the Brazilian master's second novel), rendered in English for the first time by Albeit I. Baghy, Jr., readers will find a younger, gentler Assis, writing a romantic comedy that is yet permeated with the lively wit characteristic of his later works. The story is a simple one - of love lost and love found. Of love lost by Estêvão, amiable but vacillating, who is bemused by his own romantic posturing, and by Jorge, superficial and calculating. Of love found by Luis Alves, whose self-possession and determination seem destined to carry him far. The love of all three men is the proud and beautiful Guiomar, sure of her own heart but unsure, until faced by rival claims, of where to bestow it - a foreshadowing of Capitu, the intriguing heroine of DOM CASMURRO. ‘English-speaking readers,' says Helen Caldwell in the Foreword, ‘who are already acquainted with Machado de Assis will welcome this latest addition to the translated novels. True, it is a period piece; but its quaintness is a charm to carry us back to the Rio de Janeiro of the 1850s - to vanished courtly elegance and attitudes. . . . Now, we too can know what drew Assis back to this early tale, for THE HAND AND THE GLOVE recreates in English the elegant background, the charming heroine, the comedy, and the light-hearted ebullience of the Portuguese original.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Jack Schmitt is assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese at California State University, Long Beach. Lone lshimatsu is a graduate student and associate instructor in Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University.
‘Be aware that frankness is the prime virtue of a dead man,' writes the extraordinary narrator of THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRAS CUBAS. ‘The gaze of public opinion, that sharp and judgmental gaze, loses its virtue the moment we tread the territory of death. I'm not saying that it doesn't reach here and examine and judge us, but we don't care about the examination or the judgment. My dear living gentlemen and ladies, there's nothing as incommensurable as the disdain of the deceased.' Indeed, writing his memoirs from the other world gives Bras Cubas a certain freedom from both social and literary conventions. And while he may be dead, he is surely one of the liveliest characters in fiction, a product of one of the most remarkable imaginations in all of literature, Brazil's greatest novelist of the nineteenth century, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. In this wildly inventive book, Machado is, in fact, much closer to such postmodern masters as Calvino, Kundera, and Garcia Marquez than to the conventions of the nineteenth century realist and romantic novel, which the narrator continually and hilariously mocks. Irrepressibly whimsical, irreverent, chatty, and charmingly self-absorbed, Bras Cubas is forever intruding into his narrative, questioning, lecturing, and elbowing the reader, commenting on his writing and its highly unusual style - his book and my style are like drunkards, they stagger left and right, they walk and stop, mumble, yell, cackle, shake their fists at the sky, stumble, and fall' - congratulating himself on particular chapters, wondering whether to cut others out, and interrupting his life story with all manner of digressions, from a philosophical discourse on the purpose of the nose to a visionary ride on the back of a hippopotamus to find the origin of the centuries. Along the way we're treated to a marvelous cast of characters, including the outlandish philosopher Quincas Borba, who asserts that ‘asceticism is the perfection of human idiocy,' and Virgilia, the beautiful married woman with whom Bras Cubas carries on a passionate and not-so-secret love affair. By turns flippant and profound, THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRAS CUBAS is the story of an unheroic man with half-hearted political ambitions, a harebrained idea for curing the world of melancholy, and a thousand quixotic theories unleashed from beyond the grave. It is a novel that has influenced generations of Latin American writers but remains refreshingly and unforgettably unlike anything written before or after it. Newly translated by Gregory Rabassa and superbly edited by Enylton de Sá Rego and Gilberto Pinheiro Passos, who provide an insightful introduction and afterword, this edition inaugurates Oxford's Library of Latin America series, and brings to English-speaking readers a literary delight of the highest order.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Gregory Rabassa is the acclaimed translator of One Hundred Years of Solitude and many other works of Latin American fiction. Enylton de Sá Rego is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin. Gilberto Pinheiro Passos is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of São Paulo.
‘Be aware that frankness is the prime virtue of a dead man,' writes the extraordinary narrator of THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRAS CUBAS. ‘The gaze of public opinion, that sharp and judgmental gaze, loses its virtue the moment we tread the territory of death. I'm not saying that it doesn't reach here and examine and judge us, but we don't care about the examination or the judgment. My dear living gentlemen and ladies, there's nothing as incommensurable as the disdain of the deceased.' Indeed, writing his memoirs from the other world gives Bras Cubas a certain freedom from both social and literary conventions. And while he may be dead, he is surely one of the liveliest characters in fiction, a product of one of the most remarkable imaginations in all of literature, Brazil's greatest novelist of the nineteenth century, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. In this wildly inventive book, Machado is, in fact, much closer to such postmodern masters as Calvino, Kundera, and Garcia Marquez than to the conventions of the nineteenth century realist and romantic novel, which the narrator continually and hilariously mocks. Irrepressibly whimsical, irreverent, chatty, and charmingly self-absorbed, Bras Cubas is forever intruding into his narrative, questioning, lecturing, and elbowing the reader, commenting on his writing and its highly unusual style - his book and my style are like drunkards, they stagger left and right, they walk and stop, mumble, yell, cackle, shake their fists at the sky, stumble, and fall' - congratulating himself on particular chapters, wondering whether to cut others out, and interrupting his life story with all manner of digressions, from a philosophical discourse on the purpose of the nose to a visionary ride on the back of a hippopotamus to find the origin of the centuries. Along the way we're treated to a marvelous cast of characters, including the outlandish philosopher Quincas Borba, who asserts that ‘asceticism is the perfection of human idiocy,' and Virgilia, the beautiful married woman with whom Bras Cubas carries on a passionate and not-so-secret love affair. By turns flippant and profound, THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRAS CUBAS is the story of an unheroic man with half-hearted political ambitions, a harebrained idea for curing the world of melancholy, and a thousand quixotic theories unleashed from beyond the grave. It is a novel that has influenced generations of Latin American writers but remains refreshingly and unforgettably unlike anything written before or after it. Newly translated by Gregory Rabassa and superbly edited by Enylton de Sá Rego and Gilberto Pinheiro Passos, who provide an insightful introduction and afterword, this edition inaugurates Oxford's Library of Latin America series, and brings to English-speaking readers a literary delight of the highest order.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Gregory Rabassa is the acclaimed translator of One Hundred Years of Solitude and many other works of Latin American fiction. Enylton de Sá Rego is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin. Gilberto Pinheiro Passos is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of São Paulo.
The mixed-race grandson of ex-slaves, Machado de Assis is not only Brazil’s most celebrated writer but also a writer of world stature, who has been championed by the likes of Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, and Salman Rushdie. In his masterpiece, the 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (translated also as Epitaph of a Small Winner), the ghost of a decadent and disagreeable aristocrat decides to write his memoir. He dedicates it to the worms gnawing at his corpse and tells of his failed romances and halfhearted political ambitions, serves up harebrained philosophies, and complains with gusto from the depths of his grave. Wildly imaginative, wickedly witty, and ahead of its time, the novel has been compared to the work of everyone from Cervantes to Sterne to Joyce to Nabokov to Borges to Calvino, and has influenced generations of writers around the world. This new English translation is the first to include extensive notes providing crucial historical and cultural context. Unlike other editions, it also preserves Machado’s original chapter breaks–each of the novel’s 160 short chapters begins on a new page–and includes excerpts from previous versions of the novel never before published in English.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. Gregory Rabassa is the acclaimed translator of One Hundred Years of Solitude and many other works of Latin American fiction. Enylton de Sá Rego is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin. Gilberto Pinheiro Passos is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of São Paulo.
The first collection of the short stories of Machado de Assis to appear in English. These twelve stories by Brazil's greatest writer are penetrating psychological vignettes, and witty ironic satires on science, politics, the gambling instinct, the professorial mind, as well as that of the lady of easy virtue, sadism, envy, and other human foibles and vanities. Here is Machado de Assis' humor in both its mild and mordant form; all the stories, no matter how grim the message, contain powerful comic elements and are cast in the mold of comedy. The locale of all the stories is Rio de Janeiro or its outskirts. ‘Machado de Assis was a literary force transcending nationality and language, comparable certainly to Flaubert, Hardy, or James.' - Dudley Fitts. ‘One of the great writers of all time . . . a novelist with whom we have none to compare.' ‘He comes bringing the gift of temperament, a highly personalized view of life and the world which still is broad as the world, as deep and dark and mystery-laden as life itself,' - Samuel Putnam. ‘As a novelist and writer of short stories, he admits of no peers either in Spanish or in his own language.' - Arturo Torres-Rioseco.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. THE TRANSLATORS: WILLIAM L. GROSSMAN, of New York University, translator of EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER, which introduced Machado de Assis to readers of English, and other masterpieces of Brazilian literature. Awarded the Machado de Assis Medal of the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1961, the first American to receive the honor. HELEN CALDWELL, of the University of California, Los Angeles, translator of DOM CASMURRO and author of a scholarly study entitled THE BRAZILIAN OTHELLO OF MACHADO DE ASSIS. Decorated in 1959 by the Brazilian government with the Order of the Southern Cross.
Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is Brazil's finest novelist. In the year of his death he published THE WAGER, a poignant elegy for a lost world, and a work which shows him still at the height of his powers. Returning to his native Rio after many years abroad, Aires, a retired diplomat, is captivated by a young widow, Fidelia Noronha, whom he sees praying at her husband's graveside. Her charm and the tragic story of her brief marriage increase his fascination, and soon he is indulging in impossible dreams. But the Brazil that Aires remembers from his youth is fast changing. A new era is dawning with event such as the coming of the railway and the abolition of slavery. The future belongs to a younger generation, to men like Tristao, the doctor and political candidate, who is also an admirer of the beautiful Fidelia . . . . Imbued with autumnal sadness, THE WAGER is the story of a man coming to terms with old age and approaching death. With its shrewd observation of human nature and gentle, ironic humor, the work of Machado de Assis remains timeless in its appeal.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died. ROBERT SCOTT-BUCCLEUCH studied at St. Andrews University. In 1963 he was appointed Associate Professor of English at the University of Brasilia. He holds the Machado de Assis Medal for his translations of works by Brazilian writers.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died.
Part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works of Latin America. The last of four novels that precede Assis's famous trilogy of realistic masterpieces, IAIA GARCIA belongs to what critics have called the Brazilian author's ‘romantic' phase. But it is far more than that implies. Like his other early works, laid Garcia foreshadows the themes and characters of Assis's most masterful novels. IAIA GARCIA intertwines the lives of three characters in a subtly and wryly developing relationship. While the youthful Iaiá is growing into womanhood, a tentative love affair occurs between the aristocratic Jorge and the prideful Estela. This affair is afflicted by ironic shifts of fortune and in time the maturing Iaia becomes a rival for Jorge's attentions. Assis's portrayal of the relationship among these three characters is a perceptive study of uncompromising pride, thwarted love, jealousy, misunderstanding, bewilderment, and attainment.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.' Son of Francisco Jose de Assis (a mulatto housepainter, descendent of freed slaves) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of Jose de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his ‘new style' was Epitaph for a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memorias Postumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queiros in Portugal, but Machado de Assis' work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado's work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, ‘A Cartomante' and ‘A Igreja do Diabo.' Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died.
Asturias has long been celebrated in Europe and Latin America as a writer of the highest stature. He writes in an extraordinary language of the most staggering vitality, full of symbolism and exotic metaphor, yet uncompromisingly realistic, as powerful and electrifying as a nightmare. EL SEÑOR PRESIDENTE is the story of a corrupt and dissolute Caribbean dictator, his henchmen and his victims. The killing of one of his sycophant generals provokes a political intrigue that can- not fail to touch everyone with blood: a halfwit beggar, shot after dragging his body, broken-limbed, through the wilderness for days; his derelict companions, tortured into false confessions; a government official's wife, who watches her nursing infant die just beyond her reach, and is sold into prostitution; a timid court clerk, flogged to death for spilling ink on the President's desk; even Angel Face, the President's favorite, ‘As handsome and as evil as Satan.' The scene is kaleidoscopic: a tavern, a military court, a tropical swamp, a prison cell, a boudoir, a peasant hut, a brothel, the splendid villas of the temporarily fortunate, the vermin-infested slums of the permanently wretched. And the story is a terrifying engine of savagery, destruction, suffering and despair. Yet in the midst of tragedy are moments of grotesque but haunting humor, and through its murk shine the most brilliant pinpoints of love and hope and humanity. Based on the record of the brutal Cabrera regime in Guatemala, this novel is a ferocious and shattering indictment of dictatorship in any land or time.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
Reprint. Originally published 1964.Asturias has long been celebrated in Europe and Latin America as a writer of the highest stature. He writes in an extraordinary language of the most staggering vitality, full of symbolism and exotic metaphor, yet uncompromisingly realistic, as powerful and electrifying as a nightmare. EL SEÑOR PRESIDENTE is the story of a corrupt and dissolute Caribbean dictator, his henchmen and his victims. The killing of one of his sycophant generals provokes a political intrigue that can- not fail to touch everyone with blood: a halfwit beggar, shot after dragging his body, broken-limbed, through the wilderness for days; his derelict companions, tortured into false confessions; a government official's wife, who watches her nursing infant die just beyond her reach, and is sold into prostitution; a timid court clerk, flogged to death for spilling ink on the President's desk; even Angel Face, the President's favorite, ‘As handsome and as evil as Satan.' The scene is kaleidoscopic: a tavern, a military court, a tropical swamp, a prison cell, a boudoir, a peasant hut, a brothel, the splendid villas of the temporarily fortunate, the vermin-infested slums of the permanently wretched. And the story is a terrifying engine of savagery, destruction, suffering and despair. Yet in the midst of tragedy are moments of grotesque but haunting humor, and through its murk shine the most brilliant pinpoints of love and hope and humanity. Based on the record of the brutal Cabrera regime in Guatemala, this novel is a ferocious and shattering indictment of dictatorship in any land or time.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
Asturias has long been celebrated in Europe and Latin America as a writer of the highest stature. He writes in an extraordinary language of the most staggering vitality, full of symbolism and exotic metaphor, yet uncompromisingly realistic, as powerful and electrifying as a nightmare. EL SEÑOR PRESIDENTE is the story of a corrupt and dissolute Caribbean dictator, his henchmen and his victims. The killing of one of his sycophant generals provokes a political intrigue that can- not fail to touch everyone with blood: a halfwit beggar, shot after dragging his body, broken-limbed, through the wilderness for days; his derelict companions, tortured into false confessions; a government official's wife, who watches her nursing infant die just beyond her reach, and is sold into prostitution; a timid court clerk, flogged to death for spilling ink on the President's desk; even Angel Face, the President's favorite, ‘As handsome and as evil as Satan.' The scene is kaleidoscopic: a tavern, a military court, a tropical swamp, a prison cell, a boudoir, a peasant hut, a brothel, the splendid villas of the temporarily fortunate, the vermin-infested slums of the permanently wretched. And the story is a terrifying engine of savagery, destruction, suffering and despair. Yet in the midst of tragedy are moments of grotesque but haunting humor, and through its murk shine the most brilliant pinpoints of love and hope and humanity. Based on the record of the brutal Cabrera regime in Guatemala, this novel is a ferocious and shattering indictment of dictatorship in any land or time.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
Published in 1949, MEN OF MAIZE was the first great experiment in what critics now call ‘magical realism'. It remains one of the most challenging and significant Latin American novels to have appeared this century. Inextricably mythological and historical, it traces, with unsurpassed inventiveness and audacity, the shattering impact of internal colonialism, private property and market economics on the descendants of the Mayan Indians. Modernizers from the outside destroy a way of life based on corn as the sacred plant; the ancestral customs and beliefs of the Mayans become buried beneath the debris of capitalism. Asturias was able to convey his insight into the history and culture of the Middle American peoples through an extensive knowledge of contemporary world literature and thought, to produce a work of fiction comparable to those of Faulkner and Joyce - except that the unspoken cultural hero of MEN OF MAIZE is neither Jesus nor Ulysses but America's more enigmatic Quetzalcoatl, a protagonist exploring past, present and future in search of the lost feminine Other.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
The folklore and legends of the Guatemalan Indians overflow from this rich, swiftly moving novel. A mailman turns into a coyote and apparitions issue from the flames of burned-over cornfields. Woven in with the supernatural is the earthly struggle between the Indians and modernizers from the outside who slash and burn the land in order to produce corn in massive quantities. A way of life based upon corn as the sacred plant is coming to an end. In giving brilliant poetic expression to the beliefs of the Indian people, Asturias achieves heights as a stylist and innovator of language, comparable to Faulkner and Joyce.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
‘Social protest and poetry; reality and myth; nostalgia for an uncorrupted, golden past; sensual human enjoyment of the present; ‘magic' rather than lineal time, and, above all, a tender, compassionate love for the living, fertile, wondrous land and the struggling, hopeful people of Guatemala.' - Saturday Review . . . ‘We are not accustomed, in Latin America, to critical work of this academic breadth on our literature.' - Mario Vargas Llosa . . . Originally published in 1949, Men of Maize was the first great experiment in what critics now call ‘magical realism.' It remains one of the most challenging Latin American novels to be published in this century. Gerald Martin's masterful translation, with over 100 pages of explanatory notes, brings this significant work to the English-speaking reader. Mythological and historical, it traces the shattering impact of internal colonialism, private property, and market economics on the descendants of the Mayan Indians. Modernizers from the outside destroy a way of life based on corn as the sacred plant; ancestral customs and beliefs of the Mayans are buried beneath the debris of capitalism. Miguel Asturias was among the pioneers who sparked renewed critical interest in Latin American literature between the 19205 and 19405, a trailblazing modernist whose work led to the emergence of a distinctively Latin American style in succeeding decades. The Pittsburgh Editions of Latin American Literature are based on the Coleccion Archivos, a landmark series of critical editions of twentieth-century Latin American fiction, poetry, and essays. This important collection was created through agreements with the governments of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, with funding provided by ALLCA and UNESCO. The translations in the Pittsburgh series will make this valuable influential body of literature accessible to North American readers.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
Asturias is one of our major novelists for the vigor of his imagination, the audacity with which he complicates the interior structure of his tale and the violent or tender lyricism with which he evokes the lands of America.' - Enrique Anderson Imbert, Harvard University . . . MULATA is a rich and gaudy novel from Latin America, steeped in Indian mythology, eroticism and surrealistic adventure, by a Guatemalan writer whose name is frequently mentioned for the Nobel Prize in Literature. MULATA is the story of the weird and hilarious apprenticeship of a mestizo couple in the priesthood of witchcraft. Celestino Yumi is a poor peasant known as the Fly Wizard who sells his wife to the god of corn in return for infinite wealth and a voluptuous Mulata. But the Mulata turns Out to be bisexual, a dangerous moon spirit. When he attempts to return to his first wife, Yumi is drawn into a vast struggle with all the gods of the legend. He and his wife visit the City of Magic, Tierrapaulita, where they undergo a series of transformations. The final struggle is a nightmare panorama with Indian forces pitted against distorted Christian powers.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris. Gregory Rabassa, the translator of MULATA, is a professor at Columbia University. He has translated other notable works of contemporary Latin American literature, including Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, for which he received the National Book Award in 1967.
THE FLY WIZARD AND THE CORN DEVIL . . . One day the Fly Wizard - so called because of the way he dressed to gain attention - made a secret pact with the Corn Devil. In return for limitless wealth all the Fly Wizard had to do was expose himself at Mass so that women would, commit sin by looking at his private parts and then take Communion without confession. And, to add fuel to the fire, the priest would become so unnerved by the spectacle he would make mistakes during the Mass. The Fly Wizard did it and became so rich even his bones turned to gold. And that was just the beginning . . . MULATA is ample indication why Miguel A. Asturias was awarded the Nobel Prize. His genius is perhaps best described by Arts Magazine: ‘Imagine Hieronymous Bosch as a novelist, and you will have some idea of this most extraordinary of books.' Le Monde called the author ‘A great writer.volcanic virtuousity . . . his characters have the force of nature.' And the Saturday Review stated, ‘Asturias also has a robust vein of humor (Rabelaisian in nature), a strong predilection for the erotic, and the ability to carry one into the mythic world he creates by oscillating between the real and the mythic.'
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris. Gregory Rabassa, the translator of MULATA, is a professor at Columbia University. He has translated other notable works of contemporary Latin American literature, including Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, for which he received the National Book Award in 1967.
STRONG WIND is the first volume of Miguel Angel Asturias' controversial major work, the Banana Republic trilogy. The protagonist is the vast stretch of banana plantations in an unnamed Central American republic, and its domination by Tropical Banana, Inc., a powerful North American fruit company. Laid out with forbidding symmetry in the torrid malarial lowlands, the plantations burgeon with wealth and injustice. The peasant laborers are exploited until they drop, their women are raped, but still they pour down from the interior, dreaming of making their fortunes with the ‘ingots of green gold.' The story, full of drama and epic excitement, concerns the uprising of the peasants against Tropical Banana, Inc., run invisibly by absentee investors and a sinister chairman known as the Green Pope. An idealistic North American couple encourages the uprising and are eventually destroyed in a tropical hurricane. The customs, the pace of life, the sorrows of these downtrodden people are conveyed vividly and with compassion. In the words of the Swedish Academy, upon awarding him the Nobel Prize, Asturias' writings are ‘rooted in a national individuality and Indian traditions.' . . . ACCLAIM FOR Miguel Angel Asturias - ‘Powerful realism and compassionate identification with the poor and the oppressed mark Asturias' works, which are suffused with Guatemalan individuality, Mayan traditions and a sense of tragic destiny.' - New York Times . . . ‘I have often wondered what would have happened to Keats if he had been born in the Amazon jungle. It seems to me that now I have the answer. He would have been the incarnation of Miguel Angel Asturias. No one has a more irrepressible imagination, or greater inventiveness, or a deeper sense of human tragedy.' - Frank Tannenbaum, Institute of Latin American Studies, Columbia University . . . ‘ . . . rich in fantasy, lyric and baroque in expression, and infused with tender affection for the land and its people. Asturias also has a robust vein of humor (Rabelaisian in nature), a strong predilection for the erotic, and the ability to carry one into the magic world he creates by oscillating between the real and the mythic.' - Saturday Review . . . ‘Asturias is one of our major novelists for the vigor of his imagination, the audacity with which he complicates the interior structure of his tale and the violent or tender lyricism with which he evokes the lands of America.' - Enrique Anderson Imbert, Harvard University.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
Reprint. Originally published 1967. STRONG WIND is the first volume of Miguel Angel Asturias' controversial major work, the Banana Republic trilogy. The protagonist is the vast stretch of banana plantations in an unnamed Central American republic, and its domination by Tropical Banana, Inc., a powerful North American fruit company. Laid out with forbidding symmetry in the torrid malarial lowlands, the plantations burgeon with wealth and injustice. The peasant laborers are exploited until they drop, their women are raped, but still they pour down from the interior, dreaming of making their fortunes with the ‘ingots of green gold.' The story, full of drama and epic excitement, concerns the uprising of the peasants against Tropical Banana, Inc., run invisibly by absentee investors and a sinister chairman known as the Green Pope. An idealistic North American couple encourages the uprising and are eventually destroyed in a tropical hurricane. The customs, the pace of life, the sorrows of these downtrodden people are conveyed vividly and with compassion. In the words of the Swedish Academy, upon awarding him the Nobel Prize, Asturias' writings are ‘rooted in a national individuality and Indian traditions.' . . . ACCLAIM FOR Miguel Angel Asturias - ‘Powerful realism and compassionate identification with the poor and the oppressed mark Asturias' works, which are suffused with Guatemalan individuality, Mayan traditions and a sense of tragic destiny.' - New York Times . . . ‘I have often wondered what would have happened to Keats if he had been born in the Amazon jungle. It seems to me that now I have the answer. He would have been the incarnation of Miguel Angel Asturias. No one has a more irrepressible imagination, or greater inventiveness, or a deeper sense of human tragedy.' - Frank Tannenbaum, Institute of Latin American Studies, Columbia University . . . ‘ . . . rich in fantasy, lyric and baroque in expression, and infused with tender affection for the land and its people. Asturias also has a robust vein of humor (Rabelaisian in nature), a strong predilection for the erotic, and the ability to carry one into the magic world he creates by oscillating between the real and the mythic.' - Saturday Review . . . ‘Asturias is one of our major novelists for the vigor of his imagination, the audacity with which he complicates the interior structure of his tale and the violent or tender lyricism with which he evokes the lands of America.' - Enrique Anderson Imbert, Harvard University.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
Like a bright kite, fighting the thread that binds it to the earth, El Alhajadito, or THE BEJEWELED Boy, searches for reality in a dream that cannot end. ‘Dear Lord,' be cried, ‘I can never look into a mirror without believing that there's something more there than I can see.' In his little barn, away from the town, he has his own dreams, sensuous and childlike, and his own adventures. But back in the big house to which he must return, the whey-faced, pig-tailed servants scurry sourly about their endless tasks. The doors of the big house are always open, the beds are aired and made up with spotless linen. Plates of cakes and fruit, glasses of wine and liquor, boxes of cigars, hundreds of lamps to light at dusk, all these are kept in constant readiness, for El Alhajadito's forbears never visibly died: they just disappeared~ The family sepulchre has remained empty all these generations, and the big house is kept in glowing readiness through the days and nights, awaiting the return of the Masters. To attempt a description of this novel is like trying to describe a Bunuel film: they are both apparently irrational, but in truth they are depictions of the veil which separates those two realities, the objective and the subjective, and they must both be experienced first hand.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
The first of Asturias' famous 'Banana Trilogy,' all of which emphasize social and economic exploitation by a large North American fruit company.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
This is the third and concluding volume of Asturias' controversial major work, the Banana Republic trilogy. The first two volumes were STRONG WIND and THE GREEN POPE. The setting is the vast stretch of banana plantations in a Central American republic dominated and exploited by a powerful North American fruit company. The novel seethes with poetry, suspense and violence, dealing with the downfall of George Maker Thompson, King of the banana empire, and the defeat of the fruit company by a labor strike and revolution. The hallucinatory descriptions of the jungle, Indian villages, tropical slums at the feet of Spanish churches, legendary scenes interwoven with folklore and mythology, and a medieval procession of priests, beggars, millionaires, children and soldiers reveal what the Nobel Prize committee referred to as the ‘volcanic vehemence' of Asturias' vision. ACCLAIM FOR Miguel Angel Asturias - ‘Powerful realism and compassionate identification with the poor and the oppressed mark Asturias' works, which are suffused with Guatemalan individuality, Mayan traditions and a sense of tragic destiny.' - The New York Times. ‘No one has a more irrepressible imagination, or greater inventiveness, or a deeper sense of human tragedy.' - Frank Tannenbaum, institute of Latin American Studies, Columbia University. ‘Social protest and poetry; reality and myth; nostalgia for an uncorrupted, golden past; sensual, human enjoyment of the present; ‘magic' rather than lineal time, and, above all, a tender, compassionate love for the living, fertile, wondrous land and the struggling, hopeful people of Guatemala.' - Saturday Review. ‘Asturias is one of our major novelists for the vigor of his imagination, the audacity with which he complicates the interior structure of his tale and the violent or tender lyricism with which he evokes the lands of America.' - Enrique Anderson Imbert, Harvard University. ‘ . . . the greatest novelist of revolution.' - L'Express.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
THE GREEN POPE is the second volume of Asturias' controversial major work, the Banana Republic trilogy. The setting is the vast stretch of banana plantations in a Central American republic, dominated and exploited by a powerful North American fruit company. THE GREEN POPE is George Maker Thompson, the ruthless U.S. founder of the plantations. The passionate narrative begins with the early years of his career when he abandons piracy in the Caribbean and ventures into the steamy interior. There he wrenches land, bit by bit, from the Indians. He falls in love with a young girl, Mayaris, who stirs up the Indians against him and who finally plunges into a river, in bridal white, as a kind of sacrificial suicide. Her mother, Doña Flora, an owner of vast holdings herself, marries Thompson, then dies bearing his daughter. After the plantation grows gigantic and rich, Thompson returns to the U.S. to persuade the government to annex the republic and make him governor. The climax of this novel, a clash between two monstrous rival fruit companies, reveals what the Nobel Prize committee referred to as the ‘volcanic vehemence' of Asturias' vision. WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
A never-before translated collection of stories based on Mayan myth and Guatemalan folklore by the 1967 Novel Laureate Miguel Angel Asturias. In these delightful tales, the father of magic realism, best known for his novels The President, Mulata, and Men of Maize, displays his dazzling deftness with fiction in short form. These brilliantly inventive adaptations of Guatemalan folk tales intermesh the technical virtuosity, incomparable imagination and profound poetic vision of a giant of twentieth century literature. Hailed as the direct forebear of such authors as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Luisa Valenzuela, Miguel Angel Asturias was the second Latin American author to win the Nobel Prize. Born in Guatemala City in 1899, Asturias's family left the capitol when he was four years old fleeing political persecution. Asturias's childhood in the rural town of Salame and his adolescence, spent under the shadow of an oppressive dictatorship, strongly shaped his later writing. The Mirror of Lida Sal is Asturias's only collection of short stories and provides an excellent introduction to the author's poetic prose. This first edition also features an introduction by Gerald Martin, a prestigious Miguel Angel Asturias scholar.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
Miguel Angel Asturias, a recent Nobel Prize candidate, is achieving international recognition as one of Latin America's most distinguished writers. The present book is outstanding for its imaginative quality and the richness of its language. Yumi barters his wife, Niniloj, for wealth. The Devil of the Maize Leaves carries her off in a whirlwind. Yumi then marries the Mulatta - who is not what she appears to be. Horrified, Yumi, with the help of Niniloj (now a dwarf) walls up the Mulatta in a cave of the White Mountain, which erupts, burying Yumi's estates. Reduced to poverty once more the couple become sorcerers and undergo terrifying metamorphic adventures. This book embodies much of the superstition and folklore still prevalent in Guatemala today.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
The present book is outstanding for its imaginative quality and the richness of its language. Yumi barters his wife, Niniloj, for wealth. The Devil of the Maize Leaves carries her off in a whirlwind. Yumi then marries the Mulatta - who is not what she appears to be. Horrified, Yumi, with the help of Niniloj (now a dwarf) walls up the Mulatta in a cave of the White Mountain, which erupts, burying Yumi's estates. Reduced to poverty once more the couple become sorcerers and undergo terrifying metamorphic adventures. This book embodies much of the superstition and folklore still prevalent in Guatemala today.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
A tropical South American state . . . miserly beggars are mustering and jostling in the porch of the capital's church for the night, when above the moans and snores, and yelping of half-starved dogs, rises the cry of a man mutilated and torn to death by a crazy tramp. This is the first link of the chain of events which winds through the novel to the source of the corruption - the feared, omnipotent President. His subjects squirm and crawl to avoid a brutal displeasure and even the sly double-faced dissenter, Angel Face, cannot evade a death in a dank underground cell. THE PRESIDENT is an alarming evocation of political corruption, with a richness of style which forces stark reality to the limits of surrealism. Asturias was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1967.
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 - June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature ‘for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America.' Asturias was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid, Spain. In 1904 his family moved from the capital to Salamá, Baja Verapaz, where they remained until 1908. In 1917, while studying law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (after a brief one-year flirtation with medicine), Asturias participated in the 1920 uprising against dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France, to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse, and began writing poetry and fiction. Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corps. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata de Tal. Eventually, in 1966, democratically elected President Julio CEsar MEndez Montenegro appointed him the ambassador to France, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize. Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. His son Rodrigo Asturias, under the nom de guerre Gaspar Ilom, was head of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a unified rebel group during the Civil War in the 1980s, and after the peace accords 1996 became the group's presidential candidate. In 1991, the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon published ‘Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela' about their time together during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris.
A rather melodramatic love story set in the United States and Guatemala.
In 1881, when he was only twenty-four years old, Aluisio Azevedo (1857-1913) published MULATTO, a scathing exposE of his native city. Polemic as well as love story, Azevedo's early novel brought him singular notoriety and is generally considered the first naturalist novel to be produced in Brazil. Set in the conservative Brazilian province of Maranhao before the abolition of slavery and the establishment of the first republic, Mulatto tells the story of Raimundo, a young Brazilian of liberal ideas. Kept in complete ignorance of the identity of his mother and the secret of his birth, Raimundo is educated in Europe and upon his return to the north of Brazil struggles against the provincial and bigoted society he encounters. The novel is an intense expression of the spirit of abolitionism, anticlericalism, and republicanism sweeping through Brazil in the 1870s; it is also a love story, matching a sensual, defiant heroine with the young positivist hero. Mulatto is a young man's novel, full of passion and venom, It contains vivid, often comical, sometimes melodramatic portraits of the provincial northern city of São Luis do Maranhão, with its cosmopolitan pretensions, paternalistic commercial ties, and stultifying family life. It is as lavish in its depiction of the beauties of the landscape and the habits of the people as it is searing in its denunciation of their pettiness and cruelty. Most important, it reveals its author's fierce opposition both to the clergy, whose corruption and influence Azevedo denounced, and to the slave-holding system and the deep-rooted racism of an agrarian society still dependent upon that system. Joined to these themes are those of love and desire, the search for one's past, the tension between individual and society, and the consequences of cultural amnesia. Demonstrating Azevedo's considerable skill at caricature, Mulatto is peopled with broadly sketched types-bigots, sadists, bores, and villains as well as innocent victims and faithful companions-and also with carefully delineated personalities. Above all, the novel is the intricate portrait of a city-its rhythms and hues, its work and play, and its hierarchical divisions of male and female, white and black, parent and child, priest and penitent, slaveowner and slave, and of a particular historical moment of challenges to these hierarchies. In it Azevedo captures not only the vivid details of life in his native Maranhão but also the compelling colors and contours of hatred, cowardice, fear, hope, rebellion, and defeat. ALUISIO AZEVEDO was born in the northern province of Maranhäo in 1857. He was in his early twenties when he wrote Mulatto, which aroused such resentment in Maranhão that Azevedo left his native city and moved to Rio de Janeiro. There, for nearly fifteen years, he worked as a journalist and writer, and produced, among other works of fiction, Brazil's best-known naturalist novel, 0 Cortiço (1890), published in English as A Brazilian Tenement. At age thirty-eight, disenchanted with the effort to earn his living by the pen, Azevedo gave up writing and became a diplomat. He died in Buenos Aires in 1913. MURRAY GRAEME MACNICOLL received his Ph.D. in Brazilian literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1977 and taught at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Pittsburgh. He published articles in numerous literary journals and, prior to his death in 1984, was researching the culture and literature of northern Brazil. DAPHNE PATAI also received her Ph.D. in Brazilian literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1977. She is professor of Women's Studies and of Portuguese at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and is the author of Myth and Ideology in Contemporary Brazilian Fiction, THE ORWELL MYSTIQUE: A STUDY IN MALE IDEOLOGY, and BRAZILIAN WOMEN SPEAK: CONTEMPORARY LIFE STORIES.
Aluísio Tancredo Gonçalves de Azevedo (April 14, 1857 - January 21, 1913) was a Brazilian novelist, caricaturist, diplomat, playwright and short story writer. Initially a Romantic writer, he would later adhere to the Naturalist movement. He introduced the Naturalist movement in Brazil with the novel O Mulato, in 1881. He founded and occupied the 4th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1897 until his death in 1913. Azevedo was born in São Luís, to David Gonçalves de Azevedo (the Portuguese vice-consul in Brazil) and Emília Amália Pinto de Magalhães. He was the younger brother of the famous playwright Artur Azevedo. As a child, Aluísio would work as a traveling salesman. Since then, he loved painting and drawing, and would move to Rio de Janeiro in 1876 (where his brother Artur was living already), to study at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes. After graduating, he drew caricatures for journals such as O Fígaro, O Mequetrefe, Zig-Zag and A Semana Ilustrada. His father's death, in 1878, made him return to São Luís, in order to take care of his family. He then initiated his writer career, publishing in 1880 a typical Romantic novel, Uma Lágrima de Mulher. He helps on the creation of an anticlerical journal named O Pensador, where he wrote Abolitionist articles. In 1881 he publishes the first Brazilian Naturalist novel ever: O Mulato, that deals with the racism. Consolidating his career as a writer, he could return to Rio. He would write endlessly during the period of 1882-1895. Dating from this period are his also famous novels Casa de Pensão (1884) and O Cortiço (1890), and many other works written in partnership with his brother, or with Emile Rouède. In 1895 he became a diplomat. He served as a minister in Spain, Japan, England, Italy and Argentina, where he died.
First published in 1890, and undoubtably Azevedo's masterpiece. THE SLUM is one of the most widely read and critically acclaimed novels ever written about Brazil. Indeed, its great popularity, realistic descriptions, archetypal situations, detailed local coloring, and overall race-consciousness may well evoke Huckleberry Finn as the novel's North American equivalent. Yet Azevedo also exhibits the naturalism of Zola and the ironic distance of Balzac. While tragic, beautiful, and imaginative as a work of fiction, THE SLUM is universally regarded as one of the best, or truest, portraits of Brazilian society ever rendered. This is a vivid and complex tale of passion and greed, a story with many different strands touching on the different economic tiers of society. Mainly, however, THE SLUM thrives on two intersecting story lines. In one narrative, a penny-pinching immigrant landlord strives to become a rich investor and then discards his black lover for a wealthy white woman. In the other, we witness the innocent yet dangerous love affair between a strong, pragmatic, gentle giant' sort of immigrant and a vivacious mulatto woman who both live in a tenement owned by the landlord. The two immigrant heroes are originally Portuguese, and thus personify two alternate outsider responses to Brazil. As translator David H. Rosenthal points out in his useful Introduction: one is the capitalist drawn to new markets, quick prestige, and untapped resources; the other, the prudent European drawn moth-like to the light and sexual heat of the tropics.' A deftly told, deeply moving, and hard-scrabble novel that features stirring passages about life in the streets, the melting-pot realities of the modern city, and the oft-unstable mind of the crowd, The Slum will captivate anyone who might appreciate a more poetic, less political take on the nineteenth-century naturalism of Crane or Dreiser. The Brazilian novelist Aluisio Azevedo (1857-1913) was also the author of A WOMAN'S TEAR, THE MULATTO, and several other works. . The late David H. Rosenthal was an accomplished translator of works from the Catalan (from 15th-century classics to modern poetry) and also wrote essays and books on many other topics, including HARD BOP: JAZZ AND BLACK MUSIC 1955-1965 (Oxford University Press, 1992).
Aluísio Tancredo Gonçalves de Azevedo (April 14, 1857 - January 21, 1913) was a Brazilian novelist, caricaturist, diplomat, playwright and short story writer. Initially a Romantic writer, he would later adhere to the Naturalist movement. He introduced the Naturalist movement in Brazil with the novel O Mulato, in 1881. He founded and occupied the 4th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1897 until his death in 1913. Azevedo was born in São Luís, to David Gonçalves de Azevedo (the Portuguese vice-consul in Brazil) and Emília Amália Pinto de Magalhães. He was the younger brother of the famous playwright Artur Azevedo. As a child, Aluísio would work as a traveling salesman. Since then, he loved painting and drawing, and would move to Rio de Janeiro in 1876 (where his brother Artur was living already), to study at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes. After graduating, he drew caricatures for journals such as O Fígaro, O Mequetrefe, Zig-Zag and A Semana Ilustrada. His father's death, in 1878, made him return to São Luís, in order to take care of his family. He then initiated his writer career, publishing in 1880 a typical Romantic novel, Uma Lágrima de Mulher. He helps on the creation of an anticlerical journal named O Pensador, where he wrote Abolitionist articles. In 1881 he publishes the first Brazilian Naturalist novel ever: O Mulato, that deals with the racism. Consolidating his career as a writer, he could return to Rio. He would write endlessly during the period of 1882-1895. Dating from this period are his also famous novels Casa de Pensão (1884) and O Cortiço (1890), and many other works written in partnership with his brother, or with Emile Rouède. In 1895 he became a diplomat. He served as a minister in Spain, Japan, England, Italy and Argentina, where he died.
First published in 1890, and undoubtably Azevedo's masterpiece. A BRAZILIAN TENEMENT is one of the most widely read and critically acclaimed novels ever written about Brazil. Indeed, its great popularity, realistic descriptions, archetypal situations, detailed local coloring, and overall race-consciousness may well evoke Huckleberry Finn as the novel's North American equivalent. Yet Azevedo also exhibits the naturalism of Zola and the ironic distance of Balzac. While tragic, beautiful, and imaginative as a work of fiction, A BRAZILIAN TENEMENT is universally regarded as one of the best, or truest, portraits of Brazilian society ever rendered. This is a vivid and complex tale of passion and greed, a story with many different strands touching on the different economic tiers of society. Mainly, however, A BRAZILIAN TENEMENT thrives on two intersecting story lines. In one narrative, a penny-pinching immigrant landlord strives to become a rich investor and then discards his black lover for a wealthy white woman. In the other, we witness the innocent yet dangerous love affair between a strong, pragmatic, gentle giant' sort of immigrant and a vivacious mulatto woman who both live in a tenement owned by the landlord. The two immigrant heroes are originally Portuguese, and thus personify two alternate outsider responses to Brazil.
Aluísio Tancredo Gonçalves de Azevedo (April 14, 1857 - January 21, 1913) was a Brazilian novelist, caricaturist, diplomat, playwright and short story writer. Initially a Romantic writer, he would later adhere to the Naturalist movement. He introduced the Naturalist movement in Brazil with the novel O Mulato, in 1881. He founded and occupied the 4th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1897 until his death in 1913. Azevedo was born in São Luís, to David Gonçalves de Azevedo (the Portuguese vice-consul in Brazil) and Emília Amália Pinto de Magalhães. He was the younger brother of the famous playwright Artur Azevedo. As a child, Aluísio would work as a traveling salesman. Since then, he loved painting and drawing, and would move to Rio de Janeiro in 1876 (where his brother Artur was living already), to study at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes. After graduating, he drew caricatures for journals such as O Fígaro, O Mequetrefe, Zig-Zag and A Semana Ilustrada. His father's death, in 1878, made him return to São Luís, in order to take care of his family. He then initiated his writer career, publishing in 1880 a typical Romantic novel, Uma Lágrima de Mulher. He helps on the creation of an anticlerical journal named O Pensador, where he wrote Abolitionist articles. In 1881 he publishes the first Brazilian Naturalist novel ever: O Mulato, that deals with the racism. Consolidating his career as a writer, he could return to Rio. He would write endlessly during the period of 1882-1895. Dating from this period are his also famous novels Casa de Pensão (1884) and O Cortiço (1890), and many other works written in partnership with his brother, or with Emile Rouède. In 1895 he became a diplomat. He served as a minister in Spain, Japan, England, Italy and Argentina, where he died.
Murder and flight. In Mexico City rumors abound, speculation begins. The murderer's colleagues meet in conjecture. From their conflicting accounts of the Jose Augusto Banderas they knew-his politics, romances, possible motives-a man of legendary dimensions emerges. Meanwhile the fugitive, thousands of miles from his mythical avatar, tries to recover himself in physical and spiritual exile. His flight from country to country, one job to another, one affair to the next leads him at last to a turbulent Paris where, propelled by the turmoil and protest around him, he embarks on the course whose dangers and demands will transform him into the man his cronies could only imagine. It is a course that must in the end return Banderas to Mexico City for the inevitable denouement. Banderas' story comes to epitomize the change taking place in the city he fled, a Mexico City where the corruption and squalor bred by ostensible progress are creating a new generation of violent opposition; where past idealists, whose politics have slipped into nostalgia and apathy, are about to be prodded into action; where the silence is soon to be shattered. SHADOWS OF SILENCE was awarded Mexico's National Novel Award in 1980 and hailed for its vivid depiction of the social crises and personal ambitions and fears at the heart of the massive protests that racked Mexico City in 1968.
Arturo Azuela Arriaga (June 30, 1938, Mexico City - June 7, 2012) was a Mexican writer, historian and academic. His works have been translated into six languages. SHADOWS OF SILENCE is the first of his novels to appear in English. . Elena C. Murray is a freelance translator in Mexico City.
MARIANO AZUELA is the leading novelist of Mexico. MARCELA is a pastoral melodrama, a love story and a thriller. Marcela is an Indian girl, the eternal harlot, whom to see is passionately to desire. In her all the wild beauty of Mexican earth is essenced; all the passionate submission of the Indian race and all the slumbering revolt. She is wildly loved by Don Julian, who understands and lives only for women and horses. The novel unfolds the struggle between this primitive girl and the decadent, still lordly scion of old Spain, and the fate of the other men who come between them. The story is as violent and as beautiful as the Mexican landscape. Anita Brenner, who has done the translating of this profound picture of rural Mexican life in the era of Porfirio Diaz, is the author of IDOLS BEHIND ALTARS. Anita Brenner, who has done the translating of this profound picture of rural Mexican life in the era of Porfirio Diaz, is the author of IDOLS BEHIND ALTARS.
Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel AndrEs PErez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915. Azuela was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. During his days in the Mexican Revolution, Azuela wrote about the war and its impact on Mexico. He served under president Francisco I. Madero as chief of political affairs in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - his home town. After Madero's death, he joined the military forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa, where he served as a field doctor. He later was forced for a time to emigrate to El Paso, Texas. There he wrote Los de abajo, a first-hand description of combat during the Mexican revolution, based on his experiences in the field. In 1917 he moved to Mexico City where for the rest of his life he continued his writing and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942 he received the Mexican national prize for literature. On April 8, 1943 he became a founding member of Mexico's National College. In 1949 he received the Mexican national prize for Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City March 1, 1952 and was placed in a sepulchre of the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres.
Ten years after its publication in a small El Paso paper, THE UNDERDOGS achieved worldwide renown as the greatest novel of the Mexican Revolution. It tells the story of Demetrio Macias, a modest, peace-loving Indian, who is forced to side with the rebels to save his family. In the course of battle, he becomes a compulsive militarist almost despite himself, and his courage leads to a generalship in Pancho Villa's army. But as the rebels suffer defeat after defeat, Macias loses prestige and moral purpose at the hands of turncoats, camp followers, and the peasants who had once loved him. The social conscience and bitter irony of Azuela's classic novel have earned him comparisons to Chekhov and Gorky. As Mexico continues to both celebrate and struggle with the consequences of its great revolution, The Underdogs remains a powerful and insightful portrait of social upheaval.
Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel AndrEs PErez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915. Azuela was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. During his days in the Mexican Revolution, Azuela wrote about the war and its impact on Mexico. He served under president Francisco I. Madero as chief of political affairs in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - his home town. After Madero's death, he joined the military forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa, where he served as a field doctor. He later was forced for a time to emigrate to El Paso, Texas. There he wrote Los de abajo, a first-hand description of combat during the Mexican revolution, based on his experiences in the field. In 1917 he moved to Mexico City where for the rest of his life he continued his writing and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942 he received the Mexican national prize for literature. On April 8, 1943 he became a founding member of Mexico's National College. In 1949 he received the Mexican national prize for Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City March 1, 1952 and was placed in a sepulchre of the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres.
Ten years after its publication in a small El Paso paper, The Underdogs achieved world-wide renown as the greatest novel of the Mexican Revolution. It is the story of Demetrio Maclas, a naïve, peace-loving Indian, who is forced to side with the rebels to save his family. In the course of battle, he becomes a compulsive militarist whose courage, almost despite himself, leads to a generalship in Villa's army. But as the Cause suffers defeat after defeat, Maclas loses prestige and moral purpose at the hands of turncoats, camp followers, and the peasants who had once loved him. Carleton Beals wrote of this novel, ‘The scenes have the brutality of Gorky. Azuela is the Mexican Chekhov only in so much as he is a doctor; in all else he is close to Gorky, with a touch of Gorky's terrific pessimism, but none of Gorky's revolutionary optimism.'
Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel AndrEs PErez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915. Azuela was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. During his days in the Mexican Revolution, Azuela wrote about the war and its impact on Mexico. He served under president Francisco I. Madero as chief of political affairs in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - his home town. After Madero's death, he joined the military forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa, where he served as a field doctor. He later was forced for a time to emigrate to El Paso, Texas. There he wrote Los de abajo, a first-hand description of combat during the Mexican revolution, based on his experiences in the field. In 1917 he moved to Mexico City where for the rest of his life he continued his writing and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942 he received the Mexican national prize for literature. On April 8, 1943 he became a founding member of Mexico's National College. In 1949 he received the Mexican national prize for Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City March 1, 1952 and was placed in a sepulchre of the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres.
Ten years after its publication in a small El Paso paper, The Underdogs achieved world - wide renown as the greatest novel of the Mexican Revolution. It is the story of Demetrio Maclas, a naïve, peace - loving Indian, who is forced to side with the rebels to save his family. In the course of battle, he becomes a compulsive militarist whose courage, almost despite himself, leads to a generalship in Villa's army. But as the Cause suffers defeat after defeat, Maclas loses prestige and moral purpose at the hands of turncoats, camp followers, and the peasants who had once loved him. Carleton Beals wrote of this novel, 'The scenes have the brutality of Gorky. Azuela is the Mexican Chekhov only in so much as he is a doctor; in all else he is close to Gorky, with a touch of Gorky's terrific pessimism, but none of Gorky's revolutionary optimism.'
Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel AndrEs PErez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915. Azuela was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. During his days in the Mexican Revolution, Azuela wrote about the war and its impact on Mexico. He served under president Francisco I. Madero as chief of political affairs in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - his home town. After Madero's death, he joined the military forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa, where he served as a field doctor. He later was forced for a time to emigrate to El Paso, Texas. There he wrote Los de abajo, a first-hand description of combat during the Mexican revolution, based on his experiences in the field. In 1917 he moved to Mexico City where for the rest of his life he continued his writing and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942 he received the Mexican national prize for literature. On April 8, 1943 he became a founding member of Mexico's National College. In 1949 he received the Mexican national prize for Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City March 1, 1952 and was placed in a sepulchre of the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres.
Ten years after its publication in a small El Paso paper, THE UNDERDOGS achieved worldwide renown as the greatest novel of the Mexican Revolution. It tells the story of Demetrio Macias, a modest, peace-loving Indian, who is forced to side with the rebels to save his family. In the course of battle, he becomes a compulsive militarist almost despite himself, and his courage leads to a generalship in Pancho Villa's army. But as the rebels suffer defeat after defeat, Macias loses prestige and moral purpose at the hands of turncoats, camp followers, and the peasants who had once loved him. The social conscience and bitter irony of Azuela's classic novel have earned him comparisons to Chekhov and Gorky. As Mexico continues to both celebrate and struggle with the consequences of its great revolution, The Underdogs remains a powerful and insightful portrait of social upheaval.
Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel AndrEs PErez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915. Azuela was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. During his days in the Mexican Revolution, Azuela wrote about the war and its impact on Mexico. He served under president Francisco I. Madero as chief of political affairs in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - his home town. After Madero's death, he joined the military forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa, where he served as a field doctor. He later was forced for a time to emigrate to El Paso, Texas. There he wrote Los de abajo, a first-hand description of combat during the Mexican revolution, based on his experiences in the field. In 1917 he moved to Mexico City where for the rest of his life he continued his writing and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942 he received the Mexican national prize for literature. On April 8, 1943 he became a founding member of Mexico's National College. In 1949 he received the Mexican national prize for Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City March 1, 1952 and was placed in a sepulchre of the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres.
In the early years of the twentieth century, with revolution sweeping the Mexican countryside, Demetrio Macias, a poor, illiterate Indian, is forced to join the rebels in order to save his family. His courage and charisma earn him important friends - and a generalship in the army of the legendary Pancho Villa - but in the face of mounting defeats and increasing factionalism, Demetrio begins to feel estranged from the cause, coming up against a crisis of resolve he hoped he would never have to confront. Mariano Azuela's stirring novel about the first great revolution of the twentieth century is a powerful portrait of the disillusionment of war, an authentic representation of Mexico's peasant life, and an iconic novel. ‘Azuela, more than any other novelist of the Mexican Revolution, lifts the heavy stone of history to see what there is underneath it.' - Carlos Fuentes, from the Foreword.
Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel AndrEs PErez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915. Azuela was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. During his days in the Mexican Revolution, Azuela wrote about the war and its impact on Mexico. He served under president Francisco I. Madero as chief of political affairs in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - his home town. After Madero's death, he joined the military forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa, where he served as a field doctor. He later was forced for a time to emigrate to El Paso, Texas. There he wrote Los de abajo, a first-hand description of combat during the Mexican revolution, based on his experiences in the field. In 1917 he moved to Mexico City where for the rest of his life he continued his writing and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942 he received the Mexican national prize for literature. On April 8, 1943 he became a founding member of Mexico's National College. In 1949 he received the Mexican national prize for Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City March 1, 1952 and was placed in a sepulchre of the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres.
This epic novel of the Mexican Revolution was originally published in installments in 1915 in an El Paso, Texas, newspaper. Since then, THE UNDERDOGS - the story of a courageous Indian farmer who almost unwittingly rises to a generalship in Pancho Villa's rebel army-has steadily gained recognition in Mexico and Latin America, winning renown as the classic novel about the war. Despite the international interest in Latin American fiction generated by writers like Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Marquez since the 1960's, The Underdogs has yet to receive the full recognition it deserves in North America. This new translation by Frederick Fornoff, based on the most authentic manuscript, captures the flavor of Azuela's masterpiece-his lyrical portrayal of culture and landscape; his sparkling, spare style. Critical essays offer historical and literary perspectives on the text. Ahead of his time, Azuela in this 1915 novel challenged conventional narrative technique in ways North American writers would not adopt for decades.
Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel AndrEs PErez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915. Azuela was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. During his days in the Mexican Revolution, Azuela wrote about the war and its impact on Mexico. He served under president Francisco I. Madero as chief of political affairs in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - his home town. After Madero's death, he joined the military forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa, where he served as a field doctor. He later was forced for a time to emigrate to El Paso, Texas. There he wrote Los de abajo, a first-hand description of combat during the Mexican revolution, based on his experiences in the field. In 1917 he moved to Mexico City where for the rest of his life he continued his writing and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942 he received the Mexican national prize for literature. On April 8, 1943 he became a founding member of Mexico's National College. In 1949 he received the Mexican national prize for Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City March 1, 1952 and was placed in a sepulchre of the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres.
The Underdogs Mariano Azuela Ten years after its publication in a small El Paso paper, The Underdogs achieved worldwide renown as the greatest novel of the Mexican Revolution. It tells the story of Demetrio Macías, a modest, peace-loving Indian, who is forced to side with the rebels to save his family. In the course of battle, he becomes a compulsive militarist almost despite himself, and his courage leads to a generalship in Pancho Villa's army. But as the rebels suffer defeat after defeat, Macías loses prestige and moral purpose at the hands of turncoats, camp followers, and the peasants who once loved him. The social conscience and bitter irony of Azuela's classic novel have earned him comparisons to Chekhov and Gorky. As Mexico continues to celebrate and struggle with the consequences of its great revolution, The Underdogs remains a powerful and insightful portrait of social upheaval.
Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel AndrEs PErez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915.
THE TRIALS OF A RESPECTABLE FAMILY portrays the impact of the Mexican Revolution on people of property and their conflicting responses to the moral and social issues involved. The novel analyzes the conflict between the obtuse who seek selfish advantage and the sensitive who summon courage in the face of disaster. THE UNDERDOGS, a landmark in Mexican literary history, describes the Mexican Revolution in one of the most violent, brutal, and discouraging phases. It was the first and greatest of the cycle of works on revolutionary subjects, written between 1915-1918, which form the basis of Azuela's literary fame. THE FIREFLY represents a deliberate change of style on the part of Mariano Azuela, who thought this novel to be the greatest literary success of his life. Influenced in part by his reading of Marcel Proust, Azuela used techniques of introspection, psychological insight, and impressionism to fully develop the characters.
Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel AndrEs PErez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915. Azuela was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. During his days in the Mexican Revolution, Azuela wrote about the war and its impact on Mexico. He served under president Francisco I. Madero as chief of political affairs in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - his home town. After Madero's death, he joined the military forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa, where he served as a field doctor. He later was forced for a time to emigrate to El Paso, Texas. There he wrote Los de abajo, a first-hand description of combat during the Mexican revolution, based on his experiences in the field. In 1917 he moved to Mexico City where for the rest of his life he continued his writing and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942 he received the Mexican national prize for literature. On April 8, 1943 he became a founding member of Mexico's National College. In 1949 he received the Mexican national prize for Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City March 1, 1952 and was placed in a sepulchre of the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres.
Two short novels of the Mexican Revolution. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1956).
Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel AndrEs PErez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915. Azuela was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. During his days in the Mexican Revolution, Azuela wrote about the war and its impact on Mexico. He served under president Francisco I. Madero as chief of political affairs in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - his home town. After Madero's death, he joined the military forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa, where he served as a field doctor. He later was forced for a time to emigrate to El Paso, Texas. There he wrote Los de abajo, a first-hand description of combat during the Mexican revolution, based on his experiences in the field. In 1917 he moved to Mexico City where for the rest of his life he continued his writing and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942 he received the Mexican national prize for literature. On April 8, 1943 he became a founding member of Mexico's National College. In 1949 he received the Mexican national prize for Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City March 1, 1952 and was placed in a sepulchre of the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres.
During the Mexican Revolution the Vásquez Prados of Zacatecas, a wealthy and substantial family, suffer successive stages of declining fortunes to a condition of degrading poverty. A division in the family, between members who are obtuse in the face of revolutionary changes and time-serving in their own interests and those who are moved by innate honesty and a sense of responsibility, provides the conflict about which the narrative develops. Shifting from an account seen through the eyes of the younger son of the family whose sudden death marks the end of Book I, the center of interest in Book II becomes the regeneration of Procopio, the father of the family. Sustained by the love and understanding of one of his daughters, he combats the influence of his self-centered wife and the opportunistic husband of the other daughter. Procopio achieves his victory. . . THE UNDERDOGS by Mariano Azuela - Forced to take to the mountains by the animosity of the local cacique, Demetrio Maclas found himself ranged on the side of the revolutionaries in Mexico without knowing how or why. This natural leader, about whom a small band of loyal followers collected, achieved in his native canyon a substantial victory over the government forces. Through the influence of a townsman who deserted the Federalists to take up with the serranos after deciding that tomorrow would belong to them, Demetrio joined forces with one of Pancho Villa's generals. After distinguishing himself in a spectacular assault at Zacatecas, Demetrio himself soon achieved status as a general. These ‘indomitable men of the indigenous race' were swept along by the revolution through the .months and years. Pillaging was their reward; carousing their release. Though they smiled as they robbed and killed, they could smile as they died. Disenchantment and futility; sadness and even horror mark these pages. ‘Mexico has produced no novelist more original or Mexican than Mariano Azuela whose work is both genuine and authentic. . . . In THE TRIALS OF A RESPECTABLE FAMILY, Azuela has given an incomparable picture of a dramatic phase of the historical and social development of his country. . . . The work without doubt merits the attention of the world of literary criticism which until now has ignored it. . . . THE UNDERDOGS achieves merit by having penetrated the depths of the collective psychology of the Mexican people in an instant of crisis and of having revealed it to us in all its terrible brutality - neither more terrible nor more cruel than any other human group in similar circumstances. By having delved into the Mexican manifestations in the novel, Dr. Azuela reached the human universal in its worst dimension.' - Manuel Pedro Gonzalez, Professor of Spanish-American Literature, University of California, Los Angeles . . . ‘THE UNDERDOGS is Mexico. By reading it we know Mexico, her people, her land, her problems, her aspirations, and her limitations. Without doubt, THE TRIALS OF A RESPECTABLE FAMILY is, after THE UNDERDOGS, the most vivid picture of revolutionary times from Azuela's pen. In the development of a plot which is one of his best, he provides scenes of great power and emotion.' - Luis Leal, Professor of Hispanic-American Literature, University of Illinois . . . ‘For the first time The Trials of a Respectable Family, a notable work, . . . becomes available in English. Its subject is the social transformation at work in Mexico during the Revolution. With it appears a new translation of THE UNDERDOGS. . . which has long been needed. . . . It will enable English readers to achieve a new comprehension of the best novel of Mariano Azuela. . . whose literary achievements are worthy of the atten- tion of this and succeeding generations.' - Francisco Monterde, Member of the Academia Mexicana. Prologue by Salvador Azuela. Biographical sketch by Louis Leal . .
Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel AndrEs PErez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915. Azuela was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. During his days in the Mexican Revolution, Azuela wrote about the war and its impact on Mexico. He served under president Francisco I. Madero as chief of political affairs in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - his home town. After Madero's death, he joined the military forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa, where he served as a field doctor. He later was forced for a time to emigrate to El Paso, Texas. There he wrote Los de abajo, a first-hand description of combat during the Mexican revolution, based on his experiences in the field. In 1917 he moved to Mexico City where for the rest of his life he continued his writing and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942 he received the Mexican national prize for literature. On April 8, 1943 he became a founding member of Mexico's National College. In 1949 he received the Mexican national prize for Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City March 1, 1952 and was placed in a sepulchre of the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres.
RACHEL'S SONG is a brilliant portrait of pre-Castro Cuba as told through the story of a famous cabaret dancer - a story frequently humorous, full of surprises, and all in all a vivid picture of the first three decades in our century in Havana. In this classic novel, Rachel speaks of her many love affairs and of her adventures in the theater. Recounting the frivolity and excesses of her time, she ironically becomes a highly reliable witness of the period without even being aware that her account reveals the racism and injustice of the society around her.
Miguel Angel Barnet Lanza (born January 28, 1940) is a Cuban writer, novelist and ethnographer. He studied sociology at the University of Havana, under Fernando Ortiz, the pioneer of Cuban anthropology, whose studies of Afro-Cuban cultures influenced many of the themes, both literary and scholarly, of Barnet.
The works of the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges almost defy classification. His stories often read like thoughtful essays, his essays like poems, and his poems like brief narrations. Borges in conversation similarly transcends and transmutes our expectations of the ordinary colloquy. In the wide- ranging dialogues presented in this volume, the author's thoughts are evoked through the perceptive questioning of Willis Barnstone, John Coleman, Alastair Reid, Dick Cavett, and others. The resulting interplay between Borges and his interviewers makes fascinating reading, revealing him as perhaps the premier conversationalist of our time. Borges chats intimately with his audience. ‘A crowd is an illusion . . . I am talking to you personally,' he tells one group. Candor, wit, and humorous self-disparagement mark his responses, as do the Socratic qualities of profound yet amusing meditation and retort. ‘When I wake up,' he informs us, ‘I wake to something worse. It's the astonishment of being myself.' With the haunting resonance and structure of a fugue, the pervasive themes of Borges' works (or ‘exercises' as he chooses to call them) are woven throughout these evocative conversations. The nightmares, labyrinths, mazes, and mystic experiences that are part of Borges' creative mythology similarly loom large in his conversations. Revealed here are the interests that have continued to engage the writer-Old English and Old Norse sagas, his favorite authors (notably Whitman, Poe, and Emerson), the Kabbalah - as well as his feeling of what it is like to be blind, and now, in his eighties, his thoughts on death. A dozen of Borges' poems are reproduced, both in Spanish and in English translation, followed by remarks on how he came to write them and what they mean. Willis Barnstone's remarkable photographs complete the sensitive word portrait that emerges in BORGES AT EIGHTY: CONVERSATIONS. JORGE LUIS BORGES, born in Buenos Aires in 1899, received his education in Argentina and later in Switzerland and France. He has published numerous collections of short stories, essays, and poems, which have been translated into the world's principal languages. They include FICCIONES LABYRINTHS, DREAM TIGERS, and BOOK OF SAND. . WILLIS BARNSTONE, poet and Professor of Comparative Literature and Latin American Studies at Indiana University, is coeditor (with Aliki Barnstone) of A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now. He has translated volumes of poetry by Sappho, St. John of the Cross, and Antonio Machado. Collections of Barnstone's poetry include From This White Island and China Poems.
Willis Barnstone, born in Lewiston, Maine, and educated at Bowdoin, the Sorbonne, Columbia and Yale, taught in Greece at end of civil war (1949-51), in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War, and in China during Cultural Revolution, where he was later a Fulbright Professor in Beijing(1984-85) Former O'Connor Professor of Greek at Colgate University, he is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. A Guggenheim fellow, he has received the NEA, NEH, Emily Dickinson Award of the PSA, Auden Award of NY Council on the Arts, Midland Authors Award, four Book of the Month selections, four Pulitzer nominations, and Lanner Poetry Award for Border of a Dream: The Poems of Antonio Machado (Copper Canyon). His work has appeared in APR, Harper's, NYRB, Paris Review, Poetry, New Yorker, TLS. Author of seventy books, recent volumes are Poetics of Translation (Yale, 1995), The Gnostic Bible (Shambhala, 2003), Life Watch (BOA, 2003), Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (2004), Restored New Testament (Norton, 2009), Stickball on 88th Street (Red Hen Press, 2011), and Dawn Cafe in Paris (Sheep Meadow, 2011), The Poems of Jesus Christ (Norton, 2012), ABC of Translation (Black Widow Press, 2013), Borges at Eighty (New Directions Press, 2013).
In an engaging series of contending, amusing, and philosophically poignant conversations, Willis Barnstone offers a fresh and touching portrait of Jorge Luis Borges in his later years. Against the backdrop of Argentina's Dirty War and the tragedy of los desaparecidos, we accompany Borges as he walks the streets of Buenos Aires, being greeted by well-wishers. We sit in as he teaches a class in Old English, at the end of which students are asked to read aloud from James, or Whitman, or from Poe's ‘visionary and atrocious wonders.' Borges expresses his opinions on the Malvinas/Falklands war (‘a struggle between two old bald men, fighting over a comb') and on poets from T. S. Eliot (‘a good poet but a stuffy critic') and Robert Frost (‘a fine poet but a terrible farmer') to Ezra Pound (‘I have one word for Ezra Pound. Fraud'). Readers learn why Borges said of Robert Lowell, ‘I might like his poems-but only if he keeps his trousers on.' Whether expressed in the familiarity of his own apartment, the intimacy of adjoining airplane seats, or the formality of an address to a throng of academics, Borges's words are captured here in context. The blindness and the unique vision for which he is renowned are evident throughout, both in his prodigious feats of textual memory and in his recounting of dreamlike narratives that later would be transferred to paper and print. As Barnstone chronicles events in Argentina and the United States, Maria Kodama's role as Borges's reader and travel companion becomes abundantly clear. The book contains a moving portrait of their marriage in Switzerland, when Borges was on his deathbed. ‘Borges's words and spirit shine through. Barnstone's book is therefore not only immensely more enjoyable to read than the majority of other books about Barges, but more valuable than them as well. This is a rich portrait of a passionate but gentle genius.' - Richard Burgin, author of PRIVATE FAME and CONVERSATIONS WITH JORGE LUIS BORGES . . . ‘Barnstone's highly readable memoir helps update our knowledge of an elder Borges. Borges the man comes touchingly alive in this close look at his relations with others.' - Gene Bell-Villada, author of GARCIA MARQUEZ: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. . WILLIS BARNSTONE, professor of comparative literature and Spanish at Indiana University is the author of BORGES AT EIGHTY: CONVERSATIONS. His recent books include THE POETICS OF TRANSLATION: HISTORY THEORY AND PRACTICE, and SUNDAY MORNING IN FASCIST SPAIN: A MEMOIR.
Willis Barnstone, born in Lewiston, Maine, and educated at Bowdoin, the Sorbonne, Columbia and Yale, taught in Greece at end of civil war (1949-51), in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War, and in China during Cultural Revolution, where he was later a Fulbright Professor in Beijing(1984-85) Former O'Connor Professor of Greek at Colgate University, he is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. A Guggenheim fellow, he has received the NEA, NEH, Emily Dickinson Award of the PSA, Auden Award of NY Council on the Arts, Midland Authors Award, four Book of the Month selections, four Pulitzer nominations, and Lanner Poetry Award for Border of a Dream: The Poems of Antonio Machado (Copper Canyon). His work has appeared in APR, Harper's, NYRB, Paris Review, Poetry, New Yorker, TLS. Author of seventy books, recent volumes are Poetics of Translation (Yale, 1995), The Gnostic Bible (Shambhala, 2003), Life Watch (BOA, 2003), Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (2004), Restored New Testament (Norton, 2009), Stickball on 88th Street (Red Hen Press, 2011), and Dawn Cafe in Paris (Sheep Meadow, 2011), The Poems of Jesus Christ (Norton, 2012), ABC of Translation (Black Widow Press, 2013), Borges at Eighty (New Directions Press, 2013).
‘Professor Barrenechea's book has taught me many things about myself. . . The tenets and opinions [an author] holds are wrought by the superficial accidents of circumstance; what really matters is the driving trend be- hind the symbols. The author may not wholly understand them; this is the critic's task.' - from the Foreword by Jose Luis Borges. With this incisive examination of ‘the driving trend behind the symbols' in Borges' work Ana Maria Barrenechea provides a biographical sketch and a detailed critical study of the brilliant Argentinian writer who is now being recognized as one of the most commanding writers of our time.
Ana María Barrenechea (Buenos Aires , March 6, 1913 - October 4, 2010 ) was a Argentine writer, linguist and literary critic.
THE PATRIOT (Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma) is unquestionably Lima Barreto's greatest work. It is not merely because of the unforgettable character he has created, but because it is written with restraint and good-humored tolerance that is scarcely to be found in any of his other novels, He has disciplined the passionate outbursts, curbed the bitterness of his satire and avoided personal attacks on his individuals, unless we so qualify his masterly portrait of the national hero, Floriano Peixoto. The novel embraces a great deal of Brazilian life, a great deal that is typically Brazilian, Some characters and incidents may appear grotesque and exaggerated, for example such incidents as the civilian bystander being allowed to fire a gun at the enemy; to Caldas trying to find his ship; to Quaresma's petition to Congress.
Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto (May 13, 1881 - November 1, 1922) was a Brazilian novelist and journalist. A major figure on the Brazilian Pre-Modernism, he is famous for the novel Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma, a bitter satire of the first years of the República Velha in Brazil. Lima Barreto was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1881, to João Henriques de Lima Barreto and Amália Augusta. His father was a typographer and a monarchist who had close connections to Afonso Celso de Assis Figueiredo, the Viscount of Ouro Preto, who would later become Lima Barreto's godfather. Barreto's mother died when he was very young, and he was subsequently sent to study at a private school run by Teresa Pimentel do Amaral. Soon after, he entered at the Liceu Popular Niteroiense, after the Viscount of Ouro Preto decided to pay for his studies. He graduated in 1894, and in the following year, he would enter the famous Colegio Pedro II. Soon after he graduated, he entered the Escola PolitEcnica do Rio de Janeiro, but was forced to abandon it in 1904 in order to take care of his brothers, since his father's mental health was starting to deteriorate. Barreto used to write for newspapers since 1902, but he achieved fame in 1905, writing for the Correio da Manhã a series of articles regarding the demolition of Castle Hill. In 1911 he founded, alongside some friends, a periodical named Floreal. Although it only lasted for two issues, it received a warm reception by the critics. In 1909 he published his first novel, Recordações do Escrivão Isaías Caminha, a contundent and semi-autobiographical satire of the Brazilian society. However, his masterpiece was Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma, that was published in 1911, under feuilleton form, being re-released under hardcover form in 1915. During his last years of life, Barreto was attacked by heavy crisis of depression, which led him to alcoholism and many internations on different psychiatric hospitals and sanatoriums. He died of a heart attack in 1922.
'The seed of madness exists in all of us and with no warning may attack, overpower, crush and bury us...' Policarpo Quaresma - fastidious civil servant, dedicated patriot, self-styled visionary - is a defender of all things Brazilian, full of schemes to improve his beloved homeland. Yet somehow each of his ventures, whether it is petitioning for Brazil's national language to be changed, buying a farm to prove the richness and fertility of the land, or offering support to government forces as they suppress a military revolt - results in ridicule and disaster. Quixotic and hapless, Quaresma's dreams will eventually be his undoing. Funny, despairing, moving and absurd, Lima Barreto's masterpiece shows a man and a country caught in the violent clash between illusion and reality, hope and decline, sanity and madness.
Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto (May 13, 1881 - November 1, 1922) was a Brazilian novelist and journalist. A major figure on the Brazilian Pre-Modernism, he is famous for the novel Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma, a bitter satire of the first years of the República Velha in Brazil. Lima Barreto was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1881, to João Henriques de Lima Barreto and Amália Augusta. His father was a typographer and a monarchist who had close connections to Afonso Celso de Assis Figueiredo, the Viscount of Ouro Preto, who would later become Lima Barreto's godfather. Barreto's mother died when he was very young, and he was subsequently sent to study at a private school run by Teresa Pimentel do Amaral. Soon after, he entered at the Liceu Popular Niteroiense, after the Viscount of Ouro Preto decided to pay for his studies. He graduated in 1894, and in the following year, he would enter the famous ColEgio Pedro II. Soon after he graduated, he entered the Escola PolitEcnica do Rio de Janeiro, but was forced to abandon it in 1904 in order to take care of his brothers, since his father's mental health was starting to deteriorate. Barreto used to write for newspapers since 1902, but he achieved fame in 1905, writing for the Correio da Manhã a series of articles regarding the demolition of Castle Hill. In 1911 he founded, alongside some friends, a periodical named Floreal. Although it only lasted for two issues, it received a warm reception by the critics. In 1909 he published his first novel, Recordações do Escrivão Isaías Caminha, a contundent and semi-autobiographical satire of the Brazilian society. However, his masterpiece was Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma, that was published in 1911, under feuilleton form, being re-released under hardcover form in 1915. During his last years of life, Barreto was attacked by heavy crisis of depression, which led him to alcoholism and many internations on different psychiatric hospitals and sanatoriums. He died of a heart attack in 1922.
Eduardo Barrios was a prize-winning Chilean novelist who produced philosophical fiction in a time when much of the Chilean literature consisted of social protest novels by indigenous writer, regional tales of the land, and historical works of revolutionary themes. His influences included Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Flaubert Zola, and Balzac, and Galdos. He is known for his psychological works. His novel El hermano asno (1922; Brother Asno, 1969) is an unusual episode in the life of a mentally disturbed monk who attacks a girl in order to be despised by those who consider him a living saint.
Eduardo Barrios, (born October 25, 1884, Valparaíso, Chile - died September 13, 1963, Santiago), Chilean writer best known for his psychological novels. Barrios was educated in Lima and at the Chilean Military Academy in Santiago. After working as a merchant, a rubber agent, and a prospector in several Latin American countries, he settled (1913) in Santiago, where he served as minister of public education and director of the National Library. Barrios began his literary career under the influence of Emile Zola, with a collection of naturalistic stories, Del natural (1907; In the Naturalistic Style). His later novels, which established his reputation, include El niño que enloquecio de amor (1915; The Love-Crazed Boy), a fictionalized diary of a boy obsessed with love for one of his mother's friends; Un perdido (1918; A Down-and-Outer), the story of a young boy with a deep inferiority complex; and El hermano asno (1922; Brother Asno, 1969), an unusual episode in the life of a mentally disturbed monk who attacks a girl in order to be despised by those who consider him a living saint. Barrios's most successful work was Gran señor y rajadiablos (1948; Grand Gentleman and Big Rascal), a best-seller in which the novelist portrayed life on a typical Chilean farm. Barrios's personal experiences played an important part in all these novels, as well as in his other works: Páginas de un pobre diablo (1923; Pages from a Poor Devil), a series of autobiographical sketches; Tamarugal (1944), a novel about life in the northern mining region of Chile; and Los hombres del hombre (1950; Men Within Man), a novelistic study in human psychology.
MAPIRUNGA is a story written by Senhor Gustavo Barroso, a Brazilian author of repute, who writes under the pseudonym of Joao do Norte, that is John of the North. It treats of life some five and twenty years ago, in the Sertào. Senhor Barroso has made the life of the Sertao (‘backlands') peculiarly his own.
Gustavo Dodt Barroso (December 29, 1888 in Fortaleza - December 3, 1957 in Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian writer and politician associated with Brazilian Integralism. He was half German by birth, his mother coming from Württemberg. Barroso made his name as a journalist and was for a time involved with the socialist Clube Maximo Gorki. However his politics became more conservative after he secured a law degree in Rio de Janeiro in 1910. He soon became an important figure in Ceará state, serving variously as Secretary of the Interior and Justice, and being elected a Representative in the National Congress. He even formed part of the Brazilian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919. He would later rise to hold such positions as president of the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy) and secretary-general of the International Committee of Legal Advisers. In 1933, Barroso joined the Integralista party that had fascist characteristics. He soon became the head of the extreme anti-Jewish faction within the Integralista party. Noted for his hard-line antisemitism, he took charge of the group's militia from 1934 to 1936 before being appointed to the party's Supreme Council. An extensive writer, his polemical works at this time included many anti-semitic books and newspaper articles in Fon-Fon and SEculo XX magazines. Due to political differences Barroso came to be regarded as dangerous by the more constitutionally minded Integralista party's leader, Plínio Salgado, who suspended him from collaborating for six months with the party's newspaper, A Ofensiva. However Barroso continued to pursue his antisemitic ideals, translating the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into Portuguese and even suggesting setting up concentration camps. Following the formation of the Estado Novo dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas (1938–1945), Barroso was arrested in 1938 after the Integralista party attempted a violent coup d´etat. However Barroso was never tried due to a lack of evidence of his involvement in the coup d´etat. He subsequently left political activism and became largely accepting of Getúlio Vargas posterior constitutional government (1951–1954), serving as a special ambassador to Uruguay (1952) and Peru (1954). He was awarded a posthumous honorary doctorate from a Rio de Janeiro University. A museum in Fortaleza, his home town, the Museu Gustavo Barroso, bears his name. A keen Folklorist, Barroso built up a collection of exhibits relating to Brazil's past at the Museu Historico Nacional in Rio de Janeiro and produced around 50 non-political books including historical and regional novels, folklore studies and biographies of Brazilian national military heroes such as General Osorio and Admiral Tamandare. As a novelist, he produced the work Terra de Sol (1912), which demonstrated his admiration for the people of northeastern Brazil's rural areas. Barroso was often linked in with the neorealist school of Brazilian literature, although he differed from the neorealism typified by the likes of Erico Verissimo, Amando Fontes and Telmo Vergara by his emphasis on rural rather than urban settings. Barroso belonged to the regionalist documentary strand of Brazilian neorealism, although, along with Mário Sete, he rejected the modernism inherent in the works of contemporaries in the genre such as Jorge Luis de Rêgo and Jorge Amado. An a political writer, his polemical works when joined to the Integralista party included O Liceu do Ceará, Brasil: Colônia de Banqueiros and Historia Secreta do Brasil. He also translated the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into Portuguese. As Brazil had relatively few Jews by then, Barroso's anti-semitic writings tended to focus on the international conspiracy theory of Jewish world control, as espoused notably in his book The Paulista Synagogue.
THE INHABITED WOMAN is an intelligent and politically sophisticated adventure-romance in which the soul of an Indian warrior woman from the time of the Conquistadors inhabits the body and mind of Lavinia, a middle class woman living in a Latin American country. With daring and growing self-assertion, Lavinia abandons the confines of her own privileged life to join an underground movement against a dictatorship, undergoing a personal transformation in which she finds-through love-the power and courage to act.
Gioconda Belli (born December 9, 1948 in Managua, Nicaragua) is an author, novelist and renowned Nicaraguan poet.
When Rogelio Villaverde finds himself destitute and desperate for employment, he leaps at the chance for work with The Tribune, a small newspaper in San Salvador. The jumbled pieces of his life begin to fall neatly into place with his new job, a new love interest - Lourdes, a new lease on life. But the recent military coup d'etat brings curfews and martial law. Rogelio's work with the newspaper plunges him into the political melee. He is forced to-discard his political ambivalence and take a position. He can no longer remain indifferent in the face of the chaos that has overtaken the lives of everyone around him. His anti-government sentiments peak with the assassination of Archbishop Romero and the aftermath, when soldiers opened fire on the throngs of mourners. Rogelio's first instinct is to escape the madness and accompany his boss and friend into exile. But destiny takes another radical twist, and chilling events seal Rogelio's fate. He is compelled to remain and join the struggle for justice and freedom in his homeland. More than a political novel, A SHOT IN THE CATHEDRAL is a tribute to the endurance of the human spirit. Its protagonists are ordinary people who strive to live ordinary lives in the midst of dangerous and oppressive circumstances.
MARIO BENCASTRO (born 1949, Ahuachapán, El Salvador), a native of El Salvador, is a novelist, playwright and painter. He began his artistic career in painting, a medium in which he enjoyed success from an early age and earned him Second Prize in the National Drawing Competition in San Salvador in 1961. Bencastro's works have been exhibited in El Salvador, the United States, Latin America and Europe. Despite his success as a painter the social and political drama which was consuming his country moved him to concentrate his artistic expression in literature. In 1979 he began writing his first novel, A Shot in the Cathedral, a work that would take ten years to complete. Chosen as a finalist from among 204 novels in the Novedades y Diana International Literary Prize competition in Mexico in 1989, the novel was first published in Spanish by Editorial Diana. His second book, Arbol de La vida: historias de la guerra civil, also deals with the civil war that consumed his country; it was published in 1983 by El Salvador's Editorial Clasicos Roxsil. His stories have been included in numerous anthologies, including WHERE ANGELS GLIDE AT DAWN: NEW STORIES FROM LATIN AMERICA (HarperCollins, 1990), Texto v vida: introduccion a la literatura hispanoamericana (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1992), Thrning Points (Nelson Canada, 1993) and Vistas: Voces del mundo hispanico (Prentice Hall. 1995). Arte Pulilico Press will also issue the Spanish-language version of A Shot in the Cathedral (Disparo en la catedral) and both the English and Spanish editions of his collection of stories. The Tree of Life: Stories of Civil War.
A collection of the best of Mario Benedetti's stories from over 40 years of publishing. CONTENTS: The Budget; Iriarte Family; Lead Us into Temptation; Requiem over Tea; The Night of the Ugly Ones; The Widowers of Margaret Sullavan; The Demitasse Cups; The Attic; The Stars and You; Sic Transit Gloria; The Price of Rage; Jules and Jim; Fable With Pope; Miss Amnesia; Perhaps Beyond Repair; Five Years of Life; The Other Side; Just like Greenwich; A Note for Paula; Just Kidding; Post Mortem; Fidelities; A Bolivian With an Outlet to the Sea; Isosceles Triangle; Maison Lucrèce; The Williamses and the Peabodys; Blood Pact. . MARIO BENEDETTI, one of Latin America's best-known and most beloved authors, was born in 1920 in Paso de los Toros, Uruguay. He grew up in Montevideo, where his family moved when he was four years old. Trained as an accountant, he published his first story at the age of 27. In the late fifties and sixties, he traveled extensively in Latin America, Europe and the U.S. While in Cuba, he founded the world famous Centro de Investigaciones Literarias at Casa de las Americas; he directed that Center from 1969 to 1971. Returning to Uruguay in 1971, he opposed increasing government repression through his writing and participation in the leftist coalition known as the Frente Amplio, which he helped organize. Following the coup of June 1973, his work was banned by the Uruguayan Military. From that moment until the return of civilian government in 1985, he lived in exile in Argentina, Peru, Cuba and Spain. Writing for an international audience, he denounced the tragic events in his country. To date, Benedetti's more than fifty books of poetry, fiction, drama, literary and cultural criticism, and his political journalism are known around the globe. His poetic texts, some of them set to music and frequently performed at folk concerts, are familiar to the generations of Latin Americans who flock to hear him whenever he appears in public. Several of his novels have been made into films, and two have been published in English: THE TRUCE (New York, 1969) and JUAN ANGEL'S BIRTHDAY (Amherst, MA, 1974). Currently he resides in Montevideo and Madrid, and devotes himself full time to his writing. . .
Mario Benedetti (in full: Mario Orlando Hamlet Hardy Brenno Benedetti Farrugia - September 14, 1920 - May 17, 2009) was an Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet, and writer. He was not well known in the English-speaking world, but in the Spanish-speaking world he was considered one of Latin America's most important 20th-century writers. Benedetti was born in Paso de los Toros in the department of Tacuarembo in a family of Italian descent. In 1946 he married Luz Lopez Alegre. He was a member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, Juan Carlos Onetti, among others. He also wrote in the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. From 1973 to 1985, when a military dictatorship ruled Uruguay, Benedetti lived in exile in Buenos Aires, Lima, Havana and Spain. Following the restoration of democracy, he divided his time between Montevideo and Madrid. He was granted Honoris Causa doctorates by the Universidad de la República, Uruguay, the Universidad de Alicante, Spain and the Universidad de Valladolid, Spain. In 1986 he was awarded Laureate Of The International Botev Prize. On June 7, 2005, he was named the recipient of the Premio MenEndez y Pelayo. His poetry was also used in the 1992 Argentine movie The Dark Side of the Heart (El lado oscuro del corazon) in which he read some of his poems in German. In 2006, Mario Benedetti signed a petition in support of the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States of America. He died in Montevideo on 17 May 2009. He had suffered from respiratory and intestinal problems for more than a year. Before dying, he dictated to his personal secretary, Ariel Silva what would become his last poem. For his poetry and novels Benedetti had won numerous international awards. The Truce, first published in 1960, has since been translated into 19 languages and made into two motion pictures.
This beautiful and moving story is told with a master's simplicity, penetration, and sureness. It is a journal kept by a middle-aged cost accountant, Martin SantomE, a deeply thoughtful and sensitive man, who has a strongly ironic sense of himself, of others, of God, and of life. He lives in Montevideo. His wife, Isabelle, died in their fifth year of marriage, soon after giving birth to Jaime, his favorite son. For twenty years Martin has concentrated on his job and his three children, allowing himself only one vice - procrastination - having given up becoming the man he thinks he might have been in favor of the routine of an ordinary life. He is now about to retire from his job. One day he is .assigned three new young assistants, one of whom is Avellaneda, a twenty-three-year-old girl to whom he is gradually attracted. The journal concerns itself with Martin's memories of his wife, his children's troubles, the progress and illumination of his love for Avellaneda, his moment of happiness fulfilled when she quietly tells him she loves him. There is speculation about friendship, God, success, politics- everything an intelligent man is concerned with. There is no self-pity, no sentimentality, but a clear and tender- eyed examination of what it means to be human. After he loses Avellaneda, he looks back and realizes that his interlude with her was only a truce between himself and God. Life, he decides, is enormously bitter and, through the presence and love of Avellaneda, God had granted him only a respite from its bitterness. . MARIO BENEDETTI was born in 1920, in Paso de los Toros, Uruguay. He has been employed as a bookkeeper, stenographer, journalist, and as a critic on the literary scene as well as the theater and films. Mr. Benedetti is presently director of Centro de Investigaciones Literarias in Havana, Cuba. On nine occasions he has received prizes for literature. Many of his novels, poems, and essays have been translated into several languages. Portions of his work are represented in anthologies published in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, England, Italy, United States, Israel, Venezuela and Spain. . .
Mario Benedetti (in full: Mario Orlando Hamlet Hardy Brenno Benedetti Farrugia - September 14, 1920 - May 17, 2009) was an Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet, and writer. He was not well known in the English-speaking world, but in the Spanish-speaking world he was considered one of Latin America's most important 20th-century writers. Benedetti was born in Paso de los Toros in the department of Tacuarembo in a family of Italian descent. In 1946 he married Luz Lopez Alegre. He was a member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, Juan Carlos Onetti, among others. He also wrote in the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. From 1973 to 1985, when a military dictatorship ruled Uruguay, Benedetti lived in exile in Buenos Aires, Lima, Havana and Spain. Following the restoration of democracy, he divided his time between Montevideo and Madrid. He was granted Honoris Causa doctorates by the Universidad de la República, Uruguay, the Universidad de Alicante, Spain and the Universidad de Valladolid, Spain. In 1986 he was awarded Laureate Of The International Botev Prize. On June 7, 2005, he was named the recipient of the Premio MenEndez y Pelayo. His poetry was also used in the 1992 Argentine movie The Dark Side of the Heart (El lado oscuro del corazon) in which he read some of his poems in German. In 2006, Mario Benedetti signed a petition in support of the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States of America. He died in Montevideo on 17 May 2009. He had suffered from respiratory and intestinal problems for more than a year. Before dying, he dictated to his personal secretary, Ariel Silva what would become his last poem. For his poetry and novels Benedetti had won numerous international awards. The Truce, first published in 1960, has since been translated into 19 languages and made into two motion pictures.
This first English translation of a modern Mexican novel reveals the shocking picture of a latter-day feudal system that still exists in rural Mexico. Fernando Benitez, well-known Mexican author, journalist and winner of Mexico's 1968 best-book award, has taken a true but little-known incident and built it into a tightly structured, tense, and tragic novel. The Poisoned Water (El aqua envenenada), which was first published in 1961 and followed, in 1967, by a second edition in England for students of Spanish, is a brilliant Mexican novel of social protest and a searing indictment of that country's rural standard of living. Based on actual interviews with those involved, the novel is a meticulous re-creation of the mood and circumstances surrounding an entire village's bloody rebellion against its autocratic leader and the unforeseen and violent consequences. Sr. Benitez not only shows us how injustice breeds injustice, he also gives us a frightening look at one of Mexico's major social problems and glaring ironies-that over fifty years after a revolution fought by the peasant and for the peasant, most rural groups are still living below the national economic standard. The village priest of Tajimaroa narrates the story of THE POISONED WATER as a report to his bishop, explaining his part in a riot between the villagers and Don Ulises Roca~ for them he was an obsession. . . he dominated their past, present, and future.' What finally touches off the uprising is a joking comment as one of Don Ulises's men is pushed into the plaza fountain that this has poisoned the water. Feeding on itself, the rumor spreads that the boss has poisoned the local spring, and, at last, the destruction of Don Ulises is justified.
Fernando Benitez (Mexico City, January 16, 1912 - Mexico City, February 21, 2000) was a Mexican journalist, writer, editor, and historian. He was born on 16 of January of 1912 in Mexico City . In 1934 he began his journalistic work in the Revista de Revistas . Between 1936 and 1947, Benítez was a reporter, editorialist and editor of the newspaper El Nacional. In the Novedades newspaper, he founded and directed the Sunday supplement MExico en la Cultura , between 1949 and 1961. From 1962 to 1970, he directed La cultura en MExico, in the magazine Siempre!; Saturday, from the Unomásuno newspaper, between 1977 and 1983; and The Weekly Day between 1984 and 1995. He passed away in Mexico City on February 21 , 2000. MARY E. ELLSWORTH, whose exquisite translation is herein presented, is a free-lance translator. She makes her home in Naples, Florida. J. CARY DAVIS is Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages, Southern Illinois University, and now lives in San Juan Capistrano, California He is widely recognized for his research and publications in Latin American and Spanish studies.
Winner, Discover Great New Writers Award. Winner, Minnesota Book Award for Fiction. 'Profound.... a quietly stunning work that leaves soft tracks in the heart.' - The Washington Post BookWorld 'Merits placement beside some of the mesmerizing new literature with its roots in Latin America.' - The New York Times Book Review. In A Place Where the Sea Remembers, Sandra Benitez invites us into a mesmerizing world filled with, love and betrayal, tragedy and hope. This rich and bewitching story is a bittersweet portrait of the people in Santiago, a Mexican village by the sea. Chayo, the flower seller, and her husband Candelario, the salad maker, are finally blessed with the child they thought they would never have. Their cause for happiness, however, triggers a chain of events that impact the lives of everyone in their world. The hopes, triumphs, failures, and shortcomings of the novel's enchanting array of characters create a graceful picture of life that is both a universal portrait and an insider's look at life in Latin America.
Sandra Benitez (March 26, 1941 in Washington D.C.) is an American novelist. Her twin sister, Susana, died just 37 days after their birth. A year later, her father, who worked for the U.S. State Department, was assigned to Mexico, where her sister, Anita, was born. He was transferred to El Salvador where Sandra lived for most of the next 20 years. She lived with her grandparents in northeastern Missouri, and attended Unionville high school, returning each summer to El Salvador. In 1997 she was selected as the University of Minnesota Edelstein-Keller Distinguished Writer in Residence. In 1998 she did the Writers Community Residency for the YMCA National Writer's Voice program. In the spring of 2001 she held the Knapp Chair in Humanities as Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of San Diego. She lives with her husband, Jim Kondrick, in Edina, Minnesota.
Winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Fiction Winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover Award for Fiction Member of the National Writer's Voice Project Finalist Los Angeles Times Book Award In A Place Where the Sea Remembers, Sandra Benitez invites us into a mesmerizing world filled with, love and betrayal, tragedy and hope. This rich and bewitching story is a bittersweet portrait of the people in Santiago, a Mexican village by the sea. Chayo, the flower seller, and her husband Candelario, the salad maker, are finally blessed with the child they thought they would never have. Their cause for happiness, however, triggers a chain of events that impact the lives of everyone in their world. The hopes, triumphs, failures, and shortcomings of the novel's enchanting array of characters create a graceful picture of life that is both a universal portrait and an insider's look at life in Latin America.
Sandra Benitez (March 26, 1941 in Washington D.C.) is an American novelist. Her twin sister, Susana, died just 37 days after their birth. A year later, her father, who worked for the U.S. State Department, was assigned to Mexico, where her sister, Anita, was born. He was transferred to El Salvador where Sandra lived for most of the next 20 years. She lived with her grandparents in northeastern Missouri, and attended Unionville high school, returning each summer to El Salvador. In 1997 she was selected as the University of Minnesota Edelstein-Keller Distinguished Writer in Residence. In 1998 she did the Writers Community Residency for the YMCA National Writer's Voice program. In the spring of 2001 she held the Knapp Chair in Humanities as Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of San Diego. She lives with her husband, Jim Kondrick, in Edina, Minnesota.
Winner of the 1998 American Book Award. Spanning the years between 1932 and 1977, this beautifully told epic is set in the heart of El Salvador, where coffee plantations are the center of life for rich and poor alike. Following three generations of the Prieto Clan and the wealthy family they work for, this is the story of mothers and daughters who live, love, and die for their passions.
Sandra Benitez (March 26, 1941 in Washington D.C.) is an American novelist. Her twin sister, Susana, died just 37 days after their birth. A year later, her father, who worked for the U.S. State Department, was assigned to Mexico, where her sister, Anita, was born. He was transferred to El Salvador where Sandra lived for most of the next 20 years. She lived with her grandparents in northeastern Missouri, and attended Unionville high school, returning each summer to El Salvador. In 1997 she was selected as the University of Minnesota Edelstein-Keller Distinguished Writer in Residence. In 1998 she did the Writers Community Residency for the YMCA National Writer's Voice program. In the spring of 2001 she held the Knapp Chair in Humanities as Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of San Diego. She lives with her husband, Jim Kondrick, in Edina, Minnesota.
In this masterful collection of short stories by the author of SEA OF LENTILS and THE REPEATING ISLAND, a celebrated Cuban writer continues his imaginative exploration of the genesis of the modern Caribbean world. Intent on recovering the interior history (la infrahistoria) of this astonishingly diverse region, Antonio Benitez-Rojo ranges widely across time and geography. He also experiments with a variety of narrative techniques and prose styles, each intended to capture some unique aspect of the Caribbean's heterogeneous, polyrhythmic cultural heritage. Thus ‘The Broken Flute' centers on a tragic anthropological reflection; ‘Windward Passage' on the confessions of a guilty priest stationed in Hispaniola; ‘Summer Island' on events surrounding the colonization of St. Kitts; and ‘A View from the Mangrove' on the troubled days of a soldier during Cuba's War of Independence. The result is historical fiction of the first order, a vivid tapestry of characters and contexts. Whether describing the world through the eyes of a sixteenth-century African slave or an English slave trader, a French buccaneer or a Spanish official, an Aztec god's avatar or a Haitian grand blanc, Benitez-Rojo displays a rare gift for resurrecting the past in all its chaotic and compelling immediacy.
Antonio Benítez Rojo (March 14, 1931 - January 5, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist and short-story writer. He was widely regarded as the most significant Cuban author of his generation. His work has been translated into nine languages and collected in more than 50 anthologies. Born in Havana, he lived in Cuba with his mother and stepfather from the age of seven. In the mid-1950s, backed by United Nations grants, Benítez-Rojo studied statistics at the United States Department of Labor and Commerce, and later studied in Mexico. Turning down offers to work in Chile or Geneva, he returned to Cuba in 1958 and became head of the Statistics Bureau at Cuba's Labor Ministry. Benítez-Rojo began working at the Ministry of Culture in 1965 and won the Premio Casa de las AmEricas for the short story collection Tute de reyes in 1967. The following year, he won a writers' union prize of a trip to a socialist country; however, the government did not permit him to leave Cuba. By 1975, Benítez-Rojo had been made head of Casa de las AmEricas, the publishing house run by the Cuban government. Sea of Lentils, the English translation of his novel El mar de las lentejas, was selected by The New York Times as one of the Notable Books of 1992. In 1980, he was given permission to attend a conference at the Sorbonne in Paris. He traveled from Paris to Berlin, obtained a US tourist visa, and came to the United States, where he became a professor of Spanish at Amherst. The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a collection of his papers. One of his most influential publications, La Isla que se Repite, was published in 1989 by Ediciones del Norte. He died in 2005.
On the eve of the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus first voyage to America, this novel re-creates the story of Spain's conquest of the Caribbean, stripped of its heroic myths. The book begins in 1598 at the deathbed of King Philip II of Spain, whose fevered thoughts, reminiscences, and reveries form one of four parallel, interwoven narratives. His religious fervor unmitigated by the disappointments of his reign, Philip reflects on his lifelong efforts to protect the Spanish empire from heresy and capitalism, including his ill-fated dispatch of the Armada against England. A second narrative explores the origins of the clandestine African slave trade in the collaboration between English seafaring merchant John Hawkins and entrepreneur Pedro de Ponte of the Canary Islands. A third tale, told in the first person, describes the founding of Saint Augustine and the extermination of the French Huguenot colony in Florida, while the last tells the story of a common soldier who accompanied Columbus on his second expedition to the New World. The title of the book comes from cartographer Guillaume le Testu, who mistook the word Antilles for lentilles, thus giving the Caribbean a name that connotes the fanciful nature of Europe's grand colonizing venture. ‘Here, in a superb translation by James Maraniss, is the novel of the European imperial expansion in all its complexities . . . The characters-a dying monarch, a mercantilist trader, a James Maraniss is professor of Romance languages at the same institution. ‘One of the finest historical novels ever written in Latin America.' - Roberto González-Echevarria YALE UNIVERSITY. . Professor of Romance languages at Amherst College, Antonio Benitez-Rojo is the former director of the Center for Caribbean Studies at Casa de las Americas in Cuba. He has won numerous awards for his writing, including a 1985-86 Pushcart Prize for his story ‘Heaven and Earth.'
Antonio Benítez Rojo (March 14, 1931 - January 5, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist and short-story writer. He was widely regarded as the most significant Cuban author of his generation. His work has been translated into nine languages and collected in more than 50 anthologies. Born in Havana, he lived in Cuba with his mother and stepfather from the age of seven. In the mid-1950s, backed by United Nations grants, Benítez-Rojo studied statistics at the United States Department of Labor and Commerce, and later studied in Mexico. Turning down offers to work in Chile or Geneva, he returned to Cuba in 1958 and became head of the Statistics Bureau at Cuba's Labor Ministry. Benítez-Rojo began working at the Ministry of Culture in 1965 and won the Premio Casa de las AmEricas for the short story collection Tute de reyes in 1967. The following year, he won a writers' union prize of a trip to a socialist country; however, the government did not permit him to leave Cuba. By 1975, Benítez-Rojo had been made head of Casa de las AmEricas, the publishing house run by the Cuban government. Sea of Lentils, the English translation of his novel El mar de las lentejas, was selected by The New York Times as one of the Notable Books of 1992. In 1980, he was given permission to attend a conference at the Sorbonne in Paris. He traveled from Paris to Berlin, obtained a US tourist visa, and came to the United States, where he became a professor of Spanish at Amherst. The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a collection of his papers. One of his most influential publications, La Isla que se Repite, was published in 1989 by Ediciones del Norte. He died in 2005.
A DANGEROUS JOURNEY into the unknown is the only hope for the future of the Leal family. The stifling dictatorship in Cuba has left young David Leal and his family no other recourse than to join the thousands of balseros plunging Their rafts into the sea in hopes of reaching the Florida coast for reliEf and the beginnings of a new life. In order to brave the treacherous voyage, David and his father must leave half of the family behind with promises to send for them after securing jobs and housing in Florida. In this exciting adventure stories and psychological thriller for young adults, father and son are pitted against the dangerous forces of nature, storms, sharks, hunger, thirst and the chaos brought on by two uncontrollable traveling companions. When David's father becomes dangerously ill during the journey the young man is left to face the turbulent seas and his chaotic raft mates by himself. This riveting psychological thriller for young adults pitches the reader into a high-tension adventure on the high seas. Courage and desperation lead fifteen-year-old David and his father to flee Cuba's repressive regime and seek freedom by taking to the sea on a raft headed for Miami.
Born in Cuba, Anilú Bernardo experienced firsthand the difficulties of fitting in when her family fled Communist leader Fidel Castro's takeover in 1961 and moved to Miami, Florida. She spoke little English when she began school in the United States, but she wrote poems in Spanish and later went on to write fiction in both languages. For Bernardo's first novel, Jumping Off to Freedom, she interviewed balseros, Cuban men and women who made the voyage from Cuba on rafts, to develop the story of David. Unwilling to continue living under Castro, David's father builds a raft on which he, David, and another refugee can escape to the United States. As the three are leaving, another refugee, Toro, demands to be taken along. Jumping Off to Freedom tells a story of survival, as David faces sharks, storms, and both physical and emotional trauma. Eventually, he learns to trust Toro and that trust makes it possible for the group to reach Florida alive. In Booklist Anne O'Malley wrote that ‘survival story fans and readers looking for breath taking action will not be disappointed' in Bernardo's high-action tale. Fitting In, a collection of short stories, draws on Bernardo's experiences upon arriving in the United States: each of the five tales features a Cuban-American teen struggling to find a place among her peers. The stories ‘speak with a lively and authentic accent about the angst of bicultural, female adolescence,' wrote Annie Ayres in Booklist. Esther Celis, writing for Skipping Stones, noted that, with effort, people can usually find something in common and in Fitting In Bernardo ‘communicates this with humor and eloquence." Loves Me, Loves Me Not, a teen romance, ‘has depth in characterization and a recognizable Latino ambience,' according to Booklist contributor Sally Estes. In the novel, Cuban-American teenager Maggie has a crush on cute basketball player Zach, whom she tutors in German. Maggie's friend Susie, trying to win over a boy named Carlos, suggests that she and Maggie double date, pairing up Maggie with Justin, the new boy at school. Although on the surface Bernardo's novel is about dating, it also deals with cultural misconceptions and prejudice and with Maggie's growing maturity and her realization that there is more to a person than what shows on the surface. Along with her works for young adults, Bernardo has also penned a bilingual picture book for very young readers. Un día con mis tías/A Day with My Aunts is the story of a girl's day with her three aunts as well as a celebration of Cuban-American culture. From making empanadas to dancing the salsa, the narrator's day is full of family fun. ‘This story spills over with life, laughter, food, and music,' noted Maria Otero-Boisvert in School Library Journal. A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted that ‘Bernardo's story is full of family activity,' and added that recipes for the food featured in the story's text are included in both Spanish and English in the endpapers.
The year is 1920, and Luis Agua, an agent for an electricity company, arrives in Vila Natal, an inhospitable village in Portugal. His objective is to convince the inhabitants of the benefits of artificial light. Before long Agua learns that the village and the castle that presides over it hide dark secrets. The beautiful widow, shrouded in mystery, who never leaves her castle, a will that is both puzzling and cruel, a pioneer of aviation, an epidemic and a breathtaking finale unite the themes of long, revenge, humor, death, greed, heroism, and courage in the modern world.
EDUARDO BERTI was born in Buenos Aires in 1964 and now lives in Paris, where he works as a journalist and writes novels. Broadcaster (he founded one of the first independent radio stations in Argentina), rock journalist (he was editor-in-chief of the South American edition of Rolling Stone) and television documentary maker (he has won awards for La Cueva, Solo Tango, and the series Volvertango), Eduardo Berti is also a world authority on the history of the Tango. He is the author of a book of short stories entitled Los Pajaros for which he received an award from the magazine Cultura and which Pagina/12 newspaper considered among the best works of Argentine fiction in 1994. AGUA, his first novel, was unanimously acclaimed both in Argentina and Spain and has already been published in France. His second novel La Mujer de Wakefield has just been published in Spain and nominated for the prestigious Prix Femina in France.
Ramon Beteta was an important figure in the political and cultural life of today's Mexico: economist, diplomat, Cabinet member, university professor, journalist. The manuscript of JARANO was found among his papers after his death in 1965 and was published in Mexico the following year. Except for part of the last chapter, the book is about Don Ramon's childhood and youth in Mexico City and environs, with sketches of family life, school experiences, a trip to Veracruz, and incidents of the Revolution of 1910. ‘Jarano', the kind of broad sombrero worn by charros, was the secret nickname - partly disrespectful, partly amused, partly affectionate - that Ramon and his younger brother gave to their father. In the early chapters, Jarano is a petty official in, and strong critic of, the government of Porfirio Diaz. Later we share with Ramon the hardships and humiliation of the family's poverty and its attempt to keep up appearances. Neteta brought to these reminiscences the skills of the short story writer, making superb use of dialogue, descriptive details, characterization, and mood. For a small book, the range of emotions is unusually wide, from the comedy of an evening meal to which Jarano has come home drunk to the tragedy of the indio and his wife in the chapter entitled ‘San Vicente Chicoloapan.' Throughout, the writing is fresh, personal, and spontaneous, making the reader aware of the building stones that went into the foundation of this illustrious Mexican's character and career.
Ramon Beteta Quintana (7 October 1901 - 5 October 1965) was an influential politician in Mexico. Ramon Beteta Quintanaa was born in Mexico City, Federal District on 7 October 1901 into a landowning family. He was the son of Enrique Beteta MEndez and Sara Quintana, brother of Major General Ignacio M. Beteta, and uncle of Mario Ramon Beteta. He studied at the University of Texas at Austin between 1920 and 1923, graduating with a degree in Economics. He then attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), obtaining a degree in law in 1926, and then becoming the first student to obtain a Ph.D. in Social Sciences at that school in 1934. Beteta was one of the founders of the National School of Economics at the UNAM, where he taught from 1924 to 1942. He also taught the law school, taught at the National Preparatory School (1925-1928), and taught in secondary schools in Mexico City. He became a member of the League of professionals and intellectuals in the PRM in 1939. He managed the 1945 election campaign for president Miguel Alemán ValdEs. Beteta held various positions in three presidential administrations: Director General of the Department of National Statistics of the Department of Industry and Trade from 1933 to 1935; Deputy Foreign Minister from 1936 to 1940; and Secretary of Finance from 1946 to 1952. Later he was the Ambassador of Mexico in Italy (1952-1955) and Greece (1955-1958). Towards the end of his life he became involved in journalism as Director General of the Novedades and the Diario de la Tarde between 1958 and 1964. He died on 5 October 1965.
‘It is not by mere chance that Jose Bianco's work is so short: his most admirable qualities are modesty, discretion, his refusal to make a visit - a book - too long, and the perverse pleasure he takes in insinuating a story rather than telling it. Bianco steals through Argentine literature the way a cat crosses a crowded room, the way a Rulfo haunts Mexican literature: secretly, silently, unforgettably.' - Julio Cortázar. . . JOSE BIANCO - ‘an admirable writer and one of the most lucid and sensitive spirits in Spanish America. (Octavio Paz). . . THE RATS - one of the few Argentine books to remember the existence of a reader a silent one whose attention must be held, whose prescience must be delicately frustrated, whose reactions must be governed and foreseen, whose friendship is necessary, whose complicity is precious.' (Jorge Luis Borges).
Jose Bianco, (born November 21, 1908, Buenos Aires, Argentina - died April 24, 1986, Buenos Aires), novelist and editor for 23 years of the influential Buenos Aires magazine Sur, published by a group of important Argentine writers that included Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Silvina and Victoria Ocampo. Launched in 1931, Sur carried translations of European and American authors and became one of the most important literary journals in the history of Latin America. Bianco, who was a modest and unassuming man, published a collection of short stories, La pequeña Gyaros (‘Little Gyaros'), in 1932, but his reputation was established with two novellas, Sombras suele vestir (1941) and Las ratas (1943), published in English as Shadow Play, The Rats: Two Novellas by Jose Bianco. The Rats is a psychological novel, with a complicated but flawlessly constructed plot that leads to the poisoning of the protagonist. Bianco's narrator has a complicated psychological makeup that is elegantly drawn, and the plot develops inexorably yet unexpectedly to the surprising ending. Shadow Play is a fantastic tale in the manner of Borges and Bioy Casares, written in a classic, unobtrusive style that allows for the unsettling of reality to occur almost unnoticed by the reader. The novella was included in the Antología de la literatura fantástica (1977; ‘Anthology of Fantastic Literature,' translated as The Book of Fantasy), published by Borges, Silvina Ocampo, and Bioy Casares. Bianco also published criticism, memoirs, and the long novel La perdida del reino (1978; ‘Loss of the Kingdom'), but his fame rests on the two novellas and his association with Sur and the writers surrounding it. Daniel Balderston did graduate work in Comparative Literature at Princeton, writing a doctoral dissertation on Borges and Stevenson. He teaches Spanish at Tulane University.
It's a mystery as to why two towering figures of Latin American literature such as Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares aren't better known outside Spanish-language literature for more than just their close association with Jorge Luis Borges. Particularly for this book - the only novel the husband-and-wife team wrote together, which has never before been translated into English. It, too, is a mystery: In seaside Bosque del Mar, Argentina, guests at the Hotel Central are struck by double misfortune - the mysterious death of one of their party, and an investigation headed by the physician, writer, and insufferable busybody, Dr. Humberto Huberman. When pretty young translator Mary is found dead on the first night of Huberman's stay, he quickly appoints himself leader of an inquiry that will see blame apportioned in turn to each and every guest - including Mary's own sister - escalating into a wild, wind-blown reconnaissance mission to the nearby shipwreck, the Joseph K. Where There's Love, There's Hate is both a genuinely suspenseful mystery and an ingenious send-up of the genre - a novel that's captivating, unashamedly erudite, and gloriously witty.
ADOLFO BIOY CASARES (1914-99) is one of the most important literary figures of his native Argentina, most famous as the author of The Invention of Morel (1940). He won the French Legion of Honour and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, was a lifelong friend of Borges, and married to Silvina Ocampo. SILVINA OCAMPO (1903-1993) was an award-winning poet and short story writer, also well known for her children's fiction. She was born in Buenos Aires and later studied art in Paris. Together with her husband Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges, she edited the famous 1940 Antología de la literature fantástica. SUZANNE JILL LEVINE is the author of numerous studies in Latin American literature and the translator of works by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Manuel Puig, among other distinguished writers. Levine's most recent book is Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fictions. She is a professor in the Spanish Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. JESSICA ERNST POWELL has translated works by numerous Latin American writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, CEsar Vallejo, Ernesto Cardenal, and Carmen Boullosa. She is the recipient of a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for her translation of Antonio Benítez Rojo's Woman in Battle Dress.
My first afternoon in these islands has not yet ended, and I have already seen something so alarming that I must ask for your help' . . . . These are the opening words of a remarkable novel that in theme and treatment is reminiscent of the famous short stories of Jorge Luis Borges-not surprising in view of the fact that Adolfo Bioy-Casares has been Borges' friend, collaborator, and acknowledged disciple. Borges' preoccupation with the philosophical concepts of time and space are echoed here, although the truth is hidden from the reader until the end of this baffling and haunting tale. From the time the hero, Henri Nevers, a French naval lieutenant, is posted to Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana and its island penal colonies, he is confronted by a series of inexplicable events-garbled messages, strange disappearances, death. Nevers is led to doubt the evidence of his senses. As Daniel Halpern, editor of Antaeus, writes: ‘The story . . . arrives at the end with startling juxtapositions-sensory and narrative. Bioy-Casares' statement is finally one of freedom, the illusion of freedom, that metaphorically transforms itself in the final pages with an unsettling effect.' ADOLFO BIOY-CASARES lived and wrote in Buenos Aires. His friendship with Jorge Luis Borges went back some forty years. He wrote A PLAN FOR ESCAPE (Plan de Evasion) in the early 1940s when Peronism severely curtailed the writer's freedom. It was published shortly after THE INVENTION OF MOREL, probably Bioy-Casares' most famous story and the inspiration for the movie Last Year at Marienbad. His novel, Dormir al Sol, was a best seller in Argentina and led to an increased appreciation of his importance in contemporary Latin American literature. Assistance for the translation of this volume was given by the Center for Inter-American Relations.
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel. Adolfo Bioy Casares was born in Buenos Aires, the grandson of a wealthy landowner and dairy processor, and the descendant of Patrick Lynch, a successful Irish emigrant. He wrote his first story (‘Iris y Margarita') at the age of eleven. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges and wrote many stories with him under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. Bioy and Borges were introduced in 1932 by Victoria Ocampo, whose sister, Silvina Ocampo (1903–1994), Bioy Casares was to marry in 1940. In 1954 they adopted Bioy's daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954–94), who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo's death, leaving two children. The estate of Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares was awarded by a Buenos Aires court to yet another love child of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Fabián Bioy, shortly before Fabián Bioy died, aged 40, in February 2006. Bioy won several awards, including the Gran Premio de Honor of SADE (the Argentine Society of Writers, 1975), the French Legion of Honour (1981), the title of Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires (1986), and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (awarded to him in 1991 in Alcalá de Henares). Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires. In 2006 Ediciones Destino published a book of Bioy's diary entries on Borges, numbering 1663 pages of anecdotes, witticisms and observations. The best-known novel by Bioy Casares is La invencion de Morel (The Invention of Morel). It is the story of a man who, evading justice, escapes to an island said to be infected with a mysterious fatal disease. Struggling to understand why everything seems to repeat, he realizes that all the people he sees there are actually recordings, made with a special machine, invented by Morel, which is able to record not only three-dimensional images, but also voices and scents, making it all indistinguishable from reality. The story mixes realism, fantasy, science fiction and terror. Borges wrote a famous prologue in which he called it a work of ‘reasoned imagination' and linked it to H. G. Wells' oeuvre. Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as ‘perfect.' The story is held to be the inspiration for Alan Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and also an influence on the TV series Lost.
A RUSSIAN DOLL AND OTHER STORIES, published in Spanish in 1991 as Una muñeca rusa, is the ninth collection of short fiction by one of this century's premier Argentinian writers who, with his fellow countrymen Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges, helped change the world's perception of Latin American literature. Bioy Casares' narratives are elegant and urbane, his style precise and streamlined, as he paces his characters through seriocomic traps of fate-ensnared by love, impelled by lust, ambition, or plain greed, even metamorphosed by pharmaceuticals. These are not stories in a psychological mode but like the image of the Russian doll of the title piece are carefully wrought congeries of intractable selves within selves. Suzanne Jill Levine, Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is well known as the translator of Bioy Casares, Manuel Puig, and Guillermo Cabrera Infante, among others. Her book on literary translation, The Subversive Scribe, was published in 1992 by Graywolf Press. ‘[Bioy Casares] has a charm and a sinister wit and a sudden sadness that only an assured literary performer could deliver.' - John Updike, THE NEW YORKER. In addition to his short stories, Bioy Casares is the author of six novels, three books of essays, and several collaborative works with Borges. His first novel, THE INVENTION OF MOREL (1940), inspired Robbe-Grillet's script for Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad. In 1990 he was awarded Spain's most prestigious literary award, the Cervantes Prize, for his life's work. CONTENTS: A Russian Doll; A Meeting in Rauch; Cato; The Navigator Returns to His Country; Our Trip (A Diary); Underwater; Three Fantasies in Minor Key; MARGARITA OR THE POWER OF PHARMACEUTICALS; REGARDING A SMELL; LOVE CONQUERED. . Originally published in Spanish in 1991 as Una muñeca rusa - Tusquets Editores, S.A., Barcelona. The stories ‘The Navigator Returns to His Country' and ‘A Meeting in Rauch' first appeared in Rostonia, the quarterly magazine published by Boston University. .
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel. Adolfo Bioy Casares was born in Buenos Aires, the grandson of a wealthy landowner and dairy processor, and the descendant of Patrick Lynch, a successful Irish emigrant. He wrote his first story (‘Iris y Margarita') at the age of eleven. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges and wrote many stories with him under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. Bioy and Borges were introduced in 1932 by Victoria Ocampo, whose sister, Silvina Ocampo (1903–1994), Bioy Casares was to marry in 1940. In 1954 they adopted Bioy's daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954–94), who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo's death, leaving two children. The estate of Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares was awarded by a Buenos Aires court to yet another love child of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Fabián Bioy, shortly before Fabián Bioy died, aged 40, in February 2006. Bioy won several awards, including the Gran Premio de Honor of SADE (the Argentine Society of Writers, 1975), the French Legion of Honour (1981), the title of Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires (1986), and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (awarded to him in 1991 in Alcalá de Henares). Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires. In 2006 Ediciones Destino published a book of Bioy's diary entries on Borges, numbering 1663 pages of anecdotes, witticisms and observations. The best-known novel by Bioy Casares is La invencion de Morel (The Invention of Morel). It is the story of a man who, evading justice, escapes to an island said to be infected with a mysterious fatal disease. Struggling to understand why everything seems to repeat, he realizes that all the people he sees there are actually recordings, made with a special machine, invented by Morel, which is able to record not only three-dimensional images, but also voices and scents, making it all indistinguishable from reality. The story mixes realism, fantasy, science fiction and terror. Borges wrote a famous prologue in which he called it a work of ‘reasoned imagination' and linked it to H. G. Wells' oeuvre. Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as ‘perfect.' The story is held to be the inspiration for Alan Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and also an influence on the TV series Lost.
Lucio Bordenave, a patient in a mental hospital in Buenos Aires, is writing a desperate letter to an old acquaintance. It appears that Lucio, a humble, somewhat absent-minded watchmaker, was duped by a group of psychiatrists who transformed his beautiful wife Diana into ‘someone else' by means of some rather unheard-of psycho-surgery. Now they want to do the same thing to him. It is not surprising that the movie ‘The Body Snatcher' becomes a sinister leit-motif in this science fiction comedy of horrors. Lucio is not only imprisoned in a mental hospital, he is also imprisoned in his undying love for Diana (or his image of her). And, ultimately, he is imprisoned in a sinister world where dishonest lawyers and manipulative doctors are metaphors for an alien and threatening social structure. ASLEEP IN THE SUN is not only one of the most comical events in modern literature, but also a subtle and pro- found comment on man's and woman's desperate but futile efforts to possess the ‘obscure object of desire,' be it love or freedom. Love and freedom are ultimately illusions, Bioy Casares seems to be telling us, while totalitarian systems, in most of today's world, are all too real.
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel. Adolfo Bioy Casares was born in Buenos Aires, the grandson of a wealthy landowner and dairy processor, and the descendant of Patrick Lynch, a successful Irish emigrant. He wrote his first story (‘Iris y Margarita') at the age of eleven. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges and wrote many stories with him under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. Bioy and Borges were introduced in 1932 by Victoria Ocampo, whose sister, Silvina Ocampo (1903–1994), Bioy Casares was to marry in 1940. In 1954 they adopted Bioy's daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954–94), who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo's death, leaving two children. The estate of Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares was awarded by a Buenos Aires court to yet another love child of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Fabián Bioy, shortly before Fabián Bioy died, aged 40, in February 2006. Bioy won several awards, including the Gran Premio de Honor of SADE (the Argentine Society of Writers, 1975), the French Legion of Honour (1981), the title of Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires (1986), and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (awarded to him in 1991 in Alcalá de Henares). Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires. In 2006 Ediciones Destino published a book of Bioy's diary entries on Borges, numbering 1663 pages of anecdotes, witticisms and observations. The best-known novel by Bioy Casares is La invencion de Morel (The Invention of Morel). It is the story of a man who, evading justice, escapes to an island said to be infected with a mysterious fatal disease. Struggling to understand why everything seems to repeat, he realizes that all the people he sees there are actually recordings, made with a special machine, invented by Morel, which is able to record not only three-dimensional images, but also voices and scents, making it all indistinguishable from reality. The story mixes realism, fantasy, science fiction and terror. Borges wrote a famous prologue in which he called it a work of ‘reasoned imagination' and linked it to H. G. Wells' oeuvre. Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as ‘perfect.' The story is held to be the inspiration for Alan Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and also an influence on the TV series Lost. Suzanne Jill Levine, translator and critic of Latin American literature, wrote her doctoral dissertation on Adolfo Bioy Casares and the utopian text. She is currently Assistant Professor at Tufts University.
Lucio Bordenave, a patient in a mental hospital in Buenos Aires, is writing a desperate letter to an old acquaintance. It appears that Lucio, a humble, somewhat absent-minded watchmaker, was duped by a group of psychiatrists who transformed his beautiful wife Diana into ‘someone else' by means of some rather unheard-of psycho-surgery. Now they want to do the same thing to him. It is not surprising that the movie ‘The Body Snatcher' becomes a sinister leit-motif in this science fiction comedy of horrors. Lucio is not only imprisoned in a mental hospital, he is also imprisoned in his undying love for Diana (or his image of her). And, ultimately, he is imprisoned in a sinister world where dishonest lawyers and manipulative doctors are metaphors for an alien and threatening social structure. ASLEEP IN THE SUN is not only one of the most comical events in modern literature, but also a subtle and pro- found comment on man's and woman's desperate but futile efforts to possess the ‘obscure object of desire,' be it love or freedom. Love and freedom are ultimately illusions, Bioy Casares seems to be telling us, while totalitarian systems, in most of today's world, are all too real. . Adolfo Bioy Casares lives in Buenos Aires with his wife, Silvina Ocampo, also a writer. He is the author of more than twenty books, including THE INVENTION OF MOREL, PLAN FOR ESCAPE, and CHRONICLES OF BUSTOS DOMECQ (co-authored with Jorge Luis Borges). A bestseller in Argentina, ASLEEP IN THE SUN has been published in several languages to critical acclaim. . Suzanne Jill Levine, translator and critic of Latin American literature, wrote her doctoral dissertation on Adolfo Bioy Casares and the utopian text. She is currently Assistant Professor at Tufts University. . Originally published in Spanish in 1973 by Emece Editores, S.A. .
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel. Adolfo Bioy Casares was born in Buenos Aires, the grandson of a wealthy landowner and dairy processor, and the descendant of Patrick Lynch, a successful Irish emigrant. He wrote his first story (‘Iris y Margarita') at the age of eleven. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges and wrote many stories with him under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. Bioy and Borges were introduced in 1932 by Victoria Ocampo, whose sister, Silvina Ocampo (1903–1994), Bioy Casares was to marry in 1940. In 1954 they adopted Bioy's daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954–94), who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo's death, leaving two children. The estate of Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares was awarded by a Buenos Aires court to yet another love child of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Fabián Bioy, shortly before Fabián Bioy died, aged 40, in February 2006. Bioy won several awards, including the Gran Premio de Honor of SADE (the Argentine Society of Writers, 1975), the French Legion of Honour (1981), the title of Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires (1986), and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (awarded to him in 1991 in Alcalá de Henares). Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires. In 2006 Ediciones Destino published a book of Bioy's diary entries on Borges, numbering 1663 pages of anecdotes, witticisms and observations. The best-known novel by Bioy Casares is La invencion de Morel (The Invention of Morel). It is the story of a man who, evading justice, escapes to an island said to be infected with a mysterious fatal disease. Struggling to understand why everything seems to repeat, he realizes that all the people he sees there are actually recordings, made with a special machine, invented by Morel, which is able to record not only three-dimensional images, but also voices and scents, making it all indistinguishable from reality. The story mixes realism, fantasy, science fiction and terror. Borges wrote a famous prologue in which he called it a work of ‘reasoned imagination' and linked it to H. G. Wells' oeuvre. Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as ‘perfect.' The story is held to be the inspiration for Alan Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and also an influence on the TV series Lost.
As Professor David W. Foster of Arizona State University commented on Diary of the War of the Pig in Books Abroad: ‘Undoubtedly the first Latin American novel to treat significantly the new social theme of aging, Bioy Casares' work is a superb example of the expressive potential of modern fiction . . . The novel explores, through the expressionistic hyperbole of a science-fiction war of extermination of the elderly (hence, the title), man's ultimate humble and humbling confrontation with himself. One's first impression is that the backdrop of mysterious incidents, set in a consciously insistent evocation of an arrabal of northern Buenos Aires, concerns political disturbances, such as that during the closing days of the Peron regime. However, when events come into focus as they affect a closely-knit cafe group of elderly men, the reader realizes that Bioy Casares has interwoven a ‘real' setting and a fanciful circumstance in order to depict with touching irony one individual's total awareness of his fleeting and tenuous existence. This existence threatens to crumble under the weight of his dazed consciousness, if not from the cruel blows of the murderous gangs of youth.' Adolfo Bioy Casares' name is frequently linked to that of his close friend Jorge Luis Borges, with whom he has co-written several books, among them Extraordinary Tales, which was published by Herder and Herder in 1971. This outstanding writer is now gaining the critical recognition and popular acclaim due his numerous novels and short stories. In 1969 he received Argentina's first award for imaginative prose literature, and Alain Robbe-Grillet has acknowledged the profound influence which Bioy Casares' writing has had on his work.
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel. Adolfo Bioy Casares was born in Buenos Aires, the grandson of a wealthy landowner and dairy processor, and the descendant of Patrick Lynch, a successful Irish emigrant. He wrote his first story (‘Iris y Margarita') at the age of eleven. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges and wrote many stories with him under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. Bioy and Borges were introduced in 1932 by Victoria Ocampo, whose sister, Silvina Ocampo (1903–1994), Bioy Casares was to marry in 1940. In 1954 they adopted Bioy's daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954–94), who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo's death, leaving two children. The estate of Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares was awarded by a Buenos Aires court to yet another love child of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Fabián Bioy, shortly before Fabián Bioy died, aged 40, in February 2006. Bioy won several awards, including the Gran Premio de Honor of SADE (the Argentine Society of Writers, 1975), the French Legion of Honour (1981), the title of Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires (1986), and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (awarded to him in 1991 in Alcalá de Henares). Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires. In 2006 Ediciones Destino published a book of Bioy's diary entries on Borges, numbering 1663 pages of anecdotes, witticisms and observations. The best-known novel by Bioy Casares is La invencion de Morel (The Invention of Morel). It is the story of a man who, evading justice, escapes to an island said to be infected with a mysterious fatal disease. Struggling to understand why everything seems to repeat, he realizes that all the people he sees there are actually recordings, made with a special machine, invented by Morel, which is able to record not only three-dimensional images, but also voices and scents, making it all indistinguishable from reality. The story mixes realism, fantasy, science fiction and terror. Borges wrote a famous prologue in which he called it a work of ‘reasoned imagination' and linked it to H. G. Wells' oeuvre. Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as ‘perfect.' The story is held to be the inspiration for Alan Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and also an influence on the TV series Lost.
The Argentine Adolfo Bioy Casares,' writes translator Suzanne Jill Levine, ‘is an urbane comedian, a parodist who turns fantasy and science fiction inside out to explore the banality of our scientific, intellectual, and especially erotic pretensions . . . . Behind his post-Kafka, pre-Woody Allen sense of nonsense is a metaphysical vision, particularly of life's brevity and the slippery terrain of love.' His Selected Stories, chosen from various collections published from the mid-'50s to the late ‘80s, is aptly divided into two parts, ‘The Labyrinth of Love' and ‘Adverse Miracles,' ample frames for the author's amatory tales and wry magical realism. It is a fine introduction to one of Latin America's leading modern writers-and a choice retrospective of the master storyteller who won the 1990 Cervantes Prize, Spain's most prestigious literary award, for his lifetime work. CONTENTS: Introduction by Suzanne Jill Levine; I. Levine - A Secret Casanova; An Affair; Women Are All the Same; Men Are All the Same; Pearls Before Swine; Trio; II. ADVERSE MIRACLES - The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice; Flies and Spiders; Resurrection; About the Shape of the World; The Hero of Women; I THE LABYRINTH OF LOVE; Souvenir from the Mountains; A Roman Fable. The stories in this collection Were selected from the following books by Adolfo Bioy Casares: from Guirnalda con alnores (‘Garland of Loves,' 1959), ‘A Roman Fable,' ‘A Secret Casanova,' ‘An Affair,' ‘Women Are All the Same,' ‘Men Are All the Same,' ‘Souvenir from the Mountains,' ‘The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice,' ‘Flies and Spiders,' ‘Resurrection'; from El grab seraji'n (‘The Great Seraphim,' 1967) ‘Pearls Before Swine'; from El hEroe de las snujeres (‘The Hero of Women,' 1978(, ‘About the Shape of the World' and ‘The Hero of Women'; from Historias desaforadas (‘Tales from the Wild Side,' 1986), ‘Trio,' ‘The Noumenon,' ‘An Unexpected Journey.' Some of the translations were first published in the following books and magazines: The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature, Descant, Fiction, The New Boston Review, and Persea, The translated epigraphs on pages 1 and 81 are taken, respectively, from Guirnalda con ainores and ABC (1989).
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel. Adolfo Bioy Casares was born in Buenos Aires, the grandson of a wealthy landowner and dairy processor, and the descendant of Patrick Lynch, a successful Irish emigrant. He wrote his first story (‘Iris y Margarita') at the age of eleven. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges and wrote many stories with him under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. Bioy and Borges were introduced in 1932 by Victoria Ocampo, whose sister, Silvina Ocampo (1903–1994), Bioy Casares was to marry in 1940. In 1954 they adopted Bioy's daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954–94), who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo's death, leaving two children. The estate of Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares was awarded by a Buenos Aires court to yet another love child of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Fabián Bioy, shortly before Fabián Bioy died, aged 40, in February 2006. Bioy won several awards, including the Gran Premio de Honor of SADE (the Argentine Society of Writers, 1975), the French Legion of Honour (1981), the title of Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires (1986), and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (awarded to him in 1991 in Alcalá de Henares). Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires. In 2006 Ediciones Destino published a book of Bioy's diary entries on Borges, numbering 1663 pages of anecdotes, witticisms and observations. The best-known novel by Bioy Casares is La invencion de Morel (The Invention of Morel). It is the story of a man who, evading justice, escapes to an island said to be infected with a mysterious fatal disease. Struggling to understand why everything seems to repeat, he realizes that all the people he sees there are actually recordings, made with a special machine, invented by Morel, which is able to record not only three-dimensional images, but also voices and scents, making it all indistinguishable from reality. The story mixes realism, fantasy, science fiction and terror. Borges wrote a famous prologue in which he called it a work of ‘reasoned imagination' and linked it to H. G. Wells' oeuvre. Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as ‘perfect.' The story is held to be the inspiration for Alan Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and also an influence on the TV series Lost. Suzanne Jill Levine, Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has translated several previous books of Adolfo Bioy Casares, among them A Russian Doll & Other Stories, published in 1992 by New Directions. .
Adolfo Bioy Casares's latest novel is a small masterpiece, a tersely plotted mystery that blends the metaphysical and the mundane. The small-town photographer Almanza's week of adventures in the provincal capital of La Plata takes him many places; to the city's museums, monuments, and a set of stained-glass windows that will haunt him; to bed, separately, with two lovely sisters named Griselda and Julia; to cafes with his friend Mascardi; the cop who may be snitching on his friends who are political activists; and into the arms and machinations of Don Juan Lombardo, father of the sisters and a man greedy for Almannza's blood. As a decent mystery should, THE ADVENTURES OF A PHOTOGRAPHER IN LA PLATA keeps the reader on edge, and yet Bioy very assumptions of mystery also surprise. Written with the honest deadpan humor his friend Borges so admired, the novel maintains a coolly modern tone as the story hovers towards the grotesque. The late Jorge Luis Borges called his friend and collaborator Adolfo Bioy Casares, one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. Bioy Casares has been translated widely into most of the world's languages.
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel. Adolfo Bioy Casares was born in Buenos Aires, the grandson of a wealthy landowner and dairy processor, and the descendant of Patrick Lynch, a successful Irish emigrant. He wrote his first story (‘Iris y Margarita') at the age of eleven. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges and wrote many stories with him under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. Bioy and Borges were introduced in 1932 by Victoria Ocampo, whose sister, Silvina Ocampo (1903–1994), Bioy Casares was to marry in 1940. In 1954 they adopted Bioy's daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954–94), who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo's death, leaving two children. The estate of Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares was awarded by a Buenos Aires court to yet another love child of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Fabián Bioy, shortly before Fabián Bioy died, aged 40, in February 2006. Bioy won several awards, including the Gran Premio de Honor of SADE (the Argentine Society of Writers, 1975), the French Legion of Honour (1981), the title of Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires (1986), and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (awarded to him in 1991 in Alcalá de Henares). Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires. In 2006 Ediciones Destino published a book of Bioy's diary entries on Borges, numbering 1663 pages of anecdotes, witticisms and observations. The best-known novel by Bioy Casares is La invencion de Morel (The Invention of Morel). It is the story of a man who, evading justice, escapes to an island said to be infected with a mysterious fatal disease. Struggling to understand why everything seems to repeat, he realizes that all the people he sees there are actually recordings, made with a special machine, invented by Morel, which is able to record not only three-dimensional images, but also voices and scents, making it all indistinguishable from reality. The story mixes realism, fantasy, science fiction and terror. Borges wrote a famous prologue in which he called it a work of ‘reasoned imagination' and linked it to H. G. Wells' oeuvre. Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as ‘perfect.' The story is held to be the inspiration for Alan Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and also an influence on the TV series Lost.
At the end of carnival 1927, Emilio Gauna had an experience that he knew was the culmination of his life. The problem is that Gauna can only dimly remember what happened: he was out on the town with his raucous, reckless friends when a masked woman appeared. Several hours later, gasping and horrified, Gauna awoke at the edge of a lake. Three years later, he tries to solve the mystery the only way he knows: by re-creating the same situation and reliving it - despite the warnings of his secret protector, the Sorcerer. In THE DREAM OF HEROES, Adolfo Bioy Casares assembles magicians, prophetic and brave women, shamefully self-conscious men and Buenos Aires under the rubric of a sinister and mocking fate, and thrusts them forward into the dizzying realm of memory, doom and cyclical time. Written in 1954 and never before published in America, THE DREAM OF HEROES stands as a predecessor of and model for a whole school of European and American novels that followed but never quite matched it.
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel. Adolfo Bioy Casares was born in Buenos Aires, the grandson of a wealthy landowner and dairy processor, and the descendant of Patrick Lynch, a successful Irish emigrant. He wrote his first story (‘Iris y Margarita') at the age of eleven. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges and wrote many stories with him under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. Bioy and Borges were introduced in 1932 by Victoria Ocampo, whose sister, Silvina Ocampo (1903–1994), Bioy Casares was to marry in 1940. In 1954 they adopted Bioy's daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954–94), who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo's death, leaving two children. The estate of Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares was awarded by a Buenos Aires court to yet another love child of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Fabián Bioy, shortly before Fabián Bioy died, aged 40, in February 2006. Bioy won several awards, including the Gran Premio de Honor of SADE (the Argentine Society of Writers, 1975), the French Legion of Honour (1981), the title of Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires (1986), and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (awarded to him in 1991 in Alcalá de Henares). Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires. In 2006 Ediciones Destino published a book of Bioy's diary entries on Borges, numbering 1663 pages of anecdotes, witticisms and observations. The best-known novel by Bioy Casares is La invencion de Morel (The Invention of Morel). It is the story of a man who, evading justice, escapes to an island said to be infected with a mysterious fatal disease. Struggling to understand why everything seems to repeat, he realizes that all the people he sees there are actually recordings, made with a special machine, invented by Morel, which is able to record not only three-dimensional images, but also voices and scents, making it all indistinguishable from reality. The story mixes realism, fantasy, science fiction and terror. Borges wrote a famous prologue in which he called it a work of ‘reasoned imagination' and linked it to H. G. Wells' oeuvre. Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as ‘perfect.' The story is held to be the inspiration for Alan Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and also an influence on the TV series Lost.
At the end of carnival 1927, Emilio Gauna had an experience that he knew was the culmination of his life. The problem is that Gauna can only dimly remember what happened: he was out on the town with his raucous, reckless friends when a masked woman appeared. Several hours later, gasping and horrified, Gauna awoke at the edge of a lake. Three years later, he tries to solve the mystery the only way he knows: by re-creating the same situation and reliving it - despite the warnings of his secret protector, the Sorcerer. In THE DREAM OF HEROES, Adolfo Bioy Casares assembles magicians, prophetic and brave women, shamefully self-conscious men and Buenos Aires under the rubric of a sinister and mocking fate, and thrusts them forward into the dizzying realm of memory, doom and cyclical time. Written in 1954 and never before published in America, THE DREAM OF HEROES stands as a predecessor of and model for a whole school of European and American novels that followed but never quite matched it. ‘The great Borges himself much admired this staccato, cinematic fiction of Argentinian self-fashioning and you can see why. The real streets, neighborhoods, cinemas, trains and taverns of Buenos Aires, a modernist cosmopolis in which Ibsen is being thrillingly played for bohemian connoisseurs, merge cunningly into a spooky replay of Oedipus and Eurydice, a magic lantern business of prophecy and curse and archaically hellish fatalism aboard the enigmatic streetcars of South American male desire. A very fetching mix indeed, canny and labyrinthine.' - The Observer Review.
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel. Adolfo Bioy Casares was born in Buenos Aires, the grandson of a wealthy landowner and dairy processor, and the descendant of Patrick Lynch, a successful Irish emigrant. He wrote his first story (‘Iris y Margarita') at the age of eleven. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges and wrote many stories with him under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. Bioy and Borges were introduced in 1932 by Victoria Ocampo, whose sister, Silvina Ocampo (1903–1994), Bioy Casares was to marry in 1940. In 1954 they adopted Bioy's daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954–94), who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo's death, leaving two children. The estate of Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares was awarded by a Buenos Aires court to yet another love child of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Fabián Bioy, shortly before Fabián Bioy died, aged 40, in February 2006. Bioy won several awards, including the Gran Premio de Honor of SADE (the Argentine Society of Writers, 1975), the French Legion of Honour (1981), the title of Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires (1986), and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (awarded to him in 1991 in Alcalá de Henares). Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires. In 2006 Ediciones Destino published a book of Bioy's diary entries on Borges, numbering 1663 pages of anecdotes, witticisms and observations. The best-known novel by Bioy Casares is La invencion de Morel (The Invention of Morel). It is the story of a man who, evading justice, escapes to an island said to be infected with a mysterious fatal disease. Struggling to understand why everything seems to repeat, he realizes that all the people he sees there are actually recordings, made with a special machine, invented by Morel, which is able to record not only three-dimensional images, but also voices and scents, making it all indistinguishable from reality. The story mixes realism, fantasy, science fiction and terror. Borges wrote a famous prologue in which he called it a work of ‘reasoned imagination' and linked it to H. G. Wells' oeuvre. Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as ‘perfect.' The story is held to be the inspiration for Alan Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and also an influence on the TV series Lost.
When THE INVENTION OF MOREL was first published in Argentina, Jorge Luis Borges rejoiced that the author had brought ‘a new genre to our land and language.' This fine translation of Adolfo Bioy Casares' novella demonstrates that it is equally unique when transformed into English. THE INVENTION OF MOREL won for its author in 1941 the Primer Premio Municipal Award in Buenos Aires. It is joined in this volume by six equally arresting short stories originally published together in a book entitled La trama celeste. THE INVENTION OF MOREL is the offspring of a fantastic, sometimes perverse, always persuasive imagination. Borges, perhaps Argentina's greatest writer, says in his Prologue to the story that its plot is of such superior quality that ‘to classify it as perfect is neither an imprecision nor a hyperbole.' Bioy Casares' indisputable originality, so apparent in the novella, is equally evident in the six short stories, all of which have a strong affinity with The invention. Each story is an achievement of realism with curious surrealist overtones. In each, as in the novella, the author employs suspense delicately and with mounting tension. In style, narrative technique, and off-beat imaginative insight, they coalesce to make a book which is bound to have a powerful unified impact on the reader. This volume is enhanced by drawings by Norah Borges de Torre, sister of Jorge Luis Borges. . The translator, Ruth L. C. Simms, has traveled extensively in South America and is well acquainted with Spanish and Latin American literature; her sensitive use of the English language has enabled her to transfer these unusual stories into English with their unique qualities unimpaired.
Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel. Adolfo Bioy Casares was born in Buenos Aires, the grandson of a wealthy landowner and dairy processor, and the descendant of Patrick Lynch, a successful Irish emigrant. He wrote his first story (‘Iris y Margarita') at the age of eleven. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges and wrote many stories with him under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. Bioy and Borges were introduced in 1932 by Victoria Ocampo, whose sister, Silvina Ocampo (1903–1994), Bioy Casares was to marry in 1940. In 1954 they adopted Bioy's daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954–94), who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo's death, leaving two children. The estate of Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares was awarded by a Buenos Aires court to yet another love child of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Fabián Bioy, shortly before Fabián Bioy died, aged 40, in February 2006. Bioy won several awards, including the Gran Premio de Honor of SADE (the Argentine Society of Writers, 1975), the French Legion of Honour (1981), the title of Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires (1986), and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (awarded to him in 1991 in Alcalá de Henares). Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires. In 2006 Ediciones Destino published a book of Bioy's diary entries on Borges, numbering 1663 pages of anecdotes, witticisms and observations. The best-known novel by Bioy Casares is La invencion de Morel (The Invention of Morel). It is the story of a man who, evading justice, escapes to an island said to be infected with a mysterious fatal disease. Struggling to understand why everything seems to repeat, he realizes that all the people he sees there are actually recordings, made with a special machine, invented by Morel, which is able to record not only three-dimensional images, but also voices and scents, making it all indistinguishable from reality. The story mixes realism, fantasy, science fiction and terror. Borges wrote a famous prologue in which he called it a work of ‘reasoned imagination' and linked it to H. G. Wells' oeuvre. Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as ‘perfect.' The story is held to be the inspiration for Alan Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and also an influence on the TV series Lost.
Characterized by fiery criticism of Venezuelan politics and society. Representative of his severely critical essays, but of little esthetic value.
Rufino Blanco Fombona (Caracas, Venezuela, June 17, 1874 - Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 16, 1944) was a Venezuelan writer, editor, diplomat, and prominent figure of the literary modernism of the time. He was born into a an illustrious family (descended from Spanish conquerors, heroes of Independence, jurists, diplomats and writers), the son of Rufino Blanco Toro and Isabel Fombona Palacio. He did his elementary education in Caracas and obtained a bachelor's degree in 1889. He started Law and Philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela, but decided to enter the Military Academy at age 18. He intervened in the Legalist Revolution (1892) and was then appointed consul in Philadelphia. There he began to cultivate poetry and on his return to Caracas in 1895 he participated in the magazines El Cojo Ilustrado and Cosmopola. He was assigned to the Venezuelan Embassy in Holland, where he remained during 1896 and 1897. In 1898 he went to jail briefly for dueling with an assistant to the President of the Republic contrary to his ideas; once in freedom he went to New York to teach Spanish and from there he moved to the Dominican Republic, where he worked as a journalist and was appointed consul in Boston of that country (1898-1899). In 1899 Trovadores y trovas appeared in Caracas , a mixture of verses and prose that was his first book. Tales of the Poet (1900), American Tales (1904) and Little Lyrical Opera followed.(1904), a mature book of verses whose prologue is signed by RubEn Darío, because, in effect, it is part of the aesthetics of modernism , although later it will be oriented more towards postmodernism . He reprinted part of his verses in a bilingual edition ( Au-delà des horizons. Petits poèmes lyriques (Paris, 1908) and simultaneously published a collection of articles Letters and Letters from Latin America. He went to jail in Ciudad Bolívar for having killed the colonel who was trying to arrest him for fighting against the rubber monopoly in his position as governor of the federal territory of Amazonas, in the middle of the Amazon region; This served as inspiration for his first novel, The Iron Man (1907), that are already visible the influences that marked his narrative: the French realism ( HonorE de Balzac ) and pessimism naturalist of Guy de Maupassant . He also wrote the full-length pamphlet against his enemy ; the black Benjamín Ruiz (1900) and also attacked the government with another pamphlet of the same year, A page of history; Ignacio Andradeand his government , where he blamed the politician of that name for having rigged the elections that made him president and caused a civil war in Venezuela. At that time he fought against the coup d'Etat of Juan Vicente Gomez as secretary of the Chamber of Deputies and that earned him an exile that kept him away from the country for twenty-six years. He lived in Paris (1910-1914) and then in Madrid (1914-1936) in a period of his life especially fertile in literary aspects. It started with the anti-gomecist libel Judas capitolino (1912); the poetry books Songs of Prison and Exile (1911) and Song Book of Unhappy Love (1918), written on the occasion of the tragic suicide of his young wife, who had learned of his infidelity; the books of short stories, Minimal Dramas (1920) and Grotesque Tragedies (1928), and the novels The Golden Man (1915), The Miter in the Hand (1927), Beauty and the Beast (1931) andThe secret of the happiness (1933). He also directed Editorial America for almost twenty years . His projects from this period include his edition of part of the work of Simon Bolívar : the Letters (1913, 1921, 1922) and the Discourses and Proclamations (1913). In his essays, on the other hand, he proposes a "panhispanistam² project" to American "Pan-Americanism" and praises the work of the Spanish conquerors, founders of a community from which the new republics emerged. On the other hand, he collected and printed a series of studies on Bolívar by Juan Montalvo , Jose Martí and Jose Enrique Rodo, among others (1914). His friends from Spain and Latin America proposed him with no luck in 1925 to the Nobel Prize for Literature and, opposed to the dictatorship in Spain of Miguel Primo de Rivera , with the support of the Republicans of the Radical Party , he was appointed to his fall civil governor of the provinces of Almería (1933) and Navarra (1933-34). Upon returning to his country he entered the National Academy of History (1939) and was appointed president of the state of Miranda (1936-1937) and plenipotentiary minister of Venezuela in Uruguay (1939-1941). He no longer attempted to meddle with politics again: he devoted himself to historical research, to poetry, and to writing his Diary (about a thousand pages long and published in three parts: Diary of My Life. The Two-Year Novel (1904-1905). ) 1929; Camino de imperfection , 1933, and Two and a Half Years of Concern , 1942; the third part was not published as it was apparently stolen by Gomez's agents in Madrid). His heart condition worsened, his last book was poetry: Golden Cobs, a compilation of old poems with some new ones, and died of a heart attack during a trip to Buenos Aires.
illustrated musical score (reprint San Juan: Pava Prints, 1962. 33 p.). Bilingual edition of the Christmas story as narrated by Tomás Blanco. Beautifully illustrated.
Tomás Blanco (December 9, 1896 - April 12, 1975) was a Puerto Rican writer, poet, narrator, historian, author and physician. Blanco was a writer during the 1930s who was known for his critical essays that analyzed the Puerto Rican culture. Similar to other authors of his generation that lived through the Great Depression, his work focused on political and social issues. He also wrote novels, short stories and poetry. Blanco (birth name: Tomás Blanco Geigel) was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he received his primary and secondary education in Catholic schools. After graduating from high school, he went to the United States and enrolled in the Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. to study medicine. Tomás Blanco first pursued the path of pharmaceutical work but progressively began to focus his attention on literature. Blanco traveled throughout Europe and in Spain where he developed his love for writing. Blanco wrote about literature, plus he was also a music critic. Blanco returned to Puerto Rico where he dedicated himself to write about Puerto Rican topics. His works are considered very important in the analysis of the "state" of the Puerto Rican culture in both the 19th century and 20th century. Among Blanco's most recognized works are Prontuario Historico de Puerto Rico and El Prejuicio Racial en Puerto Rico (Racial Prejudice in Puerto Rico). He also wrote many novels and stories such as Los Aguinaldos del Infante (Christmas Stories for Children) and Cuentos Sin Ton Ni Son. He was also the songwriter of the lyrics Tres estrofas de amor: Cancion para soprano composed in 1925 by Pablo Casals. Tomás Blanco died on April 12, 1975 in the city of San Juan. In 1935, he published his first literary piece Prontuario Historico de Puerto Rico which showcases the cultural aspects of the Puerto Rican people and racial dynamics within the country. In the essay he recounts significant events of the history of Puerto Rico, in hope of finding the country's national idiosyncrasy and cultural identity. The mixing of races and religions created a unique combination of ideas and culture, which sometimes sparked conflict. Tomas Blanco's thoughts on these racial relationships and controversies are presented in, The Racial Prejudice in Puerto Rico. The essay discusses the influence of the slave trade and the discrimination of people of African descent in Puerto Rico. Tomas Blanco speaks of the connection between Spanish Conquistadors influence, Catholicism, and the interconnection of different races. Tomas Blanco argues that the African influences in Puerto Rico are beneficial to the uniqueness and richness of the country. Other essays include Sobre PalEs Matos (1950), which analyzes PalEs Matos' poetry influenced by African and Antillean culture and Miserere: en la muerte de Georges Rouault y luz perpetua luzca en El (1959), a review on various paintings by Rouault. He also wrote essays for many newspapers and magazines, such as the Ateneo Puertorriqueño, Isla Asomante, Presente, Revista de la Asociacion de Mujeres Graduadas and Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. He wrote the essay Elogio de la plena en the magazine, Ateneo Puertorriqueño, which discussed the diversity of Puerto Rico and how it positively impacts the island. Blanco's interest in race relations led him to study African-American poetry. Racial mixing was considered immoral and was looked down upon in the 19th and early 20th century in Puerto Rico. Tomas Blanco challenges these ideas by bringing up these topics in his literary work in a positive manner. In the book "Literatura PuertorriquenÌa Del Siglo Veinte Antologia," the poem La Unicornia de la Isla highlights these controversial ideas and different viewpoints. The poem investigates the cultural identity of the people of Puerto Rico through the mention of topics like miscegenation and incorporating traditional Antillean myths. Much of Tomas Blanco's work highlights the various cultures and belief systems of Puerto Rico and explains how it both positively and negatively affects the environment of the country. In Los cinco sentidos: inventario de cosas nuestras (1955), he presents Antillean myths in poetic form. Much of Tomas Blanco's work highlights the various cultures and belief systems of Puerto Rico and explains how it both positively and negatively affects the environment of the country. He also wrote the poem Letras para música in 1964. Blanco wrote a number of short stories, such as Los aguinaldos del Infante: glosa de Epifanía (1954) about Christmas, La dragoneta: cuento de Semana Santa (1956) and Cuentos sin ton ni son (1970).
Martin Rivas is an 1862 novel by Alberto Blest Gana (1830–1920), and is widely acknowledged as the first Chilean novel. The social realist novel is at once a passionate love story and an optimistic representation of Chilean nationhood. Written shortly after a decade of civil conflict, this national epic is an indispensable source for understanding politics and society in nineteenth-century Chile. The hero of the story is Martin Rivas, an impoverished but intelligent, ambitious young man from the northern mining region of Chile, who is entrusted by his late father, a gold rush speculator, to the household of a wealthy and influential member of the Santiago elite. While living there, Martin Rivas falls in love with his guardian's haughty daughter Leonore. The tale of their tortuous but ultimately successful love affair represents the author's desire for reconciliation between Chile's antagonistic regional and class interests. Indeed, many critics have interpreted Martin Rivas as a blueprint for national unity that emphasizes consensus over conflict. In addition to providing humorous and biting commentary about the mores of Chilean society, Blest Gana documents the enormous gap that existed between the rich and poor classes. An invaluable text for its portrayal of contemporary social, political, and class conditions, Martin Rivas illustrates the enriching influence that romanticism had on nineteenth-century social realism.
Alberto Blest Gana (May 4, 1830 - November 9, 1920) was a Chilean novelist and diplomat, considered the father of Chilean novel. Blest Gana was of Irish and Basque descent. He was born in Santiago, the son of an Irishman, William Cunningham Blest, and of María de la Luz Gana Darrigrandi, from an aristocratic landowning family. He studied at the Military Academy and then for one year in France. A liberal, Alberto Blest was named intendant of the province of Colchagua and starting 1866 he was Chilean diplomatic representative at Washington, London and Paris. Among his successes were the inclusion of Chile in the Universal Postal Union and the purchase of armament for Chilean troops during the War of the Pacific. He also participated at border negotiations with Argentina, but with a less important role than his previous activities. Blest Gana passionately read the novels of HonorE de Balzac. Upon his return home, he virtually founded the Chilean novel by adapting European techniques to some ten novels portraying various aspects of national history and life. Of these, the most important is Martín Rivas (1862), which describes the career of a young man during the 1851 political revolt. Abundant local color and social criticism accompany the action of the novel. Although these elements of description are not brought to life and fused with the plot in the manner of Balzac, the novel achieved great success as the first realistic portrayal of Chilean life. After its publication, Blest Gana entered the diplomatic service and was Chilean ambassador to France and Britain for many years. Other novels of this first period are The Arithmetic of Love (Spanish: La aritmEtica del amor) (1860) and El ideal de un calavera (The Rake's Ideal, 1863). Upon his retirement from diplomacy, Blest Gana returned to writing novels. Strongly influenced by his reading of the new masters of the form, he produced his best work. Four novels from this second period of creative activity are Durante la reconquista (During the Reconquest,1897), Los transplantados (The Exiles, 1904), El loco Estero (Estero the Mad, 1909), and Gladys Fairfield (1912). El loco Estero is about the Chile of Blest Gana's childhood. The lively adventure and love intrigue infused with nostalgia qualify this novel as Blest Gana's greatest work. His literary work - almost exclusively novels - followed the aesthetic ideals and themes of the European Realism, but with a conscious 'americanization' of themes, as a way of making the genre fit (and educational enough) to be read by a national audience. His writings were explicitly influenced by 19th century liberalism, but they are also an attempt to reconcile religious and moral ideals of his time. Notable among his novels are ‘Martín Rivas' (published 1862, about the social rise of a poor, middle-class young man, which is considered the first Chilean novel), ‘El ideal de un Talavera' (1863), ‘Durante la Reconquista' (1879 historical novel of the period 1814-1817); ‘Los Trasplantados' (1906) and ‘El Loco Estero' (1909 with pleasant remembrances of childhood). His ability to describe characters and customs has been praised by critics now, as well as at the time of publishing. Despite his non-literary education, which accounts for his careless style and excess of gallicisms, his work is considered fundamental, in terms of their representation of the customs, morals and ideals of 19th century Chileans. ‘Martin Rivas' was translated into English by Tess O'Dwyer and published by Oxford University Press in 2000. He also wrote a comedy: ‘El jefe de familia' (1858). He died, aged 90, in Paris.
Reprint. Originally published 1916. Martin Rivas is an 1862 novel by Alberto Blest Gana (1830–1920), and is widely acknowledged as the first Chilean novel. The social realist novel is at once a passionate love story and an optimistic representation of Chilean nationhood. Written shortly after a decade of civil conflict, this national epic is an indispensable source for understanding politics and society in nineteenth-century Chile. The hero of the story is Martin Rivas, an impoverished but intelligent, ambitious young man from the northern mining region of Chile, who is entrusted by his late father, a gold rush speculator, to the household of a wealthy and influential member of the Santiago elite. While living there, Martin Rivas falls in love with his guardian's haughty daughter Leonore. The tale of their tortuous but ultimately successful love affair represents the author's desire for reconciliation between Chile's antagonistic regional and class interests. Indeed, many critics have interpreted Martin Rivas as a blueprint for national unity that emphasizes consensus over conflict. In addition to providing humorous and biting commentary about the mores of Chilean society, Blest Gana documents the enormous gap that existed between the rich and poor classes. An invaluable text for its portrayal of contemporary social, political, and class conditions, Martin Rivas illustrates the enriching influence that romanticism had on nineteenth-century social realism.
Alberto Blest Gana (May 4, 1830 - November 9, 1920) was a Chilean novelist and diplomat, considered the father of Chilean novel. Blest Gana was of Irish and Basque descent. He was born in Santiago, the son of an Irishman, William Cunningham Blest, and of María de la Luz Gana Darrigrandi, from an aristocratic landowning family. He studied at the Military Academy and then for one year in France. A liberal, Alberto Blest was named intendant of the province of Colchagua and starting 1866 he was Chilean diplomatic representative at Washington, London and Paris. Among his successes were the inclusion of Chile in the Universal Postal Union and the purchase of armament for Chilean troops during the War of the Pacific. He also participated at border negotiations with Argentina, but with a less important role than his previous activities. Blest Gana passionately read the novels of HonorE de Balzac. Upon his return home, he virtually founded the Chilean novel by adapting European techniques to some ten novels portraying various aspects of national history and life. Of these, the most important is Martín Rivas (1862), which describes the career of a young man during the 1851 political revolt. Abundant local color and social criticism accompany the action of the novel. Although these elements of description are not brought to life and fused with the plot in the manner of Balzac, the novel achieved great success as the first realistic portrayal of Chilean life. After its publication, Blest Gana entered the diplomatic service and was Chilean ambassador to France and Britain for many years. Other novels of this first period are The Arithmetic of Love (Spanish: La aritmEtica del amor) (1860) and El ideal de un calavera (The Rake's Ideal, 1863). Upon his retirement from diplomacy, Blest Gana returned to writing novels. Strongly influenced by his reading of the new masters of the form, he produced his best work. Four novels from this second period of creative activity are Durante la reconquista (During the Reconquest,1897), Los transplantados (The Exiles, 1904), El loco Estero (Estero the Mad, 1909), and Gladys Fairfield (1912). El loco Estero is about the Chile of Blest Gana's childhood. The lively adventure and love intrigue infused with nostalgia qualify this novel as Blest Gana's greatest work. His literary work - almost exclusively novels - followed the aesthetic ideals and themes of the European Realism, but with a conscious 'americanization' of themes, as a way of making the genre fit (and educational enough) to be read by a national audience. His writings were explicitly influenced by 19th century liberalism, but they are also an attempt to reconcile religious and moral ideals of his time. Notable among his novels are ‘Martín Rivas' (published 1862, about the social rise of a poor, middle-class young man, which is considered the first Chilean novel), ‘El ideal de un Talavera' (1863), ‘Durante la Reconquista' (1879 historical novel of the period 1814-1817); ‘Los Trasplantados' (1906) and ‘El Loco Estero' (1909 with pleasant remembrances of childhood). His ability to describe characters and customs has been praised by critics now, as well as at the time of publishing. Despite his non-literary education, which accounts for his careless style and excess of gallicisms, his work is considered fundamental, in terms of their representation of the customs, morals and ideals of 19th century Chileans. ‘Martin Rivas' was translated into English by Tess O'Dwyer and published by Oxford University Press in 2000. He also wrote a comedy: ‘El jefe de familia' (1858). He died, aged 90, in Paris.
Somewhat exaggerated psychological study of two characters. Brazilian dramatist. Born in Ukraine 1914.
Pedro Bloch (1914, Ukraine - February 23, 2004, Brazil) was a Brazilian writer. His family immigrated to Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century. He is famous for his plays, such as Dona Xepa and Mãos de Eurídice. Also, he wrote more than a hundred books, one of which is Pai, me compra um amigo? Many of those books were inspired by his experiences taking care of children. His collections of children's sayings and anecdotes are quite renowned. Bloch was a musician, a playwright, and a physician; he had been a member of the Brazilian National Faculty of Medicine since 1937. His most renowned play was As Mãos de Eurídice, which debuted on May 13, 1950 and which went on to be performed more than 60,000 times in more than 45 different countries. Two years later, he created another success, Dona Xepa, which was even turned into a soap opera on the Rede Globo network. Pedro Bloch's interest in theater stemmed from the actors who used to visit him. Pedro Bloch died at the age of 89 of respiratory insufficiency in his apartment in Copacabana. His grave is in the CemitErio Communal Israelita in Rio de Janeiro. He was cousin of media tycoon Adolpho Bloch.
Brazilian dramatist. Born in Ukraine 1914.
Pedro Bloch (1914, Ukraine - February 23, 2004, Brazil) was a Brazilian writer. His family immigrated to Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century. He is famous for his plays, such as Dona Xepa and Mãos de Eurídice. Also, he wrote more than a hundred books, one of which is Pai, me compra um amigo? Many of those books were inspired by his experiences taking care of children. His collections of children's sayings and anecdotes are quite renowned. Bloch was a musician, a playwright, and a physician; he had been a member of the Brazilian National Faculty of Medicine since 1937. His most renowned play was As Mãos de Eurídice, which debuted on May 13, 1950 and which went on to be performed more than 60,000 times in more than 45 different countries. Two years later, he created another success, Dona Xepa, which was even turned into a soap opera on the Rede Globo network. Pedro Bloch's interest in theater stemmed from the actors who used to visit him. Pedro Bloch died at the age of 89 of respiratory insufficiency in his apartment in Copacabana. His grave is in the CemitErio Communal Israelita in Rio de Janeiro. He was cousin of media tycoon Adolpho Bloch.
Published in Spanish right before Bolaño's death, A Little Lumpen Novelita percolates with a fierce and tender love of women. ‘Now I am a mother and a married woman, but not long ago I led a life of crime': so Bianca begins her tale of growing up the hard way in Rome. Orphaned overnight as a teenager - 'our parents died in a car crash on their first vacation without us' - she drops out of school, gets a crappy job, and drifts into bad company. Her younger brother brings home two petty criminals who need a place to stay. As the four of them share the family apartment and plot a strange crime, Bianca learns how low she can fall. Electric and tense with foreboding, with its jagged, propulsive short chapters beautifully translated by Natasha Wimmer, A Little Lumpen Novelita delivers a surprising, fractured fairy tale of seizing control of one's fate.
Roberto Bolaño (April 28, 1953, Santiago, Chile - July 15, 2003, Barcelona, Spain) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende's party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80's when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Romulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.
Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
A tour de force, AMULET is a highly charged first-person, semi-hallucinatory novel that embodies in one woman's voice the melancholy and violent recent history of Latin America. AMULET is a monologue, like Bolaño's acclaimed debut in English, BY NIGHT IN CHILE. The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico in the 1960s, becoming the ‘Mother of Mexican Poetry,' hanging out with the young poets in the cafEs and bars of the University. She's tall, thin, and blonde, and her favorite young poet in the 1970s is none other than Arturo Belano (Bolaño's fictional stand-in throughout his books). As well as her young poets, Auxilio recalls three remarkable women: the melancholic young philosopher Elena, the exiled Catalan painter Remedios Varo, and Lilian Serpas, a poet who once slept with Che Guevara. And in the course of her imaginary visit to the house of Remedios Varo, Auxilio sees an uncanny landscape, a kind of chasm. This chasm reappears in a vision at the end of the book: an army of children is marching toward it, singing as they go. The children are the idealistic young Latin Americans who came to maturity in the ‘70s, and the last words of the novel are: ‘And that song is our amulet.' ‘Bolaño's reputation and legend are in meteoric ascent.' - Larry Rohter, The New York Times . . . ‘The most influential and admired novelist of his generation in the Spanish-speaking world.' - Susan Sontag, The London Times Literary Supplement . . . ‘He is by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time.' - Ilan Stavans, L.A.Times . . . ‘Bolaño wrote with the high-voltage first-person braininess of a Saul Bellow and an extreme subversive vision of his own.' - Francisco Goldman, The New York Times Magazine. Born in Santiago, Chile, ROBERTO BOLAÑO (1953-2003) moved to Mexico City with his family in 1968. He went back to Chile in 1973, but in less than a month Pinochet seized power. Bolaño was arrested and imprisoned. After his release, he returned to Mexico before moving to Paris and then Barcelona. Winner of many prizes, including the Premio Herralde de Novela and the Premio Romulo Gallegos, Bolaño wrote ten novels, two collections of short stories and five books of poetry.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
As Bolaño's friend and literary executor, Ignacio Echevarría, once suggested, Antwerp can be viewed as the Big Bang of Roberto Bolaño's fictional universe. Reading this novel, the reader is present at the birth of Bolaño's enterprise in prose: all the elements are here, highly compressed, at the moment when his talent explodes. From this springboard - which Bolaño chose to publish in 2002, twenty years after he'd written it (‘and even that I can't be certain of') - as if testing out a high dive, he would plunge into the unexplored depths of the modern novel. Antwerp's fractured narration in 54 sections - voices from a dream, from a nightmare, from passers by, from an omniscient narrator, from ‘Roberto Bolaño' all speak - moves in multiple directions and cuts to the bone.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
As through a crack in the wall, BY NIGHT IN CHILE's single night-long rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of the strange bedfellows of Church and State in Chile. This wild, eerily compact novel-Roberto Bolaño's first work available in English-recounts the tale of a poor boy who wanted to be a poet, but ends up a half-hearted Jesuit priest and a conservative literary critic, a sort of lap dog to the rich and powerful cultural elite, in whose villas he encounters Pablo Neruda and Ernst Jünger. Father Urrutia is offered a tour of Europe by agents of Opus Dei (to study ‘the disintegration of the churches,' a journey into realms of the surreal); and ensnared by this plum, he is next assigned-after the destruction of Allende-the secret, never-to-be-disclosed job of teaching Pinochet, at night, all about Marxism, so the junta generals can know their enemy. Soon, searingly, his memories go from bad to worse. Heart-stopping and hypnotic, BY NIGHT IN CHILE marks the American debut of an astonishing writer. Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and moved to Mexico City with his family in 1968. He went back to Chile in 1973, just a month before Pinochet seized power, and was arrested. After his release he returned to Mexico before moving to Paris and then Barcelona. He wrote ten novels and two collections of short stories as well as poetry before he died at the age of 50, on July 15, 2003. Translator Chris Andrews was born in Newcastle, Australia, in 1962. He teaches in the language department of the University of Melbourne. In 2005, his translation of Roberto Bolaño's DISTANT STAR won the VallE-Inclan Prize.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
One more journey to the universe of Roberto Bolaño, an essential voice of contemporary Latin American literature. Cowboy Graves is an unexpected treasure from the vault of a revolutionary talent. Roberto Bolaño's boundless imagination and seemingly inexhaustible gift for shaping the chaos of his reality into fiction is unmistakable in these three novellas. In "Cowboy Graves," Arturo Belano--Bolaño's alter ego--returns to Chile after the coup to fight with his comrades for socialism. "French Comedy of Horrors" takes the reader to French Guiana on the night after an eclipse where a seventeen year old answers a pay phone and finds himself recruited into the Clandestine Surrealist Group, a secret society of artists based in the sewers of Paris. And in "Fatherland," a young poet reckons with the fascist overthrow of his country, as the woman he is obsessed with disappears in the ensuing violence and a Third Reich fighter plane mysteriously writes her poetry in the sky overhead. These three fiercely original tales bear the signatures of Bolaño's extraordinary body of work, echoing the strange characters and uncanny scenes of his triumphs, while deepening our reverence for his gifts.
Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. A poet and novelist, he has been acclaimed as by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time (The Los Angeles Times), and as the real thing and the rarest (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He is widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. His books include The Savage Detectives, 2666, By Night in Chile, Distant Star, Last Evenings on Earth, and The Romantic Dogs.
The star of Roberto Bolaño's hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multi-media enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this ‘star' in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime. The narrator, unable to stop himself, tries to track Ruiz-Tagle down, and sees signs of his activity over and over again. A corrosive, mocking humor sparkles within Bolaño's darkest visions of Chile under Pinochet. In Bolaño's world there's a big graveyard and there's a big graveyard laugh. (He once described his novel BY NIGHT IN CHILE as ‘a tale of terror, a situation comedy, and a combination pastoral-gothic novel.') Many Chilean authors have written about the ‘bloody events of the early Pinochet years, the abductions and murders,' Richard Eder commented in The New York Times: ‘None has done it in so dark and glittering a fashion as Roberto Bolaño.' . Roberto Bolaño was born in Santiago, Chile. Bolaño (1953-2003) moved to Mexico City with his family in 1968. He went back to Chile in 1973, just a month before Pinochet seized power, and was arrested. After his release he returned to Mexico before moving to Paris and then Barcelona. He wrote ten novels and two collections of short stories as well as poetry before he died at the age of 50, on July 15, 2003. Translator Chris Andrews was born in Newcastle, Australia, in 1962. He teaches in the language department of the University of Melbourne. In 2005, his translation of Roberto Bolaño's DISTANT STAR won the VallE-Inclan Prize. .
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
‘The melancholy folklore of exile,' as Roberto Bolaño once put it, pervades these fourteen haunting stories. Bolaño's narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and generally unlucky) quests, who typically speak in the first person, as if giving a deposition, like witnesses to a crime. These protagonists tend to take detours and to narrate unresolved efforts. They are characters living in the margins, often coming to pieces, and sometimes, as in a nightmare, in constant flight from something horrid. In the short story ‘Silva the Eye,' Bolaño writes in the opening sentence: ‘It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as The Eye, always tried to escape violence, even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around 20 years old when Salvador Allende died.' Set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe, and peopled by Bolaño's beloved ‘failed generation,' the stories of LAST EVENINGS ON EARTH have appeared in The New Yorker and Grand Street. Roberto Bolaño was born in Santiago, Chile. Bolaño (1953-2003) moved to Mexico City with his family in 1968. He went back to Chile in 1973, just a month before Pinochet seized power, and was arrested. After his release he returned to Mexico before moving to Paris and then Barcelona. He wrote ten novels and two collections of short stories as well as poetry before he died at the age of 50, on July 15, 2003. Translator Chris Andrews was born in Newcastle, Australia, in 1962. He teaches in the language department of the University of Melbourne. In 2005, his translation of Roberto Bolaño's DISTANT STAR won the VallE-Inclan Prize.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
Paris, 1938. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo is in the hospital, unable to stop hiccupping. His wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud: the mesmerist Monsieur Pain. A timid bachelor, Pain is in love with the widow Reynaud, and agrees to try to use his powers to help save the poet's life. But then two mysterious Spanish agents intervene, determined to keep him from treating the patient. Terrible anxiety enters the story - along with another practitioner of the occult sciences, tarot cards, nightmares, Mme Curie, WWII, hopeless love, and an assassination. Poor Monsieur Pain, haunted and guilty, wanders the crepuscular, rainy streets of Paris. . . One of Roberto Bolano's most moving and tender novels, Monsieur Pain creates a galaxy of historical figures (Cesar Vallejo and his wife Georgette, the mesmerist Pierre Pain, and Mme Curie and her daughter Irene all actually existed) only to explode it gleefully in a final ‘Epilogue for Voices,' scattering the docudrama and opening the book onto vast, untold hinterlands.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
With the release of Roberto Bolaño's THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES in 1998,journalist Monica Maristain discovered a writer ‘capable of befriending his readers.' After exchanging several letters with Bolaño, Maristain formed a friendship of her own, culminating in an extensive interview with the novelist about truth and consequences, an interview that turned out to be Bolaño's last. Appearing for the first time in English, Bolaño's final interview is accompanied by a collection of conversations with reporters stationed throughout Latin America, providing a rich context for the work of the writer who, according to essayist Marcela Valdes, is ‘a T.S. Eliot or Virginia Woolf of Latin American letters.' As in all of Bolaño's work, there is also wide-ranging discussion of the author's many literary influences. (Explanatory notes on authors and titles that may be unfamiliar to English-language readers are included here.) The interviews, all of which were completed during the writing of the gigantic 2666, also address Bolaño's deepest personal concerns, from his domestic life and two young children to the realities of a fatal disease.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
A trove of strange, arresting, short masterworks - five stories and two essays - by Roberto Bolaño, a writer who pulls bloodthirsty rabbits out of his hat. As Pankaj Mishra remarked in The Nation, one of the remarkable qualities of Bolaño's short stories is that they can do the ‘work of a novel.' THE INSUFFERABLE GAUCHO contains tales bent on returning to haunt you. Unpredictable and daring, highly controlled yet somehow haywire, a Bolaño story might concern an elusive plagiarist or an elderly lawyer giving up city life for an improbable return to the family estate, now gone to wrack and ruin. Bolaño's stories have been applauded as ‘bleakly luminous and perfectly calibrated' (Publishers Weekly) and ‘complex and provocative' (International Herald Tribune), and as Francine Prose said in The New York Times Book Review, ‘something extraordinarily beautiful and (at least to me) entirely new.' Two fascinating essays are also included.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50. Chris Andrews has won the TLS Valle Inclán Prize and the PEN Translation Prize for his New Directions translations of Roberto Bolaño.
Here is the eagerly anticipated second volume of stories by Roberto Bolaño. Tender or etched in acid; hazily suggestive or chillingly definitive: a trove of strangely arresting, short masterworks. THE RETURN contains thirteen unforgettable stories bent on returning to haunt you. Wide-ranging, suggestive, and daring, a Bolaño story might concern the unexpected fate of a beautiful ex-girlfriend or a dream of meeting Enrique Lihn: his plots go anywhere and everywhere and they always surprise. Consider the title piece: a young party animal collapses in a Parisian disco and dies on the dance floor; just as his soul is departing his body, it realizes strange doings are afoot -- and what follows defies the imagination (except Bolaño's own). Although a few have been serialized in The New Yorker and Playboy, most of the stories of THE RETURN have never before appeared in English, and to Bolaño's many readers will be like catnip to cats.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
New Year's Eve, 1975: Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, founders of the visceral realist movement in poetry, leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their quest: to track down the obscure, vanished poet Cesárea Tinajero. A violent showdown in the Sonora desert turns search to flight; twenty years later Belano and Lima are still on the run. The explosive first long work by ‘the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, Los Angeles Times), THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES follows Belano and Lima through the eyes of the people whose paths they cross in Central America, Europe, Israel, and West Africa. This chorus includes the muses of visceral realism, the beautiful Font sisters; their father, an architect interned in a Mexico City asylum; a sensitive young follower of Octavio Paz; a foul-mouthed American graduate student; a French girl with a taste for the Marquis de Sade; the great-granddaughter of Leon Trotsky; a Chilean stowaway with a mystical gift for numbers; the anorexic heiress to a Mexican underwear empire; an Argentinian photojournalist in Angola; and assorted hangers-on, detractors, critics, lovers, employers, vagabonds, real-life literary figures, and random acquaintances. A polymathic descendant of Borges and Pynchon, Roberto Bolaño traces the hidden connection between literature and violence in a world where national boundaries are fluid and death lurks in the shadow of the avant-garde. THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES is a dazzling original, the first great Latin American novel of the twenty-first century.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
THE SECRET OF EVIL opens the computer file of all the texts Bolaño was working on at his death: a glimpse of what was coming from ‘one of those rare writers who write for a future time - we have only begun to appreciate his strange, oblique genius.' - John Banville. A North American journalist in Paris is woken at 4 a.m. by a mysterious caller urgently needing to pass on information. For V. S. Naipaul the prevalence of sodomy in Argentina is a symptom of the nation's political ills. The members of the Tel Quel group abscond from a photo to pursue intellectual and erotic adventures. Daniela de Montecristo (familiar to readers of NAZI LITERATURE IN THE AMERICAS and 2666) recounts the loss of her virginity. Arturo Belano returns to Mexico City and meets the last disciples of Ulises Lima, who play in a band called The Asshole of Morelos. Belano's son Geronimo disappears in Berlin during the Days of Chaos in 2005. Memories of a return to the native land. Argentine writers as gangsters. Zombie pandemonium as allegory. The various pieces in THE SECRET OF EVIL extend the intricate, single web that is the work of Roberto Bolaño.
Born in Santiago, Chile, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) moved to Mexico City with his family in 1968. He went back to Chile in 1973, but in less than a month Pinochet seized power. Bolaño was arrested and temporarily imprisoned. After his release, he returned to Mexico before moving to Paris and then Barcelona. The winner of many prizes, including the Premio Herralde de Novela and the Premio Romulo Gallegos, Bolaño wrote novels, short stories, and poetry. BY NIGHT IN CHILE introduced Bolaño to the English-speaking world; he was acclaimed as ‘the real thing and the rarest' by Susan Sontag. Thirteen more of his books have been published by New Directions, and his collected poems, THE UNKNOWN UNIVERSITY, is forthcoming. CHRIS ANDREWS is a poet who lives and teaches in Australia. He has won the TLS Valle-Inclãn Prize and a PEN Translation Award for his New Directions translations of Roberto Bolaño. NATASHA WIMMER's translation of Bolaño's 2666 won the National Book Critics Circle's Prize for Fiction.
A hair-raising book that delivers Bolano's signature mix of mordant wit and romantic tenderness, The Skating Rink is both a crime and a love story. The story starts off with Gaspar Heredia - writer, Mexican, illegal immigrant, and stand-in for Bolano himself -who meets Remo Moran, a businessman who pulled himself up to wealth from his inauspicious beginnings as a stall vendor of cheap tourist souvenirs. Moran hires Heredia as night watchman for a campground Moran runs as a stopping ground for many illegal immigrants. Heredia, out of boredom, starts spying on Moran's odd friends and accidentally stumbles across a skating rink built by a corrupt civil servant - Enric Rosquelles: pompous, fat, squat and ugly - who has diverted public funds to secretly build the rink on behalf of the love of his life: Maria, a young blonde babe whose abiding passion is to make it onto the Spanish Olympic ice-skating team and who, unbeknownst to Enric, is having a fling with Remo Moran, our successful businessman risen from cheap souvenirs. Alas, the discovery of Enric's crimes leads to madcap blackmail, more crime, sex, intrigue - and murder. Told in rotating narratives of the three men whose actions revolve around the young blonde skating babe and her dim-witted but strong-willed manipulations. Set in the imaginary resort town of Z, north of Barcelona, Spain.Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolano (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ' by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time ' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times), ' and as ' the real thing and the rarest ' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
From a master of contemporary fiction, a tale of bohemian youth on the make in Mexico City. Two young poets, Jan and Remo, find themselves adrift in Mexico City. Obsessed with poetry, and, above all, with science fiction, they are eager to forge a life in the literary world–or sacrifice themselves to it. Roberto Bolaño's The Spirit of Science Fiction is a story of youth hungry for revolution, notoriety, and sexual adventure, as they work to construct a reality out of the fragments of their dreams. But as close as these friends are, the city tugs them in opposite directions. Jan withdraws from the world, shutting himself in their shared rooftop apartment where he feverishly composes fan letters to the stars of science fiction and dreams of cosmonauts and Nazis. Meanwhile, Remo runs headfirst into the future, spending his days and nights with a circle of wild young writers, seeking pleasure in the city's labyrinthine streets, rundown cafEs, and murky bathhouses. This kaleidoscopic work of strange and tender beauty is a fitting introduction for readers uninitiated into the thrills of Roberto Bolaño's fiction, and an indispensable addition to an ecstatic and transgressive body of work.
Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. A poet and novelist, he has been acclaimed as by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time (The Los Angeles Times), and as the real thing and the rarest (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He is widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. His books include The Savage Detectives, 2666, By Night in Chile, Distant Star, Last Evenings on Earth, and The Romantic Dogs.
On vacation with his girlfriend, Ingeborg, the German war games champion Udo Berger returns to a small town on the Costa Brava where he spent the summers of his childhood. Soon they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, who introduce them to a band of locals - the Wolf, the Lamb, and El Quemado - and to the darker side of life in a resort town. Late one night, Charly disappears without a trace, and Udo's well-ordered life is thrown into upheaval; while Ingeborg and Hanna return to their lives in Germany, he refuses to leave the hotel. Soon he and El Quemado are enmeshed in a round of Third Reich, Udo's favorite World War II strategy game, and Udo discovers that the game's consequences may be all too real. Written in 1989 and found among Roberto Bolaño's papers after his death, THE THIRD REICH is a stunning exploration of memory and violence. Reading this quick, visceral novel, we see a world-class writer coming into his own - and exploring for the first time the themes that would define his masterpieces THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES and 2666.
ROBERTO BOLANO was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He grew up in Chile and Mexico City, where he was a founder of the Infrarealist poetry movement. He is the author of THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES, which received the Herralde Prize and the Rômulo Gallegos Prize, and 2666, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Bolaño died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of fifty. NATASHA WIMMER has translated many works of fiction and nonfiction by Spanish-language authors, including Mario Vargas Llosa, Laura Restrepo, and Rodrigo Fresán, as well as Roberto Bolaño.
Perhaps surprisingly to some of his fiction fans, Roberto Bolano touted poetry as the superior art form, able to approach an infinity in which you become infinitely small without disappearing. When asked, What makes you believe you re a better poet than a novelist? Bolano replied, The poetry makes me blush less. The sum of his life s work in his preferred medium, The Unknown University is a showcase of Bolano s gift for freely crossing genres, with poems written in prose, stories in verse, and flashes of writing that can hardly be categorized. Poetry, he believed, is braver than anyone.
Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. A poet and novelist, he has been acclaimed as by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time (The Los Angeles Times), and as the real thing and the rarest (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He is widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. His books include The Savage Detectives, 2666, By Night in Chile, Distant Star, Last Evenings on Earth, and The Romantic Dogs.
‘Poetry is braver than anyone,' Roberto Bolan?o believed, and the proof is here in Tres, his most inventive and bracing poetry collection. Roberto Bolan?o's Tres is a showcase of the author's willingness to freely cross genres, with poems in prose, stories in verse, and flashes of writing that can hardly be categorized. As the title implies, the collection is composed of three sections. ‘Prose from Autumn in Gerona,' a cinematic series of prose poems, slowly reveals a subtle and emotional tale of unrequited love by presenting each scene, shattering it, and piecing it all back together, over and over again. The second part, ‘The Neochileans,' is a sort of On the Road in verse, which narrates the travels of a young Chilean band on tour in the far reaches of their country. Finally, the collection ends with a series of short poems that take us on ‘A Stroll Through Literature' and remind us of Bolan?o's masterful ability to walk the line between the comically serious and the seriously comical.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50. Laura Healy has received a Master's in Spanish from Harvard. She is the managing editor of Harvard Review and the web editor of Zoland Poetry.
Begun in the 1980s and worked on until the author's death in 2003, Woes of the True Policeman is Roberto Bolaño's last, unfinished novel. The novel follows oscar Amalfitano - an exiled Chilean university professor and widower - through the maze of his revolutionary past, his relationship with his teenage daughter, Rosa, his passion for a former student, and his retreat from scandal in Barcelona. Forced to leave Barcelona for Santa Teresa, a Mexican city close to the U.S. border where women are being killed in unprecedented numbers, Amalfitano soon begins an affair with Castillo, a young forger of Larry Rivers paintings. Meanwhile, Rosa, Amalfitano's daughter, engages in her own epistolary romance with a basketball player from Barcelona, while still trying to cope with her mother's early death and her father's secrets. After finding Castillo in bed with her father, Rosa is forced to confront her own crisis. What follows is an intimate police investigation of Amalfitano that involves a series of dark twists, culminating in a finale full of euphoria and heartbreak. Featuring characters and stories from his other books, Woes of the True Policeman invites the reader more than ever into the world of Roberto Bolaño. It is an exciting, kaleidoscopic novel, lyrical and intense, yet darkly humorous. Exploring the roots of memory and the limits of art, Woes of the True Policeman marks the culmination of one of the great careers of world literature.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50. Laura Healy has received a Master's in Spanish from Harvard. She is the managing editor of Harvard Review and the web editor of Zoland Poetry.
Jorge Luis Borges is one of the key writers of the twentieth century in the context of both Hispanic and world literature. This Companion has been designed for keen readers of Borges whether they approach him in English or Spanish, within or outside a university context. It takes his stories and essays of the forties and fifties, especially Ficciones and El Aleph, to be his most significant works, and organizes its material in consequence. About two thirds of the book analyzes the stories of this period text by text. The early sections map Borges's intellectual trajectory up to the fifties in some detail, and up to his death more briefly. They aim to provide an account of the context which will allow the reader maximum access to the meaning and significance of his work and present a biographical narrative developed against the Argentine literary world in which Borges was a key player, the Argentine intellectual tradition in its historical context, and the Argentine and world politics to which his works respond in more or less obvious ways.
STEVEN BOLDY is Reader in Latin American Literature at the University of Cambridge.
Julio Cortázar is one of the best-known members of the present generation of successful Latin American writers. His work has been widely translated. This book is a clear and detailed study of his four major novels. Steven Boldy recognizes the complexity, the ‘nerve centres of contradiction and tension', of Cortázar's novels which resist a single dogmatic interpretation; but Dr Boldy's sympathetic analysis allows the reader to approach an understanding of the individual novels and the way these are linked by an underlying thematic pattern. Cortázar's work is seen in the context of it's European and Argentinian background: the cultural materials of surrealism, allusiveness and eclecticism that he absorbs and transforms. Separate chapters concentrate on the four major novels, Los premios, Rayuela, 62. Modelo para armar and Libro de Manuel. The approach to these novels is not limited to one particular aspect or theme, but the dualism inherent in the writing and its philosophical and formal implications provide the basic framework for study. An underlying myth structure emerges - man's search for the recovery of a lost force, whose absence destroys his unity and accounts for the levels of dualism in the novels: the presence of two types of writing and two narrators, the theme of the doppelganger and the ironic use of word play. All quotations from the Spanish have been translated to make this book available to the general reader as well as to hispanists and students of Latin American and comparative literature.
STEVEN BOLDY is Reader in Latin American Literature at the University of Cambridge.
The work of the Chilean novelist and short - story writer Maria Luisa Bombal (b. June 8, 1910; d. May 6, 1980) has been coming in for fresh attention and new readings. Successfully fusing fantastic elements and innovative construction with a critical vision of society, her fiction of the 1930s anticipated the magical realism that, in later decades, would fascinate an international public. HOUSE OF MIST is characteristic of Bombal's fiction in its focus on the intimate experience of a woman of the landowning class, Bombal's heroine is gifted - or burdened - with an extraordinary imagination and an empathetic bond with the natural world, At the same time, she is acutely conscious of the repression she endures in her social role, This combination of attributes allows the novel to be both a highly subjective, first-person account of intensely lived emotional experiences and an often bitter novelistic assessment of the situation of women in the Chilean landed aristocracy. Helga, the protagonist-narrator of House of Mist, typifies Bombal's heroines, She has a powerfully imaginative inner life and is able to decipher messages from the natural world, Still, her specialness is disregarded by most of those around her, Until the novel's closing pages, she is underappreciated by the man who controls her lot in life, and who prides himself on assessing matters by objective standards. The Bombal heroine preserves, into the rationalistic twentieth century, some of the qualities of the sorceress, divining woman, or nature goddess. She enjoys an exceptional attunement to the natural world, which often provides her with clues as to the course her life is taking. She finds in water and associated entities, as well as trees and earth, a plenitude of significance well beyond the objectively observable. Bombal's La amortajada, published in 1938 by Sur, was awarded the Premio Municipal de Novela in Santiago de Chile, It appeared in 1948 as THE SHROUDED WOMAN, again in the author's own translation, In this case, the English version does not represent a drastic departure from the Spanish original. THE SHROUDED WOMAN is known, above all, for its innovative treatment of narrative voice and point of view, It is principally dedicated to relaying the thoughts and memories of the protagonist, Ana Maria, as she spends the night at her own wake, is carried to the family crypt in the morning, and releases her individual personality to enter into the rhythms of the cosmos. Though lying dead at her wake, she is able to open her eyes enough to see the people who appear at her side to pay their respects. As significant figures from her past come into her field of vision, each unleashes a rush of memories. A third-person narrator often ushers in the heroine's discourse and narrates entire passages, though from Ana Maria's point of view. Yet the novel is most memorable for the shrouded woman's first-person reminiscences and comments. THE SHROUDED WOMAN was the last new piece of long fiction from Bombal, who experienced enormous difficulty disciplining herself to write. Up to the end of the 1930s, she continued her career as a creative writer, authoring both filmscripts and short stories, In 1939, she published in Sur ‘Las islas nuevas' (‘New Islands') and ‘El ârbol' (‘The Tree'), two stories to which critics have frequently returned, A less-noted piece of short fiction, ‘Trenzas' (‘Braids'), appeared in Saber Vivir in 1940. ‘Lo secreto' (‘The Unknown') appeared in a 1941 edition of HOUSE OF MIST. During the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, while married to Count Raphael de Saint Phalle, Bombal lived in the United States, Her U.S. residence helps explain a curious circumstance. Bombal virtually ceased publishing new material and concentrated upon reworking her great successes in English. During her last years, many of her followers heard that she was struggling to finish a novel. . .
María Luisa Bombal Anthes (Viña del Mar, 8 June 1910 - 6 May 1980) was a Chilean author. Daughter of Martín Bombal Videla and Blanca Anthes Precht. Her work is now highly regarded, incorporating themes of eroticism, surrealism and feminism, and she ranks among a small number of Latin American female authors whose works received worldwide acclaim. Following the death of her father, Martín Bombal Videla, in 1922, the twelve-year-old María Luisa was sent to Paris, where she studied at the college Sainte Geneviève. At the institute for literature at the University of Paris she studied literature and philosophy until her return to South America. She had also attended the LycEe La Bruyère and the Sorbonne at the University of Paris. After her return, she married Elogio Sánchez, who did not share her interest in literature. During their marriage, Bombal began to suffer from depression, and shot her husband after a failed suicide attempt, although he survived. With the help of friends, María Bombal fled the country to Argentina, where in 1933 she met Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda in Buenos Aires. In 1940, she and her third husband emigrated to the USA, where she lived until 1971, when she returned to South America; living first in Argentina and then in Viña del Mar, Chile. There, the 18th September 1976, Bombal again met Jorge Luis Borges. She remained in Chile until her death in 1980.
In her prologue to HOUSE OF MIST, Maria-Luisa Bombal writes: I wish to inform the reader that even though this is a mystery, it is a mystery without murder. He will not find here any corpse, any detective; he will not even find a murder trial, for the simple reason that theft will be no murderer. Theft will be no murderer and no murder, yet there will be . . . crime. And there will be fear. Those for whom fear has an attraction; those who are interested in the mysterious life people live in their dreams during sleep; those who believe that the dead are not really dead; those who are afraid of the fog and of their own hearts. . . they will perhaps enjoy going back to the early days of this century and entering into the strange house of mist that a young woman, very much like all other women, built for herself at the southern end of South America.
María Luisa Bombal Anthes (Viña del Mar, 8 June 1910 - 6 May 1980) was a Chilean author. Daughter of Martín Bombal Videla and Blanca Anthes Precht. Her work is now highly regarded, incorporating themes of eroticism, surrealism and feminism, and she ranks among a small number of Latin American female authors whose works received worldwide acclaim. Following the death of her father, Martín Bombal Videla, in 1922, the twelve-year-old María Luisa was sent to Paris, where she studied at the college Sainte Geneviève. At the institute for literature at the University of Paris she studied literature and philosophy until her return to South America. She had also attended the LycEe La Bruyère and the Sorbonne at the University of Paris. After her return, she married Elogio Sánchez, who did not share her interest in literature. During their marriage, Bombal began to suffer from depression, and shot her husband after a failed suicide attempt, although he survived. With the help of friends, María Bombal fled the country to Argentina, where in 1933 she met Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda in Buenos Aires. In 1940, she and her third husband emigrated to the USA, where she lived until 1971, when she returned to South America; living first in Argentina and then in Viña del Mar, Chile. There, the 18th September 1976, Bombal again met Jorge Luis Borges. She remained in Chile until her death in 1980.
Maria Luisa Bombal was one of the most important Latin American writers of this century. It is ironic that while a younger generation of Hispanic writers has attained a well-merited celebrity in this country, the work of Bombal-which in many ways anticipates that of writers like Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and Jose Donoso -has remained unknown to the English-speaking public. The stories in NEW ISLANDS, written in the 1940s, represent the best of Bombal's work, now at last available in the United States. Bombal blends the baroque sensibility that so characterizes the Latin American novel with an absolute precision of expression, Her stories are perfect little gems, models of the way an artist consciously crafts a work, Every word, every effect, however lush and extravagant, is evidence of an artist in perfect control of her material, Bombal is a virtuoso of language, but her stories are more than exercises in style, for they are concerned with the plight of women trapped-as women have so often been-in situations not of their own making. Bombal is no sentimentalist. The lives of her characters are all the more evocative and haunting, all the more universal, be- cause these women are flawed human beings, at times irrational, often accomplices in their own subjugation. These stories, richly distilling passion and fear, are the precursors of a modern feminist sensibility, a new kind of writing about women by women. . .
María Luisa Bombal Anthes (Viña del Mar, 8 June 1910 - 6 May 1980) was a Chilean author. Daughter of Martín Bombal Videla and Blanca Anthes Precht. Her work is now highly regarded, incorporating themes of eroticism, surrealism and feminism, and she ranks among a small number of Latin American female authors whose works received worldwide acclaim. Following the death of her father, Martín Bombal Videla, in 1922, the twelve-year-old María Luisa was sent to Paris, where she studied at the college Sainte Geneviève. At the institute for literature at the University of Paris she studied literature and philosophy until her return to South America. She had also attended the LycEe La Bruyère and the Sorbonne at the University of Paris. After her return, she married Elogio Sánchez, who did not share her interest in literature. During their marriage, Bombal began to suffer from depression, and shot her husband after a failed suicide attempt, although he survived. With the help of friends, María Bombal fled the country to Argentina, where in 1933 she met Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda in Buenos Aires. In 1940, she and her third husband emigrated to the USA, where she lived until 1971, when she returned to South America; living first in Argentina and then in Viña del Mar, Chile. There, the 18th September 1976, Bombal again met Jorge Luis Borges. She remained in Chile until her death in 1980.
Maria Luisa Bombal was one of the most important Latin American writers of this century. It is ironic that while a younger generation of Hispanic writers has attained a well-merited celebrity in this country, the work of Bombal-which in many ways anticipates that of writers like Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and Jose Donoso -has remained unknown to the English-speaking public. The stories in NEW ISLANDS, written in the 1940s, represent the best of Bombal's work, now at last available in the United States. Bombal blends the baroque sensibility that so characterizes the Latin American novel with an absolute precision of expression, Her stories are perfect little gems, models of the way an artist consciously crafts a work, Every word, every effect, however lush and extravagant, is evidence of an artist in perfect control of her material, Bombal is a virtuoso of language, but her stories are more than exercises in style, for they are concerned with the plight of women trapped-as women have so often been-in situations not of their own making. Bombal is no sentimentalist. The lives of her characters are all the more evocative and haunting, all the more universal, be- cause these women are flawed human beings, at times irrational, often accomplices in their own subjugation. These stories, richly distilling passion and fear, are the precursors of a modern feminist sensibility, a new kind of writing about women by women.
María Luisa Bombal Anthes (Viña del Mar, 8 June 1910 - 6 May 1980) was a Chilean author. Daughter of Martín Bombal Videla and Blanca Anthes Precht. Her work is now highly regarded, incorporating themes of eroticism, surrealism and feminism, and she ranks among a small number of Latin American female authors whose works received worldwide acclaim. Following the death of her father, Martín Bombal Videla, in 1922, the twelve-year-old María Luisa was sent to Paris, where she studied at the college Sainte Geneviève. At the institute for literature at the University of Paris she studied literature and philosophy until her return to South America. She had also attended the LycEe La Bruyère and the Sorbonne at the University of Paris. After her return, she married Elogio Sánchez, who did not share her interest in literature. During their marriage, Bombal began to suffer from depression, and shot her husband after a failed suicide attempt, although he survived. With the help of friends, María Bombal fled the country to Argentina, where in 1933 she met Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda in Buenos Aires. In 1940, she and her third husband emigrated to the USA, where she lived until 1971, when she returned to South America; living first in Argentina and then in Viña del Mar, Chile. There, the 18th September 1976, Bombal again met Jorge Luis Borges. She remained in Chile until her death in 1980.
As night was beginning to fall, slowly her eyes opened. Oh, a little, just a little, It was as if, hidden behind her long lashes, she was trying to see.' ‘And in the glow of the tall candles, those who were keeping watch leaned forward to observe the clarity and transparency in that narrow fringe of pupil death had failed to slim. With wonder and reverence, they leaned forward, tin- aware that she could see them, ‘For she was seeing, she was feeling . . . ‘ In the same delicately haunting style she used in HOUSE OF MIST, Maria-Luisa Bombal tells the story of a beautiful and violent woman, who sees clearly, only after death, the intricate pattern which her passing made in the lives of those who were close to her, The spell of the mists and shadows of Chile and of the colorful people of that strange and romantic country is woven compellingly to create a tale as vivid as a dream.
María Luisa Bombal Anthes (Viña del Mar, 8 June 1910 - 6 May 1980) was a Chilean author. Daughter of Martín Bombal Videla and Blanca Anthes Precht. Her work is now highly regarded, incorporating themes of eroticism, surrealism and feminism, and she ranks among a small number of Latin American female authors whose works received worldwide acclaim. Following the death of her father, Martín Bombal Videla, in 1922, the twelve-year-old María Luisa was sent to Paris, where she studied at the college Sainte Geneviève. At the institute for literature at the University of Paris she studied literature and philosophy until her return to South America. She had also attended the LycEe La Bruyère and the Sorbonne at the University of Paris. After her return, she married Elogio Sánchez, who did not share her interest in literature. During their marriage, Bombal began to suffer from depression, and shot her husband after a failed suicide attempt, although he survived. With the help of friends, María Bombal fled the country to Argentina, where in 1933 she met Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda in Buenos Aires. In 1940, she and her third husband emigrated to the USA, where she lived until 1971, when she returned to South America; living first in Argentina and then in Viña del Mar, Chile. There, the 18th September 1976, Bombal again met Jorge Luis Borges. She remained in Chile until her death in 1980.
In THE PATIENT IMPATIENCE, the harmonious intertwining of the factual history of Nicaragua with the literary elaboration of Borge's personal reality produces a filly resonant view of the Nicaraguan Revolution. Borge's humor permeates The Patient Impatience as he presents stories from his youth and early adult years and vivid portraits of such historical personages as Carlos Fonseca (Founder of the FSLN) and Jose Coronel Urtecho (poet and literary critic). The different stages of his life give us unique insights into the Nicaraguan society during the Somoza regime from the 1930s to the end of the 1960s. This social reality is revealed in Borge's personal, lively style with gripping accounts of people from all walks of life.
Tomás Borge Martínez (13 August 1930 - 30 April 2012, often spelled as Thomas Borge in American newspapers) was a cofounder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua and was Interior Minister of Nicaragua during one of the administrations of Daniel Ortega. He was also a renowned statesman, writer, and politician. Tomás Borge also held the titles of "Vice-Secretary and President of the FSLN", member of the Nicaraguan Parliament and National Congress, and Ambassador to Peru. Considered a hardliner, he led the "prolonged people's war" tendency within the FSLN until his death. In 2010, he stated in an interview: "I am proud to be a Sandinista, to continue being faithful to the red and black flag of our party, to continue being faithful to our revolutionary organization; and to die proud of raising the front, and not having been disloyal to my principles, nor disloyal with my friends nor my companions, nor with my flag, nor with my cries of war."
‘JORGE LUIS BORGES, the Argentine genius, read English before he read Spanish; one of his special delights is Anglo-Saxon literature; and his knowledge of English and American literature is fabulous,' wrote a reviewer of the earlier Introduction to American Literature. Like its companion volume, this collection of essays on English literature originated in lectures prepared for Borges's Argentine students. To English and American readers the two volumes offer a view of our literary traditions from a fresh vantage point-that of a literate and discerning Latin American. As confessed in the author's preface, ‘to abridge the history of one of the richest of literatures within the brief compass of this book is an obviously impossible undertaking.' Nevertheless, by selecting representative figures in each movement and period, Borges has provided a remarkably complete introduction to the long and intricate history of English literature. More important to his purpose - ‘to interest the reader and to stimulate his curiosity to a deeper study' - what he touches on is always treated with rare discernment, wit, and charm.
JORGE LUIS BORGES is commonly regarded as the greatest contemporary Latin American author. Born in Buenos Aires, he was educated in Switzerland and lived for a time in Spain before returning to his native Argentina. There he has become noted both as a poet and a writer of short stories. His critical essays have been collected in Inquisiciones and Otras Inquisiciones. His work is increasingly available in English translations. . Translators and Editors: L. CLARK KEATING and ROBERT O. EVANS collaborated earlier in the translation and editing of Borges's Introduction to American Literature. Mr. Keating is professor of French at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of Studies on the Literary Salon in France and of Critic of Civilization: Georges Duhamel and translator of The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru by Father Pablo de Arriaga. Mr. Evans is professor of English at the University of Kentucky. He is editor and contributor to Graham Greene: Some Critical Considerations and author of studies on the English Renaissance.
Dedicating his remarkable collection of essays ‘To those three forgotten greats - Picasso, Joyce, Le Corbusier,' Honorio Bustos Domecq has, with a perspicacity bordering on genius, addressed himself those serious questions raised by contemporary art, literature, and architecture that continue to trouble us. As Gervasio Montenegro writes in the Foreword: ‘Whomsoever longs to dive into the depths of the novel, the lyric, the essay, conceptualism, architecture, sculpture, the theater, and the whole gamut of audiovisual media, which are so much the mark of our times, will, in spite of himself, have come to terms with this indispensable vademecum, a true Adiadne's thread which will lead him by the hand all the way to the Minotaur.' It is our great good fortune that through the combined efforts of Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy-Casares, and the translator Norman Thomas di Giovanni, these exemplary chronicles (a thoroughly diverting spoof of the critical essay) have been brought to the attention of the English-speaking world.
JORGE LUIS BORGES has been acknowledged to be one of the preeminent figures of twentieth-century literature. CHRONICLES OF BUSTOS DOMECQ is the sixth title in Dutton's program to make available all of Borges' writings for the reader in English. Previous titles are THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS (1969), THE ALEPH AND OTHER STORIES (1970), DOCTOR BRODIE'S REPORT (1972), A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INFAMY (1972), and IN PRAISE OF DARKNESS (1974). ADOLFO BIOY-CASARES, Borges' longtime friend and collaborator, is the author of A PLAN FOR ESCAPE, a novel first published in English in 1975. NORMAN THOMAS DI GIOVANNI, the translator, has worked with Borges on the translation of his prose and much of his poetry. He edited Borges' SELECTED POEMS 1923-1967.
Jorge Luis Borges s now recognized as one of the world's greatest living writers. He has achieved this eminence primarily through those inimitably bizarre tales which probe the dark underside of man's mind and memory, history and future. Part detective writer, part science fictionist, but above all a sensitive and consummately erudite literary artist, he has been admired by John Updike as ‘a giant of world literature,' and by George Steiner as ‘among the few fresh dreamers since Poe and Baudelaire.' . . . ‘A strange and formidable writer, Borges is also a magisterial stylist.' - The Atlantic . . . ‘Ranks among the few perfectly composed, thoroughly fascinating literary intelligences alive.' - New York Times Book Review . . . ‘Borges is one of the greatest writers alive today.' - New York Review of Books. . Jorge Luis Borges has served as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University, and was the co-recipient of the 1961 Prix International des Editeurs. He lives in Argentina, where he recently resigned his post as Director of the National Library due to his failing eyesight. A. Bioy Casares is his lifelong friend, and has appeared as a character in several of his famous stories. . (original title: Cuentos Breves y Extraordinarios, 1967 - Editorial Santiago Rueda S.R.L., Buenos Aires).
JORGE LUIS BORGES has been acknowledged to be one of the preeminent figures of twentieth-century literature. CHRONICLES OF BUSTOS DOMECQ is the sixth title in Dutton's program to make available all of Borges' writings for the reader in English. Previous titles are THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS (1969), THE ALEPH AND OTHER STORIES (1970), DOCTOR BRODIE'S REPORT (1972), A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INFAMY (1972), and IN PRAISE OF DARKNESS (1974). ADOLFO BIOY-CASARES, Borges' longtime friend and collaborator, is the author of A PLAN FOR ESCAPE, a novel first published in English in 1975.
Jorge Luis Borges s now recognized as one of the world's greatest living writers. He has achieved this eminence primarily through those inimitably bizarre tales which probe the dark underside of man's mind and memory, history and future. Part detective writer, part science fictionist, but above all a sensitive and consummately erudite literary artist, he has been admired by John Updike as ‘a giant of world literature,' and by George Steiner as ‘among the few fresh dreamers since Poe and Baudelaire.' . . . ‘A strange and formidable writer, Borges is also a magisterial stylist.' - The Atlantic . . . ‘Ranks among the few perfectly composed, thoroughly fascinating literary intelligences alive.' - New York Times Book Review . . . ‘Borges is one of the greatest writers alive today.' - New York Review of Books. Jorge Luis Borges has served as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University, and was the co-recipient of the 1961 Prix International des Editeurs. He lives in Argentina, where he recently resigned his post as Director of the National Library due to his failing eyesight. A. Bioy Casares is his lifelong friend, and has appeared as a character in several of his famous stories.
JORGE LUIS BORGES has been acknowledged to be one of the preeminent figures of twentieth-century literature. CHRONICLES OF BUSTOS DOMECQ is the sixth title in Dutton's program to make available all of Borges' writings for the reader in English. Previous titles are THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS (1969), THE ALEPH AND OTHER STORIES (1970), DOCTOR BRODIE'S REPORT (1972), A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INFAMY (1972), and IN PRAISE OF DARKNESS (1974). ADOLFO BIOY-CASARES, Borges' longtime friend and collaborator, is the author of A PLAN FOR ESCAPE, a novel first published in English in 1975.
The first fruit of the collaboration of Borges and his long-time friend Bioy-Casares, SIX PROBLEMS FOR DON ISIDRO PARODI appeared originally under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. ‘Bugsy's' prose style is not quite the style of either of the collaborators, but in this volume, at least, ‘he never got out of hand,' as Borges complained he did later. In the first story, Parodi, who is himself in jail for homicide, is visited by a young man who seeks his help in solving a particularly baffling murder. In the second story, a killing takes place aboard an express train. One of the characters is a writer named Gervasio Montenegro, whom the discerning reader will identify as author of the book's expressive foreword. In ‘Tadeo Limardo's Victim,' a murdered man prepares for his own death. ‘Tai An's Long Search' is a variation on Poe's ‘The Purloined Letter.' In ‘Free Will and the Commendatore,' a cuckold takes elaborate and invisible revenge. The book also includes a short biography of H. Bustos Domecq by Adelma Badoglio, a provincial schoolteacher. Comic in intent, and pointedly satirical, SIX PROBLEMS FOR DON ISIDRO PARODI is an essential key to understanding Borges' development as a writer. JORGE LUIS BORGES, now eighty-one years old, continues to write, to travel, and to lecture. As one of the preeminent figures of twentieth-century literature, he is read and admired throughout the Western world. SIX PROBLEMS FOR DON ISIDRO PARODI is the ninth title in Dutton's program to make available in English all of Borges' major writings. Dutton also is the publisher of JORGE LUIS BORGES. A LITERARY BIOGRAPHY, by Emir Rodrigues Monegal. ADOLFO BIOY-CASARES, besides collaborating with Borges on this book and CHRONICLES OF BUSTOS DOMECQ, is the author of A PLAN FOR ESCAPE, a novel first published in English in 1975. Like Borges, he lives in Buenos Aires.
JORGE LUIS BORGES has been acknowledged to be one of the preeminent figures of twentieth-century literature. CHRONICLES OF BUSTOS DOMECQ is the sixth title in Dutton's program to make available all of Borges' writings for the reader in English. Previous titles are THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS (1969), THE ALEPH AND OTHER STORIES (1970), DOCTOR BRODIE'S REPORT (1972), A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INFAMY (1972), and IN PRAISE OF DARKNESS (1974). ADOLFO BIOY-CASARES, Borges' longtime friend and collaborator, is the author of A PLAN FOR ESCAPE, a novel first published in English in 1975. NORMAN THOMAS DI GIOVANNI, the translator, worked with Borges in Buenos Aires from 1968 to 1972. He currently lives in Devon, England.
After almost a half-century of scrupulous devotion to his art, Jorge Luis Borges has personally compiled this anthology of his work-short stories, essays, poems, and the brief, mordant ‘sketches which, in Borges hands, take on the dimensions of a genre unique in modern letters. Considered for years by readers of Spanish to be the major prose writer of South America, it is only in the last decade that Borges, through the medium of translation, has been revealed to Euro- pean and American readers as one of the finest writers anywhere in the world. He is a thoroughly contemporary artist whose roots are deep in tradition and whose contribution is a brilliant, singular, and integral addition to modern literature. In this anthology, the author has put together those pieces on which he would like his reputation to rest; they are not arranged chronologically, but with an eye to their ‘sympathies and differences.' A Personal Anthology, therefore, is not merely a collection, but a new composition.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint. Originally published 1972. As Jorge Luis Borges conceived it, A Universal History of Infamy was to be no more than light entertainment. Yet after the book appeared in 1935 its influence on the fiction of Latin America was so profound that its publication date has become a landmark in the history of Latin American literature. Ostensibly a series of factual accounts about the lives of noted scoundrels, the book in actuality marked the debut of Borges as a storyteller, using that unique blend of fact, fiction, and pseudo-scholarship that later came to full expression in Borges' world-famed short stories. In Borges' rogues gallery are, among others, Billy the Kid and one Lazarus Morell, who encouraged Southern slaves to escape by promising them freedom, only to sell them back into slavery. From China, Borges gives us the Widow Ching, who at one point commanded six hundred war junks and forty thousand pirates. In the New York City of 1890 he locates Monk Eastman, son of the owner of a kosher restaurant, who sheltered a hundred cats and charged $100 and up for ‘doing the big job.' ‘The Insulting Master of Etiquette Kotsuke no SukE' represents infamy among the Japanese, while Hakim of Merv does the honors for Turkestan. ‘Tom Castro, the Implausible Impostor,' was born in London but found his destiny in Chile and Sydney, Australia. As in the original Spanish edition, A Universal History of Infamy also includes Borges' first short story, ‘Streetcorner Man,' presented here in a new translation, and a collection of short parables that are typically Borges. Valuable and important for what it tells us about Borges' mind and method, A Universal History of Infamy manages, at the same time, to fulfill delightfully Borges' original intention. It is, indeed, a first-rate entertainment.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INFAMY is a collection of stories about some of the world's more or less notable villains. The characters Borges has chosen to portray represent no great tradition of infamy, nor are their activities the most bloodthirsty or the most brilliant. Some are already notorious, like Bill Harrigan, better known as Billy the Kid, or Tom Castro, who as the Tichborne Claimant was the subject of one of the most fascinating cases in legal history. Others, like KotsukE no SukE, or the Widow Ching, are culled from rare and unread books. Also included is the popular Streetcorner Man', Borges' first attempt at a straightforward short story about Buenos Aires hoodlums. The final section of the book, entitled ‘Etcetera', includes a series of short and magical tales in which human villainy becomes the victim of fate or enchantment or its own perversity. Borges wrote these stories for publication in an Argentine newspaper during the 1930s, when he was still a relatively unknown writer. He confides in the preface that they were ‘the game of a shy young man who dared not write stories and so amused himself by falsifying and distorting the tales of others'. At the time, these stories were written and meant to be read as entertainments; now, though they are still essentially pieces for enjoyment, we can at once recognize in them the quiet brilliance of Borges' writing. Beneath the spare and deceptive prose style we respond with delight to the wry perception, the nudging irony and the self-mocking parody which are his distinctive hallmarks. Borges says himself that ‘The word ‘infamy' in the title is thunderous, but behind the sound and fury there is nothing. The book is no more than appearance, a surface of images; for that very reason it may prove enjoyable.'
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
As Jorge Luis Borges conceived it, A Universal History of Infamy was to be no more than light entertainment. Yet after the book appeared in 1935 its influence on the fiction of Latin America was so profound that its publication date has become a landmark in the history of Latin American literature. Ostensibly a series of factual accounts about the lives of noted scoundrels, the book in actuality marked the debut of Borges as a storyteller, using that unique blend of fact, fiction, and pseudo-scholarship that later came to full expression in Borges' world-famed short stories. In Borges' rogues gallery are, among others, Billy the Kid and one Lazarus Morell, who encouraged Southern slaves to escape by promising them freedom, only to sell them back into slavery. From China, Borges gives us the Widow Ching, who at one point commanded six hundred war junks and forty thousand pirates. In the New York City of 1890 he locates Monk Eastman, son of the owner of a kosher restaurant, who sheltered a hundred cats and charged $100 and up for ‘doing the big job.' ‘The Insulting Master of Etiquette Kotsuke no SukE' represents infamy among the Japanese, while Hakim of Merv does the honors for Turkestan. ‘Tom Castro, the Implausible Impostor,' was born in London but found his destiny in Chile and Sydney, Australia. As in the original Spanish edition, A Universal History of Infamy also includes Borges' first short story, ‘Streetcorner Man,' presented here in a new translation, and a collection of short parables that are typically Borges. Valuable and important for what it tells us about Borges' mind and method, A Universal History of Infamy manages, at the same time, to fulfill delightfully Borges' original intention. It is, indeed, a first-rate entertainment.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
This book, AN INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LITERATURE, is truly a distinctive volume. In it the internationally known Argentine writer and critic Jorge Luis Borges offers a fresh and personal view of the literature of the United States. He touches not only upon most of the major works and writers but also upon such manifestations of popular culture as the western, the detective story, science fiction, and even the oral poetry of the American Indian. Although Borges writes briefly, even succinctly, his comments are notable for their critical insight. He reveals in almost every sentence a keen understanding of American culture. Especially to be remarked in this connection are the sections on New England puritanism and transcendentalism - elements of the American experience most foreign perhaps to the Latin sensibility. Borges has organized his work on esthetic and personal grounds; he has written on those authors and works that have appealed to him. At the same time the fundamental purpose of the book, he says, ‘has been to encourage an acquaintance with the literary evolution of the nation which forged the first democratic constitution of modern times.' What began as a guide to study for his Argentine students becomes for Americans a fresh and many-faceted view of their literature.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.' The Translator and Editor: L. CLARK KEATING is professor of French at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of Studies on the Literary Salon in France and of Critic of Civilization: Georges Duhamel and translator of The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru by Father Pablo de Arriaga. ROBERT O. EVANS is professor of English at the University of Kentucky. He is editor and contributor to Graham Greene: Some Critical Considerations and author of studies on the English Renaissance.
In this heterogeneous ATLAS, Jorge Luis Borges creates a personal geography out of prose, verse, dreams, and photos collected during the blind poet's journeys around the world. The artist's reflection and associations are triggered by such diverse places and events as streets in Buenos Aires of Mallorca, a balloon ride in California, a piazza in Rome, a monster in Iceland, even a brioche. Borges charts a voyage which, disparate and fragmented like the world it describes, is also transformed by his notion of time that is both collapsed and infinite. As in his other slim, unconventional masterpiece, DREAMTIGERS, Borges confounds traditional genres in this literary scrapbook. Part journal, part fantasy, part ‘found object', ATLAS proves again that art need not be only a representation of reality, but an integral part of it.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
The text of this book is based on tape-recorded transcripts of three meetings with Borges, Columbia students, and faculty. To avoid needless repetition, it was decided that each of these meetings would be devoted primarily to a single topic: to the writing of fiction, of poetry, and of translation. Those present were provided with the text of one of Forges' stories, ‘The End of the Duel,' with half a dozen poems, and with various samples of Borges' work translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni and others. For the fiction session, di Giovanni read the story line by line, and Borges interrupted when he wished to comment on it or discuss technical matters. Afterward, a general conversation took place, with Borges trying to explain how he gradually transformed his material into a story. For the poetry meeting, the same method was followed, with di Giovanni reading the poems slowly and allowing for comments by Borges. During the question period, Borges discussed the usefulness of traditional forms of prosody and the need for knowing one's own literary heritage. The translation seminar naturally involved di Giovanni more intimately as a participant, and he explained the way in which the two men worked together to put Borges' stories and poems into English. Each of the three occasions was informal. Forges' humor and modesty helped make these occasions congenial, as did di Giovanni's directness and unpretentiousness. The three meetings thereby provided the Columbia students and faculty the possibility of a close examination of a major writer's work, with the benefit of his own comments. Editing was kept to a minimum in order to preserve the flavor of the actual occasions. Following the last of his visits to the School of the Arts, Borges attended a reception held jointly for him and for the students and faculty of the writing program. There he spoke generally of the plight of the young writer, whether in Buenos Aires or New York, and these remarks are included in the appendix.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION; NOTE ON THE TRANSLATIONS; PART ONE: THE WRITER - A YOUNG POET'S VOICE; Dawn; General Quiroga Rides to His Death in a Carriage; Manuscript Found in a Book of Joseph Conrad; The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires; Horse-Wagon Inscriptions; Isidoro Acevedo; The Recoleta; REDISCOVERING FICTION - Palermo, Buenos Aires; A Vindication of the Cabala; A Vindication of Basilides the False; Our Inadequacies; The Postulation of Reality; Narrative Art and Magic; Elements of Rhetoric; The Dread Redeemer Lazarus Morel!; The Art of Verbal Abuse; Man from the Slums; The Mirror of Ink; Tom Castro, the Implausible Impostor; The Masked Dyer, Hakim of Merv; I, a Jew; The Doctrine of Cycles; Chesterton and the Labyrinths of the Detective Story; The Translators of The tooi Nights; Oswald Spengler: A Capsule Biography; Modes of G. K. Chesterton; Virginia Woolf: A Capsule Biography; William Faulkner: Three Reviews; The Total Library; Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote; Joyce and Neologisms; Avatars of the Tortoise; Some of Nietzsche's Opinions; Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius; Prologue to The Invention of Morel; The Circular Ruins; Portrait of the Germanophile; The Cyclical Night; The Lottery in Babylon; Fragment on Joyce; About The Purple Land; Citizen Kane; Dr. Jekyll and Edward Hyde, Transformed; The Analytical Language of John Wilkins; Almafuerte; On the Origins of the Detective Story; Melville; Conjectural Poem; Theme of the Traitor and Hero; A Comment on August 23, 1944; The Aleph; The Flower of Coleridge; Henry James; Our Poor Individualism; The Paradox of Apollinaire; The First Wells; Hurry, Hurry!; The Dead Man; About Oscar Wilde; New Refutation of Time; Note on Walt Whitman; The House of Asterion; The Zahir; A Celebration of the Monster; The Meeting in a Dream; The Other Death; Nathaniel Hawthorne; From Allegories to Novels; 230 Partial Enchantments of the Quixote; The Handwriting of God; From Someone to No One; Pascal's Sphere; Kafka and His Precursors; The Metaphor; The Modesty of History; The Enigma of Edward FitzGerald; A Page to Commemorate Colonel Suárez, Victor at Junin; Matthew, 25: 30; The South; The Dagger; Truco; History of the Tango; PART TWO: THE DICTATOR - THE OLD POET'S VOICE - The Golem (I); The Golem (II); Limits; A Poet of the Thirteenth Century; Mirrors; Borges and I; Poem of the Gifts; Chess; The Other Tiger; The Borges; AdroguE; Emerson; Camden, 1892; Spinoza; Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf; PART THREE: A BRIEF RETURN TO REALISM - The Intruder; In Praise of Darkness; Milonga of Manuel Flores; Invocation to Joyce; Prologue to Doctor Brodie's Report; Doctor Brodie's Report; Poem of Quantity; Pedro Salvadores; Juan Muraña; The Gospel According to Mark; Guayaquil; The Blind Man; Things; Tankas; The Threatened One; To the German Language; The Watcher; The Other; Preface to The Unending Rose; Things that Might Have Been; A History of Night; PART FOUR: APPENDIXES; CHRONOLOGY; BORGES IN ENGLISH; NOTES; LIST OF TRANSLATORS.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
At the age of seventy, after a gap of twenty years, Jorge Luis Borges returned to writing short stories. In BRODIE'S REPORT, he turned back also to the style of his earlier years with its brutal realism, its nightmares, and its bloodshed. Many of these stories, including ‘Unworthy' and ‘The Other Duel,' are set in the macho Argentinean underworld, although even the rivalries between academics or artists are suffused with suppressed violence. Throughout, opposing themes of fate and free will, loyalty and betrayal, time and memory flicker in the recesses of these compelling stories, which are among the best Borges ever wrote. ‘[Borges] more than anyone renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.' - J. M. Coetzee, The New York Review of Books.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of the century. Now, for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are collected in a single volume - from his 1935 debut with THE UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INFAMY through his immensely influential collections FICCIONES and THE ALEPH, the enigmatic prose poems of THE MAKER, up to his final work in the 1980s, SHAKESPEARE'S MEMORY. For some fifty years, in intriguing and ingenious stories that played even with the form of the short story, Borges returned again and again to his celebrated themes: dreams, duels, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gauchos, knife fighters, tigers, and the elusive nature of identity itself. Playfully experimenting with ostensibly subliterary genres, Borges took the detective story and turned it into metaphysics; he took fantasy writing and made it, with its questioning and reinventing of everyday reality, central to the craft of fiction; he took the literary essay and put it to use reviewing wholly imaginary books. This edition at last brings together all of Borges' magical stories, and all of them newly rendered into English is a superb translation by Andrew Hurley. COLLECTED FICTIONS is the perfect one-volume compendium for all those who have long loved Borges, and the perfect introduction to the master's work for all those who have yet to discover him. CONTENTS: A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INIQUITY (1935) - Preface to the First Edition; Preface to the 1954 Edition; The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell; The Improbable Impostor Tom Castro; The Widow Ching-Pirate; Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities; The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan; The Uncivil Teacher of Court Etiquette KôtsukE no SukE; Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv; Man on Pink Corner; Et cetera; Index of Sources; FICTIONS (1944) - THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS (1941); Foreword; Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius; The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim; Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote; The Circular Ruins; The Lottery in Babylon; A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain; The Library of Babel; The Garden of Forking Paths; ARTIFICES (1944) - Foreword; Funes, His Memory; The Shape of the Sword; The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero; Death and the Compass; The Secret Miracle; Three Versions of Judas; The End; The Cult of the Phoenix; The South; THE ALEPH (1949) - The Immortal; The Dead Man; The Theologians; Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden; A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874); Emma Zunz; The House of Asterion; The Other Death; Deutsches Requiem; Averroes' Search; The Zahir; The Writing of the God; Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth; The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths; The Wait; The Man on the Threshold; The Aleph; Afterword; THE MAKER (1960) - Foreword: for Leopoldo Lugones; The Maker; Dreatntigers; A Dialog About a Dialog; Toenails; Covered Mirrors; Argumentum Ornithologicum; The Captive; The Mountebank; Delia Elena San Marco; A Dialog Between Dead Men; The Plot; A Problem; The Yellow Rose; The Witness; Martin Fierro; Mutations; Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote; Paradiso, XXXI, 108; Parable of the Palace; Everything and Nothing; Ragnarok; Inferno, I,32; Borges and I; MUSEUM - On Exactitude in Science; In Memomriam, J.F.K.; Afterword; IN PRAISE OF DARKNESS (1969) Foreword; The Ethnographer Pedro Salvadores; Legend; A Prayer; His End and His Beginning; BRODIE'S REPORT (1970) - Foreword; The Interloper; Unworthy; The Story from Rosendo Juárez; The Encounter; Juan Murana; The Elderly Lady; The Duel; The Other Duel; Guayaquil; The Gospel According to Mark; Brodie's Report; THE BOOK OF SAND (1975) - The Other; Ulrikke; The Congress; There Are More Things; The Sect of the Thirty; The Night of the Gifts; The Mirror and the Mask; ‘Undr'; A Weary Man's Utopia; The Bribe; Avelino Arredondo; The Disk; The Book of Sand; Afterword; SHAKESPEARE'S MEMORY (1983) - August 25,1983; Blue Tigers; The Rose of Paracelsus; Shakespeare's Memory; A Note on the Translation; Acknowledgments; Notes to the Fictions.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint. Originally published 1972. (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978. Paper). When blindness overtook him in the early fifties, Jorge Luis Borges believed that his career as a writer of short stories was at an end. Yet there were still stories to be told and the impulse to tell them was too strong to resist. The result-after a hiatus of seventeen years-is the eleven masterful stories in DOCTOR BRODIE'S REPORT. A number of them are clearly destined to become classics. V. S. Pritchett has written that Borges has ‘the art of enhancing the effects of the Unbearable, the sinister, and the ineluctable.' Indeed, these stories, deceptively plain in the telling, bear a unique magic. In the Preface to DOCTOR BRODIE'S REPORT, Borges writes: ‘I have done my best-I p don't know with what success-to write straightforward stories. I do not dare to state that they are simple; there isn't anywhere on earth a single page or single word that is, since each thing implies the universe, whose most obvious trait is complexity . . . My stories, like those of the Thousand and One Nights, try to be entertaining or moving but not persuasive . . . . The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral . . . . ‘ All those who love a story told by a master of the art have reason to rejoice at this new collection of Borges tales, including eight which have never before appeared in book form. JORGE LUIS BORGES in 1971 received the Jerusalem Prize, honorary degrees from Columbia and Oxford universities, and was made an honorary member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Now over seventy, he has seen his audience grow from a small coterie in Buenos Aires, where he lives, to a readership that is worldwide. . Norman Thomas di Giovanni met Borges in 1967 while the latter was at Harvard. In 1968, on Borges' invitation, he went to live in Buenos Aires, where he works with the author daily. Together they are producing ten of Borges' books in English versions for F. P. Dutton & Co. The first of these, The Book of Imaginary Beings, was published in 1969, and the second, The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969, in 1970. Di Giovanni has also edited Borges' Selected Poems 1923-1967.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
When blindness overtook him in the early fifties, Jorge Luis Borges believed that his career as a writer of short stories was at an end. Yet there were still stories to be told and the impulse to tell them was too strong to resist. The result-after a hiatus of seventeen years-is the eleven masterful stories in DOCTOR BRODIE'S REPORT. A number of them are clearly destined to become classics. V. S. Pritchett has written that Borges has ‘the art of enhancing the effects of the Unbearable, the sinister, and the ineluctable.' Indeed, these stories, deceptively plain in the telling, bear a unique magic. In the Preface to DOCTOR BRODIE'S REPORT, Borges writes: ‘I have done my best-I p don't know with what success-to write straightforward stories. I do not dare to state that they are simple; there isn't anywhere on earth a single page or single word that is, since each thing implies the universe, whose most obvious trait is complexity . . . My stories, like those of the Thousand and One Nights, try to be entertaining or moving but not persuasive . . . . The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral . . . . ‘ All those who love a story told by a master of the art have reason to rejoice at this new collection of Borges tales, including eight which have never before appeared in book form. JORGE LUIS BORGES in 1971 received the Jerusalem Prize, honorary degrees from Columbia and Oxford universities, and was made an honorary member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Now over seventy, he has seen his audience grow from a small coterie in Buenos Aires, where he lives, to a readership that is worldwide. . Norman Thomas di Giovanni met Borges in 1967 while the latter was at Harvard. In 1968, on Borges' invitation, he went to live in Buenos Aires, where he works with the author daily. Together they are producing ten of Borges' books in English versions for F. P. Dutton & Co. The first of these, The Book of Imaginary Beings, was published in 1969, and the second, The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969, in 1970. Di Giovanni has also edited Borges' Selected Poems 1923-1967.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Who is Evaristo Carriego? Is he the historical man, a poet who lived at the turn of the century, or the author's living memory of him-perhaps the author himself? And what is Palermo, Buenos Aires? Is it a suburb, a slum, or the remembrance of a certain smell from childhood? Why, at twenty-nine, does Borges, who does not believe in biography, choose for the subject of his first ‘longish' book the story of his neighbor and precursor-a man who was himself twenty-nine when he died? These are some of the questions that are inevitably provoked by Jorge Luis Borges's Evaristo Carriego. This curious, disarming, and unclassifiable essay about a man, a time, and a place, being published here for the first time in English, is the earliest of Borges's works in print in any language. In it, one of this century's most venerated authors pays tribute to one of his own childhood heroes-and sketches for the first time the geography of his literary universe. In EVARISTO CARRIEGO we see, in embryo, all the elements that will come to typify the master's work: the almost palpable evocation of time and place (the making of information ‘visible,' as Borges puts it); the not-quite-serious scholasticism (he cannot keep his critical focus, but veers off into metaphysical footnotes); the fascination with potential violence (‘The Dagger'), with games of chance, with the tango and that thoroughly Argentine dance, the milonga. He explores the universal by unraveling the texture of the specifically local: what other writer might have dared to draw philosophical inspiration from inscriptions on horse-drawn wagons? Most of all, we find in Carriego perhaps the author's first attempt at creating his very own Buenos Aires, a place so exaggeratedly real that it takes on elements of the emblematic, the mythic, the fantastic.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
The best writer of short stories in Spanish today, perhaps the best of the century, Jorge Luis Borges was co-winner of the International Publishers Prize for 1961. This award, the current publication of his work in book form in the United States, and the publication of his complete works in German translation and several volumes in French at last bring him the international renown many have long believed should be his. Borges was formed by influences as diverse as those of German Expressionism and scientific rationalism. As the translator of Gide, Kafka, Faulkner, Whitman, Melville, and Virginia Woolf, he is at home in the literatures of Germany, France, England, and the United States, as well as those of Spain and his native South America. Compacted of these international materials, his stories have an astonishing range of allusion and thought. Despite their many-layered character, these stories are readily accessible and attractive on first approach. Borges' Poe-like tales have turned up in the pages of the Ellery Queen annual of mystery stories. He writes with a fine edge of irony that delights lovers of good satire. His style - laconic, incisive - has attracted a following of pursuers of the best in writing. His easy handling of many backgrounds, leaping from Prague under the heel of the Third Reich to the Dublin of the Irish Revolutionary Army and back to his native Argentina, lends an intriguing diversity of setting to his stories. The International Publishers Prize was established in 1960 by outstanding publishers from six countries: Librairie Gallimard of France, Giulio Einaudi of Italy, Ernst Rowohlt Verlag of Germany, Weidenfeld & Nicolson of Britain, Editorial Seix Barral of Spain, and Grove Press, Inc. of the United States. It provides an award of $10,000 to an author of any nationality whose existing body of work will, in the view of the jury, have a lasting influence on the development of modern literature. The aim of the prize, in addition to recognition of exceptional merit, is to bring the author's work to the attention of the largest possible international audience. The 1961 award, the first made, was shared by Samuel Beckett, for his novel Comment C'est, and Jorge Luis Borges for Ficciones. . JORGE LUIS BORGES was born in 1899 in Buenos Aires. He was educated in Europe, and returned to Argentina in 1921, where he pioneered ultraismo, the Spanish equivalent of German Expressionism. In poetry, the new idea was close to that of Imagism: intensity of image and replacement of rhyme. In the story form, Borges became the chronicler of the harsh life of the slums. With Ricardo Güiraldes, he founded the journal Proa. His later work shows evidence of concern with metaphysics and the Occult, as well as with the detective story and the work of James Joyce. Borges lost his sight from an inherited sickness but, with the secretarial help of his mother, has continued to write. ‘Once the outside world interfered too much,' he has said. ‘Now the world is all inside me. And I see better, for I can see all the things I dream.' Since the fall of Juan Peron, whom he opposed, Borges has been Director of the National Library of Argentina.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint with a new title. Originally published 1962. The best writer of short stories in Spanish today, perhaps the best of the century, Jorge Luis Borges was co-winner of the International Publishers Prize for 1961. This award, the current publication of his work in book form in the United States, and the publication of his complete works in German translation and several volumes in French at last bring him the international renown many have long believed should be his. Borges was formed by influences as diverse as those of German Expressionism and scientific rationalism. As the translator of Gide, Kafka, Faulkner, Whitman, Melville, and Virginia Woolf, he is at home in the literatures of Germany, France, England, and the United States, as well as those of Spain and his native South America. Compacted of these international materials, his stories have an astonishing range of allusion and thought. Despite their many-layered character, these stories are readily accessible and attractive on first approach. Borges' Poe-like tales have turned up in the pages of the Ellery Queen annual of mystery stories. He writes with a fine edge of irony that delights lovers of good satire. His style - laconic, incisive - has attracted a following of pursuers of the best in writing. His easy handling of many backgrounds, leaping from Prague under the heel of the Third Reich to the Dublin of the Irish Revolutionary Army and back to his native Argentina, lends an intriguing diversity of setting to his stories. The International Publishers Prize was established in 1960 by outstanding publishers from six countries: Librairie Gallimard of France, Giulio Einaudi of Italy, Ernst Rowohlt Verlag of Germany, Weidenfeld & Nicolson of Britain, Editorial Seix Barral of Spain, and Grove Press, Inc. of the United States. It provides an award of $10,000 to an author of any nationality whose existing body of work will, in the view of the jury, have a lasting influence on the development of modern literature. The aim of the prize, in addition to recognition of exceptional merit, is to bring the author's work to the attention of the largest possible international audience. The 1961 award, the first made, was shared by Samuel Beckett, for his novel Comment C'est, and Jorge Luis Borges for Ficciones. JORGE LUIS BORGES was born in 1899 in Buenos Aires. He was educated in Europe, and returned to Argentina in 1921, where he pioneered ultraismo, the Spanish equivalent of German Expressionism. In poetry, the new idea was close to that of Imagism: intensity of image and replacement of rhyme. In the story form, Borges became the chronicler of the harsh life of the slums. With Ricardo Güiraldes, he founded the journal Proa. His later work shows evidence of concern with metaphysics and the Occult, as well as with the detective story and the work of James Joyce. Borges lost his sight from an inherited sickness but, with the secretarial help of his mother, has continued to write. ‘Once the outside world interfered too much,' he has said. ‘Now the world is all inside me. And I see better, for I can see all the things I dream.' Since the fall of Juan Peron, whom he opposed, Borges has been Director of the National Library of Argentina.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint with a new title. Originally published 1962. The best writer of short stories in Spanish today, perhaps the best of the century, Jorge Luis Borges was co-winner of the International Publishers Prize for 1961. This award, the current publication of his work in book form in the United States, and the publication of his complete works in German translation and several volumes in French at last bring him the international renown many have long believed should be his. Borges was formed by influences as diverse as those of German Expressionism and scientific rationalism. As the translator of Gide, Kafka, Faulkner, Whitman, Melville, and Virginia Woolf, he is at home in the literatures of Germany, France, England, and the United States, as well as those of Spain and his native South America. Compacted of these international materials, his stories have an astonishing range of allusion and thought. Despite their many-layered character, these stories are readily accessible and attractive on first approach. Borges' Poe-like tales have turned up in the pages of the Ellery Queen annual of mystery stories. He writes with a fine edge of irony that delights lovers of good satire. His style - laconic, incisive - has attracted a following of pursuers of the best in writing. His easy handling of many backgrounds, leaping from Prague under the heel of the Third Reich to the Dublin of the Irish Revolutionary Army and back to his native Argentina, lends an intriguing diversity of setting to his stories. The International Publishers Prize was established in 1960 by outstanding publishers from six countries: Librairie Gallimard of France, Giulio Einaudi of Italy, Ernst Rowohlt Verlag of Germany, Weidenfeld & Nicolson of Britain, Editorial Seix Barral of Spain, and Grove Press, Inc. of the United States. It provides an award of $10,000 to an author of any nationality whose existing body of work will, in the view of the jury, have a lasting influence on the development of modern literature. The aim of the prize, in addition to recognition of exceptional merit, is to bring the author's work to the attention of the largest possible international audience. The 1961 award, the first made, was shared by Samuel Beckett, for his novel Comment C'est, and Jorge Luis Borges for Ficciones. JORGE LUIS BORGES was born in 1899 in Buenos Aires. He was educated in Europe, and returned to Argentina in 1921, where he pioneered ultraismo, the Spanish equivalent of German Expressionism. In poetry, the new idea was close to that of Imagism: intensity of image and replacement of rhyme. In the story form, Borges became the chronicler of the harsh life of the slums. With Ricardo Güiraldes, he founded the journal Proa. His later work shows evidence of concern with metaphysics and the Occult, as well as with the detective story and the work of James Joyce. Borges lost his sight from an inherited sickness but, with the secretarial help of his mother, has continued to write. ‘Once the outside world interfered too much,' he has said. ‘Now the world is all inside me. And I see better, for I can see all the things I dream.' Since the fall of Juan Peron, whom he opposed, Borges has been Director of the National Library of Argentina.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
This collection of stories and essays introduces to America one of the leading figures of Latin American literature, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In his preface AndrE Maurois writes: ‘Jorge Luis Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention and their tight, almost mathematical style.' LABYRINTHS contains thirty-eight of Borges finest ‘fictions,' essays and parables. The stories, which have been compared to those of Kafka, might be classed as ‘highbrow science fiction' or ‘intellectual detective stories' were it not for the undertones of deeper meaning which place them at a far higher level. Borges has been recognized around the world as a writer of the first rank. He shared with Samuel Beckett the $10,000 International Publishers' Prize in 1961. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as a bibliography of Borges' writings.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
This collection of stories and essays introduces to America one of the leading figures of Latin American literature, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In his preface AndrE Maurois writes: ‘Jorge Luis Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention and their tight, almost mathematical style.' LABYRINTHS contains thirty-eight of Borges finest ‘fictions,' essays and parables. The stories, which have been compared to those of Kafka, might be classed as ‘highbrow science fiction' or ‘intellectual detective stories' were it not for the undertones of deeper meaning which place them at a far higher level. Borges has been recognized around the world as a writer of the first rank. He shared with Samuel Beckett the $10,000 International Publishers' Prize in 1961. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as a bibliography of Borges' writings.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint. This collection of stories and essays introduces to America one of the leading figures of Latin American literature, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In his preface AndrE Maurois writes: ‘Jorge Luis Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention and their tight, almost mathematical style.' LABYRINTHS contains thirty-eight of Borges finest ‘fictions,' essays and parables. The stories, which have been compared to those of Kafka, might be classed as ‘highbrow science fiction' or ‘intellectual detective stories' were it not for the undertones of deeper meaning which place them at a far higher level. Borges has been recognized around the world as a writer of the first rank. He shared with Samuel Beckett the $10,000 International Publishers' Prize in 1961. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as a bibliography of Borges' writings.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
This collection of stories and essays introduces to America one of the leading figures of Latin American literature, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In his preface AndrE Maurois writes: ‘Jorge Luis Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention and their tight, almost mathematical style.' LABYRINTHS contains thirty-eight of Borges finest ‘fictions,' essays and parables. The stories, which have been compared to those of Kafka, might be classed as ‘highbrow science fiction' or ‘intellectual detective stories' were it not for the undertones of deeper meaning which place them at a far higher level. Borges has been recognized around the world as a writer of the first rank. He shared with Samuel Beckett the $10,000 International Publishers' Prize in 1961. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as a bibliography of Borges' writings.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint. Labyrinths is a collection of 'fictions' and essays and parables by Borges : FICTIONS: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, The Garden of Forking Paths, The Lottery in Babylon, Pierre Menard, Author of Quixote, The Circular Ruins, The Library of Babel, Funes the Memorious, The Shape of the Sword; Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, Death and the Compass, The Secret Miracle, Three Versions of Judas, The Sect of the Phoenix, The Immortal, The Theologians, Story of the Warrior and the Captive, Emma Zunz, The House of Asterion, Deutsches Requiem; Avveroes's Search, The Zahir, The Waiting, The God's Script; ***ESSAYS: The Fearful Sphere of Pascal, Partial Magic in the Quixote, Valery as Symbol, Kafka and his Precursors, Avatars of the Tortoise, The Mirror of Enigmas, A Note on (towards) Bernard Shaw, A New Refutation of Time. ***PARABLES: Inferno I, 32, Paradiso, XXXI, 108, Ragnarok, Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote, The Witness, A Problem, Borges and I, Everything and Nothing, Elegy.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Paperback Reprint. This collection of stories and essays introduces to America one of the leading figures of Latin American literature, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In his preface AndrE Maurois writes: ‘Jorge Luis Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention and their tight, almost mathematical style.' LABYRINTHS contains thirty-eight of Borges finest ‘fictions,' essays and parables. The stories, which have been compared to those of Kafka, might be classed as ‘highbrow science fiction' or ‘intellectual detective stories' were it not for the undertones of deeper meaning which place them at a far higher level. Borges has been recognized around the world as a writer of the first rank. He shared with Samuel Beckett the $10,000 International Publishers' Prize in 1961. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as a bibliography of Borges' writings.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint. This collection of stories and essays introduces to America one of the leading figures of Latin American literature, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In his preface AndrE Maurois writes: ‘Jorge Luis Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention and their tight, almost mathematical style.' LABYRINTHS contains thirty-eight of Borges finest ‘fictions,' essays and parables. The stories, which have been compared to those of Kafka, might be classed as ‘highbrow science fiction' or ‘intellectual detective stories' were it not for the undertones of deeper meaning which place them at a far higher level. Borges has been recognized around the world as a writer of the first rank. He shared with Samuel Beckett the $10,000 International Publishers' Prize in 1961. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as a bibliography of Borges' writings.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint. This collection of stories and essays introduces to America one of the leading figures of Latin American literature, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In his preface AndrE Maurois writes: ‘Jorge Luis Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention and their tight, almost mathematical style.' LABYRINTHS contains thirty-eight of Borges finest ‘fictions,' essays and parables. The stories, which have been compared to those of Kafka, might be classed as ‘highbrow science fiction' or ‘intellectual detective stories' were it not for the undertones of deeper meaning which place them at a far higher level. Borges has been recognized around the world as a writer of the first rank. He shared with Samuel Beckett the $10,000 International Publishers' Prize in 1961. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as a bibliography of Borges' writings.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
A literary guide to Borges's native - and beloved - Argentina. Jorge Luis Borges wrote about Argentina as only someone passionate about his homeland ca. ON ARGENTINA reveals the many facets of his passion in essays, poems, and stories through which he sought to bring Argentina forward on the world stage, and to do for Buenos Aires what James Joyce did for Dublin. In colorful pieces on the tango and the gaucho, on the card game truco, and on the criollos (immigrant from Spain) and compadritos (street-corner thugs), he gain insight not only into unique aspects of Argentine culture but also into the intellect and values of one of Latin America's most influential writers. Featuring material available in English for the first time, this unprecedented collection is an invaluable literary and travel companion for devotees of both Borges and Argentina.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
On Mysticism is a collection of Borges' essays, fiction and poetry that explores the role of the mysterious and spiritual in Borges' life and writing. Borges had profound knowledge of eastern religions and was raised by a philosophically astute father. As a result he was preoccupied with a metaphysical uneasiness that infiltrated his work. This book is a unique collection of Borges' meditations on the mystical realm that fascinated him so much.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
A master class in the art of writing by one of its most distinguished and innovative practitioners. Delve into the labyrinth of Jorge Luis Borges's thoughts on the theory and practice of literature, and learn from one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century not only what a writer does but also what a writer is. Borges's wide-ranging reflections on writers, on the canon, on the craft of fiction and poetry, and on translation - an ars poetica of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Featuring many pieces appearing in English for the first time - including his groundbreaking early essay on magical realism, ‘Stories from Turkesta' - ON WRITING provides a map of both the changes and continuities in Borges's aesthetic over the course of his life. It is an indispensible handbook for anyone hoping to master their own style or to witness Borges's evolution as a writer.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
In this varied collection of essays we travel with Jorge Luis Borges on journeys in time, in place, and in thought - from 246 B.C. and the Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti to A.D. 1949 and the British airplane designer John William Dunne; from the Ancient Persia of Omar Khayyam to the Modern England of Bertrand Russell; from Dr. Americo Castro's discourse on the slang of Buenos Aires to the ‘Avatars of the Tortoise.' This remarkable book by the man who is considered Argentina's outstanding contemporary writer includes essays dealing with various concepts of time which have been presented throughout history - John William Dunne's theory that dreams are the past and future life, that wakeful living is the present; Philip Henry Gosse's theory concerning the time involved in the Creation; Jorge Luis Borges' own ‘New Refutation of Time.' Another general thought common to several essays in this collection is that of the profound unity of ideas as they are expressed and re-expressed in the written word, such as the long-range plan of a ‘superhuman performer' with the underlying theme of inspiration from dreams - ‘The Dream of Coleridge,' ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne,' and ‘The Enigma of Edward FitzGerald.' We also find a justification for suicide, ‘The Biathanatos'; a proposed universal language, ‘The Analytical Language of John Wilkins'; the development of language from oral to written communication, ‘On the Cult of Books'; and the modern-day subjects of world revolution and fascism, ‘Two Books.' The number and variety of authors discussed by Sr. Borges is as, extensive as the ideas examined - Quevedo, Cervantes, Whitman, Valery, Wilde, and a host of others. Jorge Luis Borges, a recipient of the Prix International des Editeurs, was born in Buenos Aires in 1899 and educated in Europe. While in Spain he participated in the ultraismo movement of young rebellious vanguardist poets. His poetry is marked by unique descriptiveness and intense patriotism. In fact, the patriotic fervor with which he opposed General Peron's dictatorship brought him the loss of his modest position as municipal librarian in Buenos Aires. He is now director of the National Library of Argentina and professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires. At the invitation of the Tinker Foundation, Sr. Borges came to the University of Texas, where he gave courses in Argentine literature from 1961, to the following January. He traveled extensively in the United States in 1962, lecturing at leading universities. As a result of this stay in Texas the English translation of El Hacedor entitled Dreamtigers was published early in 1964. Mrs. Ruth L. C. Simms is thoroughly familiar with Spanish and Latin American literature. Her translation of Otras inquisiciones flows smoothly and without flaw. .
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
In this varied collection of essays we travel with Borges on journeys in time, in place, and in thought-from the Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti (246 BC) to the British Airplane Designer John William Dunne (1949 AD); from the Ancient Persia of Omar Khayyam to the Modem England of Bertrand Russell. This remarkable book by one of the greatest writers alive in the world today includes essays dealing with various concepts of time which have been presented throughout history including Borges' own New Refutation of Time. Another general thought common to several essays is that of the profound unity of ideas as they are expressed and re-expressed in the written word. We also find a justification for suicide -The Biathanatos; a proposed universal language-The Analytical Language of John Wilkins; the development of language from oral to written communication-On the Cult of Books; and the modem-day subjects of revolution and fascism-Two Books. The number and variety of authors discussed by Jorge Luis Borges is as extensive as the ideas examined. It is a happy chance that this writer who is deeply read in a dozen literatures should be a scholar in our own. ABOUT BORGES - ‘Borges is one of the greatest writet s alive today.' - New York Review of Books. . . ‘Ranks among the few perfectly composed, thoroughly fascinating literary intelligences alive.' - New York Times Book Review.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Jorge Luis Borges takes us on a startling idiosyncratic, fresh, and highly opinionated tour of English literature, from the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings to Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, the Romantic poets Thomas Carlyle, Robert Browning, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, Charles Dickens, and Robert Louis Stevenson. PROFESSOR BORGES passes through a vast array of writers, artists, and philosophers from countless cultural traditions of the last three thousand years. These lectures - with their astoundingly intimate view of Borges in the classroom - bring the canon to life. Now translated into English for the first time, Borges's classes were recorded and transcribed by his students. Through years of exhaustive research, the scholars Martin Arias and Martin Hadis have restored the course to its full glory and offer valuable annotations.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), ‘a giant of world literature' (John Updike), was born in Buenos Aires and is the author of The Aleph, Ficciones, and Labyrinths. A prolific writer, Borges wrote short stories, poems, essays, and translations. Martin Hadis is a professor, writer and researcher. He holds a Masters in Media Technology from the MIT Media Lab and a Masters in Anthropology from the University of North Texas; he learned Old English and Old Norse at Harvard University. A renowned Borges scholar, he is the author of numerous books including Literatos y excEntricos (Erudites and Eccentrics) and Siete guerreros nortumbrios (Seven Northumbrian Warriors). Martin Arias is a writer, journalist, and senior researcher at the National Library's Center for Research in Argentina (CIBINA). He edited The Lost Notebooks of Ricardo Güiraldes and Borges, Director of the National Library. He has contributed to the newspaper Pagina 12 and is the author of a book of stories, Vida en la duna (Life in the Dune). Katherine Silver is an award-winning literary translator and the co-director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC). Her most recent translations for New Directions include works by Martin Adán, CEsar Aira, and Horacio Castellanos Moya.
It will come as a surprise to many readers that the greater part of Jorge Luis Borges' extraordinary writing was not in the genres of fiction or poetry, but in various forms of non-fiction prose. His thousands of pages of essays, reviews, prologues, lectures, and political and cultural notes - though revered in Latin America and Europe as among his finest work - have scarcely been translated into English. SELECTED NON-FICTIONS presents a Borges almost entirely unknown to American readers. Here is the dazzling metaphysician speculating on the nature of time and reality and the inventions of heaven and hell, and the almost superhumanly erudite reader of the world's literatures, from Homer to Ray Bradbury, James Joyce to Lady Murasaki. Here, Too, the political Borges, taking courageous stands against fascism, anti-Semitism, and the Peron dictatorship; Borges the movie critic, on King Kong and Citizen Kane and the Borgesian art of dubbing; and Borges the regular columnist for the Argentine equivalent of the Ladies' Home Journal, writing hilarious book reviews and capsule biographies of modern writers. Like the Aleph in his famous story - the magical point in a basement in Buenos Aires from which one can view everything in the world - Borges' non-fictions are a vortex for seemingly the entire universe: Dante and Ellery Queen, Shakespeare and Kabbalah, the history of angels and the history of the tango, the Buddha, Bette Davis and the Dionne Quints. The first comprehensive selection of this work in any language, SELECTED NON-FICTIONS presents over 160 of these astonishing writings, from his youthful manifestos to his last meditations on his favorite books. More than a hundred of these pieces have never before appeared in English, and all have been rendered in brilliant new translations by Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine, and Eliot Weinberger. This unique selection, the third and final volume in Viking Press's centenary edition of the Collected Work in English, presents Borges at once as a deceptively self-effacing guide to the univferse and the inventor of a universe that is an indispensable guide to Borges.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). , some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
‘The roots of language are irrational and of a magical satire. The Dane who pronounced the name of Thor or the Saxon who uttered the name of Thunor did not know whether these words represented the god of thunder or the rumble that is beard after the lightning flash. Poetry wants to return to that ancient magic. Without fixed rules, it progresses in a hesitant, daring way, as if moving in darkness. Poetry is a mysterious chess, whose chessboard and whose pieces change as in a dream and over which I shall be gazing after I am dead.' Though universally acclaimed for his dazzling fictions, Jorge Luis Borges always considered himself first and foremost a poet. A decade before writing his earliest stories, Borges published his first book of poems. And even in that precocious debut, the twenty-four-year-old poet claimed for himself the principal themes that would preoccupy him for the next half century: the cult of his ancestors and his ‘mysterious habit called Buenos Aires'; the enigma of time and the many yesterdays of history; the metaphysics of Schopenhauer and Berkeley; the now-familiar mirrors, mazes, and swords. This new bilingual selection brings together some two hundred poems - the largest collection of Borges's poetry ever assembled in English, including scores of poems never previously translated. Edited by Alexander Coleman, the selection draws from a lifetime's work - from Borges's first published volume of verse, Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923), to his final work, Los conjurados, published just a year before his death in 1986. Throughout this unique collection the brilliance of the Spanish originals is matched by luminous English versions rendered by a remarkable cast of translators: Willis Barnstone, Alexander Coleman, Robert Fitzgerald, Stephen Kessler, Kenneth Krabbenhoft, Eric McHenry, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Hoyt Rogers, Mark Strand, Charles Tomlinson, Alan S. Trueblood, and John Updike. When Viking published Andrew Hurley's new translation of Borges's COLLECTED FICTIONS last year, the book was hailed in The New York Times as an event, and cause for celebration. Now, commemorating the hundredth anniversary of his birth, the celebration continues with SELECTED POEM, the second installment in Viking's three-volume edition of Borges's collected works in English.
One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, JORGE LUIS BORGES (1899-1986) published numerous collections of poems, essays, and fiction. Director of the National library of Buenos Aires from 1955 to 1973, Borges was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from both Columbia and Oxford. He received various literary awards over the course of his career, including the International Publishers' Prize (which he shared with Samuel Beckett in 1961), the Jerusalem Prize, and the Alfonso Reyes Prize. ALEXANDER COLEMAN is professor emeritus of Portuguese and Spanish Studies at New York University.
This is the first systematic presentation in English of the poems of a writer who made his initial fame in his own country nearly fifty years ago with his poetry, but whose present-day universal acclaim happens to rest on the small body of his prose. Until now, in England and the United States, we have known only the Borges of the puzzling short stories and luminous essays, Borges the brilliant conversationalist, the imitated Borges, the Anglo-American Borges. Of course, there is only one Borges, and no one will deny that the central vision which informs all his work is a poetic vision, but with a broad selection of the poems available we at last begin to have Borges whole. We may in this book even have, for the first time, the essence of Borges-the Borges who is one of South America's, and the world's, best poets. Borges' poetry requires no special key. For those who like a biographical context, it is sufficient to point out here that the author was born in Buenos Aires, in 1899, learned English as a child at the side of an English grandmother, and came to poetry in English under the influence of his father, who loved England's great poets of ‘Hengest Cyning,' ‘Afterglow,' ‘Plainness,' ‘The Dagger,' ‘To a Saxon Poet,' ‘Daybreak,' ‘Fragment,' ‘Isidoro Acevedo,' ‘The Southside,' and ‘Rose,'. CONTENTS: AUTHOR'S FOREWORD; INTRODUCTION; FERVOR OF BUENOS AIRES - Unknown Street; Sepulchral Inscription; Patio; Empty Drawing Room; Rosas; Remorse for Any Death; Inscription on Any Tomb; Afterglow; Daybreak; At the Butcher's; Plainness; Parting; MOON ACROSS THE WAY - Anticipation of Love; General Quiroga Rides to His Death in a Carriage; Manuscript Found in a Book of Joseph Conrad; Dulcia Linquimus Arva; Houses Like Angels; My Whole Life; Sunset Qver Villa Ortdzar; The Goleni; Poem of the Gifts; Chess; SAN MARTiN COPYBOOK - The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires; Isidoro Acevedo; Deathwatch on the Southside; Deaths of Buenos Aires; To Francisco Lopez Merino; THE SELF AND THE OTHER - Two English Poems; The Cyclical Night; Conjectural Poem; To a Minor Poet of the Greek Anthology; A Page to Commemorate Colonel Suárez, Victor at Junin; Matthew XXV; The Dagger; Compass; A Poet of the Thirteenth Century; A Soldier of Urbina; Limits; A Saxon (AD. 449); Elvira de Alvear; Susana Soca; The Other; Tiger; Allusion to a Shadow of the Nineties; Allusion to the Death of Colonel Francisco; Borges (1833-1874); The Borges; Embarking on the Study of Anglo~Saxon Grammar; Luke XXIII; Ars Poetica; A Rose and Milton; To One No Longer Young; Odyssey, Book Twenty-three; To a Minor Poet of 1899; Texas; Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf; Hengest Cyning; Fragment; To a Saxon Poet; Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241); To Charles XII of Sweden; Emanuel Swedenborg; Jonathan Edwards (1763-1758); Emerson; Edgar Allan Poe; Camden 1892; Paris 1856; Rafael Cansinos-Assens; The Enigmas; To My Reader; Someone; Everness; Ewigkeit; Oedipus and the Riddle; Spinoza; Adam Cast Forth; To a Coin; Another Poem of Gifts; Ode Written in 1966; Lines I Ivlight Have Written and Lost Around 1922; Junin; A Soldier Under Lee (1862); The Sea; A Morning of 1649; To a Saxon Poet; The Labyrinth; FOR THE GUITAR - Milonga of the Two Brothers; Milonga of Albornoz; MUSEUM - Quatrain; Limits (or Good-byes); The Poet Tells of His Fame; The Generous Enemy; APPENDICES - I New and Unreprinted Poems; II Prose Pieces from El hacedor; III Prefaces and a Dedication; IV Supplement of 1969 Revisions; NOTES; CONTENTS OF THE PRINCIPAL EDITIONS OF BORGES' POETRY; INDEX OF SPANISH AND ENGLISH TITLES. A Seymour Lawrence book. . Copyright (c) 1968, 1969, 1971 by Jorge Luis Borges and Norman Thomas di Giovanni, originally appeared in The New Yorker. ‘Embarking on the Study of Anglo-Saxon Grammar' and ‘Ars Poetica,' Copyright (c) 1969 by Jorge Luis Borges, originally appeared in Harper's Bazaar. Other of the translations first appeared in the following periodicals and books: ADAM International Review, The Antioch Review, The Atlantic Monthly Press, Buenos Aires Herald, Encounter, The New York Review of Books, Salmagundi, The Times Literary Supplement, TriQuarterly, Vogue (London), The Yale Literary Magazine, SELECTED TRANSLATIONS 1948-1968 by W. S. Merwin (Atheneum Publishers), and WALKING TO SLEEP by Richard Wilbur (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.). THE TRANSLATORS: BEN BELITT; NORMAN THOMAS DI GIOVANNI; ALAN DUGAN; WILLIAM FERGUSON; ROBERT FITZGERALD; JOHN HOLLANDER; RICHARD HOWARD AND CESAR RENNERT; W. S. MERWIN; ALASTAIR REID; MARK STRAND; JOHN UPDIKE; RICHARD WILBUR.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Jorge Luis Borges's fictions blur the distinction between fact and fantasy, scholarship and imagination. Behind his playful cerebrations lies an impressive erudition amassed over a lifetime of study, in spite of failing eyesight and eventual blindness. Allusive motifs run through his writings in amazing diversity, and in SEVEN NIGHTS they are distilled into the form of public lectures, originally given in Buenos Aires in 1977, and now made available for the first time in English translation. ‘The Divine Comedy'; ‘Nightmares'; ‘The Thousand and One Nights'; ‘Buddhism'; ‘Poetry'; ‘The Kabbalah'; ‘Blindness' - the relevance of these lectures to Borges's oeuvre is thoughtfully explored in an introduction by Alastair Reid, who as a translator has in the past himself worked closely with the author. The texts themselves have been rendered into English by Eliot Weinberger, translator of the poetry of Octavio Paz and Homero Aridjis. . Borges was born in 1899 in Buenos Aires, where he still lives, and has long been acknowledged internationally as one of the foremost writers of the century. His ingenious and innovative work was introduced to North American readers in 1962 through LABYRINTHS (New Directions) and FICCIONES (Grove) - paving the way for the immense popularity of Latin American literature of recent years. ‘Jorge Luis Borges is . . . a central fact of Western culture. . . . He is also one of the finest, subtlest, and least appreciated of comedians.' - J. D. O'Hara, The Washington Post Book World.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint. Originally published 1970. Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father's killer, and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house. This volume also contains the hauntingly brief vignettes about literary imagination and personal identity collected in The Maker, which Borges wrote as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint. Originally published 1970. Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father's killer, and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house. This volume also contains the hauntingly brief vignettes about literary imagination and personal identity collected in The Maker, which Borges wrote as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint. Originally published 1970. Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father's killer, and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house. This volume also contains the hauntingly brief vignettes about literary imagination and personal identity collected in The Maker, which Borges wrote as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Reprint. New Translation. Originally published 1970. Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father's killer, and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house. This volume also contains the hauntingly brief vignettes about literary imagination and personal identity collected in The Maker, which Borges wrote as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.' Andrew Hurley is a translator of numerous works of literature, criticism, history, and memoir. He is professor emeritus at the University of Puerto Rico.
The most important stories of one of the half-dozen giants of contemporary' literature. Dazzling and unmistakable in style, resonant in meaning, Jorge Luis Borges' The Aleph and Other Stories contains the best of Borges' fiction. Included also is a lengthy autobiographical essay written especially for this volume. The twenty stories in this book cover the whole span and all the various facets of Borges' forty-year career as a short story writer. The collection is the most definitive and comprehensive available in English. Eleven of the stories have never before appeared in book form in English. They are: ‘Streetcorner Man,' ‘The Two Kings and Their Two Labyrinths,' ‘The Other Death,' ‘Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth,' ‘The Man on the Threshold,' ‘The Challenge,' ‘The Intruder,' ‘The Immortals,' ‘The Meeting,' ‘Pedro Salvadores,' and ‘Rosendo's Tale.' Newly translated, with the author's full assistance, are: ‘The Aleph,' ‘The Approach to al-Mu'tasim,' ‘The Circular Ruins,' ‘Death and the Compass,' ‘The Life of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874),' ‘The Dead Man,' ‘The Captive,' ‘Borges and Myself,' and ‘The Maker.' The English versions are superb. They are the only translations of his work to be done with Borges' collaboration. Their lucidity and polish, while confirming the author's reputation as a great stylist, will also make Borges' writing more accessible to a wide American readership. Borges, traditionally reticent about his life, is unusually open and informative in his autobiographical fragment. He treats not only of his youth and early career as a writer, but also of what the coming of fame has meant to him. The essay provides a fascinating insight into one of the major literary figures of our time. Also included in this collection are short commentaries by Borges on each of the stories. CONTENTS: The Aleph; Streetcorner Man; The Approach to al-Muotasim; The Circular Ruins; Death and the Compass; The Life of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874); The Two Kings and Their Two Labyrinths; The Dead Man; The Other Death; Jim Hakkan al-Bokhara; Dead in His Labyrinth; The Man on the Threshold; The Challenge; The Captive; Borges and Myself; The Maker; The Intruder; The Immortals; The Meeting; Pedro Salvadores; Rosendo's Tale; AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY; COMMENTARIES; Bibliographical Note.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.' Norman Thomas di Giovanni was born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1933, and was graduated from Antioch College in 1955. He met Borges in 1967 while the latter was at Harvard. In 1968, on Borges' invitation, he went to live in Buenos Aires, where he works with the author in daily sessions. Together they are producing ten of Borges' books in English versions for E. P. Dutton & Co. The first of these, The Book of Imaginary Beings, was published in 1969.
Reprint. Originally published 1970.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on •her father's ‘killer,' and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guesthouse. This volume also contains the hauntingly brief vignettes about literary imagination and personal identity collected in THE MAKER, which Borges wrote as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self. ‘I am quite aware of how ephemeral literary assessments may prove, but in Borges' case I do not consider it rash to acclaim him as the most important thing to happen to imaginative writing in the Spanish language in modern times.' - Mario Vargas Llosa.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
The bestiary of a master fantasist. . . THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS, said Benjamin DeMott in The New York Times, ‘is an astonishing ‘construct' - the brave, beautiful man behind it ranks among the few perfectly composed, thoroughly fascinating literary intelligences alive.' Borges draws oh sources ranging from Chinese legends to the works of Kafka and C. S. Lewis. In the lucid, razor-sharp prose that distinguishes all his work, he reports on beasts as diverse as the Chilean Chonchon, which is shaped like a human head, the huge ears serving as wings for its flight on moonless nights; and the homely and mournful Squonk of Pennsylvania, which thwarts capture by dissolving itself in its own tears. Stanton Hoffman said in the Nation, ‘THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS is more than a Borgesian entertainment. Its real justification lies in its relationship to Borges' other work, especially to those pervasive themes and metaphors which seem to me to establish Borges' singularity and importance as a writer. . . the encyclopedia as art.'
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
The bestiary of a master fantasist. . . THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS, said Benjamin DeMott in The New York Times, ‘is an astonishing ‘construct' - the brave, beautiful man behind it ranks among the few perfectly composed, thoroughly fascinating literary intelligences alive.' Borges draws oh sources ranging from Chinese legends to the works of Kafka and C. S. Lewis. In the lucid, razor-sharp prose that distinguishes all his work, he reports on beasts as diverse as the Chilean Chonchon, which is shaped like a human head, the huge ears serving as wings for its flight on moonless nights; and the homely and mournful Squonk of Pennsylvania, which thwarts capture by dissolving itself in its own tears. Stanton Hoffman said in the Nation, ‘THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS is more than a Borgesian entertainment. Its real justification lies in its relationship to Borges' other work, especially to those pervasive themes and metaphors which seem to me to establish Borges' singularity and importance as a writer. . . the encyclopedia as art.'
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Brought together here in one volume, THE BOOK OF SAND (1975) and SHAKESPEARE'S MEMORY (1983) are the final works of fiction Borges would produce, and they feature some of the most extraordinary writing of his career. In the words of the author himself, the stories in this collection - including such standouts as ‘The Congress,' ‘Undr,' and ‘The Mirror and the Mask' - are ‘blind man's exercises . . . variations on favorite themes. . . combining a plain and at times almost colloquial style with a fantastic plot.' Showcasing Borges's depth of vision and his signature image-conjuring power in stories about an infinite book a one-sided mirror, a golden mask, and a scholar who mysteriously acquires Shakespeare's memory, this hypnotic collection is the capstone to an august literary life. ‘A marvellous collection to which one will return again and again. . . A book to treasure.' - The Scotsman.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
The short stories of Jorge Luis Borges, written more than twenty years ago, have become classics of contemporary literature. In The Book of Sand are thirteen brand-new stories rivaling those famous stories that established Borges' world-wide reputation. Borges himself considers two of the stories-the title story and ‘The Congress'-to be among his greatest achievements in short fiction. Like the distinctive stories in Ficciones and The Aleph, these stories artfully blend elements from many literary genres: the essay, science fiction, detective fiction, fantasy, literary criticism and autobiography. The subject matter, which Borges makes so uniquely his own, ranges from philosophic musings on the nature of time to deft satire on the role-playing of contemporary authors. THE BOOK OF SAND is an important addition to Borges' works, a welcome and unexpected gift for Borges' host of admirers.
JORGE LUIS BORGES is the author of many distinguished volumes of short fiction, poetry and essays, including The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969, In Praise of Darkness, and The Universal History of Infamy. He has been awarded the Jerusalem Prize, the International Literary Prize and dozens of honorary degrees. Although almost totally blind, Borges continued to write, to travel and to lecture well ingto his seventies. He lived in Buenos Aires. NORMAN THOMAS DI GIOVANNI, who to date has produced English versions of eight books by Borges, lives in Devon, England. He worked with Borges in Buenos Aires from 1968 to 1972.
A world congress is called. As in Borges' even shorter works of fiction or fictional essays, the complexity of human existence is treated in typically Borgesian style.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
Through a twist of fate that the author of LABYRINTHS himself would have relished, these lost lectures given in English at Harvard in 1967-1968 by Jorge Luis Borges return to us now, a recovered tale of a life-long love affair with literature and the English language. Transcribed from tapes only recently discovered, THE CRAFT OF VERSE captures the cadences, candor, wit, and remarkable erudition of one of the most extraordinary and enduring literary voices of the twentieth century. In its wide-ranging commentary and exquisite insights, the book stands as a deeply personal yet far-reaching introduction to the pleasures of the word, and a a first-hand testimony to the life of literature. Though his avowed topic is poetry, Borges explores subjects ranging from prose forms (especially the novel), literary history, and translation theory to philosophical aspects of literature in particular and communication in general. Probably the best-read citizen of the globe in his day, he draws on a wealth of examples from literature in modern and medieval English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Latin. Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese, speaking with characteristic eloquence on Plato, the Norse kenningar, Byron, Poe, Chesterton, Joyce, and Frost, as well as on translations of Homer, the Bible, and the RUBAIYAT of Omar Khayyam. Whether discussing metaphor, epic poetry, the origins of verse, poetic meaning, or his own ‘poetic creed', Borges gives a performance as entertaining as it is intellectually engaging. A lesson in the love of literature and in the making of a unique literary sensibility, this is a sustained encounter with one of the writers by whom the twentieth century will be long remembered.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.' CALIN-ANDREI MIHAILESCU is Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Western Ontario. . .
Delightful dialogues, very witty, agile; true conversations and not, as often happens with interviews, arcane sessions of rehearsed questions and answers. They have new facts, perspectives, and anecdotes, but above all they possess a refinement of the art of conversation, through which Borges has been creating perhaps his best literature.
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first Prix International, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: ‘He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.'
What is a woman to do? Mean Woman raises and answers the question time and again. The female characters in the novel rule countries, are oppressed, and rise again individually and in groups. Shifting scenes of Latin American politics are evoked in kaleidoscopic play. Swaggering heroines of tango, the Argentines Eva and Isabelita Peron, the itinerant Filipina Imelda Marcos, and their male consorts may be glimpsed in a vision whose sustained humor dazzles us with the conundrums of violence, machismo, and exile. MEAN WOMAN is an exhilarating and original mix of fantasy-history, real-unreal, comedy-tragedy. Its oblique angles and fun-house-mirror reflections reveal all the pieces of the mosaic, leaving to the reader the pleasure of making the final arrangement.' - Cola Franzen.
Alicia Borinsky, born in Buenos Aires, is a novelist, poet and literary critic. Alicia Borinsky is professor of Latin American and Comparative Literature and Director of the Writing in the Americas Program at Boston University. Her critical work has helped frame the discussion about the writers of the ‘boom' movement in Latin America. Among her other scholarly achievements is the introduction of the figure of Macedonio Fernández, Borges's master, the exploration of the intersection between literary theory, cultural and gender studies and numerous works about poetry, Latino writers and World literature.
Latin American fiction, arguably the most inventive literature of recent decades, seems marked by its self-reflexivity, by its playful relationship to history and the everyday, and by its concerns with the ways in which language works. But is it, Alicia Borinsky asks, really a literature whose primary goal is to raise metafictional questions about writing and reading? While the effects of this literature include dismantling the illusions of realism, naturalism, and historicism, the haunting and disturbing energy of its major works lies in their capacity to invoke a region beyond literature through literature. Whether through its use of history, its framing of a non-causal view of the world, or its nostalgic evocation of a feminine realm. Borinsky argues. the contemporary Latin American novel does not just ingeniously dismantle the referential claims of the more traditional novel; it offers a post-modern version of the lessons taught by fiction. For Borinsky, the ‘theoretical fables' of contemporary Latin American fiction challenge the reader to perform. rather than merely to consume a message; yet they do so while preserving literature's more permanent impetus to persuade. alter, and guide. THEORETICAL FABLES progresses by way of close readings of the works of eight canonical-and not quite canonical-Latin American authors. Borinsky argues that the Latin American ‘theoretical fable' has its origins in the work of the early twentieth-century Argentinian writer, Macedonio Fernández. In this light she studies the works of Jorge Luis Borges. Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Jose Donoso, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Manuel Puig, and Maria Luisa Bombal. Fresh readings of recognized authors and a new genealogy for Latin American fiction of this century make Theoretical Fables a volume of interest to students, scholars, and the general reader. A volume in the Pennsylvania Studies in Contemporary American Fiction. CONTENTS: 1. An Apprenticeship in Reading: Macedonio Fernández; 2. Taming the Reader: Jorge Luis Borges; 3. Intelligence and Its Neighbors: Gabriel Garcia Marquez; 4. Literature as Risk: Julio Cortázar; 5. A Poetics of Misencounters: Adolfo Bioy Casares; 6. Is There Style Without Gender? Manuel Puig; 7. The Lucidity of Inaction: Maria Luisa Bombal; 8. Closing the Book-Dogspeech: Jose Donoso; 9. Overstaying My Welcome: Conclusions; Preface; Index; Bibliography. . Alicia Borinsky is Professor of Latin American and Comparative Literature at Boston University. She has published volumes of criticism in Latin America and Europe, as well as two collections of poetry and a novel, MEAN WOMAN.
Alicia Borinsky, born in Buenos Aires, is a novelist, poet and literary critic. Alicia Borinsky is professor of Latin American and Comparative Literature and Director of the Writing in the Americas Program at Boston University. Her critical work has helped frame the discussion about the writers of the ‘boom' movement in Latin America. Among her other scholarly achievements is the introduction of the figure of Macedonio Fernández, Borges's master, the exploration of the intersection between literary theory, cultural and gender studies and numerous works about poetry, Latino writers and World literature.
Carmen Boullosa has established herself as one of Latin America's most original voices, with a gift for illuminating unseen dimensions of familiar Stories and the extraordinary outsiders who inhabited them all along. In CLEOPATRA DISMOUNTS, she has found perhaps her perfect subject, as this enchanting and audacious writer takes on one of history's most legendary women-a powerful queen in a world of men, both lauded and vilified by literature ever since. CLEOPATRA DISMOUNTS is an imagined life of the Egyptian queen, called Queen of Kings by her subjects and widely said to be the incarnation of the goddess Isis. In the opening section, with Marc Antony dying in her arms, Cleopatra bewails the ignominious end to her larger-than-life career through the political world of ancient Egypt, Greece, and the Mediterranean. But is this really the true Cleopatra? Through the intervention of Cleopatra's scribe and informer, Diomedes, Boullosa creates two previous Cleopatras, and in effect two deliriously wild other lives for the young monarch-a girl escaping the intrigues of royal society, fleeing in the back of a horsecart to Ascalon, to disguise herself and take up residence with a band of pirates; and the young queen who is carried across the sea on the back of a magical bull, to live among the Amazons and become part of their society, learning their battle techniques and stories of love. In each adventure, Cleopatra reveals the roots of her genius by losing herself in these different worlds-male, female, high, low, and of many cultures-and absorbing the advantages and pitfalls of their views of the world. Magical, multifaceted, and rippling with luminous imagination, CLEOPATRA DISMOUNTS rescues Cleopatra from the weak, tragic heroine of Shakespeare and reveals her brilliance and power. It is a work that recalls Jeanette Winterson's THE PASSION and SEXING THE CHERRY and confirms Carmen Boullosa as an important international voice. CARMEN BOULLOSA is the author of many plays works of poetry, and novels, among them LEAVING TABASCO and THEY'RE COWS, WE'RE PIGS. She was recently included in the landmark collection REVERSIBLE MONUMENTS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN POETRY. Born in Mexico and a longtime resident of Mexico City, she currently resides in New York.
Carmen Boullosa (born September 4, 1954 in Mexico City, Mexico) is a leading Mexican poet, novelist and playwright. Her work is eclectic and difficult to categorize, but it generally focuses on the issues of feminism and gender roles within a Latin American context. Her work has been praised by a number of prominent writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Alma Guillermoprieto and Elena Poniatowska, as well as publications such as Publishers Weekly. She has won a number of awards for her works, and has taught at universities such as Georgetown University, Columbia University and New York University (NYU), as well as at universities in nearly a dozen other countries. She is currently Distinguished Lecturer at the City College of New York. She has two children -- Maria Aura and Juan Aura -- with her former partner, Alejandro Aura --and is now married to Mike Wallace, the Pulitzer-prize winning co-author of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. Boullosa has written over a dozen novels, and some of these works have been translated into five different languages. Her bestselling novel, Son vacas, somos puercos (1991) was translated into English in 1997 as They're Cows, We're Pigs. The story is narrated in the first person by an old man looking back on his life. He was kidnapped and sent from his native France on a slave ship to the West Indies at the age of thirteen. To gain his freedom, he joins a group of pirates (or ‘pigs'), allowing Boullosa to compare two very different societal and political systems - traditional Europe and carefree pirates. In La milagrosa, a novel written in 1993, the protagonist is a girl who has the power to heal the sick and perform other miracles while she sleeps. She falls in love with Aurelio Jimenez, a detective sent to discredit her, even though she fears that her powers will disappear if she spends time with people. It ends ambiguously, leaving an unsolved murder without closure. Duerme, another popular work published in 1995, tells the story of Claire, a French woman whose mother was a prostitute. Attempting to escape the same profession, she arrives in Spain dressed as a man. To save a subject of the Spanish king, she reveals herself as a female and prepares to take his punishment of death by hanging. Beforehand, however, she is wounded in the left breast and her blood is replaced by water from the lakes of Mexico City. The water's magical powers make it possible for her to survive the punishment. She is also famous for her Teatro herEtico (1987), a compilation of three parodies in play format - Aura y las once mil vírgenes, Cocinar hombres, and Propusieron a María. The first tells the story of a man called by God to ‘deflower' eleven thousand virgins in his life, so that heaven's overpopulation problem might be addressed, since the women will have to wait in purgatory for a time. The man then uses his sexual encounters as material for his television commercials and becomes a successful advertising agent. Cocinar hombres tells the story of two girls who find themselves to have become young adult witches overnight, so as to fly over the earth tempting but not satisfying men. Finally, the third play satirically recounts the conversation between Joseph and Mary before Mary gives birth to Jesus and ascends to heaven.
From Carmen Boullosa, winner of Mexico's prestigious Xavier Villaurrutia Award, comes Heavens on Earth, a testament to the power of the written word in transcending political, racial, and cultural barriers to create and preserve history. Lear, officially known as 24, lives in L'Atlntide, a utopian post-apocalyptic society placing increasing limits on the use of language. Steadfast in her resistance to new regulations and pressure to conform, Lear continues to transcribe the writings of Don Hernando, a 16th century Indian priest, and of Estela in the 20th century, an early translator of Don Hernando's work. Though separated by time and space, Lear and Estela find strength in Hernando's words, ultimately rebelling against their respective societies in a struggle for remembrance. Cloud Atlas meets Savage Detectives in Carmen Boullosa's Heavens on Earth as three narratives thread together in a captivating exploration of memory, language, and humanity. Three narrators from different historical eras engage in preserving history in "Heavens on Earth." As her narrators sense each other and interact through time and space, Boullosa challenges the primacy of recorded history and asserts literature and language's power to transcend the barriers of time and space in vivid, urgent prose. Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico's leading novelists, poets, and playwrights. Her most recent novel "Texas: The Great Theft "(Deep Vellum, 2014) was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize, nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award, and won Typographical Era's Translation Award. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Mexico City, Mexico.
Carmen Boullosa (born September 4, 1954 in Mexico City, Mexico) is a leading Mexican poet, novelist and playwright. Her work is eclectic and difficult to categorize, but it generally focuses on the issues of feminism and gender roles within a Latin American context. Her work has been praised by a number of prominent writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Alma Guillermoprieto and Elena Poniatowska, as well as publications such as Publishers Weekly. She has won a number of awards for her works, and has taught at universities such as Georgetown University, Columbia University and New York University (NYU), as well as at universities in nearly a dozen other countries. She is currently Distinguished Lecturer at the City College of New York. She has two children -- Maria Aura and Juan Aura -- with her former partner, Alejandro Aura --and is now married to Mike Wallace, the Pulitzer-prize winning co-author of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. Boullosa has written over a dozen novels, and some of these works have been translated into five different languages. Her bestselling novel, Son vacas, somos puercos (1991) was translated into English in 1997 as They're Cows, We're Pigs. The story is narrated in the first person by an old man looking back on his life. He was kidnapped and sent from his native France on a slave ship to the West Indies at the age of thirteen. To gain his freedom, he joins a group of pirates (or ‘pigs'), allowing Boullosa to compare two very different societal and political systems - traditional Europe and carefree pirates. In La milagrosa, a novel written in 1993, the protagonist is a girl who has the power to heal the sick and perform other miracles while she sleeps. She falls in love with Aurelio Jimenez, a detective sent to discredit her, even though she fears that her powers will disappear if she spends time with people. It ends ambiguously, leaving an unsolved murder without closure. Duerme, another popular work published in 1995, tells the story of Claire, a French woman whose mother was a prostitute. Attempting to escape the same profession, she arrives in Spain dressed as a man. To save a subject of the Spanish king, she reveals herself as a female and prepares to take his punishment of death by hanging. Beforehand, however, she is wounded in the left breast and her blood is replaced by water from the lakes of Mexico City. The water's magical powers make it possible for her to survive the punishment. She is also famous for her Teatro herEtico (1987), a compilation of three parodies in play format - Aura y las once mil vírgenes, Cocinar hombres, and Propusieron a María. The first tells the story of a man called by God to ‘deflower' eleven thousand virgins in his life, so that heaven's overpopulation problem might be addressed, since the women will have to wait in purgatory for a time. The man then uses his sexual encounters as material for his television commercials and becomes a successful advertising agent. Cocinar hombres tells the story of two girls who find themselves to have become young adult witches overnight, so as to fly over the earth tempting but not satisfying men. Finally, the third play satirically recounts the conversation between Joseph and Mary before Mary gives birth to Jesus and ascends to heaven.
The emerging societies of the Caribbean in the seventeenth century were a riotous assembly of pirates, aristocrats, revolutionaries, and rogues-outcasts and fortune-seekers, all. Into this New World of bloody chaos and uncertain possibility steps our hero, Jean Smeeks, who at thirteen was taken from Flanders and brought as a slave to Tortuga, the mythic Treasure Island. To his great good fortune, he is initiated into the magic of medicine by le Nègre Miel, an African healer, who is poisoned by an unknown assailant, and later by Pineau, a French-born surgeon, who buys Smeeks out of servitude; but he too is violently murdered under mysterious circumstances. Grieving for his mentors and uncertain of his own path, Smeeks signs on as a medical officer with the Brethren of the Coast. As he puts his hybrid medical knowledge to use treating everything from rampant disease to the wounds of battle, he becomes strangely transformed by the looting, violence, and carousing of pirate life, and by his desire to avenge the deaths of his teachers. Smeeks finds himself both doctor and despoiler, servant and mercenary, native and foreigner, perhaps even male and female, and suspended between two worlds-those of freely roaming and raiding ‘pigs' and of law-abiding, tradition-bound ‘cows.' Written by one of the preeminent voices of the new generation in Latin American fiction, THEY'RE COWS, WE'RE PIGS is a brazenly original evocation of ribald and grotesque excesses, of villainy and honor among thieves. CARMEN BOULLOSA was born in 1954 in Mexico City. She is the author of eight novels, ten collections of poetry, three plays, and several theater adaptations, short stories, and critical essays. The recipient of many prizes, fellowships, and honors, she is a popular guest lecturer and visiting professor both abroad and in the U.S. She has directed her own small press and owns and operates a ‘theater bar' in Coyoacan, one of the most popular literary and cultural meeting places south of the border. Besides writing, she loves dancing, red wine, and lazy afternoons with her children in Mexico City.
Carmen Boullosa (born September 4, 1954 in Mexico City, Mexico) is a leading Mexican poet, novelist and playwright. Her work is eclectic and difficult to categorize, but it generally focuses on the issues of feminism and gender roles within a Latin American context. Her work has been praised by a number of prominent writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Alma Guillermoprieto and Elena Poniatowska, as well as publications such as Publishers Weekly. She has won a number of awards for her works, and has taught at universities such as Georgetown University, Columbia University and New York University (NYU), as well as at universities in nearly a dozen other countries. She is currently Distinguished Lecturer at the City College of New York. She has two children -- Maria Aura and Juan Aura -- with her former partner, Alejandro Aura --and is now married to Mike Wallace, the Pulitzer-prize winning co-author of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. Boullosa has written over a dozen novels, and some of these works have been translated into five different languages. Her bestselling novel, Son vacas, somos puercos (1991) was translated into English in 1997 as They're Cows, We're Pigs. The story is narrated in the first person by an old man looking back on his life. He was kidnapped and sent from his native France on a slave ship to the West Indies at the age of thirteen. To gain his freedom, he joins a group of pirates (or ‘pigs'), allowing Boullosa to compare two very different societal and political systems - traditional Europe and carefree pirates. In La milagrosa, a novel written in 1993, the protagonist is a girl who has the power to heal the sick and perform other miracles while she sleeps. She falls in love with Aurelio Jimenez, a detective sent to discredit her, even though she fears that her powers will disappear if she spends time with people. It ends ambiguously, leaving an unsolved murder without closure. Duerme, another popular work published in 1995, tells the story of Claire, a French woman whose mother was a prostitute. Attempting to escape the same profession, she arrives in Spain dressed as a man. To save a subject of the Spanish king, she reveals herself as a female and prepares to take his punishment of death by hanging. Beforehand, however, she is wounded in the left breast and her blood is replaced by water from the lakes of Mexico City. The water's magical powers make it possible for her to survive the punishment. She is also famous for her Teatro herEtico (1987), a compilation of three parodies in play format - Aura y las once mil vírgenes, Cocinar hombres, and Propusieron a María. The first tells the story of a man called by God to ‘deflower' eleven thousand virgins in his life, so that heaven's overpopulation problem might be addressed, since the women will have to wait in purgatory for a time. The man then uses his sexual encounters as material for his television commercials and becomes a successful advertising agent. Cocinar hombres tells the story of two girls who find themselves to have become young adult witches overnight, so as to fly over the earth tempting but not satisfying men. Finally, the third play satirically recounts the conversation between Joseph and Mary before Mary gives birth to Jesus and ascends to heaven.
UNDER THE THUMB OF THE SYSTEM - Welcome to Sao Paulo, Brazil, in the not too distant future. Water is scarce, garbage clogs the city, movement is restricted . . . and the System - sinister, omnipotent, secret - rules its subjects' every moment, every pulsebeat, every thought. Here middle-aged Souza lives a meaningless life in a world where the future is doomed and the past is forbidden to be remembered. Souza wants to escape this society of enforced consumerism, bizarre happenings, and ever-present propaganda. But there is no help from his wife who cannot be sure if their son ever existed or from his 23-year-old nephew, officer in the Mili-Tech, an army without emotions, without humanity. But one day Souza meets a former colleague now running an elevator, and everything changes . . . as this gripping journey to the absurd turns violent, explosive, and terrifyingly real.
IGNACIO de LOYOLA BRANDAO was born on July 31, 1936 in Brazil. He began a career in journalism at the age of sixteen writing reviews for the films that played at the only cinema in his hometown. At twenty, he moved to Sao Paulo, where he worked for the principal newspapers of the state capital until 1979. ZERO was finished in 1969 but was not published until five years later, when it was accepted by an Italian publisher. Not until 1975 was it published in Brazil, bringing considerable scandal, but extraordinary praise and a number of literary prizes, including the Brasilia Prize, a national literary honor. In 1976, it was banned by the Ministry of Justice. Following a national protest in 1977, the ban was lifted in 1979 and ZERO immediately returned to the bestseller list. This is the first English language edition of this international bestseller.
What if a man were so shallow that he couldn't believe his life had meaning unless he was loved and desired by millions of people? What if everything he learned from his television, from the movies, from what he heard on the radio, was treated as an absolute and incontrovertible truth? And what, then, if this man was amoral, cunning, and willing to lie, seduce, and kill to save himself from anonymity? With an army of consultants, a library of ' howto ' manuals, and an endless variety of product placements at his behest, the hero of Anonymous Celebrity sets out to become king of his own little world-which unfortunately turns out to be the same one the rest of us live in. Equal parts Nabokov, All About Eve, and Big Brother, this is a bawdy, irreverent indictment of our self-absorbed culture of celebrity, where to be anything less than famous means being something less than human.
IGNACIO de LOYOLA BRANDAO was born on July 31, 1936 in Brazil. He began a career in journalism at the age of sixteen writing reviews for the films that played at the only cinema in his hometown. At twenty, he moved to Sao Paulo, where he worked for the principal newspapers of the state capital until 1979. ZERO was finished in 1969 but was not published until five years later, when it was accepted by an Italian publisher. Not until 1975 was it published in Brazil, bringing considerable scandal, but extraordinary praise and a number of literary prizes, including the Brasilia Prize, a national literary honor. In 1976, it was banned by the Ministry of Justice. Following a national protest in 1977, the ban was lifted in 1979 and ZERO immediately returned to the bestseller list. This is the first English language edition of this international bestseller.
A modern-day Don Quixote and an exile in his own hometown, the protagonist of Teeth Under the Sun is kept from writing by a conspiracy (real? imagined?) designed to prevent him from revealing the truth about the town's strange status quo and violent past. In a place where people have abandoned their houses for tiny apartments in the confines of new high-rises, the narrator walks the almost empty streets, remembering better times and meeting figures from his past: his ex-wife, his son, writers, friends, and revolutionaries. And all of this is interspersed with his memories of the movies. Fact and fiction, past and present, all meet in this story of the narrator's attempts to engage more fully with a modern world forcing him into isolation. Ignacio de Loyola Brandao began his career writing film reviews and went on to work for one of the principal newspapers in São Paulo. Initially banned in Brazil, his novel ZERO, which is also published by Dalkey Archive Press, went on to win the prestigious Brasilia Prize and become a controversial best-seller. Brandão is the author of more than a half-dozen works of fiction, including ANONYMOUS CELEBRITY and ANGEL OF DEATH. .
IGNACIO de LOYOLA BRANDAO was born in 1936 in Brazil. He began a career in journalism at the age of sixteen writing reviews for the films that played at the only cinema in his hometown. At twenty, he moved to Sao Paulo, where he worked for the principal newspapers of the state capital until 1979. ZERO was finished in 1969 but was not published until five years later, when it was accepted by an Italian publisher. Not until 1975 was it published in Brazil, bringing considerable scandal, but extraordinary praise and a number of literary prizes, including the Brasilia Prize, a national literary honor. In 1976, it was banned by the Ministry of Justice. Following a national protest in 1977, the ban was lifted in 1979 and ZERO immediately returned to the bestseller list. This is the first English language edition of this international bestseller.
There are no heroes in Ignácio de Loyola Brandão's world, only victims: not only of violence, but of deceit, desire, and fear. In THE GOOD-BYE ANGEL, Brandão returns to his great subject: the tyranny of the community versus the individual, the city versus its inhabitants. Large enough to develop its own mythology, yet small enough to be provincial and petty, the city of Arealva (standing in for Brazil, and the world at large) is itself a character in Brandão's latest novel, toying with and finally consuming its citizens with the innocent cruelty of a cat with its prey - it's nothing personal, but it needs the meat. A cross between a noir and a Greek tragedy, with more than its share of sex and drugs (though no rock 'n' roll), THE GOOD-BYE ANGEL begins with a murder and ends in a panorama of ambition, obsession, libido, hypocrisy, and loneliness.
Ignácio de Loyola Brandão began his career writing film reviews and went on to work for one of the principal newspapers in São Paulo. Initially banned in Brazil, his novel Zero went on to win the prestigious Brasilia Prize and become a controversial bestseller. Brandão is the author of more than a half-dozen works of fiction, including ZERO, TEETH UNDER THE SUN, and ANGEL OF DEATH, all of which are available or forthcoming from Dalkey Archive. Clifford E. Landers has translated fifteen novels from Brazilian Portuguese, and was awarded both the Mario Ferreira Award in 1999 from ATA's Portuguese Language Division, as well as a Prose Translation grant from the National Endowment of the Arts in 2004.
‘I WAS NOTHING IN THE EYES OF THE WORLD'. Jose Goncalves is a man who counts for little with anyone-his lawyer father, his rosary-saying mother, and even the young whores in the crowded South American city where he lives. Like every man, he yearns for love and looks for meaning in life. What he finds (with the help of the Happy Heart Marriage Agency) is chubby, somewhat tacky Rosa, the woman 6f his dreams . . . and a living nightmare. For Jose is trapped in a society going mad with meaningless commercialism, media hype, and the brutality of a repressive regime. ZERO is the journey of a revolutionary, searching for freedom, set on a collision course with government Death Squads. A shockingly frank Brazilian novel filled with the grotesque and bizarre, profound revelations and comic parody, ZERO is a haunting work of outrage and terrifying truth.
IGNACIO de LOYOLA BRANDAO was born on July 31, 1936 in Brazil. He began a career in journalism at the age of sixteen writing reviews for the films that played at the only cinema in his hometown. At twenty, he moved to Sao Paulo, where he worked for the principal newspapers of the state capital until 1979. ZERO was finished in 1969 but was not published until five years later, when it was accepted by an Italian publisher. Not until 1975 was it published in Brazil, bringing considerable scandal, but extraordinary praise and a number of literary prizes, including the Brasilia Prize, a national literary honor. In 1976, it was banned by the Ministry of Justice. Following a national protest in 1977, the ban was lifted in 1979 and ZERO immediately returned to the bestseller list. This is the first English language edition of this international bestseller.
The work deals with issues of performance, gender ambiguity, and marginality. It is concerned with the boundaries of language and the possibilities of cross-dressing poetry as commercials, diary, tabloids, gossip, confessions, videos, autobiography, musicals, and manifesto. Characters turn into other characters. Clowns, buffoons, shepherds, lead soldiers, magicians, madmen, witches, fortune-tellers, and artists perform their fantasies in the city streets. An antinovel within the book satirizes the writer's role in the modern age and calls for a revolution of poetry. New York City becomes the site of liberation for its marginal citizens, as the narrator is led through a seeming phantasmagoria of internal and external trials in order to experience the center - of political power, of meaning, of feeling, and of personal identity.
Giannina Braschi (born February 5, 1953) is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998), the postmodern poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams (Yale, 1994), and the philosophical fiction United States of Banana, (AmazonCrossing, 2011), which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States. ‘For decades, Dominican and Puerto Rican authors have carried out a linguistic revolution,' noted The Boston Globe, and ‘Giannina Braschi, especially in her novel YO-YO BOING!, testify to it.' She is considered an influential and revolutionary voice in contemporary Latin American literature. Her work has been described as a ‘synergetic fusion that marks in a determinant fashion the lived experiences of U.S. Hispanics.' Written in three languages, English, Spanglish, and Spanish, Braschi's work captures the cultural experience of nearly 50 million Hispanic Americans and also seeks to explore the three political options of Puerto Rico: Nation, Colony, or Statehood. On the subject of the Island's lack of sovereignty, Braschi stated, ‘Liberty is not an option - it is a human right.'
Written in an upbeat and flowing mix of Spanish and English, Yo-Yo Boing is a symphony of dramatic, bilingual dialogue riding the current controversial wave of bilingualism. At a rapid tempo and with humorous gusto, Braschi's poetic voice moves vigorously throughout the public and private spaces of the city-from the Upper West Side soiree to the Lower East Side tertulia, from the diner booth to the subway platform.
Giannina Braschi (born February 5, 1953) is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998), the postmodern poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams (Yale, 1994), and the philosophical fiction United States of Banana, (AmazonCrossing, 2011), which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States. ‘For decades, Dominican and Puerto Rican authors have carried out a linguistic revolution,' noted The Boston Globe, and ‘Giannina Braschi, especially in her novel YO-YO BOING!, testify to it.' She is considered an influential and revolutionary voice in contemporary Latin American literature. Her work has been described as a ‘synergetic fusion that marks in a determinant fashion the lived experiences of U.S. Hispanics.' Written in three languages, English, Spanglish, and Spanish, Braschi's work captures the cultural experience of nearly 50 million Hispanic Americans and also seeks to explore the three political options of Puerto Rico: Nation, Colony, or Statehood. On the subject of the Island's lack of sovereignty, Braschi stated, ‘Liberty is not an option - it is a human right.'
The cry ‘No more Cubas' has reflexively guided U.S. policy for nearly three decades, yet Cuba's significant improvements in education, health care, housing, and access to food are widely admired throughout the Third World. Myths and misconceptions about the country abound, but THE CUBA READER at last provides a balanced, comprehensive, and readable description of Cuba as it is today. It places the 1959 revolution in the context of Cuba's hundred years of social change, and explores the pivotal roles that both the United States and the Soviet Union have played in Cuba's politics and its economy, as well as the important issues of human rights and Cuba's relations with the Third World. Perhaps most important, it details the impact of revolutionary ideals on every aspect of Cuban life, from its foreign policy to its daily life and culture. The United States and Cuba have dramatically increased their diplomatic contact recently, and the complex relationship between the countries seems to be improving. As such new developments occur, THE CUBA READER offers the background necessary to appreciate the changing circumstances. Including articles from a wide range of viewpoints inside and outside of Cuba, many of which were written expressly for this volume, THE CUBA READER offers the most complete picture available of this surprising and fascinating country. CONTENTS: Preface; Introduction; Saul Landau, Asking the Right Questions About Cuba; Carlos Franqui, The Island of Cuba; PART I: THE SETTING OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTION - CHAPTER 1: The Revolutionary Heritage - 1. Background of the Revolution, by Leo Huberrnan and Paul M. Sweezy; 2. The Revolution of 1933, Luis E. Aguilar; 3. Our America, by Jose Marti; CHAPTER 2: A Four.Hundred-Year Struggle - 4. The Platt Amendment; 5. History Will Absolve Me, by Fidel Castro; 6. Program Manifesto of the 26th of July Movement; CHAPTER 3: Themes of the Cuban Revolution - 7. Prologue to the Cuban Revolution, by Robin Blackburn; 8. Continuities in Cuban Revolutionary Politics, by Richard R. Fagen; PART II: THE CUBAN ECONOMY - CHAPTER 4: The Prerevolutionary Economy and an Overview of Policy - 9. Revolutionary Economic Policies in Cuba, by Carmelo Mesa-Lago; 10. Man and Socialism in Cuba, by Ernesto ‘Che' Guevara; CHAPTER 5: Economic Transformation in the 1960s and 1970s - 11. The Agrarian Revolution, by Medea Benjamin, Joseph Collins, and Michael Scott; 12. 1970 and the Trouble with Cuban Socialism, by Wassily Leontief; 13. Development Strategies and Basic Human Needs, by Claes Brundenius; CHAPTER 6: The Contemporary Cuban Economy; 14. Main Report to the Third Party Congress: The Economy, by Fidel Castro; 15. Patterns of Cuban Development The First Twenty-five Years, by Andrew Zimbalist and Susan Eckstein; 16. Castro Takes the Economy in Hand, by Marifeli Perez-Stable; PART III: POLITICS IN CUBA - CHAPTER 7: The Cuban Communist Party - 17. Fidel Castro, by Herbert L. Matthews; 18. Party Development in Revolutionary Cuba, by William M. LeoGrande; 19. The Changing Face of Cuba's Communist Party, by Nelson ValdEs; 20. Cuban Leadership in the 1980s, by Jorge I. Dominguez; CHAPTER 8: The State and Political Participation - 21. The Politico-Administrative System of Cuba at the End of the 1970s; 22. Mass Political Participation in Socialist Cuba, by William M. LeoGrande; 23. Law and Revolution in Cuba, by Debra Evenson; CHAPTER 9: Human Rights and Freedom - 24. Freedom of Worship in Revolutionary Cuba, by Margaret E. Crahan; 25. The Press in Cuba, by John Spicer Nichols; 26. Human Rights in Cuba, by OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission; 27. Political Imprisonment in Cuba: Two Readings, by Amnesty International and Institute for Policy Studies; 28. Cuba's Policies on Immigration and Emigration, by Patricia Weiss Fagen; PART IV: CUBAN FOREIGN POLICY - CHAPTER 10: Cuban Foreign Relations: An Overview; 29. Change and Continuity in Cuban Foreign Policy, by Philip Brenner; 30. Strategic Foundations of Cuban Foreign Policy, by Carlos Rafael Rodriguez; 31. The Cuban Military, by Phyllis Greene Walker; 32. Institutionalization, Political Elites, and Foreign Policies, by Edward Gonzalez; CHAPTER 11: Cuba's Relations with the Soviet Union - 33. Why We Have Points of Concurrence with the Soviet Union, by Carlos Rafael Rodriguez; 34. Cuba and the Soviet Union: Does Cuba Act Alone? by Robert Pastor; 35. The Cost of Cuba's Trade with Socialist Countries, by Pamela S. Falk; CHAPTER 12: Cuba's Relations with the United States - 36. United States-Cuban Relations in the 1980s, by Philip Brenner; 37. The Bay of Pigs, by Herbert L. Matthews; 38. Putting Cuba and Crisis Back in the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Scott Armstrong and Philip Brenner; 39. Cuban Exodus 1980: The Context, by Barry Sklar; 40. The United States and Cuba, by Kenneth N. Skoug, Jr.; CHAPTER 13: Cuba and the Third World - 41. Castro's Cuba: Soviet Partner or Nonaligned? by Wayne S. Smith; 42. Cuba's Policy in Africa, by William M. LeoGrande; 43. Cuba: The Frontier of Latin America, by Rafael Hernández; 44. Cuba and the Americas: 1972-1979, by H. Michael Erisman; 45. Cuban Internationalism: A Humanitarian Foreign Policy, by Donna Rich; PART V: DAILY LIFE AND CULTURE - CHAPTER 14: Daily Life - 46. The Debourgeoisement of Cuban Cities, by Susan Eckstein; 47. The Cuban Sports Program, by Raudol Ruiz Aguilera; CHAPTER 15: Social Services - 48. Twenty-five Years of Cuban Health Care, by Robert N. Ubell; 49. Cuba's Schools: 25 Years Later, by Marvin Leiner; CHAPTER 16: Racism and Sexism - 50. Women's Development Through Revolutionary Mobilization, by Max Azicri; 51. Race Relations in Contemporary Cuba, by Lourdes Casal; CHAPTER 17: Culture - 52. Talking About Cuban Culture: A Reporter's Notebook, by Sandra Levinson; 53. Cuba Vision: Three Decades of Cuban Film, by Pat Aufderheide; 54. Cultural Policy and Writers in Cuba, by Lourdes Casal; 55. When I Say Future, by Silvio Rodriguez; 56. From Man to Death, by Pablo Armando Fernández; Appendix A: Chronology of Major Events; Appendix B: Basic Statistics of Cuba; Appendix C: Suggestions for Further Reading; ; About the Editors; About the Contributors; Index.
Philip Brenner is associate professor of international relations at The American University and author of Prom Confrontation to Negotiation: US. Relations with Cuba. William M. LeoGrande is associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at The American University and author of Cuba's Policy in Africa. Donna Rich is a research analyst for the Cuba Policy Project at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She was a guest scholar at the University of Havana in 1984, and an analyst at the National Security Archive. Daniel Siegel is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He was director of public education on the contra gate project at the Christic Institute, coeditor of In Contempt of Congress: The Reagan Record on Central America, and coauthor of Outcast among Allies: The International Costs of Reagan's War against Nicaragua.
Magda's childhood in the 1960s in Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay, is one of small pleasures: sitting beneath the poinsettia tree in her yard, meeting her friends by the banks of the Rio de la Plata, and learning the rules that her culture ordains for young women of privilege. But as Magda grows up, her comfortable world becomes frightening in ways that she has never imagined it could. As her government increasingly turns on its own people in both subtle and overt acts of terror, Magda's family and friends come under threat. Sent to the United States for a year of school, Magda realizes how her own passivity has contributed to the fear that now grips her country. The events she experiences after her return to Montevideo give her the courage to join the underground struggle against the government - a fateful decision that draws not only her, but all those around her, into unexpected danger.
Tessa Bridal was born and raised in Uruguay. After moving to Washington, DC with her mother and sister, she began writing as a means of dealing with the psychological impacts of immigration and displacement. She eventually moved to London and completed a three-year course in theatre arts, with a focus on acting and directing. She later married and moved to Minnesota, where her two daughters, Anna and Kate, were born. Bridal went on to develop a career using theatre in museums--an educational and interpretive technique she was instrumental in developing and for which she became widely recognized in the museum field. While at the Science Museum of Minnesota, she was awarded the American Alliance of Museums' Excellence in Practice Award, which recognizes an individual who demonstrates exemplary service to the public through the practice of education in museums. Bridal also led interpretive programs at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. She is the author of two books on the use of theatre in museums: Exploring Museum Theatre and Effective Exhibit Interpretation and Design. Her first novel The Tree of Red Stars won the Milkweed Prize for Fiction, the Friends of American Writers Fiction Prize, and was translated into several languages. River of Painted Birds (Río de los pájaros pintados) is her second novel and will be released both in English and Spanish.
Bilingual edition based on the 1874 text of El baile del gueguence; o Macho-Raton. (facs. reprint New York: AMS Press, 1969).
This survey concentrates on the modern novel of Spanish-speaking America. Dr. Brotherston starts with a long and suggestive introduction on the general topic ‘settings and people', showing the growth of a sense of Latin American identity in the fiction produced in the continent as a whole. There follow detailed studies of individual modern novels taken as representative of their time, their author, their country and the continent. They are by Miguel Angel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, Juan Carlos Onetti, Juan Rulfo, Julio Cortázar, Jose Maria Arguedas, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Márquez. A conclusion surveys and sums up the themes. The analytical studies of important and representative novels, related to each other in theme and preoccupation, the substantial quotations (in English), the notes and useful bibliography, make this a book which gives students and other readers a well-considered introduction to the Spanish American fiction of this century.
Gordon Brotherston is Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Stanford University, USA, and Emeritus Professor, University of Essex, UK. His publications include The Emergence of the Latin American Novel (1977); Image of the New World (1979), and Voices of the First America (1986).
This innovative book is a set of experiments in the analysis of prose fiction. Using critical theories that emphasize how fictions are made and how they function, John Brushwood analyzes eight novels from nineteenth-century Spanish America that critics have usually studied as products rather than as processes. The novels range from a romantic evocation of the last Aztec emperor to contemporary social satire, thus offering a spectrum of problems in interpretation. In a given analysis, more than one theory may be useful. Therefore, Roman Jakobson or Roland Barthes, for example, may be the chief resource in a given chapter, but the ideas of other theorists may also be incorporated. In each case, some particular aspect of the meaning of the novel is addressed. Prominent among the theorists used, in addition to Jakobson and Barthes, are Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Wayne C. Booth, Gerard Genette, Tzvetan Torodov, Floyd Merrell, and Arnold Kettle. An introductory chapter locates the novels among other works of the same time and region, somewhat altering the traditional view of how the genre developed in Spanish America. The concluding chapter considers briefly how each of the analytical procedures might be applied to each of the other novels studied. This consideration shows how one approach may yield more understanding than another in a specific instance. It also shows how the several theories, despite their differences, are significantly interrelated, since all of them refer to the same phenomenon, the individual novel itself as the source of experience and the focus of concern.
JOHN S. BRUSHWOOD is Roy A. Roberts Professor of Spanish-American Literature at the University of Kansas. His other publications include MEXICO AND ITS NOVEL: A NATION'S SEARCH FOR IDENTITY (1966), THE SPANISH AMERICAN NOVEL: A TWENTIETH-CENTUTY SURVEY (1975), and other books and articles.
In THE SPANISH AMERICAN NOVEL, John S. Brushwood analyzes the twentieth-century Spanish American novel as an artistic expression of social reality. In relating the generic history of the novel to extra-literary events in Spanish America, he shows how twentieth-century fiction sets forth the essence of such phenomena as the first Peron regime, the Mexican Revolution, the Che Guevara legend, indigenismo, and the strong-man political type. In essence, he views the novel as art rather than as document, but not as art alienated from society. The discussion is organized chronologically, opening with the turn of the century and focusing on novels from 1900 to 1915 that exemplify various aspects of the nineteenth-century literary inheritance. Professor Brushwood then highlights the avant-garde fiction (influenced by Proust and Joyce) of the 1920's as a precursory movement to the ‘new' Latin American novel, a phenomenon that came into its own during the 1940's. He then examines the ‘boom' in Spanish American fiction, the period of extensive international recognition of certain works, which he dates from 1962 or 1963. In each era considered, the development of the novel is placed in dual perspective. One view-that of particularly significant novels in light of others published during the same year-is a cross section of the genre at one particular moment. The second view - that of a panorama of novels published in intervals between significant moments in the history of the novel - is more general and selective in the number of books discussed. Combining the historical with the analytical approach, the author proposes that the experience of a novel in which reality has been transformed into art is essential to our understanding of that reality. Texas Pan American Series. CONTENTS: Preface; 1. The Heritage (1900-1915); 2. The Year of Los de abajo (1916); 3. From Los de abajo to Don Segundo Sombra (1917-1925); 4. The Year of Don Segundo Sombra (1926); 5. From Don Segundo Sombre to Doña Barbara (1927-1928); 6. The Year of Doña Barbara (1929); 7. From Doña Barbara to Don Goyo (1930-1932); 8. The Year of Don Goyo (1933); 9. From Don Goyo to Todo verdor perecera (1934-1940); 10. The Year of Todo verdor perecera (1941); 11. From Todo verdor perecera to El Señor Presidente (1942-1945); 12. The Years of the Reaffirmation of Fiction: El Señor Presidente (1946), Al filo del agua (1947), Adan Buenosayres (1948), El reino de este mundo (1949); 13. From El reino de este mundo to Pedro Páramo (1950-1954); 14.The Year of Pedro Paramo (1955); 15. From Pedro Paramo to Rayuela (1956-1962); 16. The Year of Rayuela (1963); 17. From Rayuela to Cien años de soledad (1964-1966); 18. The Year of Cien años de soledad (1967); 19. After Cien años de soledad (1968-1970); 20. Conclusions; A List of Novels by Year and Country; Notes; A Selected Bibliography; Index.
John S. Brushwood is Roy A. Roberts Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Mexico in Its Novel. A Nation's Search for Identity, also published by the University of Texas Press.
Julius was born in a mansion on Salaverry Avenue, directly across from the old San Felipe Hippodrome.' Life-size Disney characters and cowboy movie heroes romp across the walls of his nursery. Out in the carriage house, his great-grandfather's ornate, moldering carriage takes him on imaginary adventures. But Julius' father is dead, and his beautiful young mother passes through her children's lives like an ephemeral shooting star. Despite the soft shelter of family and money, hard realities overshadow Julius' expanding world, just as the rugged Andes loom over his home in Lima. This lyrical, richly textured novel, first published in 1970 as Un mundo para Julius, opens new territory in Latin American literature with its focus on the social elite of Peru. A member of that elite, Bryce Echenique incisively charts the decline of an influential, centuries-old aristocratic family who become nouveaux riches with the invasion of foreign capital in the 1950s. A WORLD FOR JULIUS, his first novel, marks the first appearance in English of this important Peruvian writer, whose Latin American postmodern fiction has won critical acclaim throughout the Spanish-speaking world. ‘Alfredo Bryce Echenique is the best writer in Peru.' - GREGORY RABASSA . . . ‘A WORLD FOR JULIUS is one of the very best Latin American novels of the 1970s.' - GEORGE YUDICE, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF SPANISH, HUNTER COLLEGE, NEW YORK. Texas Pan American Series.
Alfredo Bryce Echenique (born February 19, 1939) is a Peruvian writer born in Lima. He has written several books and short stories. Bryce was born to an Anglo-Peruvian family of upper class, related to John Bryce Weddle, ancestor of the Marquesses of Milford-Haven and of the duchesses of Abercon and Westminster. He was the third son and the fourth of the five children of the banker Francisco Bryce Arrospide and his wife, Elena Echenique Basombrío, granddaughter of the former President Jose Rufino Echenique. Bryce studied elementary education at Inmaculado Corazon school, and high school at Santa María school and Saint Paul's College, a British boarding school for boys in Lima. Upon the wish of his family Bryce Echenique studied law in the National University of San Marcos until 1964. His literary interest nevertheless prevailed and so, shortly afterwards, he completed a parallel study course in literature with a thesis on Ernest Hemingway. In 1988 he adopted Spanish nationality without losing Peruvian one. He received a grant from the French government which, like many other Latin American authors of the boom period, led him to Paris. At the Sorbonne he studied classic and modern French literature and then taught at various French schools and universities. His first book Huerto Cerrado published in 1968, was a finalist for the Casa de las AmEricas literary prize awarded in Cuba and is a collection of short stories written in different styles and points of view about a young protagonist, Manolo, a member of Lima's upper class, as he comes of age in 1950s Lima. This was followed by his first novel, Un Mundo para Julius, published in 1970 that became a big success and counts today as one of the classics of Latin American literature. The novel, which has since been translated into ten languages, tells the story of a young boy who grows up as the youngest of four children of a rich, Peruvian upper-class family. Although Julius actually belongs to the ruling classes he feels a stronger bond with the servants which surround him and this brings him into conflict with his family. With biting irony the author exposes, through the eyes of a child, the great social differences in Peruvian society. Un mundo para Julius marks for Bryce Echenique the start of an extremely productive literary career, in which he has until today written nearly twenty novels and story volumes. ‘I am an author of the second half of the 20th century.' Despite this declaration and his spatial and temporal closeness to other Latin American authors of the boom generation, Bryce Echenique keeps a conscious distance from his colleagues who he sometimes refers to as ‘nouveau riche'. That his style, as one critic once said, corresponds more to an ironic than a magic realism, is shown by the author also in one his latest novels: La amigdalitis de Tarzán from 1999. Largely in the form of letters, the novel relates the story of the hindered romantic relationship between a poor Peruvian troubadour and the daughter of an influential Salvadoran family. Similar to his heroes, Alfredo Bryce Echenique also lived for decades far from his home city of Lima to which he only returned in 1999. Also that year he was granted an honorary degree by the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. In March, 2007, Peruvian Diplomat Oswaldo de Rivero wrote an article for the newspaper El Comercio of Lima, Peru accusing Bryce of writing an article ‘Potencias sin poder' that was an almost exact copy of one written by de Rivero in the magazine ‘Quehacer' in March, 2005. Bryce responded saying the article had been submitted in error by his secretary. Juan Carlos Bondy subsequently found evidence that Bryce had earlier plagiarized the article ‘Amistad, bendito tesoro' by Ángel Esteban that had appeared in La Nacion of Argentina in December, 1996 Bondy's blog. Bryce has also been accused of plagiarizing articles by Graham E. Fuller and Herbert Morote Perú21. Journalism professor María Soledad de la Cerda found sixteen other instances of plagiarism which were found as a result of research for her course in investigative journalism El Mercurio.
From the internationally acclaimed Peruvian writer-winner of the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world-a tragicomic story of improbable, inevitable love. At the center: a couple in love, in exile together and apart. He is Juan Manuel Carpio, a second-generation Peruvian of Native American origins, a middle-class singer-composer. She is Fernanda Maria de la Trinidad del Monte Montes, a polyglot and cultured Salvadoran. Through the mostly epistolary narrative set in 1960s Paris, revolutionary El Salvador, Chile, 1980s California, and London, we follow the thirty-year arc of their relationship. At once cheerful, hopeful, and informed by a serene lack of sentimentality, the narrative-rich with the delights of paradox and hyperbole - sees the couple through disastrous and traumatic marriages to other people; the ups and downs of their respective careers; the inexorable effects of politics on their personal lives; their shifting passions and gradual realization that the truest bond between lovers is a tender, abiding, and respectful friendship.
Alfredo Bryce Echenique (born February 19, 1939) is a Peruvian writer born in Lima. He has written several books and short stories. Bryce was born to an Anglo-Peruvian family of upper class, related to John Bryce Weddle, ancestor of the Marquesses of Milford-Haven and of the duchesses of Abercon and Westminster. He was the third son and the fourth of the five children of the banker Francisco Bryce Arrospide and his wife, Elena Echenique Basombrío, granddaughter of the former President Jose Rufino Echenique. Bryce studied elementary education at Inmaculado Corazon school, and high school at Santa María school and Saint Paul's College, a British boarding school for boys in Lima. Upon the wish of his family Bryce Echenique studied law in the National University of San Marcos until 1964. His literary interest nevertheless prevailed and so, shortly afterwards, he completed a parallel study course in literature with a thesis on Ernest Hemingway. In 1988 he adopted Spanish nationality without losing Peruvian one. He received a grant from the French government which, like many other Latin American authors of the boom period, led him to Paris. At the Sorbonne he studied classic and modern French literature and then taught at various French schools and universities. His first book Huerto Cerrado published in 1968, was a finalist for the Casa de las AmEricas literary prize awarded in Cuba and is a collection of short stories written in different styles and points of view about a young protagonist, Manolo, a member of Lima's upper class, as he comes of age in 1950s Lima. This was followed by his first novel, Un Mundo para Julius, published in 1970 that became a big success and counts today as one of the classics of Latin American literature. The novel, which has since been translated into ten languages, tells the story of a young boy who grows up as the youngest of four children of a rich, Peruvian upper-class family. Although Julius actually belongs to the ruling classes he feels a stronger bond with the servants which surround him and this brings him into conflict with his family. With biting irony the author exposes, through the eyes of a child, the great social differences in Peruvian society. Un mundo para Julius marks for Bryce Echenique the start of an extremely productive literary career, in which he has until today written nearly twenty novels and story volumes. ‘I am an author of the second half of the 20th century.' Despite this declaration and his spatial and temporal closeness to other Latin American authors of the boom generation, Bryce Echenique keeps a conscious distance from his colleagues who he sometimes refers to as ‘nouveau riche'. That his style, as one critic once said, corresponds more to an ironic than a magic realism, is shown by the author also in one his latest novels: La amigdalitis de Tarzán from 1999. Largely in the form of letters, the novel relates the story of the hindered romantic relationship between a poor Peruvian troubadour and the daughter of an influential Salvadoran family. Similar to his heroes, Alfredo Bryce Echenique also lived for decades far from his home city of Lima to which he only returned in 1999. Also that year he was granted an honorary degree by the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. In March, 2007, Peruvian Diplomat Oswaldo de Rivero wrote an article for the newspaper El Comercio of Lima, Peru accusing Bryce of writing an article ‘Potencias sin poder' that was an almost exact copy of one written by de Rivero in the magazine ‘Quehacer' in March, 2005. Bryce responded saying the article had been submitted in error by his secretary. Juan Carlos Bondy subsequently found evidence that Bryce had earlier plagiarized the article ‘Amistad, bendito tesoro' by Ángel Esteban that had appeared in La Nacion of Argentina in December, 1996 Bondy's blog. Bryce has also been accused of plagiarizing articles by Graham E. Fuller and Herbert Morote Perú21. Journalism professor María Soledad de la Cerda found sixteen other instances of plagiarism which were found as a result of research for her course in investigative journalism El Mercurio.
Jose Costa is a ghostwriter - and not the kind who appears in all the magazines with models at his side. He knows he is fated to remain in the shadows of his illustrious clients -judges, politicians, the Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro - and that writing another's life will always feel like ‘having an affair with somebody else's wife,' but he takes his craft seriously. His best work is framed in his office overlooking the Copacabana Beach. But something is nagging Mr. Costa. While having a beer one day, he decides to buy a ticket to Budapest. In the city by the Danube, he falls in love with ‘the only tongue the devil respects'- and with a strangely enchanting woman named Kriska. After insisting that one does not learn the Magyar language from books, Kriska offers to teach him in a much more intimate way. First, though, he must observe the old proverb - ‘there is no life outside Hungary'- and abandon his thoughts of samba, sunbathers on Ipanema, Sugarloaf Mountain, and his wife in Rio; and turn himself over to a strange, hallucinogenic world of pumpkin rolls, late-night discos in old Buda, and endless bottles of Trojak wine. And of course, always Kriska, the willful seductress and disciplinarian who is as hard to fathom and tame as the language she speaks. But what will become of Jose, now Zsoze, when his time in Budapest comes to an end and life as he knows it is turned upside down? By Brazil's most beloved artist of music and letters, Budapest is an enchanting, playful, and irresistible novel that coils around the reader like a snake from the Arabian Nights, constantly surprising with its twists and turns, and its elegant, witty exploration of love, lust, and reinvention.
Francisco Buarque de Hollanda (born June 19, 1944 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), popularly known as Chico Buarque is a singer, guitarist, composer, dramatist, writer and poet. He is best known for his music, which often includes social, economic and cultural commentary on Brazil and Rio de Janeiro in particular. Son of the academic Sergio Buarque de Hollanda, Buarque lived in several locations throughout his childhood, though mostly in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Italy. He wrote and studied literature as a child and came to music through the bossa nova compositions of Tom Jobim and João Gilberto. He performed music throughout the 1960s as well as writing a play that was deemed dangerous by the Brazilian military dictatorship of the time. Buarque, along with several of his fellow musicians, were threatened by the government and eventually left Brazil in 1970. He moved to Italy again. However, he came back to Brazil in 1971, one year before the others, and continued to record albums, perform, and write, though much of his material was not allowed by government censors. He released several more albums in the 1980s and published three novels in the 1990s and 2000s, all of which were acclaimed critically.
An uproarious novel about a man's often sordid, lifelong search for his possibly imaginary half brother. My German Brother is the renowned Brazilian musician and author Chico Buarque's attempt to reconstruct through fiction his obsessive lifelong search for a lost sibling. In 1960s Sao Paulo, the teenage car thief and budding lothario Ciccio comes home each day to a house stuffed with books. His father, a journalist and scholar, has spent his life acquiring them; his mother, by necessity, has spent her life organizing this library. Ciccio feels like an afterthought in his own family, largely left to his own criminal devices. Forbidden to touch any of these books, Ciccio sneaks off with The Golden Bough one day to discover a decades-old letter hidden inside. The letter reveals an illicit affair his father carried on while posted in Nazi-era Berlin, an affair that resulted in the birth of a baby boy. The child, along with his mother, vanished into the chaos of the Second World War. Ciccio develops a fascination for his mysterious German brother: a fixation that becomes a mission, both comical and courageous, pursued over decades, through dead ends and embarrassments and cases of mistaken identity. My German Brother is the project of a lifetime, combining what was, what might have been, and outright fabrication, all in order to arrive at the truth.
Francisco Buarque de Hollanda (born June 19, 1944 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), popularly known as Chico Buarque is a singer, guitarist, composer, dramatist, writer and poet. He is best known for his music, which often includes social, economic and cultural commentary on Brazil and Rio de Janeiro in particular. Son of the academic Sergio Buarque de Hollanda, Buarque lived in several locations throughout his childhood, though mostly in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Italy. He wrote and studied literature as a child and came to music through the bossa nova compositions of Tom Jobim and João Gilberto. He performed music throughout the 1960s as well as writing a play that was deemed dangerous by the Brazilian military dictatorship of the time. Buarque, along with several of his fellow musicians, were threatened by the government and eventually left Brazil in 1970. He moved to Italy again. However, he came back to Brazil in 1971, one year before the others, and continued to record albums, perform, and write, though much of his material was not allowed by government censors. He released several more albums in the 1980s and published three novels in the 1990s and 2000s, all of which were acclaimed critically.
A major literary event that has taken the international publishing community by storm: A best-seller in Brazil, where it received unprecedented critical acclaim, Turbulence has also been translated into French, German, Italian, and Spanish, among other major languages. Written by Chico Buarque, one of Brazil's premier singers and songwriters, the novel gives an intense, apocalyptic vision of the paranoia, lawlessness, and nightmare of urban life in Brazil-an extended metaphor for a country facing the menace of a violent confrontation between the rich and the poor. Set in the decaying and poverty-stricken outskirts of an unnamed city, TURBULENCE consists of a series of highly charged cinematic scenes, viewed through the dazed eyes of a nameless narrator who moves between two different worlds. An aimless dropout, living on handouts from his rich sister, he belongs by birth to the privileged urban upper crust, with its luxury seaside apartments, its fabulous houses hidden behind electrified high walls and protected by machine-gun-toting security guards, its insanely expensive boutiques and shopping centers, its extravagant parties and trips to Europe. By chance he enters the ‘other Brazil,' the world of marginal and petty criminals that infringes on the edges of privileged society and threatens to engulf it. Told with compelling urgency, rich in irony, alive with arresting imagery, TURBULENCE is a haunting novel of kidnapping, assault and robbery, rape, and murder.
Francisco Buarque de Hollanda (born June 19, 1944 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), popularly known as Chico Buarque is a singer, guitarist, composer, dramatist, writer and poet. He is best known for his music, which often includes social, economic and cultural commentary on Brazil and Rio de Janeiro in particular. Son of the academic Sergio Buarque de Hollanda, Buarque lived in several locations throughout his childhood, though mostly in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Italy. He wrote and studied literature as a child and came to music through the bossa nova compositions of Tom Jobim and João Gilberto. He performed music throughout the 1960s as well as writing a play that was deemed dangerous by the Brazilian military dictatorship of the time. Buarque, along with several of his fellow musicians, were threatened by the government and eventually left Brazil in 1970. He moved to Italy again. However, he came back to Brazil in 1971, one year before the others, and continued to record albums, perform, and write, though much of his material was not allowed by government censors. He released several more albums in the 1980s and published three novels in the 1990s and 2000s, all of which were acclaimed critically.
From the Caribbean shores of Colombia comes a sensuous, funny. spicy novel about love and desire. Innocent, good-hearted orphan Teodora Vencejos is overjoyed when handsome ne'er-do-well Don Galaor Ucros asks for her hand in marriage, never suspecting that he is marrying her for her money and that he carries on torrid affairs behind her back, But Ucros's lazy, spendthrift ways force Teodora to leave their Colombian village to find work in Madrid at the catering firm of sensual master chef Dr. Antiel, baker of anatomically correct confectionery and other erotic goodies, whose bawdy culinary creations open her mind and whose innovative methods of debt collecting-a certain amount of credit for each kiss, more for an embrace, and so on-give new meaning to exacting a pound of flesh. In Antiel's kitchen, Teodora receives an education both culinary and carnal, one that will gradually awaken the sleeping force of her polymorphous sexuality. Teodora's sudden urge to return home after two years in Spain has unexpected results, for she has grown into a beautiful woman whose heavenly body, like the tide-turning moon, has the power to stir a whole village. When a traumatic discovery sends Teodora into a deep, enchanted sleep, the entire town falls under her magical sexual spell. Whose kiss will wake her? Her husband's? Dr. Antiel's? Or a stranger's? SEÑORA HONEYCOMB is a beguiling fairy tale for our time. Seasoned with wry humor and eroticism, it is a playfully ironic story about the liberation of female desire. With its erotic descriptions of food and its delicious descriptions of sex, this novel introduces a fresh and original voice from Latin America. .
FANNY BUITRAGO has published several novels in her native Colombia. She is well known in Mexico, where she has served as a judge for a prestigious literary prize and given readings. Señora Honeycomb is her first book to be translated into English. MARGARET SAYERS PEDEN has translated the works of such illustrious Latin American authors as Laura Esquivel, Carlos Fuentes, and Isabel Allende.
A widowed Buenos Aires artist decides to celebrate her forty-ninth birthday by spending the summer alone in a remote seaside village. TOMORROW I'LL SAY, ENOUGH is Alejandra' s ‘apprenticeship of solitude,' in which she tries to escape the family and social pressures which have restricted her for so long. With humor and irony, she describes the visits by her three daughters who descend upon her with their emotional and financial demands. Ultimately, it is her daughters' greed which prompts Alejandra to make some decisions about her future.
SILVINA BULLRICH (October 4, 1915 - July 2, 1990) was born in 1915, into a wealthy and cultured Buenos Aires family. In a time and place where marriage was the designated vocation for proper young women, Bullrich's formal education ended at the sixth-grade level. Frustrated by her lack of opportunity, she began writing as an adolescent, eventually becoming a successful novelist, short-story writer and essayist, well known to Argentine and European readers. Tomorrow I'll Say, Enough, originally published in 1968, is the first of her full-length works to be translated into English. JULIA SHIREK SMITH has degrees in French and Spanish. A former teacher and librarian, she lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is regarded as a gifted translator of short fiction.
When Borges visited Harvard University in 1967-68 he created great and genuine excitement both as a literary hero and as the charming, enchanting, fascinating person that he is. The visit occasioned this book and his conversations with Richard Burgin, at the time a mere undergraduate, show us the man and his genius in perfect accord. But every conversor is at the mercy of his companion. Face to face with Borges for the first time, Burgin began: ‘I'm going to write a book about you and I thought I might ask you some questions.' And he did. The results of this unexpected collaboration were utterly successful. ‘Within fifteen minutes we were talking about Faulkner, Whitman, Melville, Kafka, Henry James, Dostoevsky and Schopenhauer.' Hazlitt remarked that the conversation of authors is certainly better than any other. ‘The proof of which is, that, when you are used to it, you cannot put up with any other.' it is no surprise, therefore, that the conversations of Jorge Luis Borges, who has been described as ‘one of the greatest writers alive today', provide us with a fascinating insight into what lies behind his literary intelligence. ‘Borges is one of the greatest writeis alive today.' - New York Review of Books. ‘Ranks among the few perfectly composed, thoroughly fascinating literary intelligences alive.' - New York Times Book Review. ‘Meeting Borges is like reading him; to meet Borges is to read him. He talks mostly about literature or the life he has led in literature, and in shapely clever English sentences he says things about himself . Now near-blind (‘I can see that there are windows there but I cannot see your face'). his gentlemanliness even more pronounced than his gentleness, his tremulous but controlled sensibility (which seems located in the large flaring nostrils turned up to receive the outside world, in the uplifted attentively humble face of the blind), the face he presents is that of a writer writing.' - The New York Times Book Review. Born in Buenos Aires on August 24th, 1899, Jorge Luis Borges was taken to Europe by his parents at an early age and lived there until 1921. In 1918 he travelled to Spain and the following year his first poem was published in the Madrid periodical, Grecia. When he returned to Buenos Aires he lived obscurely as a municipal librarian, a position he was forced to relinquish when he fervently opposed Genei al Peron's dictatorship. Soon he became recognized as one of the principal poets of the rebellious Argentine vanguard and after Peron's fall took up the position of Director of the National Library of Argentina and Professor of English at the University of Buenos Aires. In the early ‘30s his literary activity tended more and more away from verse and toward the essay and the story. His best narratives appeared in collected form in 1944 under the general title, FICCIONES. This is the book to which Borges owes his international reputation. In 1961 the importance and quality of his work was given international recognition when he shared the Prix International des Editeurs with Samuel Becket. In 1971 he travelled to England and gave a series of lectures. The same year he received the Jerusalem Prize (awarded every two years to an author ‘who has contributed to the freedom of the individual in society') and honorary degrees from Oxford and Columbia Universities. His audience have grown over the years from a small cult in Buenos Aires to worldwide readership. He is regarded as one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century.
Richard Burgin (born June 3, 1947, Brookline, MA) is an American fiction writer, editor, composer, critic, and academic. He has published nineteen books, and from 1996 through 2013 was a professor of Communication and English at St. Louis University. He is also the founder and publisher of the internationally distributed award-winning literary magazine Boulevard, now in its 31st year of continuous publication.
Although Jorge Luis Borges is mentioned as often in literary circles, in reviews and articles on contemporary literature, as anyone else writing today, this internationally acclaimed Argentinian writer has, until now, said very little to anyone about himself. Until he met Richard Burgin, a young student intensely interested in him and his work, Borges had granted few interviews, always avoided personal replies, and remained a considerable question mark to the literary world. But while Borges was Charles Eliot Norton lecturer at Harvard last year, Richard Burgin not only met him, but got to know him well. The result of their meetings is this book-perhaps the closest we will ever get to an actual autobiography of Borges. In these informal conversations, Borges offers something of himself that readers have only been able to guess at before. He speaks of his childhood, his blindness, Peron, other writers, friends, death, metaphysics, insomnia, painting, Hiroshima, his own work, writing in general-of all aspects of his life, his art, his preoccupations. This is a unique book of great importance not only because we have no other full account by Borges on Borges, but because it provides so many clues to our understanding of a great artist's work and life. Richard Burgin has contributed a personal introduction, and Borges himself has written a special prologue.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1899, JORGE LUIS BORGES spent many of his formative years in Europe and published his first book in 1923. In 1961 he shared the $10,000 International Publishers' Prize with Samuel Beckett, and in 1966 the Ingram Merrill Foundation granted him its Annual Literary Award. Since 1955, he has been director of the National Library of Argentina. Among his many works are FICCIONES, OTHER INQUISITIONS, LABYRINTHS, DREAM TIGERS, and A PERSONAL ANTHOLOGY. RICHARD BURGIN graduated from Brandeis in 1968 and is now at Columbia University. . .
C. Cabrera Infante was one of Cuba's finest writers. From 1954 to 1960, before his exile, he wrote film criticism under the pseudonym G. Cain. Taken together, these reviews constitute a brilliant and far-sighted survey of post-war European and American cinema during a crucial phase. In A TWENTIETH CENTURY JOB Cabrera Infante revisits his past self- as a biographer. The result is a characteristically witty and fascinating picture of the author as a movie buff. As Cabrera Infante writes himself, ‘One could say that one of the authors is the ghost writer of the other but one does not say it.'
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro. He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attachE. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
When Columbus first came across tobacco in Cuba he was unimpressed. He was looking for gold, not smoke. How could he know that tobacco would become the multimillion-dollar business that it is today? And that the island of Cuba was destined to produce the best cigars in the world (although so-called Havanas were never actually cultivated in Havana!). HOLY SMOKE, by the author of THREE TRAPPED TIGERS and INFANTE'S INFERNO, is the outrageous and informative story of the cigar and of those who have smoked it - in all walks of life, in literature, and in film. Cabrera Infante tells the story of cigars and cigar smoking from Columbus to Castro (who used to mooch cigars off the author) with many delightful detours along the way via Sherlock Holmes, Groucho Marx, Mark Twain, Marilyn Monroe, Oscar Wilde, Orson Welles, James Thurber, George Sand, Humphrey Bogart, W C. Fields, Marlene Dietrich, Robinson Crusoe, Colette and many others. Cabrera Lnfante describes in detail the way cigars are made, the different kinds of cigars, the history of tobacco, and the manners and mores of cigar smoking. This incredible cigar chronicle is the funniest, most original tribute to the cigar that has ever been written. ‘Mr. Infante, who writes admirable English by the way, gives us the whole story of the weed, technical and cultural, and does not disdain the cigarette. The cigarette, after all, is what you smoke between smokes. About pipes he is not so sure.' - Anthony Burgess, The Observer.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro. He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attachE. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
When Columbus first came across tobacco in Cuba he was unimpressed. He was looking for gold, not smoke. How could he know that tobacco would become the multimillion-dollar business that it is today? And that the island of Cuba was destined to produce the best cigars in the world (although so-called Havanas were never actually cultivated in Havana!). HOLY SMOKE, by the author of THREE TRAPPED TIGERS and INFANTE'S INFERNO, is the outrageous and informative story of the cigar and of those who have smoked it - in all walks of life, in literature, and in film. Cabrera Infante tells the story of cigars and cigar smoking from Columbus to Castro (who used to mooch cigars off the author) with many delightful detours along the way via Sherlock Holmes, Groucho Marx, Mark Twain, Marilyn Monroe, Oscar Wilde, Orson Welles, James Thurber, George Sand, Humphrey Bogart, W C. Fields, Marlene Dietrich, Robinson Crusoe, Colette and many others. Cabrera Lnfante describes in detail the way cigars are made, the different kinds of cigars, the history of tobacco, and the manners and mores of cigar smoking. This incredible cigar chronicle is the funniest, most original tribute to the cigar that has ever been written. ‘Mr. Infante, who writes admirable English by the way, gives us the whole story of the weed, technical and cultural, and does not disdain the cigarette. The cigarette, after all, is what you smoke between smokes. About pipes he is not so sure.' - Anthony Burgess, The Observer.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro. He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attachE. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
G. Cabrera Infante, recognized as one of the most original contemporary writers in the Spanish language, has produced novels, stories, critical essays, articles and a few screenplays (the cult movie Vanishing Point is one) and lectured at numerous universities from Cambridge to Chicago. THREE TRAPPED TIGERS, published in 1971, was his first book to appear in English. It was hailed as ‘a remarkable book. I doubt a funnier book has been written in Spanish since Don Quixote . . . . It is also one of the most inventive novels that have come out of Latin America, and that is saying a great deal' (David Gallagher, The New York Times Book Review), and John Skow of Time magazine said: ‘Remarkably good . . . can stand on the same shelf with Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges.' INFANTE'S INFERNO is a vivid, humorous, highly charged, erotic semi-autobiographical novel about the sensual education and encounters of a young journalist in Havana. Written in the first person, Infante's Inferno chronicles the narrator's sexual conquests and failures with intimacy, humor, sensuality and sympathy. As in his previous novel, THREE TRAPPED TIGERS, there are inventive word play and punning and also a vivid re-creation of life in pre-Castro Havana. A major erotic novel, this is a hilarious version of the Don Juan myth by a writer whose reputation continues to grow.
GUILLERMO CABRERA INFANTE was born in Gibara, Cuba, a small town in Oriente Province not far from where both Batista and Fidel Castro were born. His parents were founders of the Cuban Communist party in the early thirties. In 1941 the family moved to Havana, where his father, a journalist by profession, worked at the Communist newspaper Hay. Cabrera Infante went to school in Havana, but poverty forced him to abandon his dreamed-of career in medicine. He worked as a proofreader and graduated from journalism school. He was in jail briefly in 1952 for publishing a short story with ‘English profanities.' In 1954 he started a movie column for Carteles, a weekly magazine popular throughout the Caribbean, and he founded and directed the Cinemateca de Cuba, the first film library in Cuba, which was closed by Batista in 1956. After Castro came to power in 1959, Cabrera Infante was appointed, briefly, head of the Council for Culture and later, even more briefly, one of the executive directors of the Film Institute until it was taken over by the Stalinists. He then edited the cultural weekly Lunes de Revolucion until it was banned by Castro in 1961. From 1962 to 1965 he was with the Cuban Embassy in Brussels as cultural attachE. He returned to Havana in 1965 for his mother's funeral and after a short stay decided to leave Cuba for good. He went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
COMING OF AGE IN HAVANA - A triumphant literary masterpiece full of ribald vitality and miraculous wordplay, INFANTE'S INFERNO is the semi-autobiographical account of the author's youth in pre-revolutionary Cuba. It is at once a rite of passage from innocence to sexual experience in the arms of an awesome variety of women who roamed the streets and tenements of a lusty, madcap Havana . . . and an exiled artist's poignant memories of his love affair with a city and a forever vanished world. ‘Satire masquerading as erotic memoir . . . a profusely profane, intentionally outrageous treatise' - New York Times Book Review . . . ‘A nightmare mix of realistic narrative, fantasy and the surreal' - The Los Angeles Times . . . ‘The major book admirers of his THREE TRAPPED TIGERS have been waiting for . . . His books offer a fascinating glimpse of Havana in the 40s and 50s that we can get nowhere else!' - San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner . . . ‘A painstakingly elaborate reconstruction of the steamy sexual bath of pre-Castro Cuba . . . Sexuality is to Infante what anger is to Solzhenitsyn' - The Baltimore Sun.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro. He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attachE. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
This brilliantly inventive novel, which has been acclaimed in Europe and Latin America, is an extraordinary work of imagination and language. Set against the rhythmic, kaleidoscopic world of Havana night life in the 1950s, the characters are many and they appear and reappear in bars, night clubs, cars, bedrooms and the street. Writers, prostitutes, singers, homosexuals, photographers, tourists, lovers are all part of a world of fantasy and reality, imagery and truth-a world created, sustained, transported and connected by a dazzling collage of language which is alternately cerebral, exotic, humorous and sad. Meanings within meanings, puns, satire, jokes and rhythms are all part of the verbal pyrotechnics which create a mood that is exotic, suspenseful and always fascinating. THREE TRAPPED TIGERS won the Biblioteca Breve prize in Spain in 1964, was a finalist in the Formentor Prize in 1965, and in 1970 won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in Paris. It is a remarkable and original work of fiction that propels the reader into a new dimension of experience and reality.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro. He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attachE. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
‘SHOWTIME! TROPICANA! . . . The MOST fabulous nightclub in the WORLD presents its latest show. Curtains up!' So begins a magical, marvelous journey into a Havana on the brink of revolution, a carnival excursion into the nightclubs, the strip joints, barras, and cantinas of an erotic city pulsing with songs and rumbas, sex and revolution, tragedy and bawdy, outrageous comedy. But even more, THREE TRAPPED TIGERS is a daringly innovative work that transforms language into a living, breathing vehicle of remarkable creation. ‘FEROCIOUS VERBAL ENERGY . . . A camp epic of nightlife in Batista's Havana in the 1950s' - Newsweek . . . ‘THREE TRAPPED TIGERS can stand on the same shelf with Gabriel Garcia Márquez's ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE and the provocative obscurities of Jorge Luis Borges' - Time . . . ‘A modernist text with all stops pulled, its roots in Sterne, Carroll, Joyce and, most of all, Hollywood. The narrative is like a Marx Brothers comedy' - The Village Voice . . . ‘A vastly comic novel . . . also one of the most inventive novels that has come out of Latin America.' - The New York Times Book Review.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro. He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attachE. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
Cabrera Infante's first novel THREE TRAPPED TIGERS, was hailed as ‘Remarkable. . . I doubt a funnier novel has been written in Spanish since Don Quixote' (New York Times). And Time magazine said: ‘Can stand on the same shelf with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges' His new work of fiction is a series of vignettes or episodes about Cuban history from the first inhabitants to the present, But mainly they are contemporary - vivid and sharp, sometimes cruel and violent, sometimes witty, sometimes sad, frequently deeply ironical. The book is, in the author's words, ‘a personal statement of the strategies of history.'
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro. He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attachE. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
Cabrera Infante's first novel THREE TRAPPED TIGERS, was hailed as ‘Remarkable. . . I doubt a funnier novel has been written in Spanish since Don Quixote' (New York Times). And Time magazine said: ‘Can stand on the same shelf with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges' His new work of fiction is a series of vignettes or episodes about Cuban history from the first inhabitants to the present, But mainly they are contemporary - vivid and sharp, sometimes cruel and violent, sometimes witty, sometimes sad, frequently deeply ironical. The book is, in the author's words, ‘a personal statement of the strategies of history.'
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro. He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attachE. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
Like the rhythm of the chachacha, the three short stories in this collection are marked by repetition and contrast. They all begin with the same scene: on a rainy afternoon, a man and woman are having lunch in a restaurant in the center of Havana. Each time, However, this scene is the genesis of a different love story, each corresponding to the vision of three distinct islands: the island of African rites and sacred tambours; the island of luxury hotels and American tourists; and finally, an island of communist utopia and political persecution. In this humorous, ironic and touching work, Cabrera Infante invites the reader on a journey through time, and a quest to discover the many faces of his beloved Cuba.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro. He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attachE. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
MEA CUBA is the passionate but often hilarious political autobiography of one of the greatest Cuban writers of the century. Sharply opinionated and brutally honest, it explores the nature of the Cuban revolution and the lives of those it has involved or affected, from political leaders such as Fulgencio Batista, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro to writers like Alejo Carpentier, Reinaldo Arenas, and Heberto Padilla. Mea Cuba overflows with Cabrera Infante's brilliant wit and ingenious wordplay. But it is also a deeply moving analysis of the tragedies-and political farces-of our time. Profound, incisive, enlightening, and entertaining, Mea Cuba is at once a revealing memoir and a fascinating exploration of life, politics, and literature in Cuba today.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro. He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attachE. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
As much a storyteller as an ethnographer, Lydia Cabrera was captivated by a strange and magical new world revealed to her by her Afro-Cuban friends in early twentieth-century Havana. In AFRO-CUBAN TALES this world comes to teeming life, introducing English-speaking readers to a realm of tenuous boundaries between the natural and the supernatural, deities and mortals, the spiritual and the seemingly inanimate. Here readers will find a vibrant, imaginative record of African culture transplanted to Cuba and transformed over time, a passionate and subversive alternative to the dominant Western culture of the Americas. In this charmed realm of myth and legend, imaginative flights, and hard realities, Cabrera shows us a world turned upside down. In this domain guinea hens can make dour Asturians and the king of Spain dance; little fat cooking pots might prepare their own meals; the pope can send encyclicals about pumpkins; and officials can be defeated by the shrewdness of turtles. The first English translation of one of the most important writers on African culture in the Americas, the collection provides a fascinating view of how African traditions, myths, stories, and religions traveled to the New World - of how, in their tales, Africans in the Americas created a New World all their own.
Lydia Cabrera (May 20, 1899, Havana, Cuba - September 19, 1991, Miami, FL) was a legendary Cuban ethnographer of Afro-Cuban culture and the author of many books, including El Monte and Vocabulario Congo. Alberto Hernandez-Chiroldes is a professor and chair of the Spanish department at Davidson College. Lauren Yoder is James Sprunt Professor of French at Davidson College. Isabel Castellanos is one of the foremost scholars on Afro-Cuban culture. .
Translation of Cuentos para ml Garmencita (1915). A collection of 29 stories, some of which are more like essays. illustrated
Salvador Calderón Ramirez was a Nicaraguan writer. He completed his first studies in Managua and then went to Costa Rica. In San José he began university courses that he could not continue, having arrived in El Salvador at the end of the last century. Here he married. He founded a school in Ahuachapán; he was a teacher at the Salvadoran Lyceum and his life is an example of austerity and work. A restless spirit, observer and scholar, he devoted himself to historical research, having published the following works: Around Walker; Aquino, Morgan and Paterson; Caciques and Conquistadors and Last Days of Sandino. He served as a mediator between César Augusto Sandino and Dr. Juan Bautista Sacasa, to set the conditions that put an end to the guerrilla activities of the defender of the sovereignty and integrity of Nicaragua. He also published: Cuentos para mi Carmencita and De adentro. A second edition of this work is now offered by the Editorial Department of the Ministry of Culture. The book contains a sentimental story where Roberto Ermile appears as the protagonist, an imaginary character whom the author says he met on a voyage from Columbus to New York. Calderón Ramírez was an entertaining writer and very careful of his style. An enthusiastic teacher, animator of youth and an exemplary guide for his inflexible and patriotic attitude towards dictators, as well as for his manliness and modesty. He died in San Salvador, on December 24, 1941
This is the English translation of the extraordinarily popular Mexican novel that remained on Mexico's Top Ten Best Sellers list long after its initial publication. The protagonist of the novel, Valeria, is a member of a well-to-do Jewish family in Mexico City. She is married and has two sons. Intelligent and sensitive, she realizes that the traditional conventions of her culture and subculture have made her unable to be a whole person, acting as a relatively free agent in the world. Then she falls passionately in love with a woman, and, against tremendous family pressure, finds the courage to leave her conventional life to become the writer she has wanted to be. All the elements of a true romance written with fine literary sensibility.
Sara Levi Calderon was born and raised Jewish in MExico City. She married, gave birth to two children, got divorced, became a sociologist, and then fell in love and learned the wonders of becoming a lesbian.
The genius of Machado de Assis has long been acknowledged in his native Brazil, where he is acclaimed the nation's greatest prose writer. Now, slightly more than half a century after his death, he is finally receiving widespread foreign recognition. In large part this recognition stems from Miss Caldwell's English translation of Dom Casmurro (1953), the novel that many consider Assis's masterpiece. Here is the first English-language attempt to solve the enigma of DOM CASMURRO. Miss Caldwell's inquiry into this great novel takes the form of a detective story unraveling the suspicion of adultery attaching to the heroine, and, at the same time, it gives new insight into the novelist's work a whole, particularly his use of symbolism. Perspectives in Criticism, No. 6.
Helen Florence Caldwell (July 9, 1904- April 12, 1987) was born in Omaha, Nebraska, attended Classical High School in Providence. Her family moved to Los Angeles in 1917 where she graduated from Los Angeles High School, She attended UC Berkeley for a while but graduated from the fledgling UCLA in 1925. For the next decade she worked for RKO Pictures and the Los Angeles Board of Education, while also studying Japanese dance with the celebrated dancer and choreographer Michio Ito and performing with Ito's company in the Hollywood Bowl. In the meantime UCLA had evolved into a full-fledged university, where Caldwell's graduate study was capped with a master's degree in classics in 1939. From 1942 onward she served as Lecturer in classics at her alma mater, was advanced to Senior Lecturer in 1965, and retired in 1970. During those twenty-eight years, while UCLA grew into an academic megalopolis, and even the classics faculty more than tripled in size. Caldwell was a hard-working mainstay of instruction, offering a great variety of courses in both Greek and Latin, admired by students and colleagues for scholarly competence, forthright friendliness, and exemplary humanitas. In a single year (e.g. 1965-66) she would be called on to teach Catullus and Horace, Roman elegy, Vergil's Aeneid, Plautus and Terence, and Latin composition, on top of her specialty of ancient drama with its 100 + enrollments, or again elementary Greek, elementary Latin, Tacitus, and Ovid in addition to much else. Fondness for nature, her alma mater, and the literature of antiquity brought forth a felicitous booklet, Ancient Poets' Guide to UCLA Gardens (1968). She also found her research vocation in Luso-Brazilian literature, focused on the major nineteenth-century novelist Machado de Assis, whose fame was secure in Romance-speaking areas, but whom Caldwell nearly single-handedly opened up for the English-speaking world. Her introduced and commented translations of four of Machado's major novels (Dom Casmurro [1953], Esau and Jacob [1965], Counselor Ayres' Memorial [1972], Helena [1983]) and numerous short stories (1963) were accompanied by Caldwell's own book-length studies (The Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis. A Study of Dom Casmurro [1960]. Machado de Assis.The Brazilian Master and His Novels [1970]) and earned her a wide reputation, marked by her being made a Grande Oficial of the Ordem Nacional do Cruzeiro do Sol by the Brazilian government in 1959, and by the award of the Machado de Assis Medal by the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1963. In 1982 she moved to Santa Barbara, seeking relief from increasing severe bronchial asthma in the more salubrious atmosphere up the coast. She died there five years later.
In his new novel the celebrated Brazilian writer and champion of political freedom, Antonio Callado, author of QUARUP, takes us into the Brazil of the mid-1960's. The military has seized power, and a handful of young Rio intellectuals, who spend their time drinking in Ipanema cafEs, suddenly feel challenged by the sweep of political and military events. They meet at Don Juan's Bar to plot the formation of a guerrilla band - their dream: to overthrow the dictatorship and eventually to rendezvous in Bolivia with Che Guevara and liberate the continent. As they move from their life of talk into unaccustomed action, as they meet secretly with allies from Cuba, carry out robberies to equip themselves with money and guns, attempt to join a guerrilla hand deep in Mato Grosso, and as they begin to stumble against cruel realities and are picked off one by one, the novel looks into their lives, their personalities, their motives, and explores the nature of revolution - and the futility of romantic revolutionary zeal - in contemporary Latin America.
ANTONIO CALLADO was born in Niteroi, capital of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1917. In 1937 he began his distinguished career in journalism with Rio's Correio de Manha and o Globo. During World War II he was in London and Paris as a correspondent and radio announcer. Following the war he returned to Brazil and to journalism and writing, serving as Correio de Manhâ's chief editor from 1954 to 1960. In 1950-51, as editor-in-chief, he started the Brazilian edition of Reader's Digest and from 1960 to 1963 edited a Brazilian encyclopedia sponsored by the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Since late 1963, Callado has been an editor of 0 Jornal do Brasil. He is the author of two prize-winning plays, two novels - Assunçâo do Salviano (1956) and Quarup (1967) - and three works of nonfiction, one of which consists of his 1968 interviews with American prisoners of war in North Vietnam. He has contributed occasional literary letters from Brazil to The New York Times Book Review.
Examines the various problems concerning the question of limits of scientific experimentation on human subjects.
Antonio Callado was born in Niteroi, capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1917. After taking his degree in law at the Faculdade de Direito in Niteroi, he became, in 1937, a reporter on the Rio daily Correio de Manhã, and between 1938 and 1941 wrote a signed column for Rio's 0 Globo. During World War II he worked in London as a correspondent for Correio de Manhã and for the BBC as an announcer for the Brazilian Department. In 1944-5 he was with Radiodiffusion Francaise in Paris. He returned to Brazil and Correio de Manhã in 1947 and was its chief editor from 1954 to 1960. In 1950-1 Caliado, as editor-in-chief, started the Brazilian edition of Reader's Digest and from 1960 to 1963 edited a Brazilian encyclopedia sponsored by the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His play Cidade Assassinada (1957) was awarded the Prêmio de Prefeitura of Rio and his A Madona de Cedro (1958) the Prêmio Luiza Claudio de Sonza of Rio's PEN Club; another play, Pedro Mico, had a successful run and was translated into English by Odyssey magazine in 1961. In addition to Assuncão de Salviano, a novel published in 1956, Callado is the author of three works of nonfiction: Tempo de Arraes (1964), North Vietnam (1969), and Esgueleto na Logoa Verde, an account of the attempt in 1951 to find traces of the Fawcett expedition, which disappeared in the Brazilian jungle in 1925. Callado, an editor of 0 Jornal do Brssil since late 1963 and currently its Paris correspondent, is perhaps best known in the United States for his occasional literary letters from Brazil in The New York Times Book Review, his 1968 interview of American prisoners of war in North Vietnam, and his political differences with the military regime that assumed control in Brazil in 1964.
Profoundly moving and rich in human observation . . . Callado has brought the qualities of wit, precision and poetry to his novel. . . QUARUP shows that the symbolic and didactic novel is not dead so long as there are writers possessed of. . . wide-ranging imagination and faith in the reforming power of fiction.' The lines quoted above from the Times Literary Supplement of London herald the publication of a novel of extraordinary literary and political interest -a panoramic re-creation, in terms both human and symbolic, of the convulsed society of Brazil. QUARUP is the most important work to date of the distinguished and courageously outspoken Brazilian novelist-playwright-journalist whose reportage, especially his writing for one of the hemisphere's great newspapers, 0 Jornal do Brasil, ‘bears witness' in the words of the TLS ‘to qualities of intelligence and integrity and to exceptionally high standards in the gathering of information'-an integrity and authority that make his rich, crowded portrayal of a nation in turmoil as trustworthy as it is novelistically, poetically, and humanly brilliant. QUARUP is set in the recent past: from the Vargas years through the military coup of March 31, 1964. The protagonist is a priest, Nando. This gentle, unworldly man, a mystic entranced by a centuries-old Jesuit vision of society as God's republic, is transformed by his compassion into a twentieth-century revolutionary. This lover of God's peace is propelled by his love of man into the guerrilla wars of the Sertäo. Around him, the swirling society of Brazil-'No summary,' says Gregory Rabassa, ‘can begin to detail the novel's richness of people and episodes!' In wonderfully dramatic and evocative scenes the reader moves among priests and prostitutes, among liberal governors, fanatic anti-Communist colonels, among petty officials sniffing ether in Rio's demimonde, among the forgotten sugarcane sharecroppers of the Nordeste and the Indians of Brazil's jungle interior, where Nando goes as a missionary. In its breadth and variety, its vision and its passion, Quarup-whose title is derived from the Indian ritual of resurrection-is a synthesis of Callado's wide-ranging and urgent view of the society in which he lives: its struggles of modernization, its crisis in the Church, its revolutionary tremors. It is (the TLS concludes) ‘an honest and brilliant treatment in the widest human terms of problems which, . . . crucial in Brazil, are not without an ominous significance elsewhere.' We take pleasure in presenting QUARUP in Barbara Shelby's admirable translation, which the author, himself bilingual, found ‘a pleasure to read.'
Antonio Callado was born in Niteroi, capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1917. After taking his degree in law at the Faculdade de Direito in Niteroi, he became, in 1937, a reporter on the Rio daily Correio de Manhã, and between 1938 and 1941 wrote a signed column for Rio's O Globo. During World War II he worked in London as a correspondent for Correio de Manhã and for the BBC as an announcer for the Brazilian Department. In 1944-5 he was with Radiodiffusion Francaise in Paris. He returned to Brazil and Correio de Manhã in 1947 and was its chief editor from 1954 to 1960. In 1950-1 Caliado, as editor-in-chief, started the Brazilian edition of Reader's Digest and from 1960 to 1963 edited a Brazilian encyclopedia sponsored by the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His play Cidade Assassinada (1957) was awarded the Prêmio de Prefeitura of Rio and his A Madona de Cedro (1958) the Prêmio Luiza Claudio de Sonza of Rio's PEN Club; another play, Pedro Mico, had a successful run and was translated into English by Odyssey magazine in 1961. In addition to Assuncão de Salviano, a novel published in 1956, Callado is the author of three works of nonfiction: Tempo de Arraes (1964), North Vietnam (1969), and Esgueleto na Logoa Verde, an account of the attempt in 1951 to find traces of the Fawcett expedition, which disappeared in the Brazilian jungle in 1925. Callado, an editor of 0 Jornal do Brssil since late 1963 and currently its Paris correspondent, is perhaps best known in the United States for his occasional literary letters from Brazil in The New York Times Book Review, his 1968 interview of American prisoners of war in North Vietnam, and his political differences with the military regime that assumed control in Brazil in 1964.
‘Eugenio Cambaceres (1843-1888) is considered the most important figure in the foundation and development of the Argentine novel. He identified strongly with the culture of Europe, and as a result, his writing bears the influence of nineteenth century French culture.' In an attempt to cure Buenos Aires of its corrupting influences, Cambaceres delivered POT POURRI, a warts and all portrait of Buenosairean society. Its rich, wastrel narrator recounts a conjugal history of double adultery during the Carnival celebrations, where the seducer's flight is barred by the interventions of the husband's friend. Though fiction, Cambaceres's characters so closely resembled those of an actual Buenos Aires couple that a fury arose upon publication. In reaction, Cambaceres asked for the chance to explain, and wrote, ‘I have no desire to justify myself as I feel I have committed no crime . . . Mine are characters who exist, or could exist, as easily in Buenos Aires as in France, in Cochinchina, or in hell.' In bold strokes and forceful scenes, Cambaceres describes the vibrant culture of fin-de-siecle Buenos Aires. Written when heavy waves of immigration were rapidly transforming Buenosairean culture, the book raises the issue of mestization, or the mixing of races, as well as the creation of a new dominant class. As a new addition to the already-acclaimed Library of Latin America, POT POURRI will claim its rightful place alongside other major works of Latin American literature.
Eugenio Cambaceres (1843–1888) was an Argentine writer and politician. In the 1880s he wrote four books, with Sin rumbo (1885) being his masterpiece. His promising literary career was cut short when he died of tuberculosis. Cambaceres was born and died in Buenos Aires. He was the son of a French chemist father who immigrated to Argentina in 1833 and a mother native to Buenos Aires. Cambaceres went to secondary school at the Colegio Nacional Central and then went on to receive a law degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Quickly launching into politics, he was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies and was named secretary of the Club del Progreso in 1870, and in 1873 became Vice President of said organization. However, his denunciations of fraud within his own party led to his downfall, and although he was re-elected to the legislature in 1876 he soon resigned his post and left public life to devote himself to literature. From his career as a liberal politician, perhaps his most important contribution was a controversial tract in a local magazine advocating the separation of Church and State that was quite polemic at the time. As a writer, he combined the naturalism of Emile Zola and the Goncourt brothers and a localized realist character with four novels of a pessimistic nature. His first two novels were Pot-pourri (1881) and Música sentimental: Silbidos de un vago [Sentimental Music: Whistles of a Lazy Man] (1884). Both lack a precise plot and leave many threads hanging, containing stories of adultery within a pessimistic and weary atmosphere. The novelty of dealing with such a lurid topic and in such a crude manner provoked a scandalous repercussion and critics did not hesitate in directly attacking Cambaceres. This changed the composition and style of his later works, which were much better received. In 1885 he released his most significant novel, Sin Rumbo [Without Direction], where he offered good descriptions of the landscape of sexual pathology, including interesting anecdotes. The year before he died 1887, he published En la sangre (In the Blood), a story about the son of Italian immigrants of humble origin that advances his social standing by marrying the daughter of a wealthy estate, only to squander his fortune and end up with a miserable life. Through his writing, Cambaceres dealt with the problems associated with the arrival of Immigrants to Argentina and the social changes of his time, but ended up taking the perspective of the high bourgeoisie that critiqued the lower classes and European immigration. Eugenio Cambaceres traveled to Europe and was in Paris when he died at 45 years of age, in 1888. His daughter, Rufina Cambaceres, was only four years old.
Nellie Campobello is the contemporary of a series of extraordinary women: Maria Izquierdo, Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Lupe Mann, Nahui Olin, Maria Asünsolo, Dolores del Rio. She belongs to a Mexico in the process of discovering itself and fascinated by itself and fascinating other seers, this Mexico-divine-Narcissus, this Mexico-creole-Ulysses, this Mexico-Prometheus-enchained, Mexico naming itself and appearing on the face of the earth, Mexico of the creation and of the seventh day, that without ado sets out to name the things of the earth, to turn them over to see how and of what they are made, to spread them out in the evening like Carlos Pellicer who with his Brother Sun places the evenings any old where, sky up and earth down like the great Olmec heads scattered like meteorites in Tabasco's jungles. The Mexican Revolution is an authentic popular movement; some women also stand tall and toss their angry heads long before any feminist movement in Latin America. Splendid figures like Concha Michel, Benita Galeana, and Magdalena Mondragon, although their works are not the equal of their heroic profiles. A northerner like Nellie, Magdalena Mondragon is the nonconformist author of Los presidentes me dan risa, banned in the bookstores as subversive. CONTENTS: Introduction by Elena Poniatowska; Catucho (translated by Doris Meyer); Translator's Note; Men of the North; The Executed; Under Fire; My Mother's Hands; (translated by Irene Matthews); Translator's Note.
Nellie Francisca Ernestina Campobello Luna, born María Francisca Moya Luna (born November 7, 1900 - d. July 9, 1986), was a Mexican writer. Like her half-sister Gloria, a well-known ballet dancer, she was also known as an enthusiastic dancer and choreographer. Campobello was born in Ocampo, Durango the third of six children of Rafaela Luna, and her father was her mother's nephew Jesús Felipe Moya Luna, son of her sister Florencia. Probably this was a reason, why she concealed traces of her past. She handled also her year of birth indiscriminately as 1909 or 1913. She spent her childhood in Parral, Chihuahua and her youth in the city of Chihuahua, where she visited the Inglesa de la Colonia Rosales college. After her father was killed in the Battle of Ojinaga in 1914, her mother remarried the physician Stephen Campbell from Boston, whose last name the children assumed, and which was altered to Campobello by Nellie. In 1921, her mother died. During the revolutionary years she came to Mexico City, where she became later director of the national school of dance (Spanish: Escuela Nacional de Danza) of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. In 1985 she suddenly disappeared, as well as her belongings and paintings of Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. In 1998, the Commission of Human rights of the Federal District discovered that Nellie died on July 9, 1986, and that she was buried in the Progreso de Obregon Cemetery of Hidalgo. Supposedly she was kidnapped by Claudio Fuentes Figueroa or Claudio Niño Cienfuentes and his spouse Maria Cristina Belmont. Many of her choreographies of indigenous dances were rescued. Her corpse was transferred to Durango in 1999. She was never married, but had several affairs. It is traced, that she had a son (1919–1921) with Alfredo Chávez, the later Governor of Chihuahua. Also Germán List Arzubide told that he felt in love with her. She was one of the few women involved in the center of Mexico's intellectual groups and was also great friends with Federico Garcia Lorca and Langston Hughes who translated her poetry into English. To this day, she is considered the only female Mexican writer to publish narrations (semi-autobiographical) during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. This is why she is often referred to ‘La centaura del norte'. ‘Cartucho' is considered a classic literary work of the Mexican Revolution, showing the Villistas in a favorable light at a time when most of the literature was criminalizing them.
‘I am not here, I am on another shore, twenty-two years ago.' So begins Julieta Campos's labyrinthine novel, SHE HAS REDDISH HAIR AND HER NAME IS SABINA. Sabina is the woman who speaks this line as she sits on the balcony of an Acapulco hotel gazing at a spectacular promontory and the sunlit sea beyond. Or so the reader may think at first. Sabina, it turns out, is actually a character in the mind of a writer wrestling with ideas for a novel, Through a multiplicity of voices and perspectives and an intricate manipulation of imagined and objective reality, Campos creates a compelling metafictional meditation on the creative process. Campos freezes Sabina at the moment of gazing-four o'clock in the afternoon, May 8, 1971-and opens the character to a potential that is as expansive as the ever-present sea. As the book progresses, Campos envisions a battle among several potential narrators for the character of Sabina: a female observer (perhaps Campos herself) sitting on the balcony; another female persona near the balcony taking notes for a novel she might write; a third woman, distant in time and place, sitting at a desk looking at photographs of the sea; and a male writer who constitutes an ominous, oppressive presence in the novel, This masculine presence threatens and fragments the feminine voice, rendering it ambiguous and creating a tension that is sustained throughout the novel until the climax. SHE HAS REDDISH HAIR AND HER NAME IS SABINA is an exploration of the act of creating fiction, its possibilities and limitations, Reminiscent in some ways of writings by such Latin American novelists as Borges, Fuentes, and Garcia Marquez, as well as of the nouveau roman, it is also a work of striking originality. In this superlative translation, Leland H. Chambers captures the style and structural complexities of the original text, bringing this fascinating novel to English-speaking readers for the first time.
Julieta Campos (May 8, 1932, Havana, Cuba - September 5, 2007, Mexico City, Mexico), born in Cuba in 1932, has lived in Mexico since the mid-1950s. She has published two other novels, Muerteporaqua (1965) and El miedo deperdera Euridice (1979); a collection of short stories, Celina o los gatos (1968); and several works of literary theory and criticism, most notably Functon de la novela (1973). Leland H. Chambers, former editor of the Denver Quarterly, is a professor of English and comparative literature emeritus at the University of Denver, He is the translator of Ezequiel Martinez Estrada's HOLY SATURDAY AND OTHER STORIES and is preparing translations of other works by Latin American Authors.
The plays in this volume are from the latter vein: total theater, they reflect the far and sometimes dark side of Carballido's inventive mind. The plays range from the surrealist farce of ‘The Intermediate Zone' to the grotesqueries of ‘The Time and the Place,' from tragicomedy in ‘Theseus' to the dreamlike permutations of ‘The Golden Thread.' Even at his most fantastic, Carballido never loses his remarkable gift for characterization. His peevish Minotaur and raffish Nahual (were-coyote) are as believable as his amusing, sophisticated magistrate, don Leandro do Hita, or the lonely Leonor. And even at his most inventive, the author never loses sight of his most persistent concerns: the questioning and exploration of ‘what is reality?' and the problem of the extent of man's responsibility in his world. In some way, each of the plays included here explores a reality that is not generally considered ‘real.' But the reader accepts in Carballido, in the same way he unhesitatingly accepts the distortion and improbability of dream, a mind-expanded reality that is perhaps much closer to truth than the surface reality we perceive in our everyday lives. CONTENTS: Introduction; The Mirror; The Time and the Place; Dead Love; The Glacier; The Wine Cellar; The Golden Thread; The Intermediate Zone; The Clockmaker from Cordoba; Theseus. Texas Pan American Series. . Emilio Carballido is the most innovative and accomplished of Mexico's playwrights and one of the outstanding creators in the new Latin American theater. He has received over a dozen drama awards in Mexico and other countries, including the National University award for the title play of this collection. Though only in his mid-forties, he has already produced an impressive body of works in two quite different veins. He has mastered the techniques of the realistic and traditional play that has been so characteristic of Latin American theater, but he has also developed a richly rewarding vein of fantasy, sometimes poetic, sometimes comic, sometimes macabre-and sometimes all three. . Margaret Sayers Peden, whose translations of these plays were made with the active collaboration of the author, is an Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Missouri. In 1968 the University of Texas Press published her translation of Carballido's short novel THE NORTHER. . .
Emilio Carballido Cordoba, Veracruz, 22 May 1925 - Xalapa, Veracruz, 11 February 2008) was a Mexican writer who earned particular renown as a playwright. Carballido belonged to the group of writers known as the Generacion de los 50, alongside such figures as Sergio Magaña, Luisa Josefina Hernández, Rosario Castellanos, Jaime Sabines, and Sergio Galindo. He studied English literature and earned a master's degree in literature from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). As a playwright his first work was Rosalba y los Llaveros, which premiered at Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1950, directed by well-known poet and stage director Salvador Novo. This was followed by a huge number of plays, including Un pequeño día de ira (1961), which earned him the Casa de las AmEricas Prize, ¡Silencio Pollos pelones, ya les van a echar su maíz! (1963), Te juro Juana que tengo ganas (1965), Yo tambiEn hablo de la rosa (1965), Acapulco los lunes (1969), Las cartas de Mozart (1974), and the box office hit Rosa de dos aromas(1986). Some of his works as a playwright were filmed for the screen, such as Rosalba y los llaveros (1954), Felicidad (1956), La danza que sueña la tortuga (1975), ‘El censo‘ (1977), Orinoco (1984), and Rosa de dos aromas (1989). In addition to more than a hundred plays and scripts, he also wrote two volumes of short stories and nine novels, and worked randomly as a stage director. His career in the Mexican film industry began with the script for La torre de marfil, written in collaboration with Luisa Josefina Hernández in 1957. In 1972 he received two Ariels for the storyline and script of Alfonso Arau's El Águila Descalza. On 27 May 2002 he was given the Ariel de Oro for his lifetime achievements which include more than 50 films, remarkably his collaboration in Luis Buñuel's Nazarín (1959). On 16 March 2007, Carbadillo and his partner of 20 years, HEctor Herrera, were among the first couples to apply for a civil union following the enactment of the Federal District's 2006 Ley de Sociedad de Convivencia. Carbadillo died of a heart attack on 11 February 2008 in Xalapa. Two days later, Governor of Veracruz Fidel Herrera Beltrán ordered a day of mourning in the state and announced that the Theatre of the State and one of the state literary prizes would be renamed after him.
The love affair of a middle-aged widow and a young man-this is the human experience isolated in THE NORTHER, a concise examination of what makes and breaks human relationships. As the novel opens, the relationship, already strained by Isabel's boredom, Aristeo's restlessness, and the egocentricity of both, is threatened by the intrusion of a third figure, Max, who is welcomed by Aristeo, resented by Isabel. Emilio Carballido explores the tensions in the situation by shifting alternately between past and present until, moving closer and closer together, they finally merge as the relationship comes full circle. The brilliant accommodation of form to content is also evident in the manner in which the movement of events imitates the psychological movement of the characters, Carballido's primary focus in depicting the loneliness of the individual in contemporary society. Best known as a playwright, Carballido reveals the hand of the dramatist in his characterization. We do not see his characters, they are not described, they are created as their emotional and psychological outlines emerge. Similarly, places and natural surroundings are described less to produce visualization of the setting than to suggest an emotional atmosphere. Carballido's experience as a dramatist may be responsible for a prose style that is simple and direct, with no ambiguity in language end events, but it is suggestive of a fine novelistic talent that the meaning of THE NORTHER has been the object of widely divergent interpretations. The critical conflict aroused by THE NORTHER is discussed by the translator in her Introduction. Author of more than thirty plays, Carballido has received major critical awards in Mexico nearly every year since the publication of his first drama in 1948. His nontheatrical works include two other novels, numerous screenplays, and a collection of short stories. Only recently, through his plays and short stories, has he become known outside of Mexico. Carballido the novelist is introduced to the English-speaking public for the first time with this translation of El norte, which Carballido judges ‘the best translation I have seen of any of my works.' While preparing her doctoral dissertation on Carballido, Margaret Sayers Peden, now Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Missouri, became interested in making his works available to a larger audience. She is presently translating an early trilogy of his grotesque plays and has contributed articles on Latin American theater and the novel to such publications as the Latin American Theatre Review and Hispania. . (original title: El norte).
Emilio Carballido Cordoba, Veracruz, 22 May 1925 - Xalapa, Veracruz, 11 February 2008) was a Mexican writer who earned particular renown as a playwright. Carballido belonged to the group of writers known as the Generacion de los 50, alongside such figures as Sergio Magaña, Luisa Josefina Hernández, Rosario Castellanos, Jaime Sabines, and Sergio Galindo. He studied English literature and earned a master's degree in literature from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). As a playwright his first work was Rosalba y los Llaveros, which premiered at Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1950, directed by well-known poet and stage director Salvador Novo. This was followed by a huge number of plays, including Un pequeño día de ira (1961), which earned him the Casa de las AmEricas Prize, ¡Silencio Pollos pelones, ya les van a echar su maíz! (1963), Te juro Juana que tengo ganas (1965), Yo tambiEn hablo de la rosa (1965), Acapulco los lunes (1969), Las cartas de Mozart (1974), and the box office hit Rosa de dos aromas(1986). Some of his works as a playwright were filmed for the screen, such as Rosalba y los llaveros (1954), Felicidad (1956), La danza que sueña la tortuga (1975), ‘El censo‘ (1977), Orinoco (1984), and Rosa de dos aromas (1989). In addition to more than a hundred plays and scripts, he also wrote two volumes of short stories and nine novels, and worked randomly as a stage director. His career in the Mexican film industry began with the script for La torre de marfil, written in collaboration with Luisa Josefina Hernández in 1957. In 1972 he received two Ariels for the storyline and script of Alfonso Arau's El Águila Descalza. On 27 May 2002 he was given the Ariel de Oro for his lifetime achievements which include more than 50 films, remarkably his collaboration in Luis Buñuel's Nazarín (1959). On 16 March 2007, Carbadillo and his partner of 20 years, HEctor Herrera, were among the first couples to apply for a civil union following the enactment of the Federal District's 2006 Ley de Sociedad de Convivencia. Carbadillo died of a heart attack on 11 February 2008 in Xalapa. Two days later, Governor of Veracruz Fidel Herrera Beltrán ordered a day of mourning in the state and announced that the Theatre of the State and one of the state literary prizes would be renamed after him.
Perro Viejo is an old, worn-out slave who just wants to die. Taken away from his mother at birth, he has known no other life than that of servitude on a Cuban sugar plantation. His name - Perro Viejo, or Old Dog - was pinned on him when he was a baby by the plantation master, because like the bloodhounds that chased fugitive slaves, he was constantly searching for the scent of his long-lost mother. The only thing that keeps Perro Viejo going is the memory of Asuncion, a beautiful girl he once encountered while washing his master's horses at the river. Never to see her again, he shuts his heart to all forms of love. When death is almost upon him, Perro Viejo gets to know Beira, an old slave who is avoided by the others because they think she is a witch with supernatural powers. She opens Perro Viejo's heart and together they decide to help Aisa, a ten-year-old runaway slave, escape. They might not gain their freedom, but for the first time in his life Perro Viejo knows what it is to love - and to feel free. PERRO VIEJO, written by a descendant of slaves, is a searing and moving portrait of the inhumanity of the institution of slavery. We come to love and identify with this tragic old man and to feel rage and grief at the intolerable conditions of his life. . . ‘Perro Viejo didn't fear hell - he had lived his whole life in it.' Slavery was abolished in Cuba in 1886 but, as in all parts of the world, its stain remains in racial prejudice and discrimination. Winner of the Casa de las Americas, Cuba's highest literary honor and one of the most important prizes given in the Spanish-speaking world, this book will move you deeply.
TERESA CARDENAS (born Matanzas, 1970) is an award-winning novelist as well as a storyteller, poet and dancer. She won the Premio David for young writers in 1997. Her novel CARTAS AL CIELO (published as LETTERS TO MY MOTHER / CARTAS A MI MAMA in North America) was awarded the National Prize in Literary Criticism, given to the ten most important books published in Cuba from 1998 to 2000. It was also honored at the International Latino Book Awards and was included on the Americas Award Commended List. PERRO VIEJO, originally published in Cuba, won the Casa de las Americas Prize. Teresa Cardenas lives in Havana with her two children. DAVID UNGER is a translator, poet and novelist. His translations for Groundwood Books include THE GIRL FROM CHIMEL, THE HONEY JAR and POPUL VUH: A SACRED BOOK OF THE MAYA. He lives in New York City.
This never-before-translated classic of Brazilian, and gay, literature is a Faulknerian saga depicting the unraveling of a traditional patriarchal family. "The book itself is strange - part Faulknerian meditation on the perversities, including sexual, of degenerate country folk; part Dostoevskian examination of good and evil and God - but in its strangeness lies its rare power, and in the sincerity and seriousness with which the essential questions are posed lies its greatness." - Benjamin Moser, from the introduction. Long considered one of the most important works of twentieth-century Brazilian literature, Chronicle of the Murdered House is finally available in English. Set in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, the novel relates the dissolution of a once proud patriarchal family that blames its ruin on the marriage of its youngest son, Valdo, to Nina - a vibrant, unpredictable, and incendiary young woman whose very existence seems to depend on the destruction of the household. This family's downfall, peppered by stories of decadence, adultery, incest, and madness, is related through a variety of narrative devices, including letters, diaries, memoirs, statements, confessions, and accounts penned by the various characters.
Lúcio Cardoso (August 14, 1912, Curvelo, Minas Gerais, Brazil - September 28, 1968, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) turned away from the social realism fashionable in 1930s Brazil and opened the doors of Brazilian literature to introspective works such as those of Clarice Lispector - his greatest follower and admirer. Margaret Jull Costa has translated dozens of works from both Spanish and Portuguese, including books by Javier Marías and Jose Saramago. Her translations have received numerous awards, including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 2014 she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Robin Patterson was mentored by Margaret Jull Costa, and has translated Our Musseque by Jose Luandino Vieira.
The rapidly widening audience for accurate novels of action and emotion set in the great frontier that is South America will find this book precisely to its liking. The literary quality of Cecilio Carneiro's writing won for THE BONFIRE Honorable Mention in the First Latin American Prize Novel Competition. He is particularly adept at vivid characterization of the adventuresome, unusual immigrants who developed the great southern nations. Elias Arbe is a Syrian. In a mood of violence he left his native city of Tripoli for Brazil. There his roaring, brawling temperament and his enormous energy made it possible for him to build up a coffee empire - which he lost eventually because he was as honest a man as he was tempestuous. His mercurial triumph, his catastrophe, his vehement relations with his quiet wife and their five daughters, together with his adjustment as a stranger to a bizarre and gaudy land, are the elements of a tale which in many ways resembles the accounts of the rise of certain North American tycoons, but which in actuality serves brilliantly to dramatize the difference between our two great western civilizations. Dr. Carneiro has written with sympathy about the universal qualities of his hero; he has used that same combustible talent to display the fable-like expansion of Brazil in this twentieth century.
In 1900 Cecilio Carneiro's parents came from Syria. His father translated his family name Ranema (Arab for ‘sheep') into the Portuguese Carneiro. Dr. Carneiro, the sixth of eleven children, was born on December 3, 1911 in Paracatu, a town on the banks of the gold-bearing river of that name, in the state of Minas Gerais. Later the family moved to Sao Paulo, where Dr. Carneiro completed his education. A course in the natural sciences decided him to take up medicine. In 1934 he was graduated from the University of Sao Paulo and since then has worked at the Charity Hospital of that city. Since the age of fifteen Dr. Carneiro has been interested in literature: in his teens he read Jose de Alencar, Machado de Assis and the Portuguese Eca de Queiroz, but gradually de developed a preference for older and greater masters: for Homer, Shakespeare, Hugo, Stendhal and especially for Dostoyevski, his favorite writer. In 1935, Dr. Carneiro's first work appeared: BOOK OF SCHEHERAZADE, a collection of Oriental tales as told to him and his brother Jorge, a law student, by their parents. Years later, after graduating from medical school, Carneiro wrote a novel dealing with the life of young interns entitled MEMORIAS DE CINCO. This was published in 1939.
From the author whose ‘magic realism' deeply influenced the writing of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE comes this superb novella of the New World's transforming impact upon the Old. A wealthy 18th-century Mexican journeys to Venice, where, in nights of revelry, he dances with Vivaldi, Handel, and Scarlatti to the music of Carpentier's imagination.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus.
At the publication of Alejo Carpentier's THE LOST STEPS in 1956 critics and fellow writers ecstatically and respectfully bowed to a new literary master, Nor was the public lax about taking note of Carpentier's enormous talents. A sizable cult of devotees has long been awaiting EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL. They will not find it disappointing. In his majestic, baroque prose Carpentier, closely following historical facts, has set before us an epic based on the turbulent career of Victor Hugues, a neglected but important figure in the French Revolution. Hugues was the French Jacobin who conquered Guadeloupe and helped to wage the Brigands' War. On the basis of these historical facts Carpentier has constructed his many-faceted allegory. For this novel is also about the vast cataclysm following the undermining of authority during the time of the Enlightenment and, on another level, deals with the ‘chaos that lies concealed,' the immense confusion of the world and man's attempts to impose order upon that chaos. On yet another level Carpentier has given us a complete history and geography of the Caribbean, full of the rites and beliefs of its peoples, the son of a Marseilles baker, Hugues first sailed to America as a cabin boy. After several voyages to the Caribbean he opened a large shop in Port-au-Prince. His entry into history dates from the night Haitian revolutionaries destroyed his shop and he threw in his lot with the rebels. EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL charts his rise to authority, and how that rise affected the two persons closest to him: Sofia, whom he knew as a child and later took for mistress, and her idealistic cousin, Esteban, who followed his hero into Freemasonry and revolution. Eventually, having witnessed the loss of revolutionary ideals and having seen the guillotine and the reign of terror emerge, Esteban returns home - disillusioned with Victor, with wars, with revolutions. EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL is a rare blending of violent action, mature introspection and dazzling language.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962).
At the publication of Alejo Carpentier's THE LOST STEPS in 1956 critics and fellow writers ecstatically and respectfully bowed to a new literary master, Nor was the public lax about taking note of Carpentier's enormous talents. A sizable cult of devotees has long been awaiting EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL. They will not find it disappointing. In his majestic, baroque prose Carpentier, closely following historical facts, has set before us an epic based on the turbulent career of Victor Hugues, a neglected but important figure in the French Revolution. Hugues was the French Jacobin who conquered Guadeloupe and helped to wage the Brigands' War. On the basis of these historical facts Carpentier has constructed his many-faceted allegory. For this novel is also about the vast cataclysm following the undermining of authority during the time of the Enlightenment and, on another level, deals with the ‘chaos that lies concealed,' the immense confusion of the world and man's attempts to impose order upon that chaos. On yet another level Carpentier has given us a complete history and geography of the Caribbean, full of the rites and beliefs of its peoples, the son of a Marseilles baker, Hugues first sailed to America as a cabin boy. After several voyages to the Caribbean he opened a large shop in Port-au-Prince. His entry into history dates from the night Haitian revolutionaries destroyed his shop and he threw in his lot with the rebels. EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL charts his rise to authority, and how that rise affected the two persons closest to him: Sofia, whom he knew as a child and later took for mistress, and her idealistic cousin, Esteban, who followed his hero into Freemasonry and revolution. Eventually, having witnessed the loss of revolutionary ideals and having seen the guillotine and the reign of terror emerge, Esteban returns home - disillusioned with Victor, with wars, with revolutions. EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL is a rare blending of violent action, mature introspection and dazzling language.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962).
Reprint. Originally published 1963. This swashbuckling tale set in the Caribbean during the French Revolution focuses on Victor Hugues, a historical figure who led the naval assault to take back the island of Guadeloupe from the English at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In Carpentier's story, this charismatic pirate and revolutionary enters the lives of the wealthy orphans Esteban and Sofia and casts them abruptly into the midst of immense changes sweeping the world outside their Havana mansion.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962). John Sturrock is a literary journalist, sometime deputy editor of the "Times Literary Supplement," and consulting editor on the "London Review of Books," He has written widely on French literature, and is an accomplished translator. Timothy Brennan is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
In this book Alejo Carpentier has taken the life of the hitherto ignored French Revolutionary, Victor Hugues, and traced his somewhat nefarious political career in the Caribbean, recreating the strange, haunting atmosphere of the islands at the turn of the eighteenth century - The story of Hugues is seen through the eyes of those he inspired: Esteban, a chronically sick adolescent when Hugues first encounters him, who is driven into revolutionary activities and adventures which enlighten, mature and disillusion his powerful spirit; Sofia, the lover and the loved - a child-woman whose sympathy, obsessions and ideals enlighten and destroy her intimates. Written in a gusty Romantic style, reminiscent of the great story-tellers of the eighteenth century, EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL plunges the reader into the vivid scenes of the Caribbean with the magnificence recognized in Carpentier's earlier novel THE LOST STEPS.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, Ecue-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques Prevert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix Medicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del metodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962).
Reprint. Originally published 1963. This swashbuckling tale set in the Caribbean during the French Revolution focuses on Victor Hugues, a historical figure who led the naval assault to take back the island of Guadeloupe from the English at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In Carpentier's story, this charismatic pirate and revolutionary enters the lives of the wealthy orphans Esteban and Sofia and casts them abruptly into the midst of immense changes sweeping the world outside their Havana mansion.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962). John Sturrock is a literary journalist, sometime deputy editor of the "Times Literary Supplement," and consulting editor on the "London Review of Books," He has written widely on French literature, and is an accomplished translator. Timothy Brennan is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
Reprint. Originally published 1963. At the publication of Alejo Carpentier's THE LOST STEPS in 1956 critics and fellow writers ecstatically and respectfully bowed to a new literary master, Nor was the public lax about taking note of Carpentier's enormous talents. A sizable cult of devotees has long been awaiting EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL. They will not find it disappointing. In his majestic, baroque prose Carpentier, closely following historical facts, has set before us an epic based on the turbulent career of Victor Hugues, a neglected but important figure in the French Revolution. Hugues was the French Jacobin who conquered Guadeloupe and helped to wage the Brigands' War. On the basis of these historical facts Carpentier has constructed his many-faceted allegory. For this novel is also about the vast cataclysm following the undermining of authority during the time of the Enlightenment and, on another level, deals with the ‘chaos that lies concealed,' the immense confusion of the world and man's attempts to impose order upon that chaos. On yet another level Carpentier has given us a complete history and geography of the Caribbean, full of the rites and beliefs of its peoples, the son of a Marseilles baker, Hugues first sailed to America as a cabin boy. After several voyages to the Caribbean he opened a large shop in Port-au-Prince. His entry into history dates from the night Haitian revolutionaries destroyed his shop and he threw in his lot with the rebels. EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL charts his rise to authority, and how that rise affected the two persons closest to him: Sofia, whom he knew as a child and later took for mistress, and her idealistic cousin, Esteban, who followed his hero into Freemasonry and revolution. Eventually, having witnessed the loss of revolutionary ideals and having seen the guillotine and the reign of terror emerge, Esteban returns home - disillusioned with Victor, with wars, with revolutions. EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL is a rare blending of violent action, mature introspection and dazzling language.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962).
Reprint. Originally published 1963. This swashbuckling tale set in the Caribbean during the French Revolution focuses on Victor Hugues, a historical figure who led the naval assault to take back the island of Guadeloupe from the English at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In Carpentier's story, this charismatic pirate and revolutionary enters the lives of the wealthy orphans Esteban and Sofia and casts them abruptly into the midst of immense changes sweeping the world outside their Havana mansion.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962). John Sturrock is a literary journalist, sometime deputy editor of the "Times Literary Supplement," and consulting editor on the "London Review of Books," He has written widely on French literature, and is an accomplished translator. Timothy Brennan is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
Alejo Carpentier's stature as a master stylist, as a writer on a level with the other giants of the Latin American novel (Garcia Márquez, Asturias, Fuentes, Cortázar), is reconfirmed in his new book about a Head of State-the enlightened despot of an unnamed South American country in the early days of the twentieth century. A cultivated man, devoted to French culture, to painting and to the opera . . . a vigorous man of action with a large appetite for complaisant women and for Santa Ines rum . . . a dispassionate man, master of the labyrinthine reasons of state. . . the Head of State rules with complete authority, using all the means at hand - purple rhetoric, the Army, the stolid, progressive terrorism of his Model Prison-to maintain himself and his cortege in office. The generals may revolt, the liberals may issue manifestos, the revolutionaries may plant bombs . . . the Yankees may even intrude themselves into the affairs of his homeland. but still the Head of State survives, suppressing all dissent, confiscating all red literature (including Le Rouge et le Noir and The Scarlet Letter), facing down in his own Presidential quarters the most extreme of the revolution- aries, the Student. He is in absolute control of his (and his nation's) fate . . . until the people rebel, until he is betrayed by those closest to him, until he is left to live out his last bitter days in exile, in his beloved Paris, now the disfigured, decadent home of the Jazz Age and the banalities of ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas . . . Crowded with the gaudy personalities and events of the extravagant Belle Epoque (a mascaraed Caruso, a young Nehru, a faded Bernhardt, a seductive D'Annunzio) , alive with wit and erudition, Reasons of State is an exuberant, baroque tour de force from the world-renowned author of The Lost Steps and The Kingdom of This World.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962).
The fragmentation and counterpoint of his narrative, its cycles and spirals, give his work a labyrinthine quality. In THE CHASE, Carpentier combines atmosphere, violence, and a sophisticated meditation on flight from the modern world into a richly textured romance of exploration. The current boom in Latin American fiction-the heady mix of fevered politics and narrative innovation in the works of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jose Donoso, and others-would not have been possible without Alejo Carpentier's THE CHASE. For it is this remarkable novella which changed the literary imagination of the Spanish language, much as the work of Jorge Luis Borges revolutionized its narrative forms, Written in 1956, The Chase is a thrilling tale told against the backdrop of Havana in the era of Batistas violent tyranny. Carpentier tells of two men (one a student on the run, the other a ticket seller in a concert hall) who come to find their lives-and fates-intertwined. Both men trace paths through the tumultuous city that bring them to the home of Estrella, a prostitute. They are planets doomed to orbit around-this fixed star. THE CHASE is Carpentier at his luxuriant, baroque best. His language, as one critic has observed, seems to register the contrary impulses that set imagination against reason; its involuted syntax coils around the sharp edges of concepts and ideas as if to draw them into equivocal and more elusive terrain. He masterfully undermines a sense of linear progress, deepening the mystery of historical time.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962).
As the discovery of America approaches its quincentennial in 1992, Christopher Columbus evokes little more than a name, a list of ships, and a date recited by schoolchildren. Now, translated for the first time into English, THE HARP AND THE SHADOW provides a provocative portrait of Columbus ad seen through the eyes of one of Latin America's outstanding writers. Was Columbus a saint or a sinner? Carpentier examines the question is this historical novel. The first section, ‘The Harp', takes place in the early decades of the nineteenth century, as Pope Pius IX, faced with unrest in the Americas, seeks to beatify a unifying figure, Columbus. The second section, ‘The Hand', is a flashback: Columbus lies dying, awaiting his confessor and wrestling with his sense of failure and guilt. He ponders the disparity between his initial elation at discovery of the New World and his eventual obsession with gold and slaves. In the farcical and phantasmagoric final section, ‘The Shadow', scholars and writers from Bartolome de las Casas to Jules Verne debate whether Columbus should be beatified, while the spirit of Columbus observes them, alternately cringing and crowing. THE HARP AND THE SHADOW describes the initial encounter between the Old and the New World, exploring the tragic consequences of abandoned idealism and the difficulties of communication between two cultures.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962).
In this short novel Alejo Carpentier reconstructs the events on San Domingo at at the turn of the eighteenth century. These are the years of the short-lived Black Republic, when vice and violence, idealism and nope mingle in baroque extravagance as the slave rebellion sweeps this tropical paradise. THE KINGDOM OF THIS WORLD is not only distinguished by its poetry and brilliant narrative techniques, but also by the intensity of Carpentier's moral vision. Here he is presenting his conclusions on the nature of power in imaginative terms, but such is their profundity and strength that they assume universal significance. The author of THE LOST STEPS and EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL, Carpentier was described by Dame Edith, Sitwell as ‘one of the greatest writers alive at this time'
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, Ecue-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques Prevert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix Medicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del metodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962).
This extraordinary tale of Haiti in the era of Toussaint L'Ouverture and Henri-Christophe is fiction, but most of the people who cross its magic-filled pages really lived. The chronology, the place names, even the events are largely true to historical fact. Through the eyes of one long-lived Negro - Ti Noel - we the readers see the happenings of an incredible time. But the principal character of THE KINGDOM OF THIS WORLD is not Ti Noel or Henri-Christophe, but Haiti itself in the most violent period of its dramatic and bloody history. Voodoo, race hatred, erotomania, fantastic grandeurs of false elegance, the incredible Citadel of La Ferrière, Sans Souci, King' Henri-Christophe's body set into the mortar of his weird fortress-all these elements, plus half a hundred more (including wonderful glimpses of Pauline Bonaparte) pour from this brilliantly lighted, tropical, superbly written, and unique book. By the man of whom Dame Edith Sitwell has written: ‘Carpentier is, most certainly, one of the greatest writers alive at this time.'
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962).
A successful composer leaves New York and his actress-wife to search a Latin American jungle for primitive musical instruments with his existentialist mistress, Mouche. As the expedition penetrates the upper reaches of the Orinoco, leaving every sort of sophistication behind, Mouche fades and sickens. . . and the composer turns to Rosario, an earthy woman at one with the strange rhythm of life in a primordial landscape of immeasurable antiquity, an other world of primeval gods and mystic ritual. Slowly, the composer is roused to a new consciousness of himself - and of the futility of his existence back there. In matching a visionary evocation of scenery with the introspective flights of his hero, Alejo Carpentier gives The Lost Steps an almost boundless area of reference. His novel is at once a L celebration of life - and a denunciation of civilization as we know it. ‘One of the major works of our time' - J. B. Priestley.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus.
Already an enormous critical success in France and the Spanish-speaking countries, THE LOST STEPS belongs on the small shelf of this century's truly distinguished fiction. A disillusioned and wearied man of our day tries to find a new way of life in one of the few remaining truly primitive areas of our world - the upper reaches of a great South American river. The book is the story of his search, his adventures, his findings, and his final achievement of decision. Writing with impressive and fascinating erudition, Alejo Carpentier - master of a light, crisp style of enormous allusiveness - has produced a novel so original in concept and content as to prevent comparisons, though the names of Malcolm Lowry, W. H. Hudson, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, AndrE Malraux, and Thomas Mann have been brought up by early readers. In its greatly various characters, in its deeply poetic evocation of background - which varies from New York to a South American city during a revolution and then to the depths of a fluvial jungle - and in purport and significance, The Lost Steps brings to American readers a novel and novelist of world-wide literary resonance.
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962).
A HIDDEN PASSAGE through the dense fluvial jungle of a great South American river brings a wearied and disillusioned man of our time into a new life in a primitive and sensual world. THE LOST STEPS is the story of his journey, his human relationships, his adventures, and his self- discoveries. In his introduction to this most famous of Alejo Carpentier's novels, J. B. Priestly states, ‘Taking not one country but the whole world, we can say there are only a very few masterpieces and literary men of genius in any generation. . . . in my opinion THE LOST STEPS is a work of genius, a genuine masterpiece: ' Commonweal hailed the novel as ‘a brilliant and enviable accomplishment: ' And Saturday Review said, ‘. . . a novel of remarkable beauty, intellectual worth absorbing interest, and genuine originality.'
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus.
Alejo Carpentier, like few other Latin American writers of our day, has transcended his geography; his voice - like his reputation - is international. In France and England, the United States and Spain, the publication of a new book by him is a major literary event. The five magnificently told narratives that make up WAR OF TIME are true for all the times they evoke - from our own back to that of Noah. Each of them is a success in its own right, each complements the other four. In ‘The Highroad of Saint James,' a man goes on a pilgrimage from Antwerp through Europe to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. In ‘Right of Sanctuary,' a modern political refugee finds an inexplicable new life in the embassy of a foreign nation. ‘Journey Back to the Source' relates the strange and meaningful occurrences accompanying the demolition of an old house. ‘Like the Night' is the story of a Greek girl trying to satisfy her future husband's craving for profane love and meeting a curious rebuff. In ‘The Chosen,' more than one Noah sets out upon the waters to preserve the future. Everywhere in these narratives an extraordinarily rich and imaginative mind speculates upon, evokes, and criticizes the human condition and what men do in accepting and altering it. Carpentier's writing is of the rarest depth and resonance. Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (stories originally published in Spanish under the title: Guerra del Tiempo, 1963 - Ediciones Union/Narraciones, Havana, Cuba & in French under the title: Guerre du Temps, 1967 - editions Gallimard).
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous ‘boom' period. Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in La Habana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music. Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was also considered as leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, EcuE-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers. While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including AndrE Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques PrEvert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing. He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism. Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book on Cuban music. It was published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba (Music in Cuba). He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism. In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949). In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that ‘outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage.' He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962).' This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a ‘meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.' After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch. In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix MEdicis Etranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre. Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Carpentier is widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of ‘lo real maravilloso,'. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of ‘lo real maravilloso' (‘But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?'). Some critics interpret the ‘real maravilloso' as being synonymous with magical realism. His most famous works include - Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933); The Kingdom of this World (1949); The Lost Steps (1953); El acoso (1956) (Manhunt); War of Time (1958); El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral); El recurso del mEtodo (1974) (Reasons of State); Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma; La consagracion de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring); El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus. (original title: El Siglo de las Luces, 1962).
CUNUMAN is a novel rich in the strange and beautiful mythology of the Guatemalan Mayans. It is a story about Carolina, a woman caught in a world that won't easily admit of an encroaching Western culture. Carolina faces ill fate by resorting to the advice of the village bruja, who tells her the fault lies with the evil eye of her husband, Juan. Juan too must face hardships, but he has rejected the old explanations - though the new ones seem to work no better. CUNUMAN blends traditional Quiche lore with contemporary life to create an allegory of a woman's struggle to redefine herself. The Spanish conquest of the Mayans and present-day Western involvement form the background of this folkloric tapestry, skillfully woven by a new writer with a haunting style that holds the reader in that strange zone that lies between dream and reality. The river that runs through this remote Guatemalan valley winds its magic around these characters and finally also the reader.
Born in Guatemala of Ladino parents, Omar S. Castaneda (1954-1997) moved to the United States at age three and grew up in the Midwest, where he was naturalized at age eleven. He taught at Western Washington University, where he directed The Hubless Wheel, a reading series, featuring minority and ethnic writers. Castaneda is the author of Cunuman, Among the Volcanoes, and Abuela's Weave. He also coedited New Visions: Fiction by Florida Writers.
Solita, her mother, and her brother are going to El Topaz. El Topaz, an opulent and sprawling estate, will be a paradise, a haven for them all from the refugee ghetto where they have been living since they fled to Latin America from Franco's Spain, an escape, her mother thinks, from the endless politicking of Solita's father. But when Solita, not quite ten years old and decidedly precocious, kisses her father good-bye the politics have just begun. While Solita waits for her family to be reunited, she must contend with the three spoiled daughters of the estate, their often malicious pranks, their mother's strange whims, and the even stranger society of El Topaz. Among the other guests in this dubious Garden of Eden are a constipated psychiatrist and his large-breasted wife, a world-famous pianist, a handsome German photographer, a brilliant young poet, assorted dogs, and an Andean guanaco. But for Solita, none of them can replace the songs of the Spanish refugees in the ghetto, or her father's stories about her Loyalist grandfather brutally murdered by Franco's soldiers. ‘Could you or couldn't you grab the bull by the horns when the bull owned it all?' Solita's innocently perceptive and usually comic questions strike to the heart of the superficiality and evasiveness of El Topaz, as well as the pain at the heart of her family as Solita learns to survive in a wodd as treacherous as it is glittering. The rich detail and often shocking honesty and insight of PARADISE take us into a fascinating world beautifully rendered in Elena Castedo's debut novel.
ELENA CASTEDO was born on September 1, 1937 in Barcelona, Spain, and raised in Chile, and has lived on four continents. She received an M.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University The former editor of the Inter-American Review of Bibliography and the author of a critical study of Chilean theater, she lives in McLean, Virginia.
Thinker, writer, diplomat, feminist Rosario Castellanos was emerging as one of Mexico's major literary figures before her untimely death in 1974. This sampler of her work brings together her major poems, short fiction, essays, and a five-act play, The Eternal Feminine. Translated with fidelity to language and cultural nuance, many of these works appear here in English for the first time, allowing English-speaking readers to see the depth and range of Castellanos' work. The appended checklist of Castellanos' criticism will be of value to scholars and non-specialists alike. The selections in this anthology have been chosen to show the interrelatedness of all Castellanos' writing and to place these works in their cultural context. Castellanos made dialogue with ‘the other' the central tenet of her writing. She analyzed language as an instrument of domination and explored the myths that society has imposed upon women and their writing. Her rich legacy of poetry, fiction, essay, and drama has become a model as well as paradigm for younger writers throughout Latin America. In her introductory essay, ‘Reading Rosario Castellanos: Contexts, Voices, and Signs,' Maureen Ahern presents the first comprehensive study of Castellanos' work as a sign or signifying system. This approach through contemporary semiotic theory unites literary criticism and translation as an integral semiotic process. Ahern reveals how Castellanos integrated women's images, bodies, voices, and texts to feminize her discourse and create a plurality of new signs/messages about women in Mexico Describing this process in The Eternal Feminine, Castellanos observes it's not good enough to imitate the models proposed for us that arc answers to circumstances other than our own. It isn't even enough to discover who we are. We have to invent ourselves.' TEXAS PAN AMERICAN SERIES.
Rosario Castellanos (25 May 1925 - 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 (the poets who wrote following the Second World War, influenced by CEsar Vallejo and others), she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today. Maureen Ahern, co-editor of Homenaje a Rosario Castellanos and a noted translator, is professor of Spanish at Arizona State University.
ANOTHER WAY TO BE is a multifaceted selection of the writings of Rosario Castellanos (1925-74), one of Mexico's most distinguished literary personalities. Poet, novelist, journalist, philosopher, and diplomat, Castellanos was a woman whose life and art reflected her commitment to the problems and promise of her native land. The daughter of a wealthy landowner who had married a seamstress from a lower class, she saw during her childhood the clash of cultures and social classes in tradition-bound communities where women were condemned to lives of submission and Indians were regarded as nothing more than chattel. From these experiences she came to see the world as a place where races and individuals are caught up in an ongoing struggle for justice and dignity, for ‘another way to be human and free.' In her work she focuses a penetrating light on interpersonal and interracial conflicts, denouncing the pervasive injustice as she created a literature that she hoped would be a catalyst for change. ANOTHER WAY TO BE opens with selections from her poetry, presented both in Spanish and in English translation. In such poems as ‘Wailing Wall' and the previously unpublished ‘Ritual Bath in the Grijalva,' there are echoes of Chilean Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral, whom she greatly admired. Poems like ‘Indian Mother' and ‘The Indian's Prayer' express empathy and compassion for the native of Chiapas. Selections from Castellano's prize-winning fiction reflect her concern with the hostility and prejudice that cripple human relationships and her refusal to depict women and Indians as stereotypes. This collection closes with a group of essays, the product of the latter phase of Castellanos's creative evolution. Written with keen insight and satirical humor, these essays - like her other writing - reflect her training in philosophy, her intellectual debt to Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir, and the kinship she felt with Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson. Together with the introductory essay by Myralyn Allgood and an extensive bibliography, the selections in ANOTHER WAY TO BE - most appearing in translation for the first time - give a rich and full sense of the diverse talents of a remarkable writer.
Rosario Castellanos (25 May 1925 - 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 (the poets who wrote following the Second World War, influenced by CEsar Vallejo and others), she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today.
Ciudad Real, as the Mexican city of San Cristobal de las Casas was called in earlier times, is the setting for this 1960 collection of stories by Rosario Castellanos that treats the passionate and timely themes of race, class, power and language. Set in the southern region of Chiapas, where Castellanos was born, CITY OF KINGS [Ciudad Real] explores the centuries-old domination of indigenous people by whites, and the complex relationship between conquerors and conquered that is it outcome. Each story weaves into the next to present a portrait of the men, women and children of the region, with their hopes, tragedies, beliefs, and fears. Most of all, CITY OF KINGS reveals the pain and damage suffered by both the weak and the strong when exploitation is the basis for everyday life. CONTENTS: Introduction; Death of the Tiger; Pile Truce; Aceite guapo; Luck of Teodoro MEndez Acübal; Modesta Gomez; Coming of the Eagle; The Fourth Vigil; The Wheel of Hunger; The Gift, Refused; Arthur Smith Finds Salvation; Glossary.
Rosario Castellanos (25 May 1925 - 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 (the poets who wrote following the Second World War, influenced by CEsar Vallejo and others), she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today.
One of the masterpieces of contemporary Latin American fiction, Rosario Castellanos' THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS, which tells of an uprising of Maya Indians in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, is now more relevant than ever, with the revolt of the Zapatista Liberation Army currently taking place in a Chiapas that has changed little since the novel was written. With the panoramic sweep of a Diego Rivera mural, THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS weaves together dozens of characters, plot lines, and perspectives in a tour-de-force of narrative structure that builds to an inexorable conclusion as unflinching as it is devastating. Based on episodes from actual Maya uprisings of 1712 and 1868, which are transposed in time to the 1930's, the novel merges a wealth of historical information and local detail into a vision of the nature of oppression that is universal in scope. Since its first publication in 1962, THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS has appeared in numerous translations across Europe, but has never before been published in English.
Rosario Castellanos (25 May 1925 - 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 (the poets who wrote following the Second World War, influenced by CEsar Vallejo and others), she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today.
A masterpiece of contemporary Latin American fiction from Mexico's greatest twentieth-century woman writer. Set in the highlands of the Mexican state of Chiapas, THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS tells of a fictionalized Mayan uprising that resembles many of the rebellions that have taken place since the indigenous people of the area were first conquered by invaders from Europe five hundred years ago. With the panoramic sweep of a Diego Rivera mural, the novel weaves together dozens of plot lines, perspectives, and characters-the ambitious Maya shaman Catalina and her husband, Pedro, a seeker after justice; the wealthy, ruthless landowner Leonardo; Marcela, the Maya girl raped by Leonardo who gives birth to a son, and many more. In a tour de force of narrative structure, these threads intertwine as the plot drives toward a conclusion as devastating as it is inexorable. Blending a wealth of historical information and local detail with a profound understanding of the complex relationship between victim and tormentor, Castellanos captures the ambiguities that underlie all struggles for power. Her view of the world, beautifully rendered in English by Esther Allen, is devastatingly stark - a clear-eyed, unromantic vision of how misery, ignorance, and powerlessness can distort and eventually destroy the spirit.
Rosario Castellanos (25 May 1925 - 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 (the poets who wrote following the Second World War, influenced by CEsar Vallejo and others), she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today.
Balán-Cantin means ‘Nine Stars', and is the name the Indians gave to the ancient Mayan villages in the district of the State of Chiapas, in Mexico, where the novel is laid. The home of the Argt7iellos is Comitán, a small town in the State of Chiapas, close to the Guatemalan border. This is rugged and remote territory which even today has received little influence from Mexico City. The novel takes place during the Presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, between 1934 and 1940. Cárdenas, who consolidated the Mexican Revolution which had begun in 1910, was strongly anti-clerical, It was during his rEgime that it became illegal to say Mass, and many priests lost their lives for doing so. He also pursued a policy of agrarian reform which included the return of land to the peasants. Many large estates were thus broken up, and the families who had owned them were either ruined or forced off the land into the cities. Besides Cárdenas himself, the only other historical figure mentioned in the novel is the Dominican priest and reformer, BartolomE de las Casas, who did much for the Indians' cause in the years immediately after the conquest of Mexico by Spain, in the sixteenth century. It has been thought best to leave a few Indian and Spanish words with precise shades of meaning untranslated, and a short glossary is provided.
Rosario Castellanos (25 May 1925 - 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 (the poets who wrote following the Second World War, influenced by CEsar Vallejo and others), she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today.
This haunting and moving novel was voted the best work of fiction the year it was published in Mexico. In it Rosario Castellanos combines the myth of the nine ancient Mayan villages Southern Mexico with the reality of a modern Indian uprising during the time of the agra- reforms instituted by President Cardenas. Only native a Mexican could interpret with such sensitivity and strength both the dignity and revolt of the Indians and the graciousness and traditions of the landed families. Across the panorama of a disintegrating culture move these memorable characters: the bewildered landowner, Don Cesar, who pits his will against the rising forces of change; Nana, the devout nurse, warm in her affection, strict in her observance of custom; Mario, an inquisitive boy with the inimitable charm of breeding, part of the peesent but formed by the past; Ernesto, Don Cesar's bastard nephew, surging with conflict and indecision; Matilde, a sex-starved half cousin; Juana, the wife of the Indian rebel; Felipe, leader of the insurgents, loyal and rigid as the dry earth. Though set in a remote district of Mexico, THE NINE GUARDIANS is a universal novel. Its human problems, its pathos, its tenderness, its conflicts are known to all peoples in all parts of the world. And they are interpreted with a lyric yet earthy quality as vivid as that of Conrad Richter or Willa Cather. ROSARIO CASTELLANOS is one of a group of young Mexican writers whose works are being more and more widely acclaimed beyond their native land. The young author of the prize-winning THE NINE GUARDIANS is at once novelist, poet, and philosopher, and the present novel is a fine testament to her skill and insight in all three fields. As a child, Miss Castellanos knew intimately the background she describes. Later she traveled widely in Europe as well as in the Americas. Her experiences are reflected in THE NINE GUARDIANS, which, though intensely Mexican in character, has within it a universality of understanding and feeling that appeals to the minds and hearts of readers everywhere. . (original title: Balun-Canan, 1957 - Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico City).
Rosario Castellanos (25 May 1925 - 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 (the poets who wrote following the Second World War, influenced by Cesar Vallejo and others), she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today.
In OF MEN AND CRABS, Dr. JosuE de Castro, one of the world's great authorities on hunger, writes a novel about hunger's drama. His poignant story is set in Recife, Brazil, a city of rivers and bridges and mansions, of mud and mangrove and clay shacks. In its marshes live both men and crabs, all obsessed by the craving for food. Here a small boy, João Paulo, discovers the real meaning of hunger-the hunger of the crabs at the water's edge waiting for the current to bring them a scrap; the hunger of the men sitting on the rail of the old quay dribbling with dreams of imaginary meals. Without really understanding, Joäo Paulo lives in hunger's constant presence-a presence that shapes all the behavior of Recife's people. With despotic iron hands, it makes of both men and crabs a mire that is not only Recife's, but belongs as well to two billion others who know its ravaging anguish. OF MEN AND CRABS is a story of and for our time, a totally human story of a universal drama being played daily throughout the world.
Josue de Castro, born Josue Apolônio de Castro (5 September 1908 in Recife - 24 September 1973 in Paris), was a Brazilian physician, expert on nutrition, geographer, writer, public administrator, and activist against world hunger. His book Geopolitics of Hunger was granted with The Franklin D. Roosevelt Foundation Award, in 1952. Two years later, he received the International Peace Prize. He taught at the University of Brazil (today's UFRJ) and was chairman of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He was also a member of the Brazilian parliament and a diplomat. His political rights came to an end with the military coup of 1964, when he moved to France. For many years he was president of the Association Medicale Internationale pour l'Etude des Conditions de Vie et de Sante and member of other international organizations. He taught at Paris 8 University until his death.
Josue de Castro forcibly explains the danger and prospects of a world divided between ‘those who do not eat and those who do not sleep.'
Josue de Castro, born Josue Apolônio de Castro (5 September 1908 in Recife - 24 September 1973 in Paris), was a Brazilian physician, expert on nutrition, geographer, writer, public administrator, and activist against world hunger. His book Geopolitics of Hunger was granted with The Franklin D. Roosevelt Foundation Award, in 1952. Two years later, he received the International Peace Prize. He taught at the University of Brazil (today's UFRJ) and was chairman of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He was also a member of the Brazilian parliament and a diplomat. His political rights came to an end with the military coup of 1964, when he moved to France. For many years he was president of the Association Medicale Internationale pour l'Etude des Conditions de Vie et de Sante and member of other international organizations. He taught at Paris 8 University until his death.
In this vibrant portrait, Ruy Castro delves into the past and present of Rio, where even in periods of comparative calm there has always been a palpable excitement in the air. While poets flirted with prim young ladies in coffeehouses during the belle Epoque, revolts were being plotted that almost destroyed the city. We learn how the iconic wave-patterned mosaics of Copacabana pavements were baptized with blood, and how more than a hundred years before the girl from Ipanema passed by, the girls from Ouvidor Street adopted French chic, and never really gave it up. From what is arguably the most breathtakingly beautiful city in the world, the people of Rio-the Cariocas-tell their stories: of cannibals charming European intellectuals; of elegant slaves and their shabby masters; of how a casual chat between two people drinking coffee on Avenida Rio Branco could affect world coffee markets; of an awe-inspiring beach life; of favelas, drugs, police, carnival, football, and music, With his own Carioca good humor and great storytelling gifts,
Ruy Castro (born February 27, 1948, Caratinga, Minas Gerais, Brazil) is a writer and journalist whose books include two classics about bossa nova, a biography of the soccer star Garrincha, and an encyclopedia of Ipanema. He has also edited a compendium of 1,600 poisonous bons mots called Bad Humor and written two novels for children. His book Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World was published in the U.S. in 2000.
LA CASA GRANDE, besides being a beautiful novel, is a risky experiment, and an invitation to meditate on the unforeseen, arbitrary, and astounding techniques of poetic creation. And for this same reason, it represents a new and formidable contribution to the most important literary phenomenon in today's world: the Latin American novel.' - from the foreword by Gabriel Garcia Márquez . . . The 1928 massacre of striking banana workers made famous in Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude is here presented in a fresh perspective by Alvaro Cepeda Samudio, a friend of Garcia Márquez and member of the legendary Barranquilla Group of Four. Cepeda Samudio, an admirer of William Faulkner, intertwines the strikers' story with a three-generation family saga, reminiscent of The Sound and the Fury. In his unique retelling, the struggle against tyranny emerges as main theme, played out in both the personal and the public realms. Although Cepeda Samudio's early death curtailed his fame outside Latin America, the Colombian author was once considered the most talented and innovative member of the Colombian literary renaissance. This novel, a daring experiment in literary storytelling, rightly belongs beside the works of Garcia Marquez and other classics of modern Latin American fiction. Texas Pan American Series.
Álvaro Cepeda Samudio (March 30, 1926 - October 12, 1972) was a Colombian journalist, novelist, short story writer, and filmmaker. Within Colombia and the rest of Latin America, he is known in his own right as an important and innovative writer and journalist, largely inspiring much of the artistically, intellectually and politically active climate for which this particular time and place, that of mid-century Colombia, has become known. His fame is considerably more quaint outside his home country, where it derives primarily from his standing as having been part of the influential artistic and intellectual circle in Colombia in which fellow writer and journalist Gabriel García Márquez - with whom he was also a member of the more particularized Barranquilla Group - and painter Alejandro Obregon also played prominent roles. Only one of his works, La casa grande, has received considerable notice beyond the Spanish-speaking world, having been translated into several languages, English and French among them; his fame as a writer has therefore been significantly curtailed in the greater international readership, as the breadth of his literary and journalistic output has reached few audiences beyond those of Latin America and Latin American literary scholars.
Carlos Cerda is considered one of the best Latin American ‘boomerang' writers. Cerda lived in exile in East Germany from 1973-85, while a military dictatorship governed in Chile. He has created one of the most dramatic works on exile ever written. A tale of longing and emptiness, TO DIE IN BERLIN exposes the interior experiences of exile not just from one's country but also from the inner self. It is a passionate plea for human rights and a snapshot of the sad condition millions of humans live in today, separated fr4om their own, cast into a foreign land, and condemned to the grueling, heartless task of survival without hope.
CARLOS CERDA (1942, Santiago, Chile - October 19, 2001, Chile) received his doctorate in literature from Humboldt University in Berlin. He published three novels, two short story collections, two critical works and four plays. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Chile. His novel Una casa vacia (An Empty House) won the three most prestigious awards for a novel in Chile.
Señora Rodriguez dips into her purse and there's no telling what she'll come up with - a sticky lollipop, a phone bill, or a rosary; a reminder of daily life, a bit of family history, a personal talisman, or . . . who knows? . . . a token into another world altogether. Such are the surprises and possibilities, the unpredictability and warm familiarity of Martha Cerda's magical novel. Señora Rodriguez and her family are placed shoulder-to-shoulder and page-to-page with strangers, acquaintances, and a host of importune, if not impertinent, stories: the profound distortions wrought in a woman's life by the oppressive presence of her maid; the furor caused by a premenstrual pimple; the flashbacks and chaotic grief Judas Iscariot experiences at the moment of his death; the disruption surrounding the appearance of a supposed member of the Los Angeles Dodgers. A best-selling writer widely celebrated in her native Mexico, Martha Cerda defines her own turn along the path of Latin American magical realism. In this novel the feminine, the practical, and the earthly blend with the fantastic and phantasmagoric. Tragedy and playfulness, sophistication and naïvetE mingle. What is at once a comedy of manners, a delightful collection of loosely related anecdotes, stories, sketches, and epiphanies, is also an artful entrEe into several literary and philosophical questions-the relationship between language and reality and the power of one to create and alter the other; the link between chaos and different forms of organization that pass for order. ‘A kaleidoscopic fantasy, by turns comic, deadpan, and macabre, from the Escher of magical realism.' - Laura Esquivel (author of Like Water for Chocolate).
Martha Cerda, born in 1945 in Guadalajara, Mexico, is the author of four distinguished and award-winning books. She is the founder and Director of the Sociedad General de Escritores Mexicanos and the President of P.E.N. International in Guadalajara. SEÑORA RODRIQUEZ AND OTHER WORLDS, a best-seller in Mexico in 1990, is Cerda's first novel to be published in English.
Daniel Chavarria is a Uruguayan writer with two passions: Classical literature and whores. His novels, short stories, literary journalism, and screenplays have reached audiences across Latin America and Europe. Chavarria has won numerous literary awards around the world, including a 1992 Dashiell Hammett Award. For years, he was a professor of Latin, Greek, and Classical literature, devoting much of his time and energy to researching the origins and evolution of prostitution. In 2002, Akashic Books will publish an English translation of one of Chavarria's most celebrated novels, THE EYE OF CYBELE, about an illustrious Greek whore in the time of Pericles. ADIOS MUCHACHOS is Chavarria's first novel in English translation. ‘Daniel Chavarria is a prince of a fellow, larger than life and twice as much fun.' - Lawrence Block, author of EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE.
Daniel Chavarria (born 1933) is a Uruguayan revolutionary and writer, living in Cuba. Daniel Chavarria is known to have lived an adventurous life. He worked as a miner in Essen, a model in Cologne, a museum guide at the Prado Museum in Madrid, a dishwasher in Paris and many other countless occupations. He has even disguised himself as a monk. In 1964 while living in Brazil there was a military coup and he fled to work amongst the gold seekers in the Amazon. Later on, he chartered a small plane to Cuba. There he began working as a Latin and Greek translator and teacher. Subsequently he began his career as a writer. Daniel Chavarria defines himself an Uruguayan citizen and a Cuban writer. Chavarria's style of writing is within the Latin-American tradition of political writers, such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez - but with a more optimistic and fresh point of view, similar to Luis Sepulveda and Paco Ignacio Taibo II. He mentions as a child, reading Jules Verne, Emilio Salgari and Alexandre Dumas, and their influence can be clearly seen in his writing. For example, in Tango for a Torturer, the influence of The Count of Monte Cristo is clear. Chavarria's books are strongly critical of the violence in Fascism. Chavarria's life and writings clearly show his communist and revolutionary background. He is a well known supporter of the Cuban Revolution. In 2010, Chavarria won the National Prize for Literature, Cuba's national prize for literature and more important award of its type in Cuba.
This is the first English translation of one of Chavarria's most celebrated novels, THE EYE OF CYBELE, about an illustrious Greek whore in the time of Pericles. . Daniel Chavarria is a Uruguayan writer with two passions: Classical literature and whores. His novels, short stories, literary journalism, and screenplays have reached audiences across Latin America and Europe. Chavarria has won numerous literary awards around the world, including a 1992 Dashiell Hammett Award. For years, he was a professor of Latin, Greek, and Classical literature, devoting much of his time and energy to researching the origins and evolution of prostitution.
Daniel Chavarria (born 1933) is a Uruguayan revolutionary and writer, living in Cuba. Daniel Chavarria is known to have lived an adventurous life. He worked as a miner in Essen, a model in Cologne, a museum guide at the Prado Museum in Madrid, a dishwasher in Paris and many other countless occupations. He has even disguised himself as a monk. In 1964 while living in Brazil there was a military coup and he fled to work amongst the gold seekers in the Amazon. Later on, he chartered a small plane to Cuba. There he began working as a Latin and Greek translator and teacher. Subsequently he began his career as a writer. Daniel Chavarria defines himself an Uruguayan citizen and a Cuban writer. Chavarria's style of writing is within the Latin-American tradition of political writers, such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez - but with a more optimistic and fresh point of view, similar to Luis Sepulveda and Paco Ignacio Taibo II. He mentions as a child, reading Jules Verne, Emilio Salgari and Alexandre Dumas, and their influence can be clearly seen in his writing. For example, in Tango for a Torturer, the influence of The Count of Monte Cristo is clear. Chavarria's books are strongly critical of the violence in Fascism. Chavarria's life and writings clearly show his communist and revolutionary background. He is a well known supporter of the Cuban Revolution. In 2010, Chavarria won the National Prize for Literature, Cuba's national prize for literature and more important award of its type in Cuba.
Opening with the presently shut-in narrator reminiscing about a past relationship with Delia, a young factory worker, The Dark employs Chejfec's signature style with an emphasis on the geography and motion of the mind, to recount the time the narrator spent with this multifaceted, yet somewhat absent, woman. On their daily walks he becomes privy to the ways in which the working class functions; he studies and analyzes its structure and mindset, finding it incredibly organized, self-explanatory, and even beautiful. He repeatedly attempts to apply his ‘book' knowledge to explain what he sees and wants to understand of Delia's existence, and though the difference between their social classes is initially a source of great intrigue - if not obsession - he must eventually learn that there comes a point where the boundary between observer and participant can dissolve with disarming speed. In a voice that favors erudite distance, yet simultaneously demands intimate attention, The Dark is the most captivating example of Sergio Chejfec's unique narrative approach, and a resonant novel that calls into question the necessity, risks, and fallout behind the desire and attempt to know another person.
Sergio Chejfec, originally from Argentina, has published numerous works of fiction, poetry, and essays. Among his grants and prizes, he has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in 2007 and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 2000. His books have been translated into French, German, and Portuguese. He teaches in the Creative Writing in Spanish Program at NYU, and My Two Worlds is his first novel to be translated into English.
From the author's PROLOGUE - My first collection of short stories, entitled The Smile of the Asp and Other Stories, was published in Spanish in 1992, and in English in 1994. The tales in the present volume, also written with great enthusiasm, maintain a certain tone. For example, they do not propose (at least not on purpose) a specific ethical system, much less a particular aesthetic. They narrate tales from a past so remote that, although they are quite detailed, avoid criticism from knowledgeable contemporaries. Besides, they permit ambiguous puzzles and contingencies. There, perhaps, the error rests even in language, which serves at such times as a mask for ideas. It so happens that the world, in spite of its lapidary energy, is many-voiced, suggestive, and insinuates certain things (doubts or uncertainties) that plan our waking moments and our dreams. Their plots, when benevolent, seek us out. Here we are alluding to hazardous inspirations or to the processes of reason, to romanticism or a premeditated or prearranged technique. Experience, the orchestration of our mistakes, teaches us that nothing is definitive with respect to those sources, that at times they become entwined in intersections that mark the life of a writer, in the last analysis a destiny that is not chosen, but just barely fulfilled.
Julio Chiappini is an Argentine writer. Dale Carter has been a member of the faculty of California State University, Los Angeles since 1966, serving as Department Chair from 1988-94. In addition to having served on virtually every major committee from the department to the university levels, he was a member of the Academic Senate for nine years and the Senate Executive Committee for seven. He served one term as Senate Secretary and was the founding editor of the Senate Newsletter. In addition to his university service, Professor Carter was President of the Foreign Language Council of the California State University (1991-93) and Chair of the Panel appointed by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing to revise the standards for teacher credentialing programs in languages other than English (1990-95). In recognition of his accomplishments in teaching, research, and service, Professor Carter was named Outstanding Professor by California State University, Los Angeles in 1989 and was awarded the Orden de los Descubridores by Sigma Delta Pi, the national Spanish honorary society in 1992.
Julio Chiappini's stories evoke colorful settings comment obliquely on human passions and frailties. The stories, "The Smile of the Asp," and two others - "A Prodigious Discovery" and "Chronicle of a Sovereign", all deal with the adventures and misadventures of a single object over a period of many years. In two stories, the object is a coin; in "A Prodigious Discovery," it is a chest of treasure. In "The Repentant Inquisitor," Chiappini portrays a man raised to a position of high authority in the Spanish Inquisition, in whom the conflict between religious dogma and his own consuming concupiscence produces a resolution that the reader may not foresee. "A Fiery Vengeance" centers on the tragic consequences that rejection can inspire in a relatively uncomplicated human being. In "Just to Dance, Nothing More, the author sketches with delicate strokes the tensions of a marriage. A Cardinal Point Extended adopts a position of intimacy to resolve the ambiguity of a celebrated Borges story by providing his own imagined ending. In The South a cultured librarian from Buenos Aires finding himself facing certain death in a knife fight with a rural thug. The final story, The Ivory Carving, explores the author's personal ideas on the art of composition.
Julio Chiappini is an Argentine writer. Dale Carter has been a member of the faculty of California State University, Los Angeles since 1966, serving as Department Chair from 1988-94. In addition to having served on virtually every major committee from the department to the university levels, he was a member of the Academic Senate for nine years and the Senate Executive Committee for seven. He served one term as Senate Secretary and was the founding editor of the Senate Newsletter. In addition to his university service, Professor Carter was President of the Foreign Language Council of the California State University (1991-93) and Chair of the Panel appointed by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing to revise the standards for teacher credentialing programs in languages other than English (1990-95). In recognition of his accomplishments in teaching, research, and service, Professor Carter was named Outstanding Professor by California State University, Los Angeles in 1989 and was awarded the Orden de los Descubridores by Sigma Delta Pi, the national Spanish honorary society in 1992.
Argentina in the last quarter of the nineteenth century with its spacious pampas and towering mountains provides the setting for this big, colorful, romantic novel of the passing of an era and a way of life. In the old days a gaucho followed his caudillo and asked no questions, protected his honor, lived like a Christian and if need be killed as one. He was skilled with knife and lasso, bolas and horses. Now a flood of settlers was fencing off the pampa and plowing up the land. The old simple way of life was going. But in this time of change one gaucho became a living legend from the north of Argentina to the tip of Patagonia. Around the camp fires they told how Poncho Colorado, christened Goyo, championed the poor and terrorized the gringos with his picturesque band of daring outlaws. How he stormed Buenos Aires with General Roca and won the love of Manuela de Quemon, golden-haired daughter of an aristocratic family. How he lived with Chulcan, the Indian chief, and through the treachery of a renegade priest lost his beloved Manuela. How in despair he became the swaggering bandit Valverde, hero of the riff raff of Chile and charged with every unsolved killing along the frontier. And finally how he was found again by Manuela and lived long years in honor. The dominant theme throughout the book is the battle for personal freedom against the encroachments of civilization. With the romance and action of Wister's THE VIRGINIAN and the authenticity and down-to-earth realism of Guthrie's THE BIG SKY, it does for the gaucho what the latter book did for the mountain man of our own West. It is brilliantly entertaining.
HERBERT CHILDS is remembered for his non-fiction book about Patagonia, EL JIMMY, which received excellent review attention and sold widely. A former West Coast editor for J. B. Lippincott and Company, he has a wide acquaintance in motion picture and theatrical circles. His next work will be a biography of Oscar Hammerstein.
In this notable collection of essays, written in the middle of the twentieth century, a towering Mexican thinker discusses both Latin America s internal problems and its relations with the United States, Russia, and the rest of the world. This perceptive examination of many political and economic topics will be of interest to all readers concerned with what our southern neighbors think on subjects important to us. The author brings into particularly sharp focus the relationship of Mexico and other Latin American countries to the United States.
Daniel Cosío Villegas was a key figure in the development of sociology in Mexico as an independent discipline. ‘The bases of what he called ‘Mexican sociology' lie in its inter-disciplinary perspective, observation oriented by technical and humanist knowledge and the description and comparative analysis of territorial, economic, demographic and cultural factors. The reinterpretation of the intellectual legacy of the ‘Athenians,' of some Mexican positivists and his study of economics abroad allowed him to formulate a route of knowledge about concrete problems in the years after the 1910 Revolution that even today can have a decided influence on contemporary Mexican sociology.' - The Mexican Sociology from Daniel Cosío Villegas: count of a legacy by Laura AngElica Moya Lopez and Margarita Olvera Serrano.
The pages that follow have been excerpted from Helène Cixous's ongoing meditations between 1986 and 1985 on problems of reading, writing, difference, and related themes, including exchange and the gift, love and passion, poverty and riches, The texts gathered are all readings of Clarice Lispector or, rather, readings by Cixous with Lispector in the context of seminars given at the Universite de Paris VIII-Vincennes at Saint Denis and at the College International de Philosophie. This in part dictates the format of the texts and an ordering reflective of Cixous's preoccupations rather than one that would follow Lispector's chronology as a writer, Cixous discovers Lispector at a time when she studies questions of sexual difference in connection with what have been called libidinal economies, that is, with ways the body is engaged in exchanging with and finding its limits in, a social world. Paradoxically, Cixous begins her reading of Lispector with one of the Brazilian writer's later texts, Agua viva (The Stream of Life). CONTENTS: Acknowledgments; Introduction by Verena Andermatt Conley.
Helène Cixous (born 5 June 1937) is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. She holds honorary degrees from Queen's University and the University of Alberta in Canada; University College Dublin in Ireland; the University of York and University College London in the UK; and Georgetown University, Northwestern University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the USA. In 2008 she was appointed as A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University until June 2014.
Set against the cultural and political backdrop of interwar Europe and the Americas, Poetry in Pieces is the first major study of the Peruvian poet CEsar Vallejo (1892–1938) to appear in English in more than thirty years. Vallejo lived and wrote in two distinct settings - Peru and Paris - which were continually crisscrossed by new developments in aesthetics, politics, and practices of everyday life. Michelle Clayton combines close readings of Vallejo's writings with cultural, historical, and theoretical analysis, connecting Vallejo - and Latin American poetry - to the broader panorama of international modernism and the avant-garde, and to writers and artists such as Rainer Maria Rilke, James Joyce, Georges Bataille, and Charlie Chaplin.
A native of Dublin, Ireland, Professor Michelle Clayton studied Modern Languages (Spanish & German) at Oxford University, then moved to the US, where she received her PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from Princeton University in 2003. She taught Latin American and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 2002 until 2012, when she joined the Brown community as Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature. Her research and teaching interests include modern poetry; avant-garde aesthetics; dance; art history; media studies; and film, from the earliest silents to contemporary Spanish and Latin American productions. She offers courses on modern Latin American writers such as CEsar Vallejo, Juan Carlos Onetti, Jose María Arguedas, Juan Jose Saer, and Cesar Aira; on modernism and the international avant-gardes; and on transnational and interdisciplinary exchanges spanning writing, performance, and the plastic arts.
From the PREFACE - For an English-speaking American then who desires a better acquaintance with the mentality of his Spanish-American neighbors this book will offer a guide. The literature of Brazil written in Portuguese and so rich as to require a volume almost as large as the present for its adequate exposition, is therefore not included. The reader, aware at the outset that he has before him an extremely provincial type of literature, will not expect great masterpieces. On the other hand, he will learn what effect has been produced on the transplanted Spaniard by living on the great plains of Argentina. He will better comprehend the difference between the sober energetic Chilean and the fun-loving Peruvian or the passionate Venezuelan. He will understand why there have been so many revolutions in Mexico. The anecdotes of poets' lives and the tragic stories of men who have lived and died for an ideal will inspire him with greater respect for a country which like Cuba struggled a whole century for its freedom. Even the names of the various writers, the constantly recurring Jose Maria, Joaquin, Manuel, will impress him with the deeply religious sentiments of these people.
Alfred Coester (1874-1958) was an American Hispanist.
Twelve provocative stories reveal the rich. Lively world of Puerto-Rican American teenagers in a New Jersey barrio - from the waves of sound that pour from the cinder-block jukebox of El Building to the tantalizing smells that drift from the neighborhood bodega. As the author herself was, these young people caught between two cultures, trying to find a place of their own. In ‘Bad Influence', Rita is exiled to Puerto Rico for the summer with her grandparents after her parents discover her with a boy, while, in ‘Catch the Moon', Luis Cintron sits atop a six-foot mountain of hubcaps in his father's junkyard, working off a sentence for breaking and entering. Then, in ‘Beauty Lessons', Sandi tires to reconcile her looks with the conventional Latino notion of beauty typified by her aunt Modesto, who, as Sandi's papi says, is ‘high maintenance' just like his 1957 Chevy. And in ‘Arturo's Flight', the protagonist, ridiculed for being different from his macho classmates, fantasizes about escaping from the barrio. Funny, poignant, and brimming with life, this collection - rich in themes common to anyone coming of age - aptly captures what it's like to grow up Puerto Rican in America.
Judith Ortiz Cofer (February 24, 1952 - December 30, 2016) was a Puerto Rican American author. Her critically acclaimed and award-winning work spans a range of literary genres including poetry, short stories, autobiography, essays, and young-adult fiction. Ortiz Cofer was the Emeritus Regents' and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia, where she taught undergraduate and graduate creative writing workshops for 26 years. In 2010, Ortiz Cofer was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, and in 2013, she won the University's 2014 Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award. Ortiz Cofer hailed from a family of story tellers and drew heavily from her personal experiences as a Puerto Rican American woman. In her work, Ortiz Cofer brings a poetic perspective to the intersection of memory and imagination. Writing in diverse genres, she investigated women issues, Latino culture, and the American South. Ortiz Cofer's work weaves together private life and public space through intimate portrayals of family relationships and rich descriptions of place. Her manuscripts and papers are currently housed at the University of Georgia's Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Reviewing her novel, THE LINE OF THE SUN, the New York Times Book Review hailed Judith Ortiz Cofer as ‘a writer of authentic gifts, with a genuine and important story to tell.' Those gifts are on abundant display in Cofer's newest book, THE LATIN DELI. An evocative collection of poetry, personal essays, and short fiction in which the dominant subject - the lives of Puerto Ricans in a New Jersey barrio 0 is drawn from the author's own childhood, following the directive of Emily Dickinson to ‘tell all the Truth but tell it slant', Cofer approaches her material from a variety of angles. Am acute yearning for a distant homeland is the poignant theme of the title poem, which opens the collection. Cofer's lines introduce us to ‘a woman of no-age' presiding over a small store whose wares - Bustelo coffee, jamon y queso, ‘green plantains hanging in stalks like votive offerings' - must satisfy, however imperfectly, the needs and hungers of those who have left the islands for the urban Northeast. Similarly affecting is the short story ‘Nada'. In which a mother's grief over a son killed in Vietnam gradually consumes her. Refusing the medals and flag proffered by the government (‘Tell the Mr. President of the United States what I say: no, Gracias'), as well as the consolations of her neighbors in El Building, the woman begins to give away all of her possessions. The Narrator, upon hearing the woman say ‘nada', reflects, ‘I tell you, that word is like a drain that sucks everything down.' As rooted as they are in a particular immigrant experience, Cofer's writings are also rich in universal themes, especially those involving the pains, confusions, and wonders of growing up. While set in the barrio, the essays ‘American History', ‘Not for Sale', and ‘The Paterson Public Library' deal with concerns that could be those of any sensitive young woman coming of age in America: romantic attachments, relations with parents and peers, the search for knowledge.
Judith Ortiz Cofer (February 24, 1952 - December 30, 2016) was a Puerto Rican American author. Her critically acclaimed and award-winning work spans a range of literary genres including poetry, short stories, autobiography, essays, and young-adult fiction. Ortiz Cofer was the Emeritus Regents' and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia, where she taught undergraduate and graduate creative writing workshops for 26 years. In 2010, Ortiz Cofer was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, and in 2013, she won the University's 2014 Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award. Ortiz Cofer hailed from a family of story tellers and drew heavily from her personal experiences as a Puerto Rican American woman. In her work, Ortiz Cofer brings a poetic perspective to the intersection of memory and imagination. Writing in diverse genres, she investigated women issues, Latino culture, and the American South. Ortiz Cofer's work weaves together private life and public space through intimate portrayals of family relationships and rich descriptions of place. Her manuscripts and papers are currently housed at the University of Georgia's Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
This first novel is set in the 1950s and 1960s and moves from a rural Puerto Rican village to a tough immigrant housing project in New Jersey, telling the story of a Hispanic family's struggle to become part of a new culture without relinquishing the old. At the story's center is Guzmán, an almost mythic figure whose adventures and exile, salvation and return leave him a broken man but preserve his place in the heart and imagination of his niece, who is his secret biographer.
Judith Ortiz Cofer (February 24, 1952 - December 30, 2016) was a Puerto Rican American author. Her critically acclaimed and award-winning work spans a range of literary genres including poetry, short stories, autobiography, essays, and young-adult fiction. Ortiz Cofer was the Emeritus Regents' and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia, where she taught undergraduate and graduate creative writing workshops for 26 years. In 2010, Ortiz Cofer was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, and in 2013, she won the University's 2014 Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award. Ortiz Cofer hailed from a family of story tellers and drew heavily from her personal experiences as a Puerto Rican American woman. In her work, Ortiz Cofer brings a poetic perspective to the intersection of memory and imagination. Writing in diverse genres, she investigated women issues, Latino culture, and the American South. Ortiz Cofer's work weaves together private life and public space through intimate portrayals of family relationships and rich descriptions of place. Her manuscripts and papers are currently housed at the University of Georgia's Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
This collection of imaginative and innovative short stories by Chilean author Jaime Collyer (b. Santiago, 1955) takes readers into a world unlimited by time and space. Cannibals and military dictators, Sigmund Freud and the world chess champion are some of the varied and surprising characters his narration brings to life. A gifted and impeccable writer, Collyer is well aware of the sociopolitical implications of his unfettered and humorous parodies of Europe and South America. A psychologist by training, Jaime Collyer has published five novels: Hacia el nuevo mundo (1985), Los años perdidos (1986), El infiltrado (1989), Gente al acecho (1992) [published by LALRP as People on the Prowl] and Cien pájaros volando (1995). In 1984 he was a finalist in the Casa de las Americas competition in Havana. In 1985 he won two prizes in Spain, where he resided for nearly ten years: the Premio de Novela Corta Ciudad de Villena and the Premio Jauja (Valladolid). Collyer's story A Businessman Disappears has recently appeared in The Paris Review. . Lillian Lorca de Tagle has translated more than twenty books by well-known authors, including Thomas Mann and Axel Munte. Following a successful career in broadcasting, writing, and editing, Tagle has returned to the art of translating literary works.
Jaime Collyer (born January 1, 1955, Santiago, Chile) is a Chilean writer, born in Santiago, Chile in 1955 who became part of a generation of writers known as the 'Nueva narrativa chilena' or the New Chilean Narrative. His works have been translated into English, French and other languages, winning various literary prizes and acclaim. Born in 1955, Collyer claims he discovered the joy of writing fiction as a child in school at a young age. Later in university, studying psychology, he realised 'the only thing I wanted to do was to write.' Having finished his degree in 1980, Collyer moved to Madrid, Spain in 1981 to begin a writing career and to study International Relations and Political Science. In 1986, he co-wrote a children's book Hacia el nuevo mundo, and his writing career began in earnest from there. He published El infiltrado in 1989, which was awarded a prize as the best Latin-American novel translated to French that year. Collyer has continued to publish works to much critical acclaim and has won the Premio Municipal de Santiago for his short story collections, amongst various other awards for his publications in general. The New York Times Book Review described him as 'a born writer'. Collyer cites a diverse and wide ranging set of influences from various countries and cultures. Amongst them are Rudyard Kipling and Vladimir Nabokov as well as German post war writers such as Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass. Chief amongst his influences are authors of Latin-American extraction, including Julio Cortázar and Juan Carlos Onetti. Perhaps his most salient influence, an author to whom he has been compared, is the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges. Undoubtedly an influence, Collyer was even dubbed 'The New Borges' after the release of the collection Gente al acecho (People on the Prowl). Borges is mentioned within the collection in the story 'Ultimos días de nuestro vecino', in which a character comes across the Aleph, a place where all points on the earth can be seen from one point, something which Borges had described in his own short story in the collection The Aleph.
FRANCISCO COLOANE was born in the town of Quemchi on the Great Island of Chiloe, in the archipelago bearing the same name. He has published four novels, a play, and several collections of short stories, among them Cabo de Hornos (Cape Horn), El tempano de Kanasaka (The Kanasaka Iceberg), and Tierra del Fuego. Coloane has been awarded the prestigious Chilean National Prize for Literature and is a member of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language. One of his novels has recently been made into a popular feature film in Chile. He currently lives in Santiago, where he continues to write. Coloane's stories are valuable not only because of the exotic austral scenery, hut essentially because of the infinite wealth of the characters who sustain them. Coloane rises up as the great Chilean writer of the sea, the channels and the islands; a renewed writer, strong and youthful, with an inexhaustible, contagious poetic spirit in his work.' - Yerko Moretie. . . ‘After his attractive book, La obra narrativa de Francisco Coloane (1988), David Petreman culminates his approach to the internal structure of this Chilean writer's narrative system by means of the present selection of his best short stories in a careful English translation.' - Julio Durán-Cerda.
Francisco Coloane Cárdenas (July 19, 1910, Quemchi, Chiloe Province - August 5, 2002) was a Chilean novelist and short fiction writer whose works have been translated into many languages. Some of his books were adapted to theatre and film. He was born in the southern Chilean island of Chiloe, and his literary career expanded from Perros, Caballos y Hombres (‘Dogs, Horses and Men') in 1935 to the publication of his memoirs Los Pasos del Hombre (The Steps of Man) in 2000. Among his most famous works (translated into English, French, Italian, Greek, German, Polish and Dutch) are: La Tierra del Fuego se Apago (Tierra del Fuego Has Burnt Out, 1945), Golfo de Penas (Gulf of Sorrow, 1957), El Camino de la Ballena (The Whale's Path, 1962), El Guanaco Blanco (The White Guanaco, 1980), and El Corazon del Tempano (The Heart of the Iceberg, 1991). Coloane was awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura (Chilean National Prize for Literature) in 1964. In 1997, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Republic, where he won considerable notoriety for his work in the 1990s. Coloane was an active member of the Communist Party of Chile for most of his adult life, and a lover of nature who celebrated his 89th birthday by swimming in the freezing waters of the Pacific Ocean - which in his opinion kept him ‘vital and active'. Miguel Littín's movie, Tierra del fuego, is based on a work by Coloane. Following his death, the Chilean government recognized him as a central figure of 20th-century Chilean literature.
One of Coloane's several novels of the sea.
Francisco Coloane Cárdenas (July 19, 1910, Quemchi, Chiloe Province - August 5, 2002) was a Chilean novelist and short fiction writer whose works have been translated into many languages. Some of his books were adapted to theatre and film. He was born in the southern Chilean island of Chiloe, and his literary career expanded from Perros, Caballos y Hombres (‘Dogs, Horses and Men') in 1935 to the publication of his memoirs Los Pasos del Hombre (The Steps of Man) in 2000. Among his most famous works (translated into English, French, Italian, Greek, German, Polish and Dutch) are: La Tierra del Fuego se Apago (Tierra del Fuego Has Burnt Out, 1945), Golfo de Penas (Gulf of Sorrow, 1957), El Camino de la Ballena (The Whale's Path, 1962), El Guanaco Blanco (The White Guanaco, 1980), and El Corazon del Tempano (The Heart of the Iceberg, 1991). Coloane was awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura (Chilean National Prize for Literature) in 1964. In 1997, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Republic, where he won considerable notoriety for his work in the 1990s. Coloane was an active member of the Communist Party of Chile for most of his adult life, and a lover of nature who celebrated his 89th birthday by swimming in the freezing waters of the Pacific Ocean - which in his opinion kept him ‘vital and active'. Miguel Littín's movie, Tierra del fuego, is based on a work by Coloane. Following his death, the Chilean government recognized him as a central figure of 20th-century Chilean literature.
These nine spellbinding stories of adventure, exploration and voyage are peopled with ravenous explorers, fortune hunters, foreign revolutionaries, ill-fated seafarers, intrepid ship's captains, and ruthless smugglers. But the undeniable protagonist around which these characters gravitate is nature itself. Southern Chile, the world's end, with its severe beauty - cold, inhospitable, treacherous, desolate - finds its ideal poet in Francisco Coloane. In his stories, this stern landscape rises like a definitive symbol of the elementary and ceaseless drama of human passions. Coloane is a master storyteller, deftly distilling the universal from the particular and the extreme. But no abstraction of this kind can do these tales justice. Their enduring beauty lies in the forceful, gripping narrative and the elements that principally comprise this narrative: men, their crimes and their passions: and the land itself in all its breathtaking glory and its murderous wrath. ‘Long arms, arms like rivers, are necessary to fully embrace Francisco Coloane. Or perhaps it's necessary to be a squall of wind, gusting over him beard and all. Otherwise, take a seat across the table from him and analyze the question, study him deeply; you will surely end by drinking a bottle of wine with Francisco and happily postponing the matter to some other time.' - Pablo Neruda. ‘More than any other writer, Francisco Colane is able to throw open the doors to an entirely new world.' - Luis Sepulveda. ‘Francisco Colane is the greatest poet of the extreme reaches of South America . . . There are writers who have had the fortune, the ability, or the genius to reveal through their books worlds previously unknown to us . . . Coloane was one of these very rare authors.' - Stefano Malatesta
Francisco Coloane Cárdenas (July 19, 1910, Quemchi, Chiloe Province - August 5, 2002) was a Chilean novelist and short fiction writer whose works have been translated into many languages. Some of his books were adapted to theatre and film. He was born in the southern Chilean island of Chiloe, and his literary career expanded from Perros, Caballos y Hombres (‘Dogs, Horses and Men') in 1935 to the publication of his memoirs Los Pasos del Hombre (The Steps of Man) in 2000. Among his most famous works (translated into English, French, Italian, Greek, German, Polish and Dutch) are: La Tierra del Fuego se Apago (Tierra del Fuego Has Burnt Out, 1945), Golfo de Penas (Gulf of Sorrow, 1957), El Camino de la Ballena (The Whale's Path, 1962), El Guanaco Blanco (The White Guanaco, 1980), and El Corazon del Tempano (The Heart of the Iceberg, 1991). Coloane was awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura (Chilean National Prize for Literature) in 1964. In 1997, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Republic, where he won considerable notoriety for his work in the 1990s. Coloane was an active member of the Communist Party of Chile for most of his adult life, and a lover of nature who celebrated his 89th birthday by swimming in the freezing waters of the Pacific Ocean - which in his opinion kept him ‘vital and active'. Miguel Littín's movie, Tierra del fuego, is based on a work by Coloane. Following his death, the Chilean government recognized him as a central figure of 20th-century Chilean literature.
TEN PERCENT OF LIFE brings Philip Marlowe-Raymond Chandler's legendary private eye-back to the Los Angeles of 1956 to investigate the alleged suicide of Chandler's literary agent. Marlowe probes the unspoken but heavy-handed influence of the big Hollywood studios of the McCarthy era. Soon Chandler himself becomes a murder suspect, and the dangers of protecting the defenseless from the powerful are laid out against a backdrop of glitzy boites, hushed seaside estates and glaring neon. Marlowe, freed from his creator, offers his opinions on everything from the ego and the id to forties is' Hiber Conteris' subtly political parable intrigues and delights. TEN PERCENT OF LIFE is an ingenious interplay between an author and his hard-boiled creation. With it, Conteris joins the ranks of classic South American authors such as Manuel Puig and Mario Vargas Llosa. HIBER CONTERIS, a noted Uruguayan writer and intellectual, was a political prisoner in Uruguay from 1976 to 1985. While he was in prison, Mr. Conteris wrote four novels, a book of short stories, and three plays. He was released from prison after the change of governments and came to the United States, where he is currently Visiting Professor of Hispano-American Literature at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. After his arrival, the governor of Wisconsin proclaimed May 14, 1985, Hiber Conteris Day. Mr. Conteris is an Honorary Member of P.E.N. and a recipient of the Letras de Oro Prize, among numerous other awards. Praise for the original Spanish edition of TEN PERCENT OF LIFE: ‘An amusing and ingenious novel which surely will excite lovers of thrillers everywhere; it is written with remarkable perfection' - Diario 16, Madrid.
Hiber Conteris (born September 23, 1933 in Paysandú, Uruguay) is a Uruguayan writer, dramatist, and essayist.
TEN PERCENT OF LIFE brings Philip Marlowe-Raymond Chandler's legendary private eye-back to the Los Angeles of 1956 to investigate the alleged suicide of Chandler's literary agent. Marlowe probes the unspoken but heavy-handed influence of the big Hollywood studios of the McCarthy era. Soon Chandler himself becomes a murder suspect, and the dangers of protecting the defenseless from the powerful are laid out against a backdrop of glitzy boites, hushed seaside estates and glaring neon. Marlowe, freed from his creator, offers his opinions on everything from the ego and the id to forties is' Hiber Conteris' subtly political parable intrigues and delights. TEN PERCENT OF LIFE is an ingenious interplay between an author and his hard-boiled creation. With it, Conteris joins the ranks of classic South American authors such as Manuel Puig and Mario Vargas Llosa. HIBER CONTERIS, a noted Uruguayan writer and intellectual, was a political prisoner in Uruguay from 1976 to 1985. While he was in prison, Mr. Conteris wrote four novels, a book of short stories, and three plays. He was released from prison after the change of governments and came to the United States, where he is currently Visiting Professor of Hispano-American Literature at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. After his arrival, the governor of Wisconsin proclaimed May 14, 1985, Hiber Conteris Day. Mr. Conteris is an Honorary Member of P.E.N. and a recipient of the Letras de Oro Prize, among numerous other awards. Praise for the original Spanish edition of TEN PERCENT OF LIFE: ‘An amusing and ingenious novel which surely will excite lovers of thrillers everywhere; it is written with remarkable perfection' - Diario 16, Madrid. . .
Hiber Conteris (born September 23, 1933 in Paysandú, Uruguay) is a Uruguayan writer, dramatist, and essayist.
Gustavo Corçao is an unexpected and welcome voice from Brazil. His story is that of a scientist's disillusionment with the limitations of science, its laughable but terrible futility when it comes to dominate a man's life. He relates how he himself was ‘tied to a corpse' for fifteen years -five years to the odolites and ten years to galvanometric needles, This was a world of certainties where the possibility of error added just the necessary excitement. At that time, with a few friends, he became a Marxist revolutionary idealist, yet with a lurking suspicion all the time that his life and talk were unreal. Then his wife dies-his Marxism is reduced to rubble. It is only after long groping in the dark that he finds a renewed faith to live by, when he realizes that love is no abstract thing, but concerns neighbor rather than some distant cause; that it works for the next man not for the next generation. Señor Corçao's experience is one that, in outline only, has many parallels in Europe-and its Brazilian setting gives it an especial fascination. The debt he acknowledges to Jacques Maritain and to C. K. Chesterton is evident partly in his choice of delightfully extravagant analogies and partly in the fact that some of the latter half of the book revolves around the works of these two writers. It is, how. ever, never purely literary and always comes back to real experience, everyday happenings in his own life which are' depicted with the most convincing symbolic overtones.
Gustavo Corção Braga (17 December 1896 - 6 July 1978) was a Brazilian Catholic writer. Corção was educated at the Polytechnic School of UFRJ, but left the institution in 1920 without obtaining his degree in engineering, specializing later in electronics. He was an active member of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) at this time. After meeting Alceu Amoroso Lima, however, he kept himself at a distance from communist groups and remained close to Catholic circles until his conversion, in 1939. Corção studied Thomism and theology with Benedictine monks and played an important role at Dom Vital Centre in Rio, founded by Jackson de Figueiredo. He participated in the ‘Catholic revival' movement in Brazil, which converted many intellectuals previously attracted to Positivism. The writings of G.K. Chesterton had a strong effect on Corção. In 1946 he published an essay on Chesterton's ideas and even translated one of his books, The Barbarism of Berlin. Corção was also strongly influenced by the work of the French Catholic writer Jacques Maritain, while still close to the Action Française. His only novel, Lições de Abismo (Who if I Cry Out), was awarded by Unesco and later translated into many languages. Corção worked for decades as a journalist, collaborating to several prestigious newspapers, such as Tribuna da Imprensa, Diário de Notícias, Estado de S. Paulo and O Globo. In O SEculo do Nada (The Century of Nothing), he passionately defended the Francoist Spain and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. According to him, the Second Vatican Council was a ‘terminal sin.' In August 1969, he founded Permanência, a split from Dom Vital Centre. Corção's influence among traditionalist Catholics persists to this day. In France, for instance, the Abbey of Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux has published two of his books, La DEcouverte de l'Autre and Le Siècle de l'Enfer. French historian Olivier Companion also notes the publication of some of Corção's work in Jean Madiran's newspaper, Routes. His work has been highly regarded by Antonio Olinto, Ariano Suassuna, Gilberto Freyre, Nelson Rodrigues and Manuel Bandeira. The translator, Clotilde Wilson, is well known as the translator of a book by Machado de Assis, The Heritage of Quincas Borba.
THREE MONTHS TO LIVE - Jose Maria, a versatile, thoughtful engineer in late middle age, and now a victim of leukemia, has received from his doctor the death sentence. Despite Jose Maria's ability and his philosophical bent, his life has been a frustrating Non-fulfillment of his early hopes. Gustavo Corcao's unusual novel WHO IF I CRY OUT (Licoes de abismo) is the diary of this reflective man facing the prospect of imminent death and trying to find the meaning of life-and of death-while evaluating his own existence. Seeking to answer the question ‘Who am I? What is Man?' Jose Maria formulates a rEsumE of human actions and reactions, always conscious of the tragic isolation of the human personality, the poignancy of living. With a sense of the precariousness of the human situation he considers God, love, and death as he searches for the Absolute. And he tries to fathom puzzling abstracts: time, the essence of the feminine and of the masculine, companionship, the hollowness of Christmas and other holidays, the origins of tragedy, the nature of happiness, social theories, change and deterioration, human unawareness, and always the anguish of loneliness. Even in the midst of these profuse reflections of a dying man Corcao uses his narrative art to keep the reader identified with the patient, to tell by flashbacks the story of a man and of his friends and family, and to create suspense of several kinds: as related to the failure of Jose Maria's marriage, to the outcome of numerous episodes in the forward-moving narrative, to how death will finally come. The novelist makes real for the reader both Jose Maria's passionate search for an answer to the question ‘Why?' and the events of his past and of his rapidly vanishing present-experiences that have molded his thought and feelings. The author, an engineer by profession, resides in Rio de Janeiro.
Gustavo Corção Braga (17 December 1896 - 6 July 1978) was a Brazilian Catholic writer. Corção was educated at the Polytechnic School of UFRJ, but left the institution in 1920 without obtaining his degree in engineering, specializing later in electronics. He was an active member of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) at this time. After meeting Alceu Amoroso Lima, however, he kept himself at a distance from communist groups and remained close to Catholic circles until his conversion, in 1939. Corção studied Thomism and theology with Benedictine monks and played an important role at Dom Vital Centre in Rio, founded by Jackson de Figueiredo. He participated in the ‘Catholic revival' movement in Brazil, which converted many intellectuals previously attracted to Positivism. The writings of G.K. Chesterton had a strong effect on Corção. In 1946 he published an essay on Chesterton's ideas and even translated one of his books, The Barbarism of Berlin. Corção was also strongly influenced by the work of the French Catholic writer Jacques Maritain, while still close to the Action Française. His only novel, Lições de Abismo (Who if I Cry Out), was awarded by Unesco and later translated into many languages. Corção worked for decades as a journalist, collaborating to several prestigious newspapers, such as Tribuna da Imprensa, Diário de Notícias, Estado de S. Paulo and O Globo. In O SEculo do Nada (The Century of Nothing), he passionately defended the Francoist Spain and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. According to him, the Second Vatican Council was a ‘terminal sin.' In August 1969, he founded Permanência, a split from Dom Vital Centre. Corção's influence among traditionalist Catholics persists to this day. In France, for instance, the Abbey of Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux has published two of his books, La DEcouverte de l'Autre and Le Siècle de l'Enfer. French historian Olivier Companion also notes the publication of some of Corção's work in Jean Madiran's newspaper, Routes. His work has been highly regarded by Antonio Olinto, Ariano Suassuna, Gilberto Freyre, Nelson Rodrigues and Manuel Bandeira. The translator, Clotilde Wilson, is an associate professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at the University of Washington.
Acclaimed Cuban novelist, Arnaldo Correa (author of SPY'S FATE) brings us COLD HAVANA GROUND, a riveting thriller based on actual events on the island-nation of Cuba involving three Afro-Cuban religions: Santeria, Palo Monte, and the Abakua Secret Society. . . A recently buried corpse disappears from Havana's Chinese cemetery and the Cuban police are seeking possible motives and suspects. A Santera discovers that a malignant spirit has taken possession oilier brother's head and undertakes an investigation of her own, using divining methods and other arts of her religion. . . Both inquiries eventually coincide, revealing an extraordinary web of criminal and religions occurrences. Correa has crafted a flawless mystery with an intense and authentic look into little-known aspects of' Cuban society.
ARNALDO CORREA was born in the Escambray Mountains, Cuba in 1935. In 1966, he published his first book of short stories, which were praised by Fidel Castro. Corrca is considered one of three founders of the Cuban crime-fiction genre. He studied mining engineering at the University of Alabama, and traveled extensively though the U.S. in the 1950s. He has worked on development projects in Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, and Mozambique. SPY'S FATE was his first novel published in English. He currently lives in Havana.
Julio Cortázar wrote in his preface that ‘Every city invents its own vocabulary, lets drop in everyday speech those expressions that can only have meaning for it, in it.' In this work, AlEcio de Andrade succeeds in capturing atmospheres and arresting fleeting passing moments, catching hold of or stealing the piquancy of a particular instant. With him, Paris lives through its pores, both day and night, enjoying itself, getting married, watching, waiting and loving. The photographer's oneness with Paris is no accident. The subtlety of the photographs in this book lies in their creator's sensitivity for these everyday moments that, while often fleeting, are nonetheless essential, vital.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner. The Brazilian photographer AlEcio de Andrade (1938-2003) was also a poet, pianist and friend of writers and musicians the world over. He settled in Paris in 1964 and for the next 39 years would continually return to the collections of the Louvre Museum. From these wanderings he has left 12,000 photographs. Each frame is like a scene from a play, with us as spectators looking over the artist's shoulder at the actors, the visitors to the Museum. They show a poetic vision full of humour and poignancy, which allows us to understand the ways in which people appropriate public spaces and the variety of relationships, sometimes quite unexpected, that they establish with the works of art. The book conjures up the various stages of a visit like a scenario, consciously avoiding a chronological approach or documenting the museum's transformations over the years.
AUTONAUTS OF THE COSMOROUTE is a travelogue, a love story, an irreverent collection of visual and verbal snapshots. In May 1982, Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop climbed aboard Fainer, their VW camper van, and embarked on an exploration of the uncharted territory of the Paris-Marseilles freeway. It was a route they'd covered before, usually in about ten hours, but this time they loaded up with supplies and prepared for an arduous voyage of thirty-three days without leaving the autoroute. Along the way they would uncover the hidden side of the freeway and record the trip's vital minutiae with light-hearted abandon. At roadside rest areas, armed with typewriters, cameras, and mutual affection, the authors composed this book.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
In his fifth work of fiction to be published for the American reader, Argentine writer Julio Cortázar again displays the virtuoso talent which has won him international acclaim. Here again is the Cortázar world, a special place of fantasy, comedy, cities, snatches of conversations and brief encounters; of characters' lives which begin at any moment and end in intense, brilliant encounters with others on a train, in poignant love-making, or at a restaurant. The construction of this world is so free and open, without the usual restraints of traditional novelistic order, as to take the reader on a daring and exciting new experience of life itself. An offshoot of a previous book, the new novel takes its title from Chapter 62 of Hopscotch, in which the character Morelli contemplates writing a novel based only on a few scattered notes and in which standard behavior would be inexplicable by means of current instrumental psychology. 62: A MODEL KIT can be read quite on its own, however, having its own group of characters in the City- that mediumnic meeting place where people who live in Paris, London, and Vienna are able to meet, or not to meet - where Fate is waiting to close the games.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
In his fifth work of fiction to be published for the American reader, Argentine writer Julio Cortázar again displays the virtuoso talent which has won him international acclaim. Here again is the Cortázar world, a special place of fantasy, comedy, cities, snatches of conversations and brief encounters; of characters' lives which begin at any moment and end in intense, brilliant encounters with others on a train, in poignant love-making, or at a restaurant. The construction of this world is so free and open, without the usual restraints of traditional novelistic order, as to take the reader on a daring and exciting new experience of life itself. An offshoot of a previous book, the new novel takes its title from Chapter 62 of Hopscotch, in which the character Morelli contemplates writing a novel based only on a few scattered notes and in which standard behavior would be inexplicable by means of current instrumental psychology. 62: A MODEL KIT can be read quite on its own, however, having its own group of characters in the City- that mediumnic meeting place where people who live in Paris, London, and Vienna are able to meet, or not to meet - where Fate is waiting to close the games.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
THE CITY is the meeting place for people from London, Paris, and Vienna, but they never meet there. Instead they share experiences, some funny or delightfully absurd, others mystical and rather frightening, and all of which are psychologically - and even psychically - related. 62: A MODEL KIT is the brilliant, intricate blueprint for life in the City. The New York Times called it ‘a deeply touching, enjoyable novel, beautifully written and fascinatingly mysterious.' Library Journal described it as ‘A highly satisfying work by one of the most extraordinary writers of our time.'
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
A kaleidoscopic jem from Julio Cortázar-the internationally acclaimed short story writer and novelist-that demonstrates once again, in Cortázar's singular and singularly witty way, the proper study of mankind. A series of brilliant, eccentrically interlocking pieces, by turns comic, philosophical, illusive, and allusive, and always a pleasure to read: these are the means through which Cortázar reveals the essence of one particular juan's life. First, we are plunged directly into that life. Short take by short take (none longer than nine pages, some less than one) we learn about Lucas, His Shopping; Lucas, his Patriotism; Lucas, His New Art of Giving Lectures; Lucas, His Communications; Lucas, His Criticism of Reality (‘Jekyll knows very well who Hyde is, hut the knowledge is not reciprocal. Lucas thinks that almost everybody shares Hyde's ignorance ). But then we are suddenly drawn away from the man and are given his world, his context, in multiple quick parodies-hilarious evocations of everything trendy, from physical fitness to semiotics, from cool pornography to animal ESP. Finally, in Part III we return to Lucas-to His Dreams, His Partisan Arguments, His Modesty (sorely tried by the acoustic flimsiness of modern housing), His ‘Working Methods (when he can't sleep, instead of counting sheep he answers his piled-up correspondence ‘with such perfection and elegance that Madame de SEvignE would have loathed him minutely'), His Shoeshines 1940 (‘. . . Lucas goes out onto the street and his shoes gleam like a sunflower on the right and Oscar Peterson on the left'). Until, having laughed or puzzled through the rounded shards of a mind and a life, we find that we have been given-glimpse by glimpse, aspect by aspect-a complete picture of a complete man. But not just any man. This is a certain Lucas.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
THE PLACES: The east coast of Africa, a cemetery across from Venice's Fondamente Nuove, the Paris Metro, a Nicaraguan island, a Transylvanian cafE in ‘a not excessively interesting German city'. THE PEOPLE: A woman experiencing the horror of her young nephew's nightmares and the unnamable violence they portend, a middle-aged writer investigating the biography of a dead laureate and stumbling onto the truth about his ‘dark lady', an operative waiting for death in the crowd at a title fight promoted by Alain Delon, a Chilean hitchhiker humming American jazz on an autobahn in Austria. THE EVENTS: A deadly erotic game is played out in the dark with a seemingly complaint pickup, a man smokes and stands guard over his family through a long summer night protecting them from a real or symbolic menace in the garden, drinking cronies gather at the bedside of a dying friend to watch with impersonal curiosity his terminal phases. THE BOOK: This, Julio Cortazar's first collection in English in seven years, displays the extraordinary scope of his imagination and his accomplishment. In these eighteen stories, he segues from hard-edged political drama to worlds that are not just fantasy but evocations of an alternative reality that takes over too powerfully, and finally usurps the present. In story after story, he projects everyday dreams, fears, desires, and the terrible power they can exert. To read this collection is to tread the perilous path between the ordinary and the unimaginable, the quotidian and the surreal; to give oneself over to the disturbing vision of complete worlds created, animated, and populated with the unmistakable mastery that is the hallmark of Julio Cortazar.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
In his first political novel, Julio Cortázar, the internationally acclaimed Argentinian author, applies his special mindscape to today's headlines as he tackles the surreal world of Latin American exiles in Paris who are intent on committing revolutionary acts. Using smuggled counterfeit money, they finance a plan to kidnap a top Latin American police official, whose headquarters are in Paris, and hold him for ransom until certain political prisoners in Latin America are released. Amidst pages interspersed with newspaper clippings of jailbreaks, police attacks, torture, and various acts of rebellion, the world of Cortázar's sometimes wildly improbable intellectuals-on-the-run blossoms. His characters are all searching for an almost mystical ‘bridge' to a revolutionary new world; but the bridge proves elusive, the revolution far away. Only Manuel, a baby for whom this manual of clippings and thoughts is being compiled, may live to see its arrival.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
A collection of stories by Julio Cortazar, an Argentine writer whose book, 62: A MODEL KIT, was described in the New York Times Book Review as ‘a deeply touching, enjoyable novel, beautifully written and fascinatingly mysterious. . . . It realizes [Cortazar's] desire to find new and freer modes of organization in fiction.' ALL FIRES THE FIRE is the sixth work of Cortazar's fiction to be published in America, and it creates afresh his special mindscape, beyond the space and time of linear thought. Situations double, reflect, refract: an island at noon from an airplane - an airplane at noon from an island; the living deceive the dying - and themselves - about the dead; death by fire in an ancient Roman arena and a modern city apartment. ‘Anyone could look at his watch,' begins the first story, ‘The Southern Thruway,' ‘but it was as if that time strapped to your right wrist or the beep beep on the radio were measuring something else - the time of those who haven't made the blunder of trying to return to Paris on the southern thruway on a Sunday afternoon. . . .' CONTENTS: The Southern Thruway; The Health of the Sick; Meeting; Nurse Cora; The Island at Noon; Instructions for John Howell; All Fires the Fire; The Other Heaven.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
In this previously untranslated collection of short writings accompanied by illustrations chosen by the author, noted Argentine writer Julio Cortázar leads us on a tour of his favorite worlds. Cortázar enthusiasts will find here fantastic stories bearing the author's distinctive stamp, but they will also discover such lesser-known lands as whimsical vignettes, poems, and the first substantial selection in English of the author's insightful and provocative essays. We roam through essays on writers and writing, art and jazz, a cat named Theodor W. Adorno, decadence in the French Riviera, nights in Europe's ministries, and life in Paris and Provence, on feeling not all there and on being an idiot, on the mind and matter and memory, and more. We meet a man slowly sinking into the ground, a new Napoleon who appears in contemporary Paris, a hand named Dg, an invisible monster, an upside-down fly, a woman who can't abide yawning, miniature jaguars, girls experiencing first sexual awakenings, and a man who craves ants, among other figures from Cortázar's fabulous worlds. Whether recalling his own experiences in Argentina, Paris, or Provence, or writing on the work of Poe, Duchamp, or Louis Armstrong, or inventing fantastic fictions, Julio Cortázar opens our eyes to other universes, casting off convention to reveal startling unseen connections and unexpected correspondences. ‘The author reveals himself and his preferences through anecdotes, reflections, essays, and poems about everything that fascinates or amuses him. Amidst a melange of photographs, drawings and engravings, the reader is entertained by a diverse and original offering of the important and the trivial. The entire gamut of the reader's taste can fairly prickle at flavors ranging from white humor to black humor, nonsense to intellectualism, sarcasm, wit, lyricism and social commentary. ‘[AROUND THE DAY IN EIGHTY WORLDS] is a joy to read, even to browse. Its title, of course, was born of Julio Cortázar's affection for his namesake Jules Verne whose books were his favorites as a young boy. In [this book], which contains many engravings of scenes and characters from Verne's work, the Argentine Julio exposes us to the treasures of at least eighty of his worlds in one book.' - Evelyn Picon Garfield, in her critical study, Julio Cortazar . . . ‘If I had the technical means to print my own books, I think I would keep on producing collage-books.' - Julio Cortázar. CONTENTS: ‘Make a Little Star,' ‘No, No, and No,' ‘Futile Protection,' ‘Lunch,' ‘The Lip-Biter's Discourse,' ‘It Is Regrettable That,' ‘Strange Choices.'
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
Published in hardcover as THE END OF THE GAME AND OTHER STORIES. The reader of a mystery novel finds out too late that he himself is the murderer's victim; a young man who has had a motorcycle accident dreams during a long night in the hospital that he is being sacrificed by Aztecs, and awakes to find he is not dreaming; two archaeologist friends who unearth a statuette on an expedition to a Greek island find themselves enacting, horribly, its ancient rite. These are daring stories that juggle time and probability so deftly and disturbingly that it is easy to see why Julio Cortázar had earned a reputation as one of the world's best writers of short stories long before his novels, The Winners and Hopscotch, first brought him to the attention of readers in this country. Cortázar's characters seem diabolical mirrors to the daily insanities that make up so much of contemporary life (in the activities of the photographer in ‘Blow-Up,' for example, the story on which Antonioni's remarkable film is based). His concern with the magical tradition of ‘doubles' is also very much in evidence, particularly in a story such as ‘The Distances,' in which a rich, attractive young woman is drawn, in a kind of calm terror, across time and circumstance to a meeting with what can only be another version of herself. And in the novella-length ‘The Pursuer,' the distances between an artist and his critic are explored with whiplash precision. Most of these stories appear here in English for the first time. American readers will find them unforgettable.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
How manage to arrive at the corner newspaper stand every morning? Think of a poor duck covered with ants. Out beyond Amalfi's last lighthouse you can hear a dog bark. Intentional insouciance in the face of a better organized world than you would care to make. The lateness of our arrival-anywhere. Secretaries who hover; overturned cockroaches with their feet waving in the air. The unicorn kills his mistress, digs into her superb breast his horn working with lust. Destroy the ants of Rome and then flee the city. The advisability of walking toward a staircase face on, if you intend to use it. The importance we strap our wrist into every morning. Character defects in cassowaries. The idea of forgetting the whole thing and going to a movie. ‘Another segment of Cortázar's world divides itself, according to an ancient tradition, into three parts; the word fama means fame or reputation, so the famas are, if you like, VIP's; esperanza one would have to translate as ‘hopeful,' which is too positive a solution for the translator, as the esperanzas are the great, greedy, and middle-class-minded middle class -and what they really hope is that they become famas. Cronopio, that heroic designation, is completely untranslatable, the word (if not the delicate concept) being an invention of the author. Cronopios are lovable, exasperating, and morally superior, humble and insouciant beings that they are. Cronopios are alternately the grease and the monkey wrenches in the fly-wheel of progress, depending upon their mood that morning, or depending upon their momentary attitude toward flies, ants, wasps, turtles, or condors. The idea of forgetting the whole thing and going to a movie. To return to serious matters like the behavior of mirrors on Easter Island: the thinnest membrane protects us from our dreams. Julio Cortázar's stories have a terrifying tendency to seep through it. The best break the membrane and let the magic of that inland sea and its monsters inundate us. For a writer of prose and a novelist, he has a very strange poet's head. And if we follow him to the end, we find there are very strange heads on us all. We have a suggestion: put down the book if you can. Forget the whole thing. Go to a movie.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
How manage to arrive at the corner newspaper stand every morning? Think of a poor duck covered with ants. Out beyond Amalfi's last lighthouse you can hear a dog bark. Intentional insouciance in the face of a better organized world than you would care to make. The lateness of our arrival-anywhere. Secretaries who hover; overturned cockroaches with their feet waving in the air. The unicorn kills his mistress, digs into her superb breast his horn working with lust. Destroy the ants of Rome and then flee the city. The advisability of walking toward a staircase face on, if you intend to use it. The importance we strap our wrist into every morning. Character defects in cassowaries. The idea of forgetting the whole thing and going to a movie. ‘Another segment of Cortázar's world divides itself, according to an ancient tradition, into three parts; the word fama means fame or reputation, so the famas are, if you like, VIP's; esperanza one would have to translate as ‘hopeful,' which is too positive a solution for the translator, as the esperanzas are the great, greedy, and middle-class-minded middle class -and what they really hope is that they become famas. Cronopio, that heroic designation, is completely untranslatable, the word (if not the delicate concept) being an invention of the author. Cronopios are lovable, exasperating, and morally superior, humble and insouciant beings that they are. Cronopios are alternately the grease and the monkey wrenches in the fly-wheel of progress, depending upon their mood that morning, or depending upon their momentary attitude toward flies, ants, wasps, turtles, or condors. The idea of forgetting the whole thing and going to a movie. To return to serious matters like the behavior of mirrors on Easter Island: the thinnest membrane protects us from our dreams. Julio Cortázar's stories have a terrifying tendency to seep through it. The best break the membrane and let the magic of that inland sea and its monsters inundate us. For a writer of prose and a novelist, he has a very strange poet's head. And if we follow him to the end, we find there are very strange heads on us all. We have a suggestion: put down the book if you can. Forget the whole thing. Go to a movie.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
AndrEs Fava is a character from Cortázar's FINAL EXAM, and his diary originally formed part of that novel, written in 1950 but not published, for political reasons, until after the author's death. At some stage Cortázar decided Fava's diary should stand on its own as an independent work. While FINAL EXAM is mostly dialogue, DIARY OF ANDRES FAVA is all reflection: on his reading, dreams, conversations and writing. This unpredictable collection of reflections is peppered with quotes from French poets and American jazzmen. Bemused and melancholy, erudite and searching, this first-time English translation of Diario de AndrEs Fava is full of autobiographical winks at the reader. Cortázar's brilliance and irreverence are in full flower. ‘Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder . . . and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair.' - Pablo Neruda.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
The reader of a mystery novel finds out too late that he himself is the murderer's victim; a young man who has had a motorcycle accident dreams during a long night in the hospital that he is being sacrificed by Aztecs, and awakes to find he is not dreaming; two archaeologist friends who unearth a statuette on an expedition to a Greek island find themselves enacting, horribly, its ancient rite. These are daring stories that juggle time and probability so deftly and disturbingly that it is easy to see why Julio Cortázar had earned a reputation as one of the world's best writers of short stories long before his novels, The Winners and Hopscotch, first brought him to the attention of readers in this country. Cortázar's characters seem diabolical mirrors to the daily insanities that make up so much of contemporary life (in the activities of the photographer in ‘Blow-Up,' for example, the story on which Antonioni's remarkable film is based). His concern with the magical tradition of ‘doubles' is also very much in evidence, particularly in a story such as ‘The Distances,' in which a rich, attractive young woman is drawn, in a kind of calm terror, across time and circumstance to a meeting with what can only be another version of herself. And in the novella-length ‘The Pursuer,' the distances between an artist and his critic are explored with whiplash precision. Most of these stories appear here in English for the first time. American readers will find them unforgettable.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
The reader of a mystery novel finds out too late that he himself is the murderer's victim; a young man who has had a motorcycle accident dreams during a long night in the hospital that he is being sacrificed by Aztecs, and awakes to find he is not dreaming; two archaeologist friends who unearth a statuette on an expedition to a Greek island find themselves enacting, horribly, its ancient rite. These are daring stories that juggle time and probability so deftly and disturbingly that it is easy to see why Julio Cortázar had earned a reputation as one of the world's best writers of short stories long before his novels, The Winners and Hopscotch, first brought him to the attention of readers in this country. Cortázar's characters seem diabolical mirrors to the daily insanities that make up so much of contemporary life (in the activities of the photographer in ‘Blow-Up,' for example, the story on which Antonioni's remarkable film is based). His concern with the magical tradition of ‘doubles' is also very much in evidence, particularly in a story such as ‘The Distances,' in which a rich, attractive young woman is drawn, in a kind of calm terror, across time and circumstance to a meeting with what can only be another version of herself. And in the novella-length ‘The Pursuer,' the distances between an artist and his critic are explored with whiplash precision. Most of these stories appear here in English for the first time. American readers will find them unforgettable.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
Reprint. Originally published 1967. The reader of a mystery novel finds out too late that he himself is the murderer's victim; a young man who has had a motorcycle accident dreams during a long night in the hospital that he is being sacrificed by Aztecs, and awakes to find he is not dreaming; two archaeologist friends who unearth a statuette on an expedition to a Greek island find themselves enacting, horribly, its ancient rite. These are daring stories that juggle time and probability so deftly and disturbingly that it is easy to see why Julio Cortázar had earned a reputation as one of the world's best writers of short stories long before his novels, The Winners and Hopscotch, first brought him to the attention of readers in this country. Cortázar's characters seem diabolical mirrors to the daily insanities that make up so much of contemporary life (in the activities of the photographer in ‘Blow-Up,' for example, the story on which Antonioni's remarkable film is based). His concern with the magical tradition of ‘doubles' is also very much in evidence, particularly in a story such as ‘The Distances,' in which a rich, attractive young woman is drawn, in a kind of calm terror, across time and circumstance to a meeting with what can only be another version of herself. And in the novella-length ‘The Pursuer,' the distances between an artist and his critic are explored with whiplash precision. Most of these stories appear here in English for the first time. American readers will find them unforgettable.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
FINAL EXAM, one of Julio Cortázar's early novels (not published until 1986 in Spanish), is a major, undiscovered work by this important Argentine author, now available in English translation for the first time, In its characters, themes, and preoccupations, it prefigures Cortázar's later fictions, including Blow-Up, and his masterpiece, Hopscotch. Written in 1956 (just before the fall of Peron's government), FINAL EXAM is his allegorical, bitter, and melancholy farewell to an Argentina from which he was about to be permanently self-exiled. (Cortázar moved to Paris the following year.) The setting of Final Exam is a surreal Buenos Aires, dark and eerie, where a strange fog has enveloped the city to everyone's bewilderment. Juan and Clara, two students at a Faculty called ‘The House' (the Great Books are read aloud there by so-called Readers), meet up with their friends AndrEs and Stella, as well as a journalist friend they call ‘the chronicler.' Juan and Clara are getting ready to take their final exam, but instead of preparing, they wander the city with their friends, encounter strange happenings in the squares and ponder life in cafEs. All the while, they are trailed by the mysterious Abel, apparently a former lover of Clara's. With its daring typography, its shifts in rhythm as well as in the wildly veering directions of its characters' thoughts and speech, Final Exam breaks new ground in the territory of stream-of-consciousness narrative techniques. Darkly funny-and riddled with unresolved ambiguities-Final Exam is translated ably here by Alfred Mac Adam. It is one of Cortázar's best works-long overdue to be translated in English.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
From the author of Hopscotch and Blow-up and Other Stories, this remarkable, genre-defying gem has never before been translated into English. From the Observatory - perhaps Julio Cortázar's most unconventional work - moves from descriptions of the life cycle of the Atlantic eel to glimpses of the unearthly structures of an observatory built in Jaipur by an 18th-century Indian sultan. The architectural wonder was not merely a place dedicated to astronomical observation but also a space that bore witness to the dreams of those who entered it. With a dream-logic of its own, Cortazar's haunting photos of this enigmatic place flow into others of Paris at night which flow into his verbal dance.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
By any measure, this is an extraordinary novel. In Hopscotch, one man's exasperated search for what his life is about takes the reader on a series of adventures so extravagant, yet so immediate, that the line between literature and the daily realities of life itself seems often to disappear. Such a response is intended; it is partly what Julio Cortázar's novel is about. Opening in Paris, with a love affair that never really ends throughout its almost six hundred pages, the novel moves gradually to Buenos Aires, where Oliveira is employed first as a salesman, then as the keeper of a calculating circus cat which can truly count, and finally as an attendant in a mental asylum owned by his friends. But the episodes that lie between these shifts of scene are the heart of Hopscotch. They range from. bizarre sexual encounters to absurdly long intellectual discussions of life and art, or the death of a child recounted with a brutal reality, all the more poignant for its unrelenting lack of compassion. All are blocks torn from the enormous structure that Oliveira is systematically demolishing behind him as he moves toward its original blueprint. What emerges is a book that will be compared to the classics of our time - books that shocked, amused, provoked, and opened new horizons.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
Hopscotch, one man's exasperated search for what his life is about takes the reader on a series of adventures so extravagant, yet so immediate, that the line between literature and the daily realities of life itself seems often to disappear. Such a response is intended; it is partly what Julio Cortázar's novel is about. Opening in Paris, with a love affair that never really ends throughout its almost six hundred pages, the novel moves gradually to Buenos Aires, where Oliveira is employed first as a salesman, then as the keeper of a calculating circus cat which can truly count, and finally as an attendant in a mental asylum owned by his friends. But the episodes that lie between these shifts of scene are the heart of Hopscotch. They range from. bizarre sexual encounters to absurdly long intellectual discussions of life and art, or the death of a child recounted with a brutal reality, all the more poignant for its unrelenting lack of compassion. All are blocks torn from the enormous structure that Oliveira is systematically demolishing behind him as he moves toward its original blueprint. What emerges is a book that will be compared to the classics of our time - books that shocked, amused, provoked, and opened new horizons.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
ALIENATION AND EXILE . . . HOPSCOTCH is, by any measure, an extraordinary novel, Its main character, Horacio Oliveira, has an ambition: to so fragment his personality that his life will become a series of present moments, which never cohere into a perceptible whole. He leaves Argentina to join a floating, loose-knit circle known as ‘the Club,' then returns to Buenos Aires, working by turns as a. salesman, as keeper of a calculating circus cat which can truly count, as an attendant in a mental asylum owned by his friends. His is a life truly fragmented - a life of aloof sensuality and empty pleasure over which he has lost control. Of this book, Saturday Review said, ‘Mr. Cortázar has the gift of language . . . astonishing verbal flights. The reader has the conviction that he is in the hands of a master artist.' And the National Observer called HOPSCOTCH ‘his masterwork.'
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
Julio Cortázar, the Argentine novelist and short story writer, lived much of his life in exile in Paris as one of the most renowned members of that international community of expatriate writers and artists. In 1976, Cortázar made a clandestine visit to Nicaragua, witnessing conditions there three years before the Somoza dictatorship was cleared away by the Sandinista Revolution. Subsequently, he returned many times, drawn irresistibly by the spirited resolve of the Nicaraguans to achieve economic, political, and artistic liberation despite the escalating contra war. NICARAGUAN SKETCHES is a collection of fifteen essays written between 1976 and 1983 that are the acute observations and reflections of a major intellect profoundly engaged in the revolutionary struggle of Latin America.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
The power of eros, the enduring beauty of art, a love-hate nostalgia for his Argentine homeland, the bonds of friendship and the tragic folly of politics are some of the themes of SAVE TWILIGHT. Informed by his immersion in world literature, music, art, and history, and most of all his own emotional geography, Cortazar's poetry traces his paradoxical evolution from provincial Argentinean sophisticate to cosmopolitan Parisian Romantic, always maintaining the sense of astonishment of an artist surprised by life.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
The appearance of THE WINNERS in the United States is a major literary event, introducing an outstanding writer of remarkable scope and presenting an absorbing and altogether irresistible novel that will attain a notable position among the best works of fiction of our day. A widely assorted group of people win as a lottery prize a cruise-destination unknown. Their journey reads like-and is-a superb story of suspense that ranges from the most unconventional of love affairs to the violent death of one of the passengers. Part of the suspense revolves around the fact that the passengers are forbidden to cross over to the ship's stern, ostensibly because there is an epidemic among the mysterious crew. ‘What is the danger, the plague? Does it really exist? ‘Where are the consolations of authority to comfort them? If this is a pleasure cruise, why are they virtual prisoners? And the lines are drawn, the passengers divide into a ‘war' party and a ‘peace' party. But which one will insist upon breaking through the barriers and which one will bow to the ship's law? The novel's climax is their shocking confrontation with the question of who the winners really are, and what are their prizes. This book is the world in miniature, and some of contemporary fiction's most memorable characters inhabit it: a young unmarried couple whose first lovemakings are anything but what they had expected; a sophisticated architect traveling with a beautiful redhead whom the other passengers assume to be his mistress; a delightfully pompous schoolteacher whose devotion to bureaucracy is complete. These and others are forced to a deadly knowledge of themselves through Julio Cortázar's profound skill in creating a novel that has many levels of meaning yet thoroughly entertains with the pleasure of its narrative alone.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
These seven previously untranslated stories bring us Argentine's Julio Cortazar at his most memorable, a master of that delicate balance between the unspeakable end that which must be told, between the daily horrors of which we appear to be capable and the magical events that take place every night in the labryinthine recesses of the mind. (Passport books #5). CONTENTS: A Leg of the Journey; Tara; Second Time Round; The School at Night; Unreasonable Hours; Nightmares; Don't Blame Anyone; Afterword Alberto Manguel. SERIES EDITOR - ALBERTO MANGUEL.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
Entering-in these ten stories-the mysterious, passionate, and apocalyptic world of Julio Cortázar, we are made suddenly and sometimes terrifyingly aware of the unexploded mines beneath the surface of our conscious lives. In the title story a group of fans of the legendary movie star Glenda Carson meet at showings of her films and eventually become an informal cadre of the fanatically devoted. (‘There was nothing of a club about it, we simply loved Glenda Carson, and that was enough to set us apart from those who only admired her.') Gradually, hesitantly at first, they dare to acknowledge to one another that they find some of the scenes in some of her films somewhat less than perfect. So they devise an audacious plan to get hold of and re-edit every print of every film she ever made. ‘We had problems with The Uses of Elegance because people in the oil-producing emirates owned copies for their personal enjoyment and extraordinary maneuvers and procedures were necessary in order to steal them (there's no reason to use any other word). . . . ‘ But finally it's done, and nothing can mar the Carson oeuvre. . . until she announces unexpectedly that she is going to come out of retirement and make another film. Then, together the group decides what they must do. ‘We loved Glenda so much that we would offer her one last inviolable perfection. On the untouchable heights to which we had raised her in exaltation, we would save her from the fall. . .' In ‘Clone' a modern madrigal group-subtle, sophisticated, gifted men and women-touring Latin America performing the works of the Renaissance composer Cesualdo find themselves re-enacting scenes from his life: his wife's infidelities and his own abrupt and tragic response. . . . And in story after story a violent and unsettling suspense prevails as intense emotional conflict erupts from cerebral, intellectual play. Locales range from the Buenos Aires subway to a luxurious resort hotel on Martinique; the characters from an English college girl on a bicycling tour of the Dordogne to a black cat named Osiris, whom the narrator suspects of alienating his wife's affection; and the ostensible subjects from the varieties of political oppression in Argentina to the suspicions of a young mother that the man paying court to her maid is really her own betrayed lover seeking revenge. But whatever the text of a story, the subtext always bears the disturbing signature of the writer who has been called ‘a spy in the dense and elusive world of words.' Each tale is unmistakably his and could have been written only by the brilliant, internationally admired Julio Cortazar. CONTENTS: Orientation of Cats; We Love Glenda So Much; Story with Spiders; Graffiti; Clone; Return Trip Tango; Press Clippings; Text in a Notebook; Stories I Tell Myself; Moebius Strip.
Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, UgnE Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus. Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say ‘my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy.' Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years. When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as ‘full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.' Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) ‘I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different to everybody else's.' Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He would later disparage this volume. In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Peron, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's MEmoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de LautrEamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania. Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo. Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer), based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including Los Premios (The Winners - 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela -1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar - 1968) and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel - 1973). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa. Julio Cortázar's masterpiece, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.
BEWITCHED LANDS is a novel of conflicting passions and loyalties, a fascinating tale of long-latent - and at last overt-violence on a feudal hacienda deep in the lush, uncharted Chaco region of Bolivia. The principal characters of this unusual and sophisticated story are: Don Pedro Vidal, aging and absolute master of the vast isolated Hacienda El Mataral; Doña Maria de Vidal, his pretty, pathetic, and unhappy young wife; Carlos Vidal, Don Pedro's son by a former wife, dead under mysterious circumstances; Mr. Treweek, a very English petroleum prospector - and the sympathetic narrator. Carlos Vidal, educated at military school in France, has been paroled in his father's custody after participating in an abortive revolt against his country's dictator. He is in rebellion against the medieval social ideas dominating his native land and summed up in his own father. The arrival of Mr. Treweek and his companion, in search of the petroleum whose existence Don Pedro wishes to deny, galvanizes Carlos into emotions, thoughts, and at last actions that lead inevitably to a series of violent crises. In the fabric of this brilliantly colored novel, Carlos's love for his stepmother is but one thread.
Adolfo Costa du Rels (or Adolfo Costa du Reís) (1891–1980) was a Bolivian writer and diplomat who became the last President of the Council of the League of Nations. He was the author of many plays, novels and other writings, mostly in French, and received several literary awards. Adolfo Costa du Rels was born in Sucre in 1891. His father was a French engineer from Corsica; his mother, Amelia du Reís y Medeiros, was Bolivian. The family returned to Corsica when he was eight years old. At the age of ten, he was sent to the Fesch college in Ajaccio, Corsica. Later he studied at the University of Aix-en-Provence, and then studied literature and law at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. Writing in Spanish, in his 1941 essay El drama del escritor bilingüe [The drama of the bilingual writer] Costa du Rels described the ‘linguistic trauma' that resulted from being a native Spanish-speaker educated in French. Costa du Rels returned to Bolivia in 1912. Oil had been discovered in the Bolivian Oriente, and prospecting and speculation were at their height. A member of the Sucre elite, he obtained grants to explore for petroleum in the region and spent several years in the effort, becoming one of the richest petroleum operators in the country. In 1914 he became secretary of the Incauasi Petroleum Syndicate, and by 1916 he owned claims for a combined area of 500,000 hectares (1,200,000 acres). Later he used these experiences to provide background for his novel Tierra hechizadas [Bewitched Lands]. Costa du Rels entered the diplomatic service in 1917 and was attached to the Bolivian embassy in France. He was then appointed Bolivian chargE d'affaires in Chile. He was elected a deputy in the Bolivian government for a period, then became a counsellor to the Bolivian embassy in France. In 1928 he was the Bolivian delegate to the Pan-American Conference in Havana, where he was rapporteur of the Havana Convention for the protection of artistic property and copyright, and then was Bolivian delegate to the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation. Costa du Rels was appointed Bolivian delegate to the Geneva-based Assembly of the League of Nations, and in 1930 was vice-president of the 11th Assembly of the league. He was appointed a member of the Standing Committee of Arts and Letters in 1931. In January 1927 the Bolivian government adhered to the Geneva Convention's protocol on trafficking of opium and other harmful drugs, with reservations concerning coca, a relatively mild drug (in its leaf form) that had been used for centuries by the local people. These reservations were incorporated into Bolivian law in 1932. Costa du Rels was provided with many pamphlets on coca to help him defend the Bolivian position at the League of Nations. In 1933 he sought ‘advice from industrialists and landowners of the Yungas' on new steps to protect coca. The arguments in defense included the economic importance of the crop, its value in health and nutrition, and the fact that its use was a long tradition among Bolivians. In July 1932 an ongoing dispute between Bolivia and Paraguay over the Gran Chaco territory escalated into armed conflict. In September of that year the League of Nations set up a three-person committee with delegates from Ireland, Spain and Guatemala to investigate the conflict and if necessary prepare for intervention. The committee head, Seán Lester, attempted without success to resolve the positions of two countries' delegates to the League, Costa du Rels and Ramon Caballero de Bedoya of Paraguay. In June 1933 Costa du Rels wrote to the Secretary General of the League of Nations pointing out the great military importance of Puerto Casado, a port on the Paraguay River, which was being used as a base for Paraguayan troops and as a point of supply for these troops.[13] He justified Bolivia's aerial bombardment of the town on this basis, while denying that Bolivia had attacked agricultural settlements. He represented to the League that the territory had belonged to Bolivia since 1810, but that Paraguay had been surreptitiously occupying the territory, taking advantage of her favorable geographical position. He called for arbitration to establish the boundaries. The war continued with heavy loss of life on both sides for two years. In the end, when a cease-fire was negotiated between the two exhausted countries in June 1935, Paraguay controlled most of the disputed territory. In the 1938 truce, Paraguay was awarded three quarters of the Chaco Boreal. Ironically, since the war had been fought over suspected oil and gas reserves, it turned out later that there were none in the Paraguayan sector while the Bolivian quarter was rich in these resources. Costa du Rels was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Switzerland and the Vatican between 1937 and 1943. World War II broke out in 1939, and would last until 1945. In 1940 Costa du Rels became President of the council of the League of Nations, the last to hold this post. The League was dissolved after World War II and replaced by the United Nations. In July 1940, Costa du Rels supported the appointment of Seán Lester as Secretary-General of the League, a diplomat with whom he had negotiated during the Gran Chaco conflict. Costa du Rels was Ambassador of Bolivia to Argentina between 1943 and 1944. On 10 January 1946 Costa du Rels attended a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly for discussions on disposing of the assets of the League of Nations, of which he was still technically President. Costa du Rels was Minister of Foreign Affairs and Public Worship in Bolivia in 1948. In that position he attempted without success to obtain support from the United States for raising the price paid for Bolivian tin, which had been fixed at a relatively low level but for which there was now a shortage of supply. Between 1948 and 1952 Costa du Rels was Bolivian Ambassador to France. In 1973 he served as Bolivian Ambassador to UNESCO. For much of his life, Costa du Rels made his home in Paris. According to the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld, Costa du Rels had the right to say of himself, as had Joseph de Maistre, ‘No foreigner is more French than me.' Costa du Rels died in La Paz in 1980. Costa du Rels wrote in both French and Spanish, and wrote poetry, plays, novels, short stories and essays. His play Les Etendards du roi [The king's standards] was staged in Paris in 1956. The Spanish version, Los estandartes del rey, was performed in La Paz in 1968. The play was awarded the Gulbenkian Prize in 1972, an award given to the best dramatists in the Latin world. Among his other well-known plays are Les Forces du Silence [The Forces of Silence], staged in 1944 in Buenos Aires, El signo del fuego [The Sign of Fire] (1957) and El quinto jinete [The Fifth Horseman] (1963). His essay Los cruzados de alta mar [Deep sea crossings] won the Prix Rivarol in Paris in 1954. It described his farewell to Paris in May 1940. Some of his stories such as La Misk'isimi [Sweet Lips in Quechua] explored indigenous Bolivian themes. This story appeared in the French-language 1928 collection La hantise de l'or [The spell of gold], published in 1948 in Spanish as El embrujo del oro. This story and another from the same book, Plata del diablo [The Devil's Silver], which tells of prospecting in the Andes, were freely combined with his 1973 novel Los Andes no creen en Dios [The Andes do not believe in God] to form the basis for a 2007 film Los Andes no creen en Dios starring Diego Bertie and Carla Ortiz. Costa du Rels was given many awards, including the National Prize for Literature in 1976.
A small gem of a novel that holds its own with the remarkable writing coming out of Latin America today, THE GODS, THE LITTLE GUYS AND THE POLICE won the Premio Casa de las Americas, the most prestigious literary prize offered for Latin American fiction, when it was originally published in Mexico. In this funny yet mordant satire of political terrorism in Argentina in the mid-1970s, a paramilitary death squad places the members of a poetry circle under surveillance. They include a bank clerk, a businessman and a pretty schoolteacher, as well as a cripple, a blind man and a former police informer, people as innocuous and apolitical as their verse. But having been denounced by a jealous wife of one of their members and betrayed by the informer, they have fallen prey to the violence and repression of Buenos Aires. A sinister hit squad sets out in four shiny black Ford Falcons to murder twelve of them in reprisal for the death of a general elsewhere in the country. Meanwhile, the gods intervene on both sides-Aphrodite, Athena and Hermes pitting themselves against Hades. The result is a mock-epic novel, with a catch in its throat. Humberto Costantini makes us see how dangerous it is to be any- thing out of the ordinary in Argentina-even merely a bad poet. An original political novel, THE GODS, THE LITTLE GUYS AND THE POLICE introduces a major new Argentinian writer who belongs in the company of Mario Vargas Llosa and Manuel Puig.
Humberto ‘Cacho' Costantini (April 8, 1924 - June 7, 1987) was an Argentine writer and poet whose work is filled with the rich slang (porteño) of Buenos Aires. Except for his years of exile in Mexico, his life was lived in and around Buenos Aires. Costantini was born and died in Buenos Aires, the only child of Italian Jewish immigrants who lived in the barrio of Villa Pueyrredon. From his marriage to Nela Nur Fernandez, he had three children: Violeta, Ana and Daniel. After he finished his university studies, he became a medical veterinarian. He practiced his profession in the fields near the city of Loberia, a province of Buenos Aires, where he moved with his wife. There his two daughters were born. In 1955 he returned to Buenos Aires, and his son was born shortly thereafter. He worked in various jobs: veterinarian, salesman, potter, medical researcher, etc. Because of a fierce discipline, working ‘nailed to the chair', he was able to write and rewrite everyday. His first book of stories, De por aquí nomás, was published in 1958, and from that time on there developed a long bibliography which touched all literary genres: short story, poetry, theatre, novel. His unfinished work, Rapsodía de Raquel Liberman, relates in biblical tones the exploits of a Jewish prostitute enslaved by the sinister organization Zwi Migdal, until she rebels against this fate and leaves that life behind her. And here a fundamental theme appears, as in many other of Costantini's works, a force that drives his life and work: ‘To do what is right in the eyes of Jehova, meaning to fulfill one's destiny,' as he would say. That attitude–of doing what is right–led him in many moments of his life to confront the powerful, as his heroine, Raquel Liberman succeeded in doing. Costantini was the victim of political persecutions and blacklists. That posture of confronting the powerful that ‘Cacho' exercised naturally, without fuss, as the only possible road by which to travel through life, created both hatred and profound loyalty among many toward him. With Costantini nothing was ever wishy-washy; one was either honest or one was deceitful. He made it known that he wouldn't forgive any kowtowing. From his youth he was politically active: in his student days he confronted the Fascists of the Alianza Libertadora Nacionalista and was politically active in the Communist Party until serious divergencies of opinion with the bureaucratic and pro-Soviet leadership caused him to break away. His ‘doing what is right in the eyes...' moved him to admire profoundly Ernesto Che Guevara. In the 1970s he was politically active on the revolutionary left, together with other writers, such as Harold Conti and Roberto Santoro, who were imprisoned by the criminal dictatorship of Videla, and to this day are still disappeared. His novel De Dioses, hombrecitos y policías was written between scary moments and escapes, in clandestine houses at unthinkable hours. This novel was awarded the Casa de Las AmEricas Prize by an international jury and published in Mexico (later it was translated as The Gods, The Little Guys and the Police, translated by Toby Talbot and published in New York to excellent reviews). About this novel and other work of Costantini, Julio Cortázar said, ‘I love what Humberto Costantini does, and am full of confidence in his work. He is, for me, a very important writer.' In 1976 Humberto Costantini was forced into exile and went to Mexico. There he continued his writing that was to win important prizes. He suffered in an exile that obliged him ‘to glance through the lists for his loved ones, as if the city had been hit with a typhoon'. He conducted narrative workshops regularly, made programs for radio and for television and he fell in love. As he said on his return: ‘In short, I lived'. Another of his passions was the tango. An admirer of Osvaldo Pugliese, Anibal Pichuco, Troilo and Eduardo Arolas, he was a singer and dancer, knowledgeable in the lyrics and the history of the tango. In get-togethers with friends, there was always some guitar to accompany his voice, resonant with passion, as he would sing the milonga Marieta or El adios de Gabino Ezeiza. He composed milongas and tango lyrics, some of which were published and recorded. In 1983, after seven years, seven months and seven days of exile, he returned to Buenos Aires. There he lived the democratic springtime. He walked through the city, conversed with the streets of his barrio and with old friends of his infancy, knocked around, flabbergasted through his Buenos Aires. His work is published in many languages in addition to English, among them: Czech, English, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Polish, Russian and Swedish. His second novel, appeared in English as The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis, translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni. He died on the morning of 7 June 1987 from an illness that he had contracted much earlier. The night before, taking advantage of the slight well-being between chemotherapy treatments, he worked - as he had each day - on his novel La Rhapsodía de Raquel Liberman of which he managed to complete two volumes. This work remains unpublished.
Argentine Everyman, 41-year-old Francisco Sanctis, is on his way home from work one afternoon in Buenos Aires when he is detoured by a strange scheme. It is November 1977, and Argentina is in the midst of the ‘dirty war,' with its repression, censorship, paramilitary groups, kidnappings, and submerged terror An old girl friend mysteriously reappears and enlists Francisco Sanctis in a mission to contact and warn two innocent youths who are in imminent peril of being kidnapped and probably killed by secret agents of the Air Force. Step by step during the next ten hours, we follow Sanctis - indeed, we are in his skin- along the stations of his via crucis, sharing his conflicts and fantasies, his encounters, and observing Argentine society. Wandering in nocturnal Buenos Aires, all the time longing to be home with his wife and kids, Sanctis struggles a with his dilemma: should he mind his own business or get mixed up with questionable politics? With humor, irony, and on-target sketches of his characters, Argentine writer Humberto Costantini conveys the predicament of the ordinary middle-class man in Argentina, his quest for security, his uneasy conscience, his determination not to get involved and its deadly consequences. Written with a sure hand, Costantini's second novel to be published in English is a powerful and moving, not to say timely, contribution to contemporary Latin American literature. A small gem of a political novel. . Born in Buenos Aires in 1924, HUMBERTO COSTANTINI is the highly acclaimed author of THE GODS, THE LITTLE GUYS AND THE POLICE, as well as of several collections of short stories, books of poetry, and plays, all published in his native Argentina, to which he returned recently after years of exile in Mexico City.
Humberto ‘Cacho' Costantini (April 8, 1924 - June 7, 1987) was an Argentine writer and poet whose work is filled with the rich slang (porteño) of Buenos Aires. Except for his years of exile in Mexico, his life was lived in and around Buenos Aires. Costantini was born and died in Buenos Aires, the only child of Italian Jewish immigrants who lived in the barrio of Villa Pueyrredon. From his marriage to Nela Nur Fernandez, he had three children: Violeta, Ana and Daniel. After he finished his university studies, he became a medical veterinarian. He practiced his profession in the fields near the city of Loberia, a province of Buenos Aires, where he moved with his wife. There his two daughters were born. In 1955 he returned to Buenos Aires, and his son was born shortly thereafter. He worked in various jobs: veterinarian, salesman, potter, medical researcher, etc. Because of a fierce discipline, working ‘nailed to the chair', he was able to write and rewrite everyday. His first book of stories, De por aquí nomás, was published in 1958, and from that time on there developed a long bibliography which touched all literary genres: short story, poetry, theatre, novel. His unfinished work, Rapsodía de Raquel Liberman, relates in biblical tones the exploits of a Jewish prostitute enslaved by the sinister organization Zwi Migdal, until she rebels against this fate and leaves that life behind her. And here a fundamental theme appears, as in many other of Costantini's works, a force that drives his life and work: ‘To do what is right in the eyes of Jehova, meaning to fulfill one's destiny,' as he would say. That attitude–of doing what is right–led him in many moments of his life to confront the powerful, as his heroine, Raquel Liberman succeeded in doing. Costantini was the victim of political persecutions and blacklists. That posture of confronting the powerful that ‘Cacho' exercised naturally, without fuss, as the only possible road by which to travel through life, created both hatred and profound loyalty among many toward him. With Costantini nothing was ever wishy-washy; one was either honest or one was deceitful. He made it known that he wouldn't forgive any kowtowing. From his youth he was politically active: in his student days he confronted the Fascists of the Alianza Libertadora Nacionalista and was politically active in the Communist Party until serious divergencies of opinion with the bureaucratic and pro-Soviet leadership caused him to break away. His ‘doing what is right in the eyes...' moved him to admire profoundly Ernesto Che Guevara. In the 1970s he was politically active on the revolutionary left, together with other writers, such as Harold Conti and Roberto Santoro, who were imprisoned by the criminal dictatorship of Videla, and to this day are still disappeared. His novel De Dioses, hombrecitos y policías was written between scary moments and escapes, in clandestine houses at unthinkable hours. This novel was awarded the Casa de Las AmEricas Prize by an international jury and published in Mexico (later it was translated as The Gods, The Little Guys and the Police, translated by Toby Talbot and published in New York to excellent reviews). About this novel and other work of Costantini, Julio Cortázar said, ‘I love what Humberto Costantini does, and am full of confidence in his work. He is, for me, a very important writer.' In 1976 Humberto Costantini was forced into exile and went to Mexico. There he continued his writing that was to win important prizes. He suffered in an exile that obliged him ‘to glance through the lists for his loved ones, as if the city had been hit with a typhoon'. He conducted narrative workshops regularly, made programs for radio and for television and he fell in love. As he said on his return: ‘In short, I lived'. Another of his passions was the tango. An admirer of Osvaldo Pugliese, Anibal Pichuco, Troilo and Eduardo Arolas, he was a singer and dancer, knowledgeable in the lyrics and the history of the tango. In get-togethers with friends, there was always some guitar to accompany his voice, resonant with passion, as he would sing the milonga Marieta or El adios de Gabino Ezeiza. He composed milongas and tango lyrics, some of which were published and recorded. In 1983, after seven years, seven months and seven days of exile, he returned to Buenos Aires. There he lived the democratic springtime. He walked through the city, conversed with the streets of his barrio and with old friends of his infancy, knocked around, flabbergasted through his Buenos Aires. His work is published in many languages in addition to English, among them: Czech, English, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Polish, Russian and Swedish. His second novel, appeared in English as The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis, translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni. He died on the morning of 7 June 1987 from an illness that he had contracted much earlier. The night before, taking advantage of the slight well-being between chemotherapy treatments, he worked - as he had each day - on his novel La Rhapsodía de Raquel Liberman of which he managed to complete two volumes. This work remains unpublished.
Argentine Everyman, 41-year-old Francisco Sanctis, is on his way home from work one afternoon in Buenos Aires when he is detoured by a strange scheme. It is November 1977, and Argentina is in the midst of the ‘dirty war,' with its repression, censorship, paramilitary groups, kidnappings, and submerged terror An old girl friend mysteriously reappears and enlists Francisco Sanctis in a mission to contact and warn two innocent youths who are in imminent peril of being kidnapped and probably killed by secret agents of the Air Force. Step by step during the next ten hours, we follow Sanctis - indeed, we are in his skin- along the stations of his via crucis, sharing his conflicts and fantasies, his encounters, and observing Argentine society. Wandering in nocturnal Buenos Aires, all the time longing to be home with his wife and kids, Sanctis struggles a with his dilemma: should he mind his own business or get mixed up with questionable politics? With humor, irony, and on-target sketches of his characters, Argentine writer Humberto Costantini conveys the predicament of the ordinary middle-class man in Argentina, his quest for security, his uneasy conscience, his determination not to get involved and its deadly consequences. Written with a sure hand, Costantini's second novel to be published in English is a powerful and moving, not to say timely, contribution to contemporary Latin American literature. A small gem of a political novel. . Born in Buenos Aires in 1924, HUMBERTO COSTANTINI is the highly acclaimed author of THE GODS, THE LITTLE GUYS AND THE POLICE, as well as of several collections of short stories, books of poetry, and plays, all published in his native Argentina, to which he returned recently after years of exile in Mexico City. . (original title: La larga noche de Francisco Sanctis, 1984 - Editorial Bruguera Argentina Safic).
Humberto ‘Cacho' Costantini (April 8, 1924 - June 7, 1987) was an Argentine writer and poet whose work is filled with the rich slang (porteño) of Buenos Aires. Except for his years of exile in Mexico, his life was lived in and around Buenos Aires. Costantini was born and died in Buenos Aires, the only child of Italian Jewish immigrants who lived in the barrio of Villa Pueyrredon. From his marriage to Nela Nur Fernandez, he had three children: Violeta, Ana and Daniel. After he finished his university studies, he became a medical veterinarian. He practiced his profession in the fields near the city of Loberia, a province of Buenos Aires, where he moved with his wife. There his two daughters were born. In 1955 he returned to Buenos Aires, and his son was born shortly thereafter. He worked in various jobs: veterinarian, salesman, potter, medical researcher, etc. Because of a fierce discipline, working ‘nailed to the chair', he was able to write and rewrite everyday. His first book of stories, De por aquí nomás, was published in 1958, and from that time on there developed a long bibliography which touched all literary genres: short story, poetry, theatre, novel. His unfinished work, Rapsodía de Raquel Liberman, relates in biblical tones the exploits of a Jewish prostitute enslaved by the sinister organization Zwi Migdal, until she rebels against this fate and leaves that life behind her. And here a fundamental theme appears, as in many other of Costantini's works, a force that drives his life and work: ‘To do what is right in the eyes of Jehova, meaning to fulfill one's destiny,' as he would say. That attitude–of doing what is right–led him in many moments of his life to confront the powerful, as his heroine, Raquel Liberman succeeded in doing. Costantini was the victim of political persecutions and blacklists. That posture of confronting the powerful that ‘Cacho' exercised naturally, without fuss, as the only possible road by which to travel through life, created both hatred and profound loyalty among many toward him. With Costantini nothing was ever wishy-washy; one was either honest or one was deceitful. He made it known that he wouldn't forgive any kowtowing. From his youth he was politically active: in his student days he confronted the Fascists of the Alianza Libertadora Nacionalista and was politically active in the Communist Party until serious divergencies of opinion with the bureaucratic and pro-Soviet leadership caused him to break away. His ‘doing what is right in the eyes...' moved him to admire profoundly Ernesto Che Guevara. In the 1970s he was politically active on the revolutionary left, together with other writers, such as Harold Conti and Roberto Santoro, who were imprisoned by the criminal dictatorship of Videla, and to this day are still disappeared. His novel De Dioses, hombrecitos y policías was written between scary moments and escapes, in clandestine houses at unthinkable hours. This novel was awarded the Casa de Las AmEricas Prize by an international jury and published in Mexico (later it was translated as The Gods, The Little Guys and the Police, translated by Toby Talbot and published in New York to excellent reviews). About this novel and other work of Costantini, Julio Cortázar said, ‘I love what Humberto Costantini does, and am full of confidence in his work. He is, for me, a very important writer.' In 1976 Humberto Costantini was forced into exile and went to Mexico. There he continued his writing that was to win important prizes. He suffered in an exile that obliged him ‘to glance through the lists for his loved ones, as if the city had been hit with a typhoon'. He conducted narrative workshops regularly, made programs for radio and for television and he fell in love. As he said on his return: ‘In short, I lived'. Another of his passions was the tango. An admirer of Osvaldo Pugliese, Anibal Pichuco, Troilo and Eduardo Arolas, he was a singer and dancer, knowledgeable in the lyrics and the history of the tango. In get-togethers with friends, there was always some guitar to accompany his voice, resonant with passion, as he would sing the milonga Marieta or El adios de Gabino Ezeiza. He composed milongas and tango lyrics, some of which were published and recorded. In 1983, after seven years, seven months and seven days of exile, he returned to Buenos Aires. There he lived the democratic springtime. He walked through the city, conversed with the streets of his barrio and with old friends of his infancy, knocked around, flabbergasted through his Buenos Aires. His work is published in many languages in addition to English, among them: Czech, English, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Polish, Russian and Swedish. His second novel, appeared in English as The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis, translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni. He died on the morning of 7 June 1987 from an illness that he had contracted much earlier. The night before, taking advantage of the slight well-being between chemotherapy treatments, he worked - as he had each day - on his novel La Rhapsodía de Raquel Liberman of which he managed to complete two volumes. This work remains unpublished.
This book, by one of Brazil's foremost literary critics, is an introduction to both literature in Brazil and to the methods best employed for its study. It consists of the collection of the introductory essays which Professor Coutinho has supplied to the various divisions of the four-volume work, A Literatura no Brasil, which contains the contributions of various specialists and is under his general editorship. Coutinho's basic approach is that of the ‘New Criticism,' the twentieth-century method which judges works of literature according to artistic and esthetic standards. Thus, the book brings Brazilian literary criticism up to date, freeing it from the shackles of nineteenth-century positivistic and deterministic tendencies, which always put the true literary estimation of a work in a position secondary to the importance of the historical moment or the social milieu. While the author does not ignore the influences of history, ideas, and social movements on literature, he emphasizes the essence of literature itself; thus the divisions in the book are according to stylistic movements rather than historical or ideological ones. AN INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE IN BRAZIL portrays the growth of ‘Brazilianism' in the literature of that country as it slowly broke away from the heavy influence of Portuguese writings and began to deal with native themes and types and to express itself in the new Brazilian idiom. At every stage of the book, the author ties the movements in Brazilian literature to world literary currents of the time, showing how writing in Brazil differed from and at the same time followed certain universal currents. The author concludes that only with the twentieth century did Brazil break away from Portugal completely and catch up with universal literary currents to a degree that one can speak with truth of a Brazilian literature. This book is the first translation sponsored by Columbia University's Institute of Latin American Studies.
Afrânio Coutinho (March 15, 1911 - August 5, 2000) was a Brazilian literary critic and essayist. He encouraged the rise of the "New Criticism" in Brazil of the 1950s. Coutinho edited the Portuguese version of Reader's Digest as well as several reference works on Brazilian literature. He also taught literature at several universities.The translator, Gregory Rabassa, was Professor of Romance Languages at Queens College, City University of New York.
‘Only the incorrigible filmworm . . . haunting the airless cloisters of movie Academe can fail to be enchanted by the publication of Borges's collected criticism in Edgardo Cozarinsky's' BORGES IN/AND/ON FILM. ‘As well as an excellent introduction, Cozarinsky has written brief critical studies' of the eight films ‘on which Borges worked or which were adapted from his stories. Finally, there is an extremely diverting double essay in which he turns his attention from Borges himself to his ubiquitous after ego ‘Borgeslan,' tracing the origin of the word's usage in contemporary film-making and criticism . . .' - SIGHT & SOUND . . . ‘Borges's cryptic comments on movies gave intellectual respectability to the narrative aspects of cinema at a time when such respectability was hard to find. Borges's view of film as a story-telling mechanism is a necessary corrective to the dominant, narrow realism of Bazin and Agee in Western criticism.' - Andrew Sarris. In addition to shorts and works for television, EDGARDO COZARINSKY has written and directed three feature-length movies: ‘(Dot Dot Dot), Les Apprentis-sorcièrs, and One Man's War, the last of which the London Observer called a ‘masterpiece.' He has also published essays on Henry James and on gossip as a model for narration as well as a collection of fiction, URBAN VOODOO. Mr. Cozarinsky left his native Buenos Aires for Paris, where he has lived since 1974.
Edgardo Cozarinsky (born January 13, 1939, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a writer and filmmaker. He is best known for his Spanish-language novel Vudú urbano. Cozarinsky was born to an Argentine family of Ukrainian-Jewish descent. His last name comes from his grandparents, Ukrainian Jewish immigrants who arrived in Argentina from Kiev and Odessa in the late nineteenth century. After an adolescence spent in neighbourhood cinemas showing double bills of old Hollywood films and reading an inordinate amount of fiction in Spanish, English and French (favourite authors - Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Henry James), he studied literature at Buenos Aires University, wrote for local and Spanish cinephile magazines, and published an early essay on James, which he developed from his university thesis - El laberinto de la apariencia (The Labyrinth of Appearance, 1964), a book which he later suppressed. In his early twenties he became acquainted with Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo in Buenos Aires. In 1973 he won a literary prize for his essay on gossip as narrative device in the writings of James and Proust. In 1974 he published Borges y el cine, a book that he expanded in every reprint (Spain, 1978 and 2002, and translations). He has since that time also declined to have this book reprinted. Cozarinsky visited Europe from September 1966 to June 1967, stopping for a visit to New York City on his return to Buenos Aires. Arriving back home, he more fully committed himself to his writing. He wrote for the culture sections of the Argentine weeklies Primera Plana and Panorama, then he produced his first film. It was an underground feature shot on weekends over the course of a year, knowing that it could not pass the local censorship of the period. It was nevertheless screened at festivals throughout Europe and the United States. Its title was already a challenge - ... (Puntos suspensivos - Dot Dot Dot). During the turmoil of Argentina's Dirty War, Cozarinsky left Buenos Aires for Paris, where he concentrated on his filmmaking. He produced fiction films and 'essays', mixing documentary material with personal refletions on the material. The most distinguished of these is La Guerre d'un seul homme (One Man's War, 1981), a confrontation between Ernst Jünger's wartime diaries and French newsreels of the occupation period. At a time when European television networks were willing to support such ventures, Cozarinsky was able to develop this approach in a series of original works. During the period 1970-1990, Cozarinsky published little. However, his sole novel from the period gained a wide audience - Vudú urbano (Urban voodoo, 1985), a mixture of fiction and essay not unlike his film work, with prologues by Susan Sontag and Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Cozarinsky returned to Buenos Aires for a short stay after the end of Argentina's military junta. He then returned three years later to produce Guerreros y cautivas (Warriors and Captive Women), filmed in the country's far southern reaches. He visited Argentina several times after that, occasionally filming segments or backgrounds for his films. His most adventurous later films were Rothschild's Violin and Ghosts of Tangier, both made between 1995 and 1996. Cozarinsky was diagnosed with cancer in 1999. This motivated him to dedicate his remaining time to his writing. While still in the hospital following his diagnosis he wrote the first two stories for La novia de Odessa (The Bride from Odessa). From that date on, his film work became sparse and he started publishing 'all the books I had not put on paper', fiction mostly but also essays and chronicles. He became established as a Spanish-language writer, and his works were also translated into several other languages. During this period he spent most of his time in Buenos Aires, returning to Paris for regular short stays. In 2005 he wrote and directed a play (Squash) and wrote a mini-opera Raptos (Raptures). In that year he also appeared on the alternative stage along with his medical doctor, in one of Vivi Tellas' 'documentary theater' ventures -Cozarinsky y su mEdico. In 2008 he started work on the libretto for a chamber opera with the musician Pablo Mainetti - Ultramarina, based on motives from his own novel El rufián moldavo (The Moldavian Pimp). Cozarinsky has filmed in such diverse locations as Budapest, Rotterdam, Tallinn, Tangiers, Vienna, Granada, Saint Petersburg, Seville and Patagonia. He presently alternates most of his time between Buenos Aires and Paris.
URBAN VOODOO is an exile's book. An eminently cosmopolitan-therefore, transnational-book. And yet, in its proud bookishness and its self-conscious relation to the notion of a native language, it seems very Argentine-Argentina being something of a transnational country, with its chronically displaced cultural ideals administered by an Anglophile upper class and generations of Paris-based writers and artists. The modernist tradition of Argentine letters has been gleefully erudite, fanciful, rigged: literature about literature, which presumes the universal library. The greatest Spanish-language writer of our time was an Argentine who learned to read English before Spanish, and read Don Quixote first in an English translation; who, though he decided to become Jorge Luis Borges instead of George Borges, never stopped insisting that he was an epigone of English literature. Cozarinsky is a late Borgesian whose presiding literary models are-with the exception of Borges-not Spanish either, but French, German, Russian, and who has taken even further the principle of linguistic duplicity and the art of cultural displacement. URBAN VOODOO is a displaced book first of all in that it does not have a single ‘original' language. Only the first part, ‘The Sentimental Journey,' was written in the author's native Spanish. (I can't help hearing in this title a displaced homage to the author of the single most influential work of English literature upon modernist Spanish-language, as well as Eastern and Central European writers-Tristram Shandy.) The second part of his book, as Cozarinsky explains in a note at the end, was written in a language he calls ‘foreigner's English.' Although expertly trilingual, he is not one of the tiny number of linguistic virtuosos like Beckett, Nabokov, and Cahrera Infante, who write equally (and ardently) well in two or more languages. The literary appeal to Cozarinsky of his second and third languages, English and French, is partly the degree to which they retain the sediment, the impurities of foreignness.
Edgardo Cozarinsky (born January 13, 1939, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a writer and filmmaker. He is best known for his Spanish-language novel Vudú urbano. Cozarinsky was born to an Argentine family of Ukrainian-Jewish descent. His last name comes from his grandparents, Ukrainian Jewish immigrants who arrived in Argentina from Kiev and Odessa in the late nineteenth century. After an adolescence spent in neighbourhood cinemas showing double bills of old Hollywood films and reading an inordinate amount of fiction in Spanish, English and French (favourite authors - Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Henry James), he studied literature at Buenos Aires University, wrote for local and Spanish cinephile magazines, and published an early essay on James, which he developed from his university thesis - El laberinto de la apariencia (The Labyrinth of Appearance, 1964), a book which he later suppressed. In his early twenties he became acquainted with Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo in Buenos Aires. In 1973 he won a literary prize for his essay on gossip as narrative device in the writings of James and Proust. In 1974 he published Borges y el cine, a book that he expanded in every reprint (Spain, 1978 and 2002, and translations). He has since that time also declined to have this book reprinted. Cozarinsky visited Europe from September 1966 to June 1967, stopping for a visit to New York City on his return to Buenos Aires. Arriving back home, he more fully committed himself to his writing. He wrote for the culture sections of the Argentine weeklies Primera Plana and Panorama, then he produced his first film. It was an underground feature shot on weekends over the course of a year, knowing that it could not pass the local censorship of the period. It was nevertheless screened at festivals throughout Europe and the United States. Its title was already a challenge - ... (Puntos suspensivos - Dot Dot Dot). During the turmoil of Argentina's Dirty War, Cozarinsky left Buenos Aires for Paris, where he concentrated on his filmmaking. He produced fiction films and 'essays', mixing documentary material with personal refletions on the material. The most distinguished of these is La Guerre d'un seul homme (One Man's War, 1981), a confrontation between Ernst Jünger's wartime diaries and French newsreels of the occupation period. At a time when European television networks were willing to support such ventures, Cozarinsky was able to develop this approach in a series of original works. During the period 1970-1990, Cozarinsky published little. However, his sole novel from the period gained a wide audience - Vudú urbano (Urban voodoo, 1985), a mixture of fiction and essay not unlike his film work, with prologues by Susan Sontag and Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Cozarinsky returned to Buenos Aires for a short stay after the end of Argentina's military junta. He then returned three years later to produce Guerreros y cautivas (Warriors and Captive Women), filmed in the country's far southern reaches. He visited Argentina several times after that, occasionally filming segments or backgrounds for his films. His most adventurous later films were Rothschild's Violin and Ghosts of Tangier, both made between 1995 and 1996. Cozarinsky was diagnosed with cancer in 1999. This motivated him to dedicate his remaining time to his writing. While still in the hospital following his diagnosis he wrote the first two stories for La novia de Odessa (The Bride from Odessa). From that date on, his film work became sparse and he started publishing 'all the books I had not put on paper', fiction mostly but also essays and chronicles. He became established as a Spanish-language writer, and his works were also translated into several other languages. During this period he spent most of his time in Buenos Aires, returning to Paris for regular short stays. In 2005 he wrote and directed a play (Squash) and wrote a mini-opera Raptos (Raptures). In that year he also appeared on the alternative stage along with his medical doctor, in one of Vivi Tellas' 'documentary theater' ventures -Cozarinsky y su mEdico. In 2008 he started work on the libretto for a chamber opera with the musician Pablo Mainetti - Ultramarina, based on motives from his own novel El rufián moldavo (The Moldavian Pimp). Cozarinsky has filmed in such diverse locations as Budapest, Rotterdam, Tallinn, Tangiers, Vienna, Granada, Saint Petersburg, Seville and Patagonia. He presently alternates most of his time between Buenos Aires and Paris.
A popular novel set in the jungle. Cruls has also published a study of the flora, fauna, and Indian ethnography of the region.
Luíz Cruls or Luís Cruls or Louis Ferdinand Cruls (21 January 1848 - 21 June 1908) was a Belgian-Brazilian astronomer and geodesist. He was Director of the Brazilian National Observatory from 1881 to 1908, led the commission charged with the survey and selection of a future site for the capital of Brazil in the Central Plateau, and was co-discoverer of the Great Comet of 1882. Cruls was also an active proponent of efforts to accurately measure solar parallax and towards that end led a Brazilian team in their observations of 1882 Transit of Venus in Punta Arenas, Chile.
Tia Gorda has always claimed Soledad was born con la pata caliente - with feet burning to be anywhere but here. In truth, Soledad couldn't wait to get beyond the stifling confines of West 164th Street, away from her superstitious, contentious family with their endless tragedies and petty fights; from the leering men with their potbellies, the slick-skinned teen girls with their raunchy mouths and snapping gum. At eighteen, Soledad couldn't get away from the volume and the violence of the barrio some call Dominican Heights fast enough. Two years later, an art student at Cooper Union with a gallery job and a hip East Village walk-up, Soledad feels eminently cool and infintely far from the neighborhood where she grew up.' ‘But when Gorda calls with the news that Olivia, Soledad's mother, has lapsed into an emotional coma, Soledad knows she hasn't escaped la familia. Gorda insists Soledad's return is the only thing that will cure Olivia. Fighting the memories of the life she's left - the broken hydrants on littered corners, her jealous cousin Flaca, her bizarre mother and, curiously, images of her mother's Dominican youth - Soledad returns home to Washington Heights. Her journey has only begun. As Soledad tries to salvage her damaged relationship with Olivia, tame Flaca's raucous behavior, tolerate her zany tia Gorda and resist falling for Richie, a soulful, intense man from the neighborhood, she also faces the greatest challenge of her life: confronting the ghosts from her mother's past. .
Angie Cruz is an American novelist. Cruz was born in Washington Heights, New York City. She is of Dominican descent, and often traveled back and forth between New York City and the Dominican Republic while growing up. She is currently a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Cruz treats themes of home, displacement, and working class life in her work. She has published two novels and is now working on a screenplay for a movie version of one of them, Soledad.
Having a Ball and Christmas Eve are two novellas written in the costumbrista style, made popular in the mid-nineteenth century by the periodical press in which these sketches of contemporary manners were first published. The stories are a sensitive reflection of the effects of modernization brought by an authoritarian regime dedicated to order and progress. Christmas Eve describes a volatile middle class in which people pursue pleasure and entertainment without regard to morality. Having a Ball depicts women and their dedication to fashion. It is through them that Cuellar examines a society susceptible to foreign values, the importation of which radically altered the face of Mexico and its traditional customs. Originally published in Spanish as La lintera magica ( Baile y cochino & La Noche Buena).
Jose Tomas de Cuellar (1830-1894) was a Mexican writer noted for his sharp sense of humor and gift for caricature.
Having a Ball and Christmas Eve are two novellas written in the costumbrista style, made popular in the mid-nineteenth century by the periodical press in which these sketches of contemporary manners were first published. The stories are a sensitive reflection of the effects of modernization brought by an authoritarian regime dedicated to order and progress. Christmas Eve describes a volatile middle class in which people pursue pleasure and entertainment without regard to morality. Having a Ball depicts women and their dedication to fashion. It is through them that Cuellar examines a society susceptible to foreign values, the importation of which radically altered the face of Mexico and its traditional customs.
Jose Tomas de Cuellar (1830-1894) was a Mexican writer noted for his sharp sense of humor and gift for caricature.
Written by a former army lieutenant, civil engineer, and journalist, Backlands: The Canudos Campaign, is Euclides da Cunha's vivid and poignant portrayal of Brazil's infamous War of Canudos. deadliest civil war in Brazilian history, the conflict during the 1890s was between the government and the village of Canudos, in the northeastern state of Bahia, settled by 30,000 followers of the religious zealot Antonio Conselheiro. Far from just an objective retelling, da Cunha's story shows both the significance of this event and the complexities of Brazilian society. Featuring a new translation by Elizabeth Lowe, and an introduction by Ilan Stavans, one of Latin America's foremost scholars, this is sure to remain one of the best chronicles of war ever penned.
Euclides da Cunha (January 20, 1866 - August 15, 1909) was a Brazilian journalist, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is Os Sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands), a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos. This book was a favorite of Robert Lowell, who put it above Tolstoy, the Russian writer. Jorge Luis Borges also commented on it in his short story ‘Three Versions of Judas‘. The book was translated into English by Samuel Putnam and published by the University of Chicago Press in 1944. It remains in print. Euclides da Cunha was also heavily influenced by Naturalism and its Darwinian proponents. Os Sertões characterised the coast of Brazil as a chain of civilisations while the interior was more primitively influenced. Euclides da Cunha was the basis for the character of The Journalist in Mario Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World. Euclides da Cunha occupied the 7th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1903 until his death in 1909.
One of the strangest stories ever found in a little-known corner of history, this is a human and military account of a war waged between a ragged religious mystic and the government of Brazil. It was a peculiarly personal war that had much in common with old-time Kentucky feuds and uprisings on the American frontier and it ended only when 5,200 houses and every man, woman, and child who had lived in them had been totally destroyed! This is the story of Antonio Conselheiro, the fanatic street preacher-Messiah to thousands-who led the rebellion in a primitive backwoods community of desert and mountains from December, 1896, to October, 1897. Mr. Putnam, in his excellent Introduction, reminds us that it required three months for a federal army of some 6,000 men to advance 100 yards against a handful of backwoodsmen. ‘Here is guerrilla warfare in its pristine form,' he says, ‘with the ‘scorched earth' and all the other accompaniments . . . a months-long house-to-house battle that recalls the contemporary epic of Stalingrad.' Universally known as Brazil's greatest book, Os Sertoes is now in its sixteenth Brazilian edition and has been translated into several foreign languages. ‘Os Sertoes is a Genesis which in epic accents tells of the meeting of civilization and barbarism,' says Afrânio Peixoto . . . . It is a book that represents a moment in the history of humanity; and, thanks to its style, its art, and its science, that ephemeral moment is destined to be eternal.' Carleton Beals calls it ‘that great document, which, though not a novel, reads like fiction.' Stefan Zweig, in BRAZIL, LAND OF THE FUTURE, calls it a ‘great national epic . destined to outlive countless books that are famous today, by its dramatic significance, its spectacular wealth of spiritual wisdom, and the wonderful humanitarian touch Cunha himself called his book ‘a cry of protest' against what he regarded as - a crime and an act of madness on the part of the newly formed republican government of Brazil. Os Sertöes is a document against oppression of the weak by the strong-in current language, against totalitarianism. Cunha has been called a ‘son of the soil, madly in love with it,' but be was also a scientist, a military engineer by profession, a sociologist, a reporter, and a man of letters. In the first two chapters of his book he describes with precision and passion the geographic and geologic composition of the backlands, its botany, climate, and soil, all, however, as interpretation of the mestizo backwoodsman and his way of life. Cunha's hook was originally published in Rio in 1902. It bad an immediate and terrific impact upon Brazil-indeed, so much so that Cunha's assassination in 1909 by a soldier was said to be in retaliation for the exposures of the army in Os Sertöes and in fear of another book which Cunha was writing at the time of his death. This, the first translation of Os Sertöes into English, because of its importance to better understanding between South and North America, has had aid in publication from the Office of the Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs. REBELLION IN THE BACKLANDS is Mr. Putnam's twenty-fifth full-length published book translation. He has made available to American readers many of the great books from the French, Italian, and Portuguese.
Euclides da Cunha (January 20, 1866 - August 15, 1909) was a Brazilian journalist, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is Os Sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands), a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos. This book was a favorite of Robert Lowell, who put it above Tolstoy, the Russian writer. Jorge Luis Borges also commented on it in his short story ‘Three Versions of Judas‘. The book was translated into English by Samuel Putnam and published by the University of Chicago Press in 1944. It remains in print. Euclides da Cunha was also heavily influenced by Naturalism and its Darwinian proponents. Os Sertões characterised the coast of Brazil as a chain of civilisations while the interior was more primitively influenced. Euclides da Cunha was the basis for the character of The Journalist in Mario Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World. Euclides da Cunha occupied the 7th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1903 until his death in 1909.
In the eight pieces that make up THE AMAZON: LAND WITHOUT HISTORY, which was First published in Portuguese in 1909. Euclides da Cunha offers a rare look into twentieth century Amazonia and the consolidation of South American nation states. They are written in the same proverbially elaborate prose that made da Cunha famous after the publication of his best known work, REBELLION IN THE BACKLANDS. Mixing scientific jargon and poetic language, the essays in The Amazon provide breathtaking descriptions of the Amazonian rivers and the ever-changing nature that surrounds them. In each essay, da Cuhna describes the regional social conflicts and the life of the rubber collector on both sides of the Peruvian-Brazilian border. Brilliantly translated into Victorian English, which mirrors the rich and grandiose style of da Cunha's writing, this book offers us a view of the continuously changing ecology of the Amazon, a compelling testimony to the Brazilian colonial enterprise, and its imperialist tendencies with regard to neighboring nation-states.
Euclides da Cunha (January 20, 1866 - August 15, 1909) was a Brazilian journalist, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is Os Sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands), a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos. This book was a favorite of Robert Lowell, who put it above Tolstoy, the Russian writer. Jorge Luis Borges also commented on it in his short story ‘Three Versions of Judas‘. The book was translated into English by Samuel Putnam and published by the University of Chicago Press in 1944. It remains in print. Euclides da Cunha was also heavily influenced by Naturalism and its Darwinian proponents. Os Sertões characterised the coast of Brazil as a chain of civilisations while the interior was more primitively influenced. Euclides da Cunha was the basis for the character of The Journalist in Mario Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World. Euclides da Cunha occupied the 7th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1903 until his death in 1909. Lucia Sa is professor of Brazilian Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Rain Forest Literatures: Amazonian Texts and Latin American Culture, and of numerous articles on Brazilian and Spanish-American literatures and cultures. She has taught at universities in the United States, Brazil, and Portugal. Ronald Sousa is Professor Emeritus of Portuguese, Spanish, and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois, and is currently a faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He has translated Manuel Antonia de Almeida's MEMOIRS OF A MILITIA SERGEANT for the Library of Latin America series.
The first collection in English of an endlessly surprising, master storyteller. Like those of Kafka, Poe, Leonora Carrington, or Shirley Jackson, Amparo Dávila's stories are terrifying, mesmerizing, and expertly crafted?you'll finish each one gasping for air. With acute psychological insight, Dávila follows her characters to the limits of desire, paranoia, insomnia, and fear. She is a writer obsessed with obsession, who makes nightmares come to life through the everyday: loneliness sinks in easily like a razor-sharp knife, some sort of evil lurks in every shadow, delusion takes the form of strange and very real creatures. After reading The Houseguest?Dávila's debut collection in English?you'll wonder how this secret was kept for so long.
Amparo Dávila (February 28, 1928 - April 18, 2020) was a Mexican writer best known for her short stories touching on the fantastic and the uncanny. She won the Xavier Villarrutia Award in 1977 for her short story collection, Árboles petrificados. In 2015 a literary prize in her honor was created in Mexico for the best story within the genre of "the fantastic": the Premio Bellas Artes del Cuento Fantástico Amparo Dávila. Dávila was born in Pinos, a town in Zacatecas, Mexico. She learned to love reading at an early age by spending time in her father's library. Her childhood was marked by fear, a theme that appeared in a number of her future works as an author. Her first published work was Salmos bajo la luna in 1950. This was followed by Meditaciones a la orilla del sue?o and Perfil de soledades. In 1954 she moved to Mexico City where she worked as Alfonso Reyes's secretary. In 1966 she was a part of the Centro Mexicano de Escritores (Mexican Writer's Center) where she received a grant to continue writing. In 2008, Davila was recognized by the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Davila is known for her use of themes of insanity, danger, and death, typically dealing with a female protagonist. Many of her protagonists appear to have mental disorders and lash out, often violently, against others. Many times the women are still unable to escape from their mental issues and live with the actions they have taken. She also plays with ideas of time. She uses time as a symbol of that which we cannot change. Amparo Dávila's death was announced by the Secretary of Culture of Zacatecas on April 18, 2020.
EMIGRANTS is the novel that made Ferreira de Castro justly famous throughout Europe and South America. Now its long-overdue English debut is a proud literary occasion. It is Senhor de Castro's first great novel, the landmark of a career that has made Portuguese literature internationally known, discussed, and admired. Antedating the best of our epoch's traditional "social" novels, its poetical vision of the universal human condition is nevertheless immediate and unsurpassed. EMIGRANTS is the fruit of Senhor de Castro's "Brazilian adventure"- when, as a boy of twelve, he sailed alone for the far land to which so many of his impoverished, dreaming compatriots had gone in search of inaccessible wealth, inevitably to find themselves defeated by forces they could neither control nor understand. Manuel de Boucano longer young, bound to a meager bit of land, poor, illiterate, hopelessly parochial, and despairing of his and his family's miserable lot-is typical of those Portuguese peasants who were so naive as to dream that justice awaited their earnest efforts, but brave enough to indulge the dream. Inspired by the vision of a better life, persuaded by the cynical propaganda of his middle-class countrymen, he mortgages his little strip of land and joins thousands of his brothers in their doomed adventure.
Jose Maria Ferreira de Castro (May 24, 1898 in Oliveira de Azemeis - June 29, 1974 in Oporto) was a Portuguese writer and journalist At age 12, he emigrated to Brazil, where his work at a rubber plantation for the next four years would be the inspiration for his most famous book, A Selva (1930), which was adapted for a 2002 film of the same title (released in English as The Forest). He returned to Portugal in 1919, and started working as a journalist. He was a noted oppositionist to Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. He was also famous for his travel literature, namely his book A Volta ao Mundo, recounting his travels around the world in the outset of World War II.
At the center of this novel are two women, mother and daughter, locked together by love and combat. It is 1920. On the Italian Riviera, in an immense white villa high above a threadbare fishing village, lives the only woman who has ever married her way out of the village and into luxury. Dora has carnivorous charm and utter elegance. She is ignorant, imperious, volcanic. and frightening. Swathed in velvets and silks, swooping off to Paris or Monte Carlo on mysterious assignations-Only to return to sit in her near-empty rooms by candlelight-she rules in lonely, widowed splendor over her fading kingdom. The prime target of her tyranny is her daughter Antonia. The young girl is sensitive, imaginative. vulnerable. But - almost unknowingly -she has three allies: her beautiful and self-destructive brother, Marco, to whom she is profoundly connected; an admirer, Arturo (her first and only, met by chance), whose deepening passion for Antonia enrages her mother; and the elderly, formidably worldly Count Mora, whose loyalty to Dora's children as well as to Dora (once-perhaps still-his lover) transcends the barriers of time and place. How Antonia first survives, and then conquers, the emotional wilderness her mother has created-how she ultimately escapes into love, into an extraordinary marriage, into a new world-is told in A CLOUD ON SAND in scene after spellbinding scene.
Gabriella De Ferrari was born and raised in Peru, then moved to the United States, where she earned degrees from St. Louis University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and Harvard University. In Boston, she became director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, then curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum and assistant director of the Fogg Art Museum. The author of the novel A CLOUD ON SAND, she is also a feature writer for Mirabella, Vanity Fair, and Travel and Leisure. She divides her time between Connecticut and New York City.
GRINGA LATINA tells the story of a life spent in two cultures, filtered through the veils of memory. Gabriella De Ferrari, the author of the acclaimed novel A CLOUD ON SAND, grew up in Peru, the daughter of gringos, or foreigners: her parents had come from Italy as newlyweds to set down roots in an exotic and alluring country far from home. De Ferrari recalls her privileged upbringing in the small desert town of Tacna, at the foothills of the silent Andes: the wonders of her mother's inventive cuisine, an inspired melding of Italian and Peruvian ingredients; her friendship with her Peruvian neighbor Señorita Luisa, doomed to be an old maid because her betrothed left her for someone else; her ties to Saturnina, the Indian maid who taught her about curses and miracles; and her admiration for her father, the trusted sage of their town. Eventually De Ferrari attended college in the United States, where she is called a Latina. She married an American and raised her children, as her parents did, in an adopted country far from home. Today, as she contemplates her life in America, where she feels both estranged and accepted, she realizes how much Peru peoples the landscape of her memory and remains a lodestar. GRINGA LATINA, a book of recollections, celebration, and self-definition, is the enchanting result.
Gabriella De Ferrari was born and raised in Peru, then moved to the United States, where she earned degrees from St. Louis University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and Harvard University. In Boston, she became director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, then curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum and assistant director of the Fogg Art Museum. The author of the novel A CLOUD ON SAND, she is also a feature writer for Mirabella, Vanity Fair, and Travel and Leisure. She divides her time between Connecticut and New York City.
Critics and general readers have for decades been excited, intrigued, baffled, entertained and enthusiastic about the work of the great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. In his books and stories, ranging across the traditions of the East and the West, something elusive was constantly noted as appearing and vanishing; providing a sense of direction, only to disappear, as if some guiding principle was nudging the reader towards a perennial area of self-discovery. Professor de Garayalde. Intrigued by correspondences between references in Borges' work and current projections of ancient thought, decided to produce this first report linking the ‘Sage of the West' with the thinkers of the Eastern tradition; about which Borges himself has said we must acquire what we can.
This novel is a modern Latin American classic of magical realism. When it was published in Chile in 1989, its combination of political satire, suspenseful plot structure, and corrosive humor kept it at the top fo the Chilean best-seller list for many months. Marco Antonio de la Parra, variously harassed, censored and sometimes banned under the Pinochet regime, has created a bizarre, anarchic novel which lays bare the psyche of that troubled nation. Tito Livio Trivino is a disillusioned and cynical advertising agent in Santiago who suddenly finds himself swept up in a whirlwind of strange and terrifying events. He discovers that his father was a double agent for both God and the Devil; that he is carrying the key to the fourth and final letter of the Tetragrammaton, which will determine the future of Chile, and ultimately the whole of humankind and that all at once it seems as if everybody is trying to kill him.
Antonio de la Parra is well known in his native Chile as a novelist and playwright. He has received several literary and dramatic awards since his first play, The Raw, the Cooked, and the Rotten was performed and then immediately banned in 1978. This is his second novel.
‘Parra reconstructs not only the forms of her own life, but the life of her country and, more than that, elucidates, as Virginia Woolf did, the inner life of women in an overtly patriarchal world.' - Louis Antoine Lemaitre . . . Raised on a sugarcane plantation in Venezuela, Teresa de la Parra (1889-1936) spent most of her adult life in Paris and died in Spain of tuberculosis. She is remembered for two novels, IPHIGENIA, DIARY OF A BORED YOUNG LADY (1924) and MAMA BLANCA'S MEMOIRS (1929), crafted with the subtlety and stylistic delicacy of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Anne Porter. MAMA BLANCA'S MEMOIRS re-creates the lost world of later nineteenth- century plantation society. The ‘memoirs' tell the story of six little girls growing up on a sugar plantation outside Caracas under the ostensible patriarchy of their father and the madcap maternity of their beautiful young mother. In language at times comic, often lyrically hypnotic, de la Parra creates a series of vignettes and portraits, embellishments on her own memories, for a haunting portrayal of a particular culture and a distant time. Despite its popularity in Latin America (though often read as a book for children), MAMA BLANCA'S MEMOIRS has yet to receive the full recognition it deserves in North America. This translation by Harriet de Onis, revised by Frederick Fornoff, captures the flavor of de la Parra's feminist flair. Critical essays offer historical and literary perspectives on the text. The Pittsburgh Editions of Latin American Literature are based on the Coleccion Archivos, a landmark series of critical editions of twentieth- century Latin American fiction, poetry, and essays. This important collection was created through agreements with the governments of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, with funding provided by ALLCA and UNESCO. The translations in the Pittsburgh Editions will make this valuable and influential body of literature accessible to North American readers. .
Teresa de la Parra (October 5, 1889 - April 23, 1936) was a Venezuelan novelist. She was born Ana Teresa Parra Sanojo in Paris, the daughter of Rafael Parra Hernáiz, Venezuelan Ambassador in Berlin, and Isabel Sanojo de Parra. As a member of a wealthy family, Ana Teresa spent part of her childhood at her father's hacienda, Tazon. After the death of her father, Ana Teresa and her sisters were taken by their mother to study at the Sacred Heart School, in Godella, Spain. Under fervent religious precepts, they received a solid education, suitable for upper-class young ladies. Ana Teresa returned to Caracas at the age of 19. After she settling in Paris, de la Parra travelled and had an intense social life. She began to research a biography of Simon Bolívar, perhaps inspired by the centenary of his death. However, her idea was interrupted when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Teresa de la Parra wandered in several European sanatoriums, mainly in Switzerland and Spain, but did not find a cure. She reflected about her philosophical and literary ideas, and studied her own work and life evolution through the years. The longest and most beautiful letters ever written to her family and friends, and her intimate diaries, come from this time and must be considered as part of her literature. Teresa de la Parra died in Madrid. Her remains were exhumed and brought to Caracas in 1947. She rebelled against the limited expectations for women of her class by long hours of reading and writing. Her fantastic stories were published in the newspaper El Universal, and her Diary of a Caraqueña in the Far East was published in the magazine Actualidades. De la Parra's story Mama X earned first prize in a contest held in a provincial Venezuelan city. This story, as well as her Diary of a young lady who writes because she is bored (which was published in the magazine La Lectura Semanal) was the beginning of her first major work. De la Parra's novel Iphigenia: Diary of a young lady who wrote because she was bored, published in 1924, marked a change in Venezuelan literature. Teresa de la Parra wrote most of the novel in 1921 and 1922 during the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gomez. Some of the characters in the novel were maliciously close to caricatures of people who were then well known in Caracas society. The characters Abuelita, Tía Clara and CEsar Leal represent strict adherence to morality. Ambitious and politically corrupt characters like Gabriel Olmedo and Tío Pancho also reflect moral freedom given to men, in contrast against the passive role assigned to women. The protagonist of Iphigenia, María Eugenia Alonso, a well-educated and intelligent young woman, is partly a self-portrait of the author. María Eugenia struggles against being confined in a marriage that threatens to stifle her intellectual development. She strives to determine whether it is possible for an intelligent and educated woman to evade marriage without losing her respectability in a society where women are expected to become wives and mothers. The tone, thematic nature and social-historic context of Iphigenia made it controversial among some social and literary circles in Venezuela and Colombia. Juan Vicente Gomez's government would not give Venezuelan publishers money to publish Iphigenia. Teresa de la Parra travelled to Paris, where she had friends such as Simon Barcelo, Alberto ZErega Fombona, Ventura García Calderon and Gonzalo Zaldumbide. Winner of the annual award given by Casa Editora Franco-Ibero-Americana in Paris in 1924, Teresa de la Parra finally had her work published and received a prize of 10,000 French francs. Iphigenia became a categorical success among Parisian intellectuals and readers. It was soon translated into French. Two years after multiple trips and works - which included lectures in Nations Society and exquisite answers to critics - the writer began her second major work. Souvenirs of Mama Blanca, published in 1929, was a nostalgia-filled fictionalized memoir of De la Parra's childhood. The spirit of the four sisters living on the hacienda Tazon is reflected in the six sisters living on the hacienda Piedra Azul. The moral ‘correctness' of Souvenirs of Mama Blanca received favorable attention from those who had criticized Iphigenia. In her letters, de la Parra wrote that there was no Iphigenia scent in Souvenirs of Mama Blanca, which had no protest speech, revolutionary ideas or social criticism. De la Parra became a sought-after lecturer. Her more important speeches took place in Havana and Bogotá; this last one was very meaningful about her personal ideas of women's roles in Latin American society from colonial times to the 20th century.
Teresa de la Parra's first work, Ifigenia: Diario de una Senorita que se Fastidiaba (Iphigenia: Diary of a Young Lady Who Wrote Because She Was Bored), first published in complete edition in 1924, is partly a description of convent school life based on the author's experiences. More than that, it is a protest against the stupidities of the role assigned to women of Teresa's class and epoch in a Spanish American society which accepted male supremacy without question. Her rebellion, far from that of the professional feminist, was determined by a spirited, aristocratic intellect and temperament. The present work is Teresa de la Parra's masterpiece, originally published in 1929 under the title Las Memorias de Mama Blanca. A French translation by Francis de Miomandre, previously the translator of a portion of Ifigenia, appeared in the same year. In this collection of sketches of Venezuelan rural life the author affectionately evokes - though often with humorous and good-naturedly ironic intent - recollections of her childhood on the sugar plantation. We observe, through the eyes of a little girl, a whole series of unforgettable characters: Vicente Cochocho, the kindly handyman who devotes his life to the service of others, even those who scorn him; Cousin Juancho, the lovable scatterbrain; Evelyn, the stern but effective nursemaid; Daniel, the herdsman who 1s indispensable despite his patently sharp dealings; Mama Blanca herself, disorganized and even frivolous, but always a kind and devoted mother. Through it all, as a unifying artistic force, emerges the mutual self-respect, regardless of station, which is one of the positive aspects of traditional Hispanic American society. The grace and freshness of the authors style make these scenes of idealized realism a delight to read. . TERESA DE LA PARRA, aristocratic rebel and creator of intimate, semi-autobiographical memoirs in a charming, ingenious prose style, was born Ana Teresa Parra-Sanojo in Paris in 1890, the daughter of a Venezuelan family of affluent landowners. Taken to Venezuela at the age of two, she spent the next six years on a sugar plantation near Caracas. In 1898 she was sent back to Europe, this time to Spain, to be educated in a convent near Valencia. Twelve years later she returned to take her place in Caracas society and in 1922 began to publish portions of her first novel. Teresa's cosmopolitan outlook was soon enlarged by a new residence in Paris, where she counted among her friends some of the outstanding French and Spanish American intellectuals of the day, and by travels in Latin America. In 1932 she went to Switzerland in search of health, forced to abandon literary activity by tuberculosis which ended her short life in Spain four years later. She left a literary production consisting of two novels, cast in the form of memoirs, and a series of letters.
Teresa de la Parra (October 5, 1889 - April 23, 1936) was a Venezuelan novelist. She was born Ana Teresa Parra Sanojo in Paris, the daughter of Rafael Parra Hernáiz, Venezuelan Ambassador in Berlin, and Isabel Sanojo de Parra. As a member of a wealthy family, Ana Teresa spent part of her childhood at her father's hacienda, Tazon. After the death of her father, Ana Teresa and her sisters were taken by their mother to study at the Sacred Heart School, in Godella, Spain. Under fervent religious precepts, they received a solid education, suitable for upper-class young ladies. Ana Teresa returned to Caracas at the age of 19. After she settling in Paris, de la Parra travelled and had an intense social life. She began to research a biography of Simon Bolívar, perhaps inspired by the centenary of his death. However, her idea was interrupted when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Teresa de la Parra wandered in several European sanatoriums, mainly in Switzerland and Spain, but did not find a cure. She reflected about her philosophical and literary ideas, and studied her own work and life evolution through the years. The longest and most beautiful letters ever written to her family and friends, and her intimate diaries, come from this time and must be considered as part of her literature. Teresa de la Parra died in Madrid. Her remains were exhumed and brought to Caracas in 1947. She rebelled against the limited expectations for women of her class by long hours of reading and writing. Her fantastic stories were published in the newspaper El Universal, and her Diary of a Caraqueña in the Far East was published in the magazine Actualidades. De la Parra's story Mama X earned first prize in a contest held in a provincial Venezuelan city. This story, as well as her Diary of a young lady who writes because she is bored (which was published in the magazine La Lectura Semanal) was the beginning of her first major work. De la Parra's novel Iphigenia: Diary of a young lady who wrote because she was bored, published in 1924, marked a change in Venezuelan literature. Teresa de la Parra wrote most of the novel in 1921 and 1922 during the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gomez. Some of the characters in the novel were maliciously close to caricatures of people who were then well known in Caracas society. The characters Abuelita, Tía Clara and CEsar Leal represent strict adherence to morality. Ambitious and politically corrupt characters like Gabriel Olmedo and Tío Pancho also reflect moral freedom given to men, in contrast against the passive role assigned to women. The protagonist of Iphigenia, María Eugenia Alonso, a well-educated and intelligent young woman, is partly a self-portrait of the author. María Eugenia struggles against being confined in a marriage that threatens to stifle her intellectual development. She strives to determine whether it is possible for an intelligent and educated woman to evade marriage without losing her respectability in a society where women are expected to become wives and mothers. The tone, thematic nature and social-historic context of Iphigenia made it controversial among some social and literary circles in Venezuela and Colombia. Juan Vicente Gomez's government would not give Venezuelan publishers money to publish Iphigenia. Teresa de la Parra travelled to Paris, where she had friends such as Simon Barcelo, Alberto ZErega Fombona, Ventura García Calderon and Gonzalo Zaldumbide. Winner of the annual award given by Casa Editora Franco-Ibero-Americana in Paris in 1924, Teresa de la Parra finally had her work published and received a prize of 10,000 French francs. Iphigenia became a categorical success among Parisian intellectuals and readers. It was soon translated into French. Two years after multiple trips and works - which included lectures in Nations Society and exquisite answers to critics - the writer began her second major work. Souvenirs of Mama Blanca, published in 1929, was a nostalgia-filled fictionalized memoir of De la Parra's childhood. The spirit of the four sisters living on the hacienda Tazon is reflected in the six sisters living on the hacienda Piedra Azul. The moral ‘correctness' of Souvenirs of Mama Blanca received favorable attention from those who had criticized Iphigenia. In her letters, de la Parra wrote that there was no Iphigenia scent in Souvenirs of Mama Blanca, which had no protest speech, revolutionary ideas or social criticism. De la Parra became a sought-after lecturer. Her more important speeches took place in Havana and Bogotá; this last one was very meaningful about her personal ideas of women's roles in Latin American society from colonial times to the 20th century.
The imaginative stories of Flowering Inferno: Tales of Sinking Hearts deal with human fears and spiritual growth. Rima de Vallbona's imagination has created an amazing assortment of female characters: from a spunky 90-year- old grandmother who gets a wild haircut and goes out to bowl, to a bride whose expectations of a romantic wedding night end tragically when she is raped by her new husband. Vallbona's male characters are equally engrossing: a multi-millionaire abandons all of his wealth for happiness, and military men commit an unconscionable crime, inspired by their uncontrollable fear. In this collection, Rima de Vallbona skillfully spins human issues into provocative and memorable stories.
RIMA DE VALLBONA has published many critical and fictional works, including La obra enprosa de Eunice 0db (1981), Noche en vela (1968), and Mundo, demonio y mujer (1991). She received her M.A. from the University of Costa Rica and her Doctorate in Modem Languages from Middlebury College in Vermont. Vallbona's short stories have been published in translation in many countries. Her work has also appeared in When New Flowers Bloomed (Latin American Literary Review Press, 1991). Vallbona is the recipient of several literary prizes, including the ‘National Novel Prize' (1968) from Costa Rica and the ‘Ancora Award' for Las sombras que perseguimos as the ‘1984 best book in fiction' in Costa Rica. She is Professor of Spanish at the University of St. Thomas in Texas, where she currently resides. LILLIAN LORCA DE TAGLE has translated more than twenty books by well-known authors, including Thomas Mann and Axel Munte. Following a successful career in broadcasting, writing, and editing, Tagle has returned to the art of translating literary works.
One of the acknowledged masterpieces of Mexican literature, Fernando del Paso's News from the Empire is a powerful and encyclopedic novel of the tragic lives of Maximilian and his wife, Carlota, the short-lived Emperor and Empress of Mexico. Simultaneously intimate and panoramic, the narrative flows from Carlota's fevered memories of her husband's ill-fated empire to the multiple and conflicting accounts of a broad cast of characters who bore witness to the events that first placed the hapless couple on their puppet thrones, and then as swiftly removed them. Stretching from the troubled final years of Maximilian's life to the early days of the twentieth century, News from the Empire depicts a world of both political and narrative turbulence, and is as much a history of the advent of modernity as a eulogy for the corrupt royal houses of Europe. This startling and fevered work of ‘historiography' is a tour de force. Fernando del Paso was the 2007 winner of the Juan Rulfo Prize, Mexico's highest literary award. His first novel, Jose Trigo, appeared in 1966 and was awarded the Xavier-Villaurrutia Prize. His second, Palinuro of Mexico, won awards in its Spanish and French editions. From 1985 until recently he was cultural attachE at the Mexican Embassy in Paris; he is currently director of the Biblioteca Iberoamericana in Guadalajara.
Fernando del Paso Morante (born April 1, 1935) is a Mexican novelist, essayist and poet. Del Paso was born in Mexico City and took two years in economics at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de MExico (UNAM). He lived in London for 14 years, where he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation and in France, where he worked for Radio France Internationale and briefly served as general consul of Mexico. He has been a member of Colegio Nacional de MExico since 1996 and has won several international awards, including the 2007 FIL Literature Prize (Guadalajara International Book Fair), the 1982 Romulo Gallegos Prize, the 1985 Best Novel Published in France Award (for Palinurus of Mexico), the 1966 Xavier Villaurrutia Award and the 1976 Mexico Novel Award. Noticias del Imperio (1986) is an important contribution to the Latin American new historical novel. The novel, based upon the lives of Maximilian and Carlota and French Intervention in Mexico, is called by the author a ‘historiographic' novel. This encyclopedic novel is remarkable in that, instead of trying to discover the ‘truth' about ‘what really happened,' the author presents a number of possible versions of important and controversial events. Alfonso González is Professor Emeritus of Spanish at Cal State University, Los Angeles. Stella Clark is Professor Emeritus of Spanish at Cal State University, San Marcos.
Virgil's Palinurus leads Aeneas to the shores of the Promised Land before dying at the hands of the Latini. Fernando del Paso's Palinuro is our guide through this ingenious saga of the anti-hero. Mexico City is not only the setting but a principal character in this Joycean epic. Palinuro, a medical student, is born into a polygenetic family: Uncle Esteban, who fled from Hungary during the Great War and travelled across the world to Mexico, clinging to his dream of becoming a doctor; Grandpa Francisco, a Freemason and old-time companion of Pancho Villa; Uncle Austin, an ex-British marine; grandmothers, aunts, cousins - an eccentric menage. Since childhood, Palinuro has loved his first cousin, Estefania, with an overwhelming and consuming passion. They indulge their incestuous desires and bizarre fantasies in a room in Plaza Santo Domingo. Drawing from a cultural cornucopia, del Paso propels Palinuro and his companions through the real and imaginary realms of mythology, science, politics, social comment, the arts, advertising and pornography. This labyrinthine tour de force is a fusion of Rabelaisian wit, Swiftian satire, Shakespearean invention and pastiche ranging from Hawthorne to Galdos. The saga culminates in a student revolt during the summer of the Olympiads in 1968, brutally repressed by the army and police. Death, disguised as a character from the commedia dell'arte, pursues the hero, who finally initiates us into the mysteries of the ‘Imaginary Isles' - and of his Mexico. Palinuro of Mexico is a masterpiece of transcendent imagination which ranks with the finest achievements of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Fernando del Paso Morante (born April 1, 1935) is a Mexican novelist, essayist and poet. Del Paso was born in Mexico City and took two years in economics at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de MExico (UNAM). He lived in London for 14 years, where he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation and in France, where he worked for Radio France Internationale and briefly served as general consul of Mexico. He has been a member of Colegio Nacional de MExico since 1996 and has won several international awards, including the 2007 FIL Literature Prize (Guadalajara International Book Fair), the 1982 Romulo Gallegos Prize, the 1985 Best Novel Published in France Award (for Palinurus of Mexico), the 1966 Xavier Villaurrutia Award and the 1976 Mexico Novel Award. Noticias del Imperio (1986) is an important contribution to the Latin American new historical novel. The novel, based upon the lives of Maximilian and Carlota and French Intervention in Mexico, is called by the author a ‘historiographic' novel. This encyclopedic novel is remarkable in that, instead of trying to discover the ‘truth' about ‘what really happened,' the author presents a number of possible versions of important and controversial events.
An early cameo of Latin American surrealism, Rosamel del Valle's erotic narrative of ecstasy and perdition creates the rhythm of the dream and the tempo of madness. Intermittently a waiflike young woman, Eva, intrudes into the daily routine of the writer, Her appearances are marked by a circle of red and the vision of a deep well with a star hanging over it. A tone poem of surrealist encounter, pursuit, and loss, Eva y la Fuga was written in 1930 and finally published posthumously in 1970, by Monte Avila Press in Venezuela. Anna Balakian offers here the first translation of the work into any other language. She brilliantly conveys in English the author's highly metaphoric language and the immediacy of surrealist experience, signaled in the narrative by frequent lapses into a haunting present tense. On their walks through the streets of Santiago, Eva and the narrator mingle in the fiesta atmosphere of the Chilean Amusement Park, with its gigantic Ferris Wheel. Bits of real-life dialogue float through the air. But the couple move on different wavelengths from the crowd and often from each other, Passing in and out of his life, Eva exercises a hypnotic fascination over the writer and makes an equally profound impression on the reader.
Rosamel del Valle (Curacaví , 13 of November of 1901 - Santiago de Chile, 22 of September of 1965), known primarily as a poet and essayist in Latin America, came to New York from Chile as a United Nations official in 1946. He contributed regularly to Spanish-language periodicals, writing about life in New York, literary landmarks, and American writers, for whom he expressed a near veneration, He married a French-Canadian co-worker, Therèse Dulac, in 1948 and after his retirement returned with her in 1963 to Santiago, where he died in 1965. Anna Balakian is Professor and former Chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University. Among her many writings are several books on Surrealism, including Surrealism, the Road to the Absolute, and a critical biography of Andre Breton. Volume 5 in the series Latin American Literature and Culture, edited by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria.
An early cameo of Latin American surrealism, Rosamel del Valle's erotic narrative of ecstasy and perdition creates the rhythm of the dream and the tempo of madness. Intermittently a waiflike young woman, Eva, intrudes into the daily routine of the writer, Her appearances are marked by a circle of red and the vision of a deep well with a star hanging over it. A tone poem of surrealist encounter, pursuit, and loss, Eva y la Fuga was written in 1930 and finally published posthumously in 1970, by Monte Avila Press in Venezuela. Anna Balakian offers here the first translation of the work into any other language. She brilliantly conveys in English the author's highly metaphoric language and the immediacy of surrealist experience, signaled in the narrative by frequent lapses into a haunting present tense. On their walks through the streets of Santiago, Eva and the narrator mingle in the fiesta atmosphere of the Chilean Amusement Park, with its gigantic Ferris Wheel. Bits of real-life dialogue float through the air. But the couple move on different wavelengths from the crowd and often from each other, Passing in and out of his life, Eva exercises a hypnotic fascination over the writer and makes an equally profound impression on the reader.
Rosamel del Valle (Curacaví , 13 of November of 1901 - Santiago de Chile, 22 of September of 1965), known primarily as a poet and essayist in Latin America, came to New York from Chile as a United Nations official in 1946. He contributed regularly to Spanish-language periodicals, writing about life in New York, literary landmarks, and American writers, for whom he expressed a near veneration, He married a French-Canadian co-worker, Therèse Dulac, in 1948 and after his retirement returned with her in 1963 to Santiago, where he died in 1965. Anna Balakian is Professor and former Chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University. Among her many writings are several books on Surrealism, including Surrealism, the Road to the Absolute, and a critical biography of Andre Breton. Volume 5 in the series Latin American Literature and Culture, edited by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria.
A prize-winning novel in Latin America, this haunting tale of reality and unreality is the ingenious account of an in- credible, mystifying romance as seen through the eyes of four of the people involved. Written by a master of spellbinding narration, the story immediately projects an atmosphere of foreboding which intensifies, as the action progresses, to an almost unbearable suspense. Set in a boardinghouse in Buenos Aires, the tale is first taken up by the proprietress, Mrs. Milagros, who recalls, for the police, her first encounter with the boarder, Camilo Canegato, a painfully shy, self-effacing middle-aged man. Ostensibly a portrait painter, Camilo becomes the unfortunate object of the other boarders' humor, until one day, mysteriously perfumed letters addressed to him in a feminine hand begin to arrive. When it is learned that these letters come from a beautiful, well-born young woman called Rosa, the curiosity of the entire household is aroused. As Mrs. Milagros continues her recital of the bizarre events which develop from this amazing correspondence, the reader finds himself hurrying along a path he knows will end in violence. When his guide changes from the hearty, meddlesome Mrs. Milagros to the young lawyer, David REguel, the scenery on this same path seems transformed suddenly, as if seen now through REguel's sharp, Freudian gaze. Camilo himself, as the third narrator, brings to the tale a further perspective on reality, but it is only with the final testimony of the prying spinster, Eufrasia Morales, that the astonishing facts behind this fantastic affair are revealed. As Marco Denevi skillfully uncovers the hidden identities and surprising motivations of his characters, he brilliantly illuminates the strange power of loneliness and love. Artfully translated by Donald A. Yates, ROSA AT TEN 0 CLOCK will continue to stir the reader's emotions long after the last word has been read.
Marco Denevi (May 12, 1922 in Sáenz Peña, Buenos Aires - December 12, 1998) was an Argentine award-winning author of novels and short stories, as well as a lawyer and journalist. His work is characterized by its originality and depth, as well as a criticism of human incompetence. His first work, a mystery called Rosaura a las diez (1955), was a Kraft award winner and a bestseller. In 1964, it was translated into English as Rosa at Ten O'Clock. Other famous works of his include Los expedientes (1957), Ceremonia Secreta (1960), El cuarto de la noche (1962), and Falsificaciones (1966). Ceremonia Secreta was filmed as Secret Ceremony in 1968 starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow, Robert Mitchum, and Peggy Ashcroft. It was directed by Joseph Losey, from a script by George Tabori. He is less known as an essayist, but he also cultivated this genre with his República de Trapalanda (1989), a late work, in which he takes on Ezequiel Martínez Estrada and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's view of the Argentine republic. He was born in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and at a young age he began playing the piano and reading. He graduated from college in 1939, and did not receive his law degree until 1956. In 1987 he was inducted into the Argentine Academy of Letters. It is important to note Denevi's desire to be a playwright. He wrote many dramatic pieces but felt he was not talented enough to write for the theater in Spain.
An English translation of SECRET CEREMONY by Marco Denevi, Grand Prize Winner of LIFE EN ESPANOL'S Literary Contest. It is illustrated by Juan Carlos Barberis and translated by Harriet de Onis. It is a fascinating story with its own'strange, dark, brooding atmosphere. When the LIFE EN ESPANOL Literary Contest was launched the editors expected that perhaps 1,000-1,500 short novels might be submitted. In all, an overwhelming 3,149 short novels were submitted, with writers representing every one of the Latin American republics and Puerto Rico. Faced with the monumental task of reading, analyzing and judging these manuscripts were a panel of five of the most distinguished names in current Spanish American literature: Octavio Paz of Mexico, Hernan Diaz Arrieta of Chile, Emir Rodriguez Monegal of Uruguay, Federico de Onis of Spain, and Arturo Uslar Pietri of Venezuela. Marco Denevi's SECRET CEREMONY won the $5,000 grand prize. Of it, Arturo Uslar Pietri wrote: ‘Denevi, using apparently direct realistic methods, is able to create a poetic climate around the mystery of personality mutation in this tale of extraordinary technical skill. The handling of the dialogue and situations is extremely sure and uncompromising. Nevertheless, the author sacrifices none of the necessary stuff that makes for real story telling-neither the spontaneity of his characters nor that mysterious something that brings them alive as people.' . Marco Denevi was born in Sanez Pena, Province of Buenos Aires, on May 13, 1922, youngest of seven children (four girls and three boys). His father, Valerio Rodolfo Denevi, was an immigrant from Genoa who prospered in Argentina as a small industrialist. His mother, Maria Eugenia Buschiazzo, is Argentine. Marco attended primary and secondary school in the small town of Sanez Peña, actually a suburb of Buenos Aires. He went on to university to study law, but after the fifth year and with only one term to go, found that it bored him, He quit in 1954 and started writing a novel, which he had been thinking about for several years. The novel, ‘Rosaura a las Diez, published in 1955, got first prize in a contest sponsored by Editorial Guillermo Kraft and has been a best seller in Argentina since, A movie based on this book was made a few years later and was cited for best plot at the Cannes Festival in 1958. A play, ‘Los Expedientes, published in 1957, was also a success and the Universities of Michigan and Indiana have asked permission to use it as a text for their Spanish literature classes. ‘Los Anteojos' a collection of short stories published in 1958, earned him second prize in Argentina's ‘Premio de la Direccion de Cultura.' A confirmed bachelor, he lives with his mother and two spinster sisters in the same rambling one-story house in which he was born, Every morning he arises early and commutes to Buenos Aires where he works as Chief of the Legal Advisory Office of the Argentine Postal Savings Bank (Jefe de la Asesoria Letrada de la Caja Nacional de Ahorro Postal), a clerking job despite the imposing title, He has been working there since 1952, and does his writing during his spare time. Besides Spanish, his native tongue, Marco also writes French and Italian quite well and can understand English. It took him exactly one month to put ‘Ceremonia Secreta down on paper, with only one rough draft. . Original title: Ceremonia Secreta.
Marco Denevi (May 12, 1922 in Sáenz Peña, Buenos Aires - December 12, 1998) was an Argentine award-winning author of novels and short stories, as well as a lawyer and journalist. His work is characterized by its originality and depth, as well as a criticism of human incompetence. His first work, a mystery called Rosaura a las diez (1955), was a Kraft award winner and a bestseller. In 1964, it was translated into English as Rosa at Ten O'Clock. Other famous works of his include Los expedientes (1957), Ceremonia Secreta (1960), El cuarto de la noche (1962), and Falsificaciones (1966). Ceremonia Secreta was filmed as Secret Ceremony in 1968 starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow, Robert Mitchum, and Peggy Ashcroft. It was directed by Joseph Losey, from a script by George Tabori. He is less known as an essayist, but he also cultivated this genre with his República de Trapalanda (1989), a late work, in which he takes on Ezequiel Martínez Estrada and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's view of the Argentine republic. He was born in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and at a young age he began playing the piano and reading. He graduated from college in 1939, and did not receive his law degree until 1956. In 1987 he was inducted into the Argentine Academy of Letters. It is important to note Denevi's desire to be a playwright. He wrote many dramatic pieces but felt he was not talented enough to write for the theater in Spain.
A collection of stories from the winner in 1955 of the Kraft Publishers Prize for Fiction. CONTENTS: Michel; Letter to Gianfranco; Eine kleine Nachtmusik; The Redemption of the Cannibal Woman; Afterword by Alberto Manguel. . Three of the four stories in this volume are drawn from two collections: Hierba del cielo (1973) and Reunion de desaparecidos (1977); ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik' was never published in book form in Spanish.
Marco Denevi (May 12, 1922 in Sáenz Peña, Buenos Aires - December 12, 1998) was an Argentine award-winning author of novels and short stories, as well as a lawyer and journalist. His work is characterized by its originality and depth, as well as a criticism of human incompetence. His first work, a mystery called Rosaura a las diez (1955), was a Kraft award winner and a bestseller. In 1964, it was translated into English as Rosa at Ten O'Clock. Other famous works of his include Los expedientes (1957), Ceremonia Secreta (1960), El cuarto de la noche (1962), and Falsificaciones (1966). Ceremonia Secreta was filmed as Secret Ceremony in 1968 starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow, Robert Mitchum, and Peggy Ashcroft. It was directed by Joseph Losey, from a script by George Tabori. He is less known as an essayist, but he also cultivated this genre with his República de Trapalanda (1989), a late work, in which he takes on Ezequiel Martínez Estrada and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's view of the Argentine republic. He was born in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and at a young age he began playing the piano and reading. He graduated from college in 1939, and did not receive his law degree until 1956. In 1987 he was inducted into the Argentine Academy of Letters. It is important to note Denevi's desire to be a playwright. He wrote many dramatic pieces but felt he was not talented enough to write for the theater in Spain.
INCONSOLABLE MEMORIES was written by a Cuban in Castro Cuba. This alone would make its publication notable - a rare revelation of life on an island separated from us by ninety miles of ocean and a chasm of non-communication. But this book represents more than simple reportage. Far more, It stands as the vivid testimony of a man become an alien in his native land, a man writing to discover the truth about his country and about himself. And it is a work every page of which is stamped with the sensibility and skill of a first-rate literary artist. These Memories are cast in the form of a journal - but a journal without dates. Only events mark the passage of the days. The first entry notes the departure of the author's wife for the United States. The last, the moment of emptiness following the emotional peak of the Cuban missile crisis. Between these two points in time we are with the author as he attempts to piece together an existence shattered by personal loss and the impersonal forces of history. The author appears in many roles. He is an abandoned husband haunted by memory. A lover of a teenage girl in an affair that proceeds through empty sensuality to ludicrous denouement. A disheartened writer making a pilgrimage to Hemingway's former home. A bourgeois who believes in the goals of the revolution but who is not able to ignore its harsh realities. A man prey to solitary human anguish, and a social animal grievously wounded by being cut off from society. And all the while, he is the eye that notes each telling detail, and the hand that pitilessly sets it down on paper. The tone of the narrative is at once calm and despairing, ironic and superbly intelligent. Its substance gives the reader a total sense of shared experience. To read this work is to live in Cuba today - or any other place where man can know the bitter taste of exile in a familiar landscape. With a foreword by Jack Gelber that explains how the book came out of Cuba and into the United States, INCONSOLABLE MEMORIES is a beautifully written, truly memorable document of and for our times. When Fidel Castro defeated Batista in 1959, Edmundo Desnoes was twenty-eight years old, living in New York, and working as editor on Vision, a Latin-American newsmagazine. A year later he returned to Cuba, convinced that ‘I never would be anybody outside my country.' He is now an editor at the Cuban national book publishing company. Mr. Desnoes studied and lived in the United States for a period of almost ten years and has also lived in Venezuela and the Bahamas - where he spent several months on a deserted key Eastern and Western Europe for the first time. Mr. Desnoes is the author of two novels, a collection of stories and poems, and a long essay on the surrealist painter Lam, all of which were published in Havana, as was INCONSOLABLE MEMORIES. His work has been translated into Russian, Hungarian, Italian, and Swedish. Mr. Desnoes has just finished a book of essays, including ones on Hemingway and Cuba, Che Guevara, the photographic image of the third world . and is now working on a novel about a girl growing up during the time of the revolution and the October Cuban missile crisis.
Edmundo Desnoes (Havana, Cuba, 1930), is a renowned Cuban writer, author of the novel Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment), a complex story depicting the alienation of a Cuban bourgeois struggling to adapt to the process of the Revolution. He originally called the work Inconsolable Memories in the first English edition. The book was adapted into a seminal Latin American film by the late director Tomás GutiErrez Alea in 1968. He was the one that called it Memories Of Underdevelopment, the name by which it is today known in the English-speaking world. During the 1960s and 1970s performed as an art critic and wrote many essays. He has lived in New York City in the United States since 1979. In 2008 he published Memorias del Desarrollo a follow-up to his original novel which was adapted by Miguel Coyula into the 2010 movie Memories of Overdevelopment.
Edmundo Desnoes is a renowned Cuban writer, author of the novel Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment), a complex story depicting the alienation of a Cuban bourgeois struggling to adapt to the process of the Revolution. He originally called the work Inconsolable Memories in the first English edition. The book was adapted into a seminal Latin American film by the late director Tomás GutiErrez Alea in 1968. He was the one that called it Memories Of Underdevelopment, the name by which it is today known in the English-speaking world. During the 1960s and 1970s performed as an art critic and wrote many essays. He has lived in New York City in the United States since 1979. He recently completed Memories of Overdevelopment, a follow-up to his original novel.
Edmundo Desnoes (Havana, Cuba, 1930), is a renowned Cuban writer, author of the novel Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment), a complex story depicting the alienation of a Cuban bourgeois struggling to adapt to the process of the Revolution. He originally called the work Inconsolable Memories in the first English edition. The book was adapted into a seminal Latin American film by the late director Tomás GutiErrez Alea in 1968. He was the one that called it Memories Of Underdevelopment, the name by which it is today known in the English-speaking world. During the 1960s and 1970s performed as an art critic and wrote many essays. He has lived in New York City in the United States since 1979. In 2008 he published Memorias del Desarrollo a follow-up to his original novel which was adapted by Miguel Coyula into the 2010 movie Memories of Overdevelopment.
Malabre is a prosperous Havana businessman whose life has been appropriated by the Cuban revolution. Though his wife, family and friends flee the country in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, he is forced to confront his crippling isolation and failure to overcome the trappings of his former life. Edmundo Desnoes' classic novel is a blistering examination of cultural and political underdevelopment under the backdrop of one of the most controversial revolutions of our time. Original title - Memorias del subdesarrollo.
Edmundo Desnoes (Havana, Cuba, 1930), is a renowned Cuban writer, author of the novel Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment), a complex story depicting the alienation of a Cuban bourgeois struggling to adapt to the process of the Revolution. He originally called the work Inconsolable Memories in the first English edition. The book was adapted into a seminal Latin American film by the late director Tomás GutiErrez Alea in 1968. He was the one that called it Memories Of Underdevelopment, the name by which it is today known in the English-speaking world. During the 1960s and 1970s performed as an art critic and wrote many essays. He has lived in New York City in the United States since 1979. In 2008 he published Memorias del Desarrollo a follow-up to his original novel which was adapted by Miguel Coyula into the 2010 movie Memories of Overdevelopment.
Animal World is a collection of short stories written by Antonio di Benedetto, with hallucinatory animal transformations by the internationally acknowledged Argentine master. Written in conversational and even intentionally awkward language, they present a confused and troubled narrator, who, tormented by mysterious gnawings of guilt, becomes involved in some obscure way with an animal or whole group of animals. They invade his soul, drive him to rage or deliver him from his obsession. Often the story hinges on a pun, a distorted folktale, or an illogical association. While not spectacular in itself, each story adds to the preceding to create a growing sense of doom. Thus story by story the reader becomes ensnared in a horrifying, hallucinatory realm of associations. "Powerful stories by Argentine writer from Mundo animal, his first collection, influenced by Borges, Kafka, and others. Di Benedetto explains that he wants to 'intern' readers in 'the mysteries of life,' something which his complexly plotted tales of the transformation of human beings-become animals accomplish provocatively. Adequate, although at times stilted, translations. Bilingual edition"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.http://www.loc.gov/hlas/
Antonio di Benedetto (2 November 1922 in Mendoza - 10 October 1986 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentine journalist and writer. Di Benedetto began writing and publishing stories in his teens, inspired by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Luigi Pirandello. Mundo Animal, appearing in 1952, was his first story collection and won prestigious awards. A revised version came out in 1971, but the Xenos Books translation uses the first edition to catch the youthful flavor. Antonio di Benedetto wrote five novels, the most famous being the existential masterpiece Zama (1956). El Silenciero (The Silencer, 1964) is noteworthy for expressing his intense abhorrence of noise. Critics have compared his works to Alain Robbe-Grillet, Julio Cortázar and Ernesto Sábato. In 1976, during the military dictatorship of General Videla, di Benedetto was imprisoned and tortured. Released a year later, he went into exile in Spain, then returned home in 1984. He travelled widely and won numerous awards, but never acquired the worldwide fame of other Latin American writers, perhaps because his work was not translated to many languages. Esther Allen has translated Javier Marías, Jorge Luis Borges, Felisberto Hernández, Flaubert, Rosario Castellanos, Blaise Cendrars, Marie Darrieussecq, and Jose Martí. She currently teaches at Baruch College (CUNY) and has directed the work of the PEN Translation Fund since its founding in 2003. Allen has received a Fulbright Grant and two National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships, and in 2006 was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
A bilingual edition of short stories.
Antonio di Benedetto (2 November 1922 in Mendoza - 10 October 1986 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentine journalist and writer. Di Benedetto began writing and publishing stories in his teens, inspired by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Luigi Pirandello. Mundo Animal, appearing in 1952, was his first story collection and won prestigious awards. A revised version came out in 1971, but the Xenos Books translation uses the first edition to catch the youthful flavor. Antonio di Benedetto wrote five novels, the most famous being the existential masterpiece Zama (1956). El Silenciero (The Silencer, 1964) is noteworthy for expressing his intense abhorrence of noise. Critics have compared his works to Alain Robbe-Grillet, Julio Cortázar and Ernesto Sábato. In 1976, during the military dictatorship of General Videla, di Benedetto was imprisoned and tortured. Released a year later, he went into exile in Spain, then returned home in 1984. He travelled widely and won numerous awards, but never acquired the worldwide fame of other Latin American writers, perhaps because his work was not translated to many languages.
Philosophically engaged and darkly moving, the twenty stories in Nest in the Bones span three decades from Antonio di Benedetto's wildly various career. From his youth in Argentina to his exile in Spain after enduring imprisonment and torture under the military dictatorship during the so-called dirty war to his return in the 1980s, Benedetto's kinetic stories move effortlessly between genres, examining civilization's subtle but violent imprint on human consciousness. A late-twentieth century master of the short form and revered by his contemporaries, Nest in the Bones is the first comprehensive volume of Benedetto's stories available in English. PRAISE: This collection from renowned Argentinean author Di Benedetto (Zama) showcases his short stories' development from sparse and experimental into melancholic, deeply affecting fables… These stories bolster Di Benedetto's reputation as a visionary talent, and serve as a worthy introduction to one of Latin America's most influential writers. - Publishers Weekly. [B]lends the fantastic sensibilities of Borges and Kafka with the profound pessimism of Dostoyevsky… Di Benedetto's view of the world is gloomy, his writing precise and poetic. It's a winning combination. - Kirkus Reviews. an impressive swath of subjects, emotions and perspectives. . . Readers with a love of Latin American authors will find Di Benedetto a welcome addition to the canon that's available in English. - Noah Cruickshank, the Field Museum, in Shelf Awareness. In every story, the Argentine journalist confronts bare suffering with a linguistic precision and a talent for imagery that his translator, Martina Broner, captures effortlessly… Nest in the Bones offers a whirlwind introduction to a writer whose enormous weight in Latin America is finally becoming palpable outside its borders. - Harvard Review. Very well translated… displays to perfection…the range of [Di Benedetto's] experiments with strangeness…Di Benedetto's characters, with their ‘secret wounds, their isolation and their irony, and above all their lightly masochistic self-irony,' are companions of those of Svevo, Pessoa and Kafka. - London Review of Books. [NEST IN THE BONES is] a sampling of the Argentine's short fiction… demonstrating an extraordinary experimental and emotional range that Zama - largely confined as it is to the perspective of a single self-centered narrator - could only hint at. - Public Books. Di Benedetto has written indispensable pages that have moved and continue moving me. - Jorge Luis Borges. One of the greatest Argentinean writers and one of the greatest writers of Latin America. - Roberto Bolaño.
Antonio di Benedetto (2 November 1922 in Mendoza - 10 October 1986 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentine journalist and writer. Di Benedetto began writing and publishing stories in his teens, inspired by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Luigi Pirandello. Mundo Animal, appearing in 1952, was his first story collection and won prestigious awards. A revised version came out in 1971, but the Xenos Books translation uses the first edition to catch the youthful flavor. Antonio di Benedetto wrote five novels, the most famous being the existential masterpiece Zama (1956). El Silenciero (The Silencer, 1964) is noteworthy for expressing his intense abhorrence of noise. Critics have compared his works to Alain Robbe-Grillet, Julio Cortázar and Ernesto Sábato. In 1976, during the military dictatorship of General Videla, di Benedetto was imprisoned and tortured. Released a year later, he went into exile in Spain, then returned home in 1984. He travelled widely and won numerous awards, but never acquired the worldwide fame of other Latin American writers, perhaps because his work was not translated to many languages. Esther Allen has translated Javier Marías, Jorge Luis Borges, Felisberto Hernández, Flaubert, Rosario Castellanos, Blaise Cendrars, Marie Darrieussecq, and Jose Martí. She currently teaches at Baruch College (CUNY) and has directed the work of the PEN Translation Fund since its founding in 2003. Allen has received a Fulbright Grant and two National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships, and in 2006 was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
In post-WWII South America, a struggling writer embarks on a murderous thought experiment to help kickstart his career in this next tale of longing from the author of Zama. The Silentiary takes place in a nameless Latin American city during the early 1950s. A young man employed in middle management entertains an ambition to write a book of some sort. But first he must establish the necessary precondition, which the crowded and noisily industrialized city always denies him, however often he and his mother and wife move in search of it. He thinks of embarking on his writing career with something simple, a detective novel, and ponders the possibility of choosing a victim among the people he knows and planning a crime as if he himself were the killer. That way, he hopes, his book might finally begin to take shape. The Silentiary, along with Zama and The Suicides, is one of the three thematically linked novels by Di Benedetto that have come to be known as the Trilogy of Expectation, after the dedication "To the victims of expectation" in Zama. Together they constitute, in Juan Jose Saer's words, "one of the culminating moments of twentieth-century narrative fiction in Spanish."
Antonio di Benedetto (2 November 1922 in Mendoza - 10 October 1986 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentine journalist and writer. Di Benedetto began writing and publishing stories in his teens, inspired by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Luigi Pirandello. Mundo Animal, appearing in 1952, was his first story collection and won prestigious awards. A revised version came out in 1971, but the Xenos Books translation uses the first edition to catch the youthful flavor. Antonio di Benedetto wrote five novels, the most famous being the existential masterpiece Zama (1956). El Silenciero (The Silencer, 1964) is noteworthy for expressing his intense abhorrence of noise. Critics have compared his works to Alain Robbe-Grillet, Julio Cortázar and Ernesto Sábato. In 1976, during the military dictatorship of General Videla, di Benedetto was imprisoned and tortured. Released a year later, he went into exile in Spain, then returned home in 1984. He travelled widely and won numerous awards, but never acquired the worldwide fame of other Latin American writers, perhaps because his work was not translated to many languages. Esther Allen has translated Javier Marías, Jorge Luis Borges, Felisberto Hernández, Flaubert, Rosario Castellanos, Blaise Cendrars, Marie Darrieussecq, and Jose Martí. She currently teaches at Baruch College (CUNY) and has directed the work of the PEN Translation Fund since its founding in 2003. Allen has received a Fulbright Grant and two National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships, and in 2006 was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
A bilingual edition (English section, pp. 7-34). The stories are: 'The abandon and the passivity' ('El abandono y la pasividad') and 'Horse in the salt flat' ('Caballo en el salitral'). In the introduction . Benedetto is called the first 'Objectivist' writer in the Spanish language, and a precursor of French Objectivism. Illustrated
Antonio di Benedetto (2 November 1922 in Mendoza - 10 October 1986 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentine journalist and writer. Di Benedetto began writing and publishing stories in his teens, inspired by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Luigi Pirandello. Mundo Animal, appearing in 1952, was his first story collection and won prestigious awards. A revised version came out in 1971, but the Xenos Books translation uses the first edition to catch the youthful flavor. Antonio di Benedetto wrote five novels, the most famous being the existential masterpiece Zama (1956). El Silenciero (The Silencer, 1964) is noteworthy for expressing his intense abhorrence of noise. Critics have compared his works to Alain Robbe-Grillet, Julio Cortázar and Ernesto Sábato. In 1976, during the military dictatorship of General Videla, di Benedetto was imprisoned and tortured. Released a year later, he went into exile in Spain, then returned home in 1984. He travelled widely and won numerous awards, but never acquired the worldwide fame of other Latin American writers, perhaps because his work was not translated to many languages.
An NYRB Classics Original. First published in 1956, Zama is now universally recognized as one of the masterpieces of modern Argentine and Spanish-language literature. Written in a style that is both precise and sumptuous, weirdly archaic and powerfully novel, Zama takes place in the last decade of the eighteenth century and describes the solitary, suspended existence of Don Diego de Zama, a highly placed servant of the Spanish crown who has been posted to Asuncion, the capital of remote Paraguay. There, eaten up by pride, lust, petty grudges, and paranoid fantasies, he does as little as he possibly can while plotting his eventual transfer to Buenos Aires, where everything about his hopeless existence will, he is confident, be miraculously transformed and made good. Don Diego's slow, nightmarish slide into the abyss is not just a tale of one man's perdition but an exploration of existential, and very American, loneliness. Zama, with its stark dreamlike prose and spare imagery, is at once dense and unforeseen, terse and fateful, marked throughout by a haunting movement between sentences, paragraphs, and sections, so that every word seems to emerge from an ocean of things left unsaid. The philosophical depths of this great book spring directly from its dazzling prose.
Antonio di Benedetto (2 November 1922 in Mendoza - 10 October 1986 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentine journalist and writer. Di Benedetto began writing and publishing stories in his teens, inspired by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Luigi Pirandello. Mundo Animal, appearing in 1952, was his first story collection and won prestigious awards. A revised version came out in 1971, but the Xenos Books translation uses the first edition to catch the youthful flavor. Antonio di Benedetto wrote five novels, the most famous being the existential masterpiece Zama (1956). El Silenciero (The Silencer, 1964) is noteworthy for expressing his intense abhorrence of noise. Critics have compared his works to Alain Robbe-Grillet, Julio Cortázar and Ernesto Sábato. In 1976, during the military dictatorship of General Videla, di Benedetto was imprisoned and tortured. Released a year later, he went into exile in Spain, then returned home in 1984. He travelled widely and won numerous awards, but never acquired the worldwide fame of other Latin American writers, perhaps because his work was not translated to many languages. Esther Allen has translated Javier Marías, Jorge Luis Borges, Felisberto Hernández, Flaubert, Rosario Castellanos, Blaise Cendrars, Marie Darrieussecq, and Jose Martí. She currently teaches at Baruch College (CUNY) and has directed the work of the PEN Translation Fund since its founding in 2003. Allen has received a Fulbright Grant and two National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships, and in 2006 was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
A guerrilla in Argentina who has escaped to another country recalls the struggle and his dead comrades. The action moves from jungle to city streets, from a refuge in the mountains to a torture cell in a military prison. As memory intervenes, time is fragmented, and the horror of the present tempered by the retrospective sweetness of the past and a fragile hope for the future. Memory is the key to this novel: the exiled fighter trying to rationalize the nightmarish events by keeping alive the memory of his murdered friends - the torture victim desperately trying to maintain his sanity by seeking an escape from an unbearable present in his recollection of an adolescent summer in the country and his memory of a love crushed beneath the weight of political events. The country of the book is never named and though we can infer Argentina, it could unhappily be any of the countries of the Southern Cone of the Latin American Continent. If we, like Luis, have trouble ‘believing the truth of this whole fiction', we need only consult the report produced in 1984 by CONADEP, the Comision Nacional sobre Desaparicion de las Personas, or National Committee for Missing Persons, under the Presidency of Ernesto Sábato. The report is the fruit - if we can use such a word in the context-of a long and terrible labour, the endeavour to discover the fate of the missing, ‘los desaparecidos', a word which has sadly become universal currency. It was compiled from the testimony of the few who survived the torture chambers, their friends and relatives and even some of the repressors themselves, who had, for whatever reasons, come forward to tell what they knew, The Committee was able to confirm about 9,006 cases, but there were certainly many more, not declared at the time for fear of reprisals. Even under the new democratic government, people still fear to come forward, in terror of a return to power of what Sábato unhesitatingly calls ‘the forces of evil'.
Gerardo di Masso was forced to flee Argentina during the years of political terror. Since the fall of the junta, his work is again becoming available in his native land.
Modern Brazilian writing is beginning to establish its presence and reputation worldwide, from the science fiction dystopias of Ignacio de Loyola Brandão to the singular genius of Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro. Authors like Márcio Souza, Clarice Lispector, Ivan Angelo, Moacyr Scliar, and Roberto Drummond have attempted to reshape the national consciousness while seeking to create a truly universal literature. This new Brazilian narrative chronicles and questions long held myths regarding the entire fabric of the country's social and political organization. In BRAZILIAN FICTION: Aspects and Evolution of the Contemporary Narrative, Robert DiAntonio seeks to reveal the scope and significance of the current literary ‘Boom' that may be every bit as important as that which occurred in Spanish America. Using a variety of critical approaches, this book examines many narratives from authors who emerged after the military coup of April 1, 1964, authors whose writings were greatly affected by the sociopolitical turmoil of the ensuing years. Not surprisingly, much of their fiction deals with issues of social morality, culpability, and cultural identity. Each chapter turns the attention of the reader to an important aspect of Brazilian literary history, providing a sense of how and why these writers are both innovators and perpetuators of long standing literary traditions. Their works also are analyzed in relationship to recent North American, European, and Spanish American fiction. Designed not only for the specialist but for anyone interested in modern writing, this book adds to our understanding of the significant Brazilian contribution to the contemporary international narrative. Modern Brazilian fiction is shown to be both an ideological testimony and an artistic creation that values originality, craftsmanship, and the ability to engage reader interest.
Robert DiAntonio is in the Department of Foreign Languages at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.
The Cuban Mile is a study of the psychology of risk and desire. This first novel recounts the increasingly anxious adventure of two men emigrating from Cuba across the Straits of Florida on a stolen military raft. Told from the perspective of a twenty-year-old Cuban artist who has lived through the U.S. embargo and the fall of the USSR, this poignant tale depicts in slow deliberate detail the psychological and physical disintegration of its characters trapped under the burning Caribbean sun. As they move farther away from the coastline, the thoughts of the young refugee move with it as he meditates on Marxism, capitalism, art, and the movie stars on his way toward the "land of opportunity".
Alejandro Hernández Díaz is a Cuban novelist and screenwriter. He served in the military as a journalist in Angola and won the Cuban Film Institute's award in 1997 for a script which he then prepared for film production. Dick Cluster is a novelist, a literary translator, and the coauthor of The History of Havana. He lives in Boston.
Here is all the charm of a foreign country but beneath the surface differences we find a people not unlike ourselves. This is the story of a girl growing up in Honduras and of her mother, the pretty school teacher. Mrs. Lozano writes warmly and simply of her childhood travels with her mother, Enriqueta, when for ten years they moved from one village school to another. There was an occasional season at the homes of her uncles in San Pedro Sula or Tegucigalpa, where she went to school. A sensitive child, very much alive to the natural beauty of the country and trained by her mother to an awareness of conditions about her, Argentina Diaz Lozano was fully conscious of the great differences between village and city - the deeply- felt religious ceremonies of the country people and the most sophisticated interests of the city; the locust plague, tragic to the peasants, and the revolution, tragic to the city dwellers; the not unhappy poorness of the villagers and the miserable poverty of the city poor. Here is all the charm of a foreign country but beneath the surface differences we find a people not unlike ourselves. ENRIQUETA AND I won first prize for nonfiction in the Second Latin American Literary Prize Competition against many more pretentious manuscripts by its naturalness and charm, and was selected for the award by Blair Niles, Ernesto Montenegro and John Dos Passos. . Argentina Diaz Lozano was born in 1909 in Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, where she passed her first school years in public and private schools. Mrs. Lozano's greatest wish as a child was to come to the United States. She came in 1926 to a little convent named ‘Holy Name Academy' near Tampa, Florida. There she learned English, shorthand, typing and commercial correspondence. She writes for newspapers and magazines in Honduras and South America. Some of her short stories have been translated into Portuguese and published in El Brasil. She has published three books: PERLAS DE MI ROSARIO (Pearls of My Rosary), short stories and poems; LUZ EN LA SENDA (Light in My Path), a novel; and TOPACIOS.
Argentina Díaz Lozano (1912–1999) was the pseudonym for the Honduran writer Argentina Bueso Mejía. She was a journalist and novelist, who wrote in the romantic style with feminist themes. She won numerous awards for her books, including the Golden Quetzel from Guatemala, the Honduran National Literature Prize Ramon Rosa" and the "Order Cruzeiro do Sud" from Brazil. She was admitted to the Academia Hondureña de la Lengua and is the only Central American woman whose work has officially contended for a Nobel Prize for Literature. Argentina Bueso Mejía's birth has been cited as 1909, 1910 and 1917, but is generally accepted as 15 December 1912 in Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras to businessman Manuel Bueso Pineda and Trinidad Mejía. She attended Coligio María Auxiliadora in Tegucigalpa between 1925 and 1928 and then completed her secondary education at Holy Name Academy in Tampa, Florida. In 1929, she married Porfirio Díaz Lozano and adopted both of his surnames as her literary name. She graduated with a degree in journalism from the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. She began writing for newspapers while studying in Guatemala and published articles in Diario de Centroamerica, La Hora, El Imparcial, and Prensa Libre and at one point had a weekly column called "Jueves Literarios" (Literary Thursdays) that was carried in several Guatemalan papers. Her first novel, Perlas de mi rosario (cuentos) was published in 1930 and followed by several others. Her first important recognition came in 1944 with Peregrinaje (Pilgrimage), which won first literature prize in Latin American in a contest sponsored by the Pan-American Union and the publisher Farrar & Rinehart. The prize resulted in her book being published in Spanish in Santiago, Chile and in English by Farrar & Rinehart under the title Enriqueta and I, as well as European recognition. Between 1945 and 1955, Díaz Lozano worked in the library of the Institute of Anthropology and History at the University of San Carlos. She was also involved in feminist causes, attending the Primer Congreso Interamericano de Mujeres on behalf of the ComitEs Pro Paz y Libertad (Committee for Peace and Liberty) of San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. Around 1951, she divorced her first husband, keeping his name, and sometime between 1952 and 1954, she married Guatemalan diplomat Darío Morales García. In 1956, Díaz Lozano accompanied Morales to Belgium, where Morales took up a post at the Consul of Guatemala in Antwerp, Belgium. While in Europe, she studied Fine Arts at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and published several books in French. Her book Mansion in la bruma was adapted for the stage by Ligia Bernal de Samayoa. In 1964, the book won a Golden Quetzal from Guatemala as best book of the year and Díaz Lozano returned from Belgium to be appointed Cultural AttachE for the Honduran Embassy in Guatemala. In 1967 and 1968, she conducted a series of interviews with the vice president of Guatemala Clemente Marroquín Rojas and though she did not necessarily agree with his politics she found him an interesting personality. In 1968, she published a biography of him and was awarded the Honduran National Literature Prize "Ramon Rosa" and admitted to the Academia Hondureña de la Lengua, as well as receiving the "Order Cruzeiro do Sud" from the government of Brazil. In 1971, she began the magazine Revista Istmeña and serialized a novel, Su hora under the pseudonym "Suki Yoto". In 1986, the novel would be published under the name Caoba y orquídeas: novela. In 1973, she published Aquel año rojo: novela and in June of that year was nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her nomination was accepted and she was an official candidate for the 1974 award. Díaz Lozano is the only Central American Woman whose works have been an official candidate for the Nobel Prize of Literature. After the 1976 Guatemala earthquake, Díaz Lozano made her home in Antwerp and traveled back and forth between Belgium and Guatemala, continuing to publish into the 1990s. In February, 1999 she decided to make a trip to visit her homeland in Honduras. Díaz Lozano died on 13 August 1999 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
In the year of 1511, a Spanish brigantine was lost in the Caribbean sea on its way from Darien to Santo Domingo. Jeronimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero, two enterprising Spanish adventurers, were the only sailors to survive the disaster. MAYAPAN is based on the true and tragic adventures of these two shipwrecked Spaniards. They are washed ashore on the coast of Yucatan, where they fall into the hands of Indians. Expecting to find savages, Aguilar and Guerrero come upon a highly developed civilization which produced magnificent stone architecture, an intricate and accurate calendar, paper, books and woven cloth. Yet this same people, compelled by subconscious fears, was still practicing the horrors of human sacrifice to their gods. Here is one of history's most fateful moments-the clash of the Western World with the ancient culture of Mayapan. Are the Indians beasts, or human beings to be redeemed by the blood of Christ? Should the Indians be considered vassals of the King, or slaves and servants of the Spanish colonizers? These questions, and what they represented, gave place to the most passionate debate of the 16th century. Aguilar and Guerrero, united by the bonds of common religion, language and cultural heritage, held in semi-captivity by the Indians, are the first to act out this violent controversy. MAYAPAN is novelized history, projecting the lives of people on the gigantic screen of the historic past. The doomed Mayan civilization provides the authentic backdrop for the human drama of Guerrero torn between his love for a Mayan princess and loyalty to the country of his birth. He weds beautiful Aixchel, niece of a powerful Mayan chief, and learns to respect the strange ways and customs of her ancient people. When Hernándo CortEs arrives at Cozumel to rescue the captives, Aguilar is overjoyed, ready to join his people in new conquests against the Indians. But Guerrero is caught in a fatal web-the inescapable conflict between an alien life and culture and his Christian heritage and homeland. This is a book of contrasts: an old against a new world; love against duty; religion against idolatry. The terrors of the unknown, the clash of civilizations, the aroused ferocity of the Maya toward explorers and missionaries - MAYAPAN depicts all these with graphic authenticity. MAYAPAN was first published in 1950 by the Ministry of Public Education in Guatemala. Its instantaneous success resulted in a second edition published in 1951 by the Club de Yucatan in Mexico. ‘In short chapters Argentina revives ages dim in memory with an imagination which sweeps the reader along in her reconstruction of the past. There are chapters of noble emotion. This is a book which must become known.' - La Mañana, Montevideo, Uruguay . . . ‘MAYAPAN has chapters of the same passion and suspense which marked the epoch of the Conquest, recalling the vigor of the CortEs fight against the rich Maya and Aztec Empires written with profound and human sentiment. The story is told vividly, the reader never loses interest.' - Revista Norte, New York . . . ‘Historians and archeologists have been her guides in this bold enterprise which Argentina has invested with intellectual honesty, emotion and beauty . . . The reader will receive this navel with pleasure and delight . . The book confirms Argentina's high standing as an author A true example of simplicity which charms and delights with its rich and profound human content.' - El lmparcial, Guatemala . . . ‘Through Argentina Diaz Lozano's book, the reader can come close to the magic charms of a forgotten world . . . fascinating to foreigners.' - Heinrich Berlin, archeologist, in El lmparcial, Guatemala. . SRA. DIAZ LOZANO'S first book was published when she was eighteen. She has written four subsequent books. One of these, ENRIQUETA AND I, won the first prize in the Latin American Literary Contest of 1943, and has been published in the United States and England. THE AUTHOR resides in Guatemala City, where she is associated with the Institute of Anthropology, writes a daily column for a newspaper and directs a magazine. She has been decorated with the Orden Do Cruceiro Do Sud by the Government of Brazil for her work on Brazilian art.
Argentina Díaz Lozano (1912–1999) was the pseudonym for the Honduran writer Argentina Bueso Mejía. She was a journalist and novelist, who wrote in the romantic style with feminist themes. She won numerous awards for her books, including the Golden Quetzel from Guatemala, the Honduran National Literature Prize Ramon Rosa" and the "Order Cruzeiro do Sud" from Brazil. She was admitted to the Academia Hondureña de la Lengua and is the only Central American woman whose work has officially contended for a Nobel Prize for Literature. Argentina Bueso Mejía's birth has been cited as 1909, 1910 and 1917, but is generally accepted as 15 December 1912 in Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras to businessman Manuel Bueso Pineda and Trinidad Mejía. She attended Coligio María Auxiliadora in Tegucigalpa between 1925 and 1928 and then completed her secondary education at Holy Name Academy in Tampa, Florida. In 1929, she married Porfirio Díaz Lozano and adopted both of his surnames as her literary name. She graduated with a degree in journalism from the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. She began writing for newspapers while studying in Guatemala and published articles in Diario de Centroamerica, La Hora, El Imparcial, and Prensa Libre and at one point had a weekly column called "Jueves Literarios" (Literary Thursdays) that was carried in several Guatemalan papers. Her first novel, Perlas de mi rosario (cuentos) was published in 1930 and followed by several others. Her first important recognition came in 1944 with Peregrinaje (Pilgrimage), which won first literature prize in Latin American in a contest sponsored by the Pan-American Union and the publisher Farrar & Rinehart. The prize resulted in her book being published in Spanish in Santiago, Chile and in English by Farrar & Rinehart under the title Enriqueta and I, as well as European recognition. Between 1945 and 1955, Díaz Lozano worked in the library of the Institute of Anthropology and History at the University of San Carlos. She was also involved in feminist causes, attending the Primer Congreso Interamericano de Mujeres on behalf of the ComitEs Pro Paz y Libertad (Committee for Peace and Liberty) of San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. Around 1951, she divorced her first husband, keeping his name, and sometime between 1952 and 1954, she married Guatemalan diplomat Darío Morales García. In 1956, Díaz Lozano accompanied Morales to Belgium, where Morales took up a post at the Consul of Guatemala in Antwerp, Belgium. While in Europe, she studied Fine Arts at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and published several books in French. Her book Mansion in la bruma was adapted for the stage by Ligia Bernal de Samayoa. In 1964, the book won a Golden Quetzal from Guatemala as best book of the year and Díaz Lozano returned from Belgium to be appointed Cultural AttachE for the Honduran Embassy in Guatemala. In 1967 and 1968, she conducted a series of interviews with the vice president of Guatemala Clemente Marroquín Rojas and though she did not necessarily agree with his politics she found him an interesting personality. In 1968, she published a biography of him and was awarded the Honduran National Literature Prize "Ramon Rosa" and admitted to the Academia Hondureña de la Lengua, as well as receiving the "Order Cruzeiro do Sud" from the government of Brazil. In 1971, she began the magazine Revista Istmeña and serialized a novel, Su hora under the pseudonym "Suki Yoto". In 1986, the novel would be published under the name Caoba y orquídeas: novela. In 1973, she published Aquel año rojo: novela and in June of that year was nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her nomination was accepted and she was an official candidate for the 1974 award. Díaz Lozano is the only Central American Woman whose works have been an official candidate for the Nobel Prize of Literature. After the 1976 Guatemala earthquake, Díaz Lozano made her home in Antwerp and traveled back and forth between Belgium and Guatemala, continuing to publish into the 1990s. In February, 1999 she decided to make a trip to visit her homeland in Honduras. Díaz Lozano died on 13 August 1999 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
This richly orchestrated novel, which won a national literary prize in the author's native land, Venezuela, also earned international recognition when the William Faulkner Foundation gave it an award as the most notable novel published in Ibero America between 1945 and 1962. Cumboto's disturbing story unfolds during the early decades of this century on a Venezuelan coconut plantation, in a turbulent Faulknerian double world of black and white. It records the lives of Don Federico, the effete survivor of a once vigorous family of landowners, and his Negro servant Natividad, who since the days of their mutual childhood has been his only friend. Young Federico, psychologically impotent and lost to human contact, lives on as a lonely recluse in the century-old main house of ‘Cumboto,' surrounded by descendants of African slaves who still manage, despite his apathy, to keep the plantation on its feet. Natividad's heroic and selfless struggle to redeem his friend by awakening him to the stirrings of the earth and life about him sets in motion a series of events that are to shatter Federico's childlike world: a headlong love affair with a voluptuous black girl, her terrified flight in the face of the bitter condemnation of her own people, and the unexpected appearance, twenty years later, of their extraordinary son. Throughout the novel runs a recurring theme: neither race can survive without the other. Black and white, Diaz Sanchez suggests, embody contrasting aspects of man's nature, which are not inimical but complementary: the languid intellectualism of European culture must be tempered with the indestructible vitality and intuition of the African soul if man is ever fully to comprehend the living essence of his world.
RAMoN DIAZ SANCHEZ (August 14, 1903 - November 8, 1968) was born in Puerto Cahello, Venezuela, in 1903. He worked in factories and offices; was a reporter, a municipal judge, a newspaper editor; and served as Director for Culture and the Fine Arts of his country's Ministry of Education. He was the author of several novels as well as volumes of short stories arid essays. His home was in Caracas until his death. JOHN UPTON, the translator, earned an M.A. from the University of Madrid and has lived for a number of years in various Spanish-speaking countries. He now resides in Carmel, California. . .
Exiles from Cuba populate the imaginary island of Cundeamor - the Cuban-American illusion of the perfect Cuba in Diaz's ambitious, allegorical novel about the emigres' obsessions over their homeland, sex, wealth, and political and romantic fidelity.
RenE Vázquez Diaz is considered one of the most gifted Cuban writers in exile. He is the author of THE IMAGINARY ERA (1986), BELOVED TRAITOR (1993), and FREDRIKA IN PARADISE (2000). He was born in Cuba in 1952. As an adolescent he distinguished himself at a selective center for gifted young scholars, which gave him the opportunity to study Marine Engineering in Poland in 1973. In spite of a secure professional career, he followed his literary bent and requested asylum in Sweden, where he would begin a new life. David F. Davis resides in Los Angeles, where he teaches languages and translates literary works. Among his recent translations is STEPS UNDER THE WATER, by Alicia Kozameh (University of California Press).
YEARS LIKE BRIEF DAYS is the latest novel by one of Costa Rica's most celebrated writers, Fabian Dobles, and the first to be translated into English. An elderly man decides to revisit the village where he grew up. He drives there in his old van, and so begins a nostalgic journey in which memories of his boyhood and his early sexual experiences are vividly evoked by scents and sounds and sights. His memories become more intense when he dozes off and dreams of the family house, full of talk and music and colorful relatives. After driving home he begins to write the letter he had failed to write to his mother during her lifetime. He tells her sadly but sometimes humorously of the solitary and shameful life he led when his father, the village doctor, placed him in a seminary to study for the priesthood. In episodes both farcical and painful he describes how the mental and physical abuse he experiences there cause him to reject his training and question his faith. In a coda to the novel, the old man takes his wife to the valley of their youth. Together they reminisce, and slowly the man comes to forgive the father who, for all his severity, taught him more about personal and professional integrity than anyone else in his life.
Fabián Dobles Rodríguez (January 17, 1918 - March 22, 1997) was a Costa Rican writer and left-wing political activist. An author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays, he earned international recognition as an author dealing with the plight of the poor and with social protest. Fabian Dobles was born in 1918 in the small Costa Rican town of San Antonio de Belen, where his father was the local doctor. He read law at the University of Costa Rica, San Jose, and in the 1940s established his reputation as one of Central America's leading novelists and short-story writers with Aguas turbias, a novel in the Costa Rican vernacular, and Ese que llaman pueblo, both of which attracted comparison with Steinbeck. His short stories have been translated into English, German, and Russian, and his best-known novel, the colorful agrarian saga, El sitio de las Abras, has gone through ten editions. Among Dobles's many national and international awards is the Magon National Prize for Culture. In 1993 his complete works were published in five volumes by the University of Costa Rica Press/National University Press. Los anos, pequenos dias (YEARS LIKE BRIEF DAYS) was first published in 1989 by Editorial Costa Rica.
Ten years after his THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT appeared to extraordinary praise both here and in Europe, Jose Donoso, hailed by critics and by his fellow-writers as the peer of Garcia Márquez, Fuentes, Asturias, and Borges, now gives us a startling and powerful book that reads both as a novel and as the blackest political fable. A magnificent country estate, set down in the vast emptiness of plains and mountains, somewhere in South America . . . Inside the opulent house and on the grounds, going about their summer pleasures, are the Ventura clan and their many children. Outside, beyond the towering fence of gold-tipped spears that surrounds and protects the estate, is the unseen world of those the Venturas rule-silent natives who slave in the mines, working the seams of gold that support the family wealth, and, beyond, in the darkness (or so it is believed, for none has yet tested the truth of the fear that haunts them all), roaming tribes of cannibals. While the adults fritter away the annual holidays with their exquisitely boring rituals of card games and promenades, the Ventura children-thirty-three cousins in all, ranging in age from six to sixteen-are pursuing their own elaborate games of incestuous intimacies, jealousies, feuds, and the most sexually precocious intrigue. Then, at the high point of the summer, the grown-ups decide to embark on a grand bucolic excursion, a fancy-dress picnic, leaving behind the children for a day entirely on their own. With their departure, the ‘games' of the cousins erupt into a fantastic but all-too-real nightmare. The fence of spears is torn down, and in an orgy of anarchy and destruction, children, servants, and natives enter into a bloody struggle for power, to settle old scores, to seize control of the house-and of the treasury of gold in its vaults. By the time it is over, their world can never be the same again. At one level, this is Donoso at the peak of his powers, mounting a savagely pleasurable assault on the world of the dynastic rich, rotted by corruption and terrorized by ghosts of their own devising. At another, it is his rich and angry commentary on the last decade in his country, Chile-its society, its revolutionaries, its idealists, and its dictators.
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
In the world of Jose Donoso, all is not what it seems. Behind the bland rituals of everyday life lurk impulses that can disturb and even destroy. In these crisp, impeccably written stories, the great Chilean writer follows with precision and compassion the emergence of such impulses: an otherwise nondescript office worker becomes crazed by a bizarre obsession that at first seems innocent enough; an American boy living in a remote Mexican village is destroyed by forces beyond his control; a man is overpowered by his passion for sleeping. Many of these stories are explorations of perception. Children play large parts in them, either as participants or as perceivers; with their peculiar sensitivity they are aware of what their elders recognize only dimly, if at all. In ‘Ana Maria' a charming but somehow terrifying child undermines the lives of an elderly couple; in ‘A Walk' the disintegration of a formal bourgeois household is observed through the eyes of a boy. But for all the subtleties of these tales, Donoso is first and foremost a storyteller. They begin, as do all stories; but unlike some stories, they also end firmly with the reader carried along from first word to last. Jose Donoso was born in Chile in 1924 and educated there and at Princeton. He has taught at Santiago University and at the Universities of Iowa and Princeton.
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
In the world of Jose Donoso, all is not what it seems. Behind the bland rituals of everyday life lurk impulses that can disturb and even destroy. In these crisp, impeccably written stories, the great Chilean writer follows with precision and compassion the emergence of such impulses: an otherwise nondescript office worker becomes crazed by a bizarre obsession that at first seems innocent enough; an American boy living in a remote Mexican village is destroyed by forces beyond his control; a man is overpowered by his passion for sleeping. Many of these stories are explorations of perception. Children play large parts in them, either as participants or as perceivers; with their peculiar sensitivity they are aware of what their elders recognize only dimly, if at all. In ‘Ana Maria' a charming but somehow terrifying child undermines the lives of an elderly couple; in ‘A Walk' the disintegration of a formal bourgeois household is observed through the eyes of a boy. But for all the subtleties of these tales, Donoso is first and foremost a storyteller. They begin, as do all stories; but unlike some stories, they also end firmly with the reader carried along from first word to last. Jose Donoso was born in Chile in 1924 and educated there and at Princeton. He has taught at Santiago University and at the Universities of Iowa and Princeton. The author of three novels, CORONATION, THIS SUNDAY, and THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT, Jose Donoso lives near Barcelona with his wife and daughter and is completing a new novel.
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
This novel by one of the most distinguished modem South American writers is set in the Chilean capital, Santiago, a city of contrasting elements-sober Spanish colonial, brash merchant opulence, Indian languor-ringed by the blue sierra. In an imposing Victorian mansion, fallen into decay, the ninety-four-year-old widow of a Chilean politician lies dying by degrees, her mind darkened with sexual fantasies and persecution mania. She is attended by Lourdes and Rosario, her comedy team of elderly maids, and is visited once a week by her grandson, Andres, whose twin passions are eighteenth-century French memoirs and his collection of rare walking-sticks. One after another, the old lady's nurse-companions have been driven away by their patient's outrageous, foul-mouthed attacks, and then Lourdes's seventeen- year-old niece Estela, a placid, comely country girl, arrives to take charge. Andres has a. comfortable premonition that there is going to be a turn for the better. But events take a twist that this diffident, self-contained caballero had not foreseen: he falls ludicrously, obsessively in love. The tragicomic developments of this classic situation, culminating in a ‘coronation' scene of macabre humor, are described with a blend of rueful compassion and sly humor in this absorbing, fastidiously written novel about people involved, in their different ways, with the ‘tragic sense of life.'
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
This novel by one of the most distinguished modern South American writers is set in the Chilean capital, Santiago, a city of contrasting elements-sober Spanish colonial, brash merchant opulence, Indian languor-ringed by the blue sierra. In an imposing Victorian mansion, fallen into decay, the ninety-four-year-old widow of a Chilean politician lies dying by degrees, her mind darkened with sexual fantasies and persecution mania. She is attended by Lourdes and Rosario, her comedy team of elderly maids, and is visited once a week by her grandson, Andres, whose twin passions are eighteenth-century French memoirs and his collection of rare walking-sticks. One after another, the old lady's nurse-companions have been driven away by their patient's outrageous, foul-mouthed attacks, and then Lourdes's seventeen- year-old niece Estela, a placid, comely country girl, arrives to take charge. Andres has a. comfortable premonition that there is going to be a turn for the better. But events take a twist that this diffident, self-contained caballero had not foreseen: he falls ludicrously, obsessively in love. The tragicomic developments of this classic situation, culminating in a ‘coronation' scene of macabre humor, are described with a blend of rueful compassion and sly humor in this absorbing, fastidiously written novel about people involved, in their different ways, with the ‘tragic sense of life.'
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
CURFEW takes place during one twenty-four-hour period in January 1985. Matilde Neruda, widow of the Nobel Prize-winning poet, has just passed away, and various factions are rallying to turn the event to their advantage: for Pinochet's Iunta, it represents a chance to assert political authority, while for the intellectuals who had basked in the Nerudas' light, it is an opportunity to grab the spoils of the estate. Against this backdrop of complex, often conflicting motivations, Donoso weaves a portrait of a society struggling to fashion a daily existence for itself, and of an intelligentsia vainly attempting to salvage the remnants of glory days long gone by. But CURFEW is also a deeply human story, one of tragic love between Judit Torre, an upper-middle-class radical prey to the memory of police torture, who wants to escape her bitter past; and Manungo Vera, a native son returning after a successful career as a European pop singer, whose homecoming proves to be a painful journey of self-discovery. In the zone between documentary-like realism and grotesque absurdity, Jose Donoso evokes the suffocating atmosphere of a country under dictatorship, and its quietly devastating effect on the actions of those who live there.
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
Green Integer 28. With its stark atmosphere, powerful characterizations, and dazzling alterations of perspective in time and gender, Jose Donoso's early masterwork.'Hell Has No Limits, anticipates the qualities of better-known works of this Chilean magic-realist. Originally published in 1966, this grimly vivid novel evokes the sweetness and despair during one fateful day in the collective existence of Estacion El Olivo, a decayed community marked for doom as surely as Donoso's central character, the transvestite dancer/prostitute la Manuela, whose virginal daughter operates the brothel out of which she/ he works. La Manuela is menaced both by his would-be protector, the local politician/land baron who wants to raze Estacion El Olivo for his expanding vineyards, and by a coldly vengeful trucker, nursing a lifetime of hurts, deprivation, and suppressed sexual ambiguity. The lives of this trio - past and present - are indelibly forged in the novel's stunning climax, which combines a shocking act of violence in the present with a bizarre erotic encounter from decades before.
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
One of the most admired of Latin American writers - his novel THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT was acclaimed as a masterpiece both here and in Europe - now gives us three interlinked novellas of sinister brilliance and wit. The subject (and target) of SACRED FAMILIES: what his great friend Bunuel immortalized as The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. With a mercilessly delighted ear for the telltale nuances of social repartee, with a connoisseur's eye for the Pose and the Attitude, he launches his assault on the would-be-cosmopolitan tastemakers of the not-so-International Set in their Mediterranean playgrounds. Suddenly we are in the thick of war . . . between a cover girl-and her friends-rebelling against the men who ‘created' them and manipulate them, learning to use the female arsenal of cosmetics, particularly vanishing cream, to devastating effect (so startlingly efficacious when it comes to removing a man's not-so-spare parts) between a successful couple (in the process of buying their dream apartment, decorating it with flawless taste) and their treasured possessions, which suddenly declare a strange Unilateral Independence and start disappearing along with their servants, their friends, the very building they live in, everyone and everything apparently bent on annihilating the perfect world that has been so lovingly mapped out for them . . . between a young boy and his chic, divorced mother who desperately wants him to be an ideal (i.e., utterly conventional) teenager until he defeats her by transforming himself, literally, into the embodiment of her mindless desires . . . A magnificently surreal revenge on the Worldly and their Goods! Praise for Jose' Donoso's THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT - ‘Donoso, as I have long believed, belongs to that small company of storytellers who write not for a region but for the entire world . . . a gigantic masterpiece.' - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. . . . ‘A book that is itself both Miracle and Monster, like the best of this century's fiction. . . deserves to take its place alongside the major works of Asturias and Fuentes . . . Borges . . . Garcia Marquez.' - Robert Coover . . . ‘Sinister, luxuriant, brilliant . . . with this book Donoso becomes a world novelist.' - Walter Clemons . . . ‘I think he's a sorcerer.' - Vance Bourjaily . . . ‘One of the great novels not only of Spanish America but of our time.' - Carlos Fuentes. . (original title: Tres novelitas burguesas, 1973 - Editorial Seix Barral, S.A., Barcelona, Spain).
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
One of the most admired of Latin American writers - his novel THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT was acclaimed as a masterpiece both here and in Europe - now gives us three interlinked novellas of sinister brilliance and wit. The subject (and target) of SACRED FAMILIES: what his great friend Bunuel immortalized as The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. With a mercilessly delighted ear for the telltale nuances of social repartee, with a connoisseur's eye for the Pose and the Attitude, he launches his assault on the would-be-cosmopolitan tastemakers of the not-so-International Set in their Mediterranean playgrounds. Suddenly we are in the thick of war . . . between a cover girl-and her friends-rebelling against the men who ‘created' them and manipulate them, learning to use the female arsenal of cosmetics, particularly vanishing cream, to devastating effect (so startlingly efficacious when it comes to removing a man's not-so-spare parts) between a successful couple (in the process of buying their dream apartment, decorating it with flawless taste) and their treasured possessions, which suddenly declare a strange Unilateral Independence and start disappearing along with their servants, their friends, the very building they live in, everyone and everything apparently bent on annihilating the perfect world that has been so lovingly mapped out for them . . . between a young boy and his chic, divorced mother who desperately wants him to be an ideal (i.e., utterly conventional) teenager until he defeats her by transforming himself, literally, into the embodiment of her mindless desires . . . A magnificently surreal revenge on the Worldly and their Goods! Praise for Jose' Donoso's THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT - ‘Donoso, as I have long believed, belongs to that small company of storytellers who write not for a region but for the entire world . . . a gigantic masterpiece.' - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. . . . ‘A book that is itself both Miracle and Monster, like the best of this century's fiction. . . deserves to take its place alongside the major works of Asturias and Fuentes . . . Borges . . . Garcia Marquez.' - Robert Coover . . . ‘Sinister, luxuriant, brilliant . . . with this book Donoso becomes a world novelist.' - Walter Clemons . . . ‘I think he's a sorcerer.' - Vance Bourjaily . . . ‘One of the great novels not only of Spanish America but of our time.' - Carlos Fuentes.
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
TARATUTA is a story about history and about writing. Donoso intermixes fact with fiction, actual quotation with imaginative elaboration. Taratuta is formed from a brief moment in Lenin's life, concentrating on the people surrounding him, including one Taratuta believed to be a supporter. Yet the narrator can only find conflicting references to this Taratuta. Was he a devotee of Lenin's or was he working for the other side? Or was he just an egoist with no political affiliation? The narrator puts forth his thoughts on Taratuta in an article. In response, a man of the same name comes forth wondering if he is one of Taratuta's descendants. He proves a strange link to the past. A waiter in love with an aging psychic, he grew up in poverty with little knowledge of his family. Slipping in and out of the narrator's life, this Taratuta is a comic and teasing figure, defying the neat boundaries of history and fiction. In STILL LIFE WITH PIPE, Donoso continues his discussion of the limits of art, He tells the story of Marcos Ruiz Gallardo who trades his obsession for money for an obsession in art. At first interested in the work of a forgotten Chilean painter for monetary reasons, Gallardo slowly turns his life inside out to become the keeper of the artist's memory and works. In this story of strange love and even stranger revenge, both the artistic and bourgeois worlds are delightfully parodied.
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
Recent years have witnessed an astonishing eruption in the literary output of writers in Latin America, a phenomenon that the Latin Americans themselves refer to as the Boom. This book is a fascinating account of this exciting period in Latin American letters by the Chilean novelist Jose Donoso. Mr. Donoso's latest novel, The Obscene Bird of Night, was published in the United States and received an extraordinary frontpage review in the New York Times Book Review; his short stories and novellas will appear in English translation this year. Himself a product of the era he describes, Mr. Donoso provides a personal history and critique of the Boom that has brought a number of outstanding writers to the forefront. Among the writers Mr. Donoso discusses in his account are Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, and Jorge Luis Borges. Originally published in Spain, this book recounts Mr. Donoso's own psychic and literary liberation from intellectual provinciality and tells how the so-called Boom actually came to be. Placing this ‘fortunate explosion' in perspective, the author links significant changes in the contemporary Spanish American novel to a process of internationalization and to a growing sophistication and cosmopolitanism on the part of young Latin American writers. He deflates the myths surrounding this new crop of writers-particularly their ‘literary cocktail circuit' reputation-and provides glimpses into the literary lives of many of Latin America's most celebrated authors. Written by a charming, keen, and self-aware observer, The Boom is a valuable as well as an entertaining commentary on the riches of contemporary Spanish American literature. The book will find an audience among students, specialists, and general readers interested in a literature that is now taking its place in the consciousness of Americans both North and South. Foreword by Ronald Christ. A Center for Inter-American Relations Book.
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
A Chilean writer named Julio and his wife, Gloria, are at a low point in their lives Constantly bickering, the pair are beset by worries about money, their writing, and their son (who may or may not be plying the oldest profession in Marrakesh). When Julio's boyhood best friend, now a famous artist, lends the couple his luxurious Madrid apartment for the summer; it is an escape for both-but in particular for Julio, who fantasizes about the garden next door and the erotic life of the lovely young aristocratic woman who inhabits it. But Julio's life-and career-unravel in Madrid: he is rebuffed by a famous literary agent, Nüria Monclñs, who detests him and his novel; his son's friend from Marrakesh moves in and causes havoc; and Gloria begins to drink. In the face of pitiless adversity, Julio's talent inexorably begins to fade. The garden next door, however, is also Gloria, who has been doing some creating of her own. It is this twist that transforms Donoso's brilliant satire of the writer's life into something even greater: a carefully crafted and bitterly comic meditation on gardens, deceit, and the nature of a writer's muse.
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
Winner of 2012 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation. Jose Donoso was the leading Chilean representative of the Latin American ‘Boom' of the sixties and seventies that included Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Manuel Puig, among others. Written as a draft in 1973, set aside, and forgotten, The Lizard's Tale was discovered among Donoso's papers at Princeton University by his daughter after his death. Edited for publication by critic and poet Julio Ortega, it was published posthumously in Spanish under the title Lagartija sin cola in 2007. Suzanne Jill Levine, who knew Donoso and translated two of his earlier works, brings the book to an English-language audience for the first time. Defeated and hiding in his Barcelona apartment, painter Antonio Muñoz-Roa - clearly Donoso's alter ego - relates the story of his flight with Luisa, his cousin, lover, and benefactor, after his scandalous desertion from the ‘Informalist' movement (a witty reference to a contemporary Spanish art movement and possibly an allusion to the Boom as well), in which he had been a member of a certain standing. Frustrated, old, and alone, the artist looks back on his years in the small town of Dors, a place he unsuccessfully tried to rescue from the crushing advance of modernity, and on the decline of his own family, also threatened by the changing times. In Levine's able hands, Donoso's clear prose shines through, forming a compact, powerful, and still-relevant meditation on the commercialization of art and the very places we inhabit.
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
Huge, phantasmagorical - a profane oratorio of magic, of grotesques, of supernatural passions - Jose Donoso's first novel in six years is the grand vision of a prodigiously talented writer. The narrator is Humberto, once secretary and retainer to a great Chilean family. Now left alone to serve out the end of his days as factotum for the nuns in a convent home for old women - the unloved, unwanted pensioners of the rich-he gives himself to his memories. The past becomes the present. On the remote estate of his patrons, a child - a hideous, monstrous mutation-is born to Jeronimo and InEs de Azcoitia, the last of the line. Raising him becomes Humberto's lifework (perhaps his life-sentence for crimes of intimacy). To protect the child-this creature conjured into the world by witchcraft and black magic - Humberto surrounds him with freaks, with sports of nature; to protect himself, he retreats into his own fevered thoughts, into fantasies (or are they remembered truths?) about master and mistress, servant and slave. His mind becomes a stage crowded - invaded - by figures in a ritual play; in their seismic shifts of personality beneath the outer masks, Humberto, and through him the author, exercises his obsessions with his own magic powers of creation. Carlos Fuentes says ‘I am gasping as I read this masterly novel . delirious, poetical, associative, ironic, full of social observation, Boschian and Dickensian . . . one of the great novels not only of Spanish America . . . but of our time. Chapeatt, maitre, chapeau mille fois.' Luis Buñuel says ‘It is a mastepiece . . . the ferocious atmosphere, the obsessive repetitions, the mutations of the characters, the ‘purely surrealistic' structure of the narrative, the irrational associations, the immense imaginative freedom, the contemptuous disregard of the rules as to what is good and what is bad, what is beautiful and what is ugly, leave me stunned.'
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
In this novel, the author of CORONATION, which won the William Faulkner Prize for Chile and was impressively reviewed when published in this country, again re-creates for North American readers in a dramatic novel the remorseless change in human relations going on to the south of us. The result is a story that is modern in the best sense of the word. As in CORONATION, Donoso is writing about the enervating, pointless lives of the old upper middle class. He has elected to tell the story in two voices, on the one hand through the intimate reminiscences of an aging couple and on the other through one of their grandchildren recalling with unusual vividness and suggestiveness and the full innocence and cruelty of childhood the Sundays he used to spend at his grandparents' home. For him and his lively cousins, his grandmother was a giving, loving person and his grandfather a silly, empty, vain old man, called privately amongst themselves the Doll. As is always the case, the obsessions and passions of each grandparent bring the surprises one expects when a person's secret life is revealed. Yet one of the greatest surprises of all, which emerges as irony in Donoso's subtle hands, is that the children after all were right in their feelings about the adults even though the reader never knows whether the grandson was ever privy to the facts the reader comes to know. On another level, the novel is an account of how the grandparents - whose big home and weekend bounty are the prototype of the expansive bourgeois family - have lived emotionally off the poor who serve them and who were destroyed by the relationship. In THIS SUNDAY Donoso again displays a quality which distinguishes him from most Spanish and Latin American writers: he never seems an exotic, he speaks directly to us, not because of his scene (which is new and unfamiliar) but because of his tone and style, which seem to be in tune with our sensibilities. Because this is true without his being ‘Americanized,' Donoso is a Latin American writer who, like Jorge Amado, may become widely read in our country.
Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'. His best known works include the novels Coronacion, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.
IS WALT DISNEY THAT INNOCENT? WHY ARE THERE NO PARENTS IN HIS COMIC BOOKS? HOW COME THE NATIVES AND SAVAGES ALWAYS GIVE UP THEIR RICHES TO THE DUCK INVADERS? WHY DOES DONALD LOVE STATUES AND PHOTO ALBUMS? WHAT ARE HUEY, DEWEY, AND LOUIE DOING IN VIETNAM? The Chilean people began to ask these and other questions in revolutionary Chile 1970. How to Read Donald Duck was first published as Para Leer al Pato Donald in Chile 1971, and since the fascist coup in 1973, it has been banned and burned there with other literature. The entire third printing was dumped into the ocean by the Chilean Navy and bonfires were held to destroy earlier editions, How to Read Donald Duck reveals the capitalist ideology at work in our most beloved cartoons. Focusing on the hapless mice and ducks of Disney - curiously parentless, marginalized, always short of cash - Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart dissect the narratives of dependency and social aspiration that define the Disney corpus. Disney recognized the challenge, and when the book was translated and imported into the U.S. in 1975, managed to have all 4,000 copies impounded. Ultimately, 1,500 copies of the book were allowed into the country, the rest of the shipment was blocked. The original American publisher, International General, produced an enlarged edition in 1984, but no American publisher dared to re-release the book until 2002 (OR Books). A product of the political struggle, the book is a profound and imaginative critique of the sacred cow of children's culture: the Disney Myth. introduction by David Kunzle, and annotated bibliography of Marxist writings on cultural imperialism, and the comics. A handbook of de-colonization. - John Berger. An unforgettable expose of the true nature of Disney-style American ‘innocence' . . . I still have my copy of that book from the mid-1970s, which, in its Spanish version, had quite literally been consigned to the flames. It was a work that no American publisher would put out at the time, and so my well-worn copy has become a remarkably valuable collector's item. - Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985. Armand Mattelart (born January 8, 1936) is a Belgian sociologist and well known as a Leftist French scholar. His work deals with media, culture and communication, specially in their historical and international dimensions.
IS WALT DISNEY THAT INNOCENT? WHY ARE THERE NO PARENTS IN HIS COMIC BOOKS? HOW COME THE NATIVES AND SAVAGES ALWAYS GIVE UP THEIR RICHES TO THE DUCK INVADERS? WHY DOES DONALD LOVE STATUES AND PHOTO ALBUMS? WHAT ARE HUEY, DEWEY, AND LOUIE DOING IN VIETNAM? The Chilean people began to ask these and other questions in revolutionary Chile 1970. How to Read Donald Duck was first published as Para Leer al Pato Donald in Chile 1971, and since the fascist coup in 1973, it has been banned and burned there with other literature. A product of the political struggle, the book is a profound and imaginative critique of the sacred cow of children's culture: the Disney Myth. introduction by David Kunzle, and annotated bibliography of Marxist writings on cultural imperialism, and the comics.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985. Armand Mattelart (born January 8, 1936) is a Belgian sociologist and well known as a Leftist French scholar. His work deals with media, culture and communication, specially in their historical and international dimensions.
When Graham Blake - model parent, marketing guru of the hugely successful Clean Earth, Inc - suffers a mental breakdown, he checks into the Corporate Life Therapy Institute, where the self-assured, silver-tongued Dr. Carl Tolgate has prepared a strange, shocking, and erotic treatment. Caught in a voyeuristic spiral involving a mysterious Latina, Blake tries desperately to find out, before it is too late, who is controlling his life, his company's future, and his own heart. A work of intense psychological intrigue, BLAKE'S THERAPY holds a magnifying glass to one man's life as it unravels in a world of economic turmoil and spiritual crisis, reality-TV, and genetic engineering, finally questioning the very nature of storytelling in our time. A ‘literary grandmaster' (Lime) whose work constantly reveals how power and identity intersect, Ariel Dorfman has been hailed by the Washington Post as ‘a world novelist of the first order' and by Newsweek as ‘one of the greatest Latin American novelists.' A Chilean expatriate, Dorfman has spent his life exploring the reality and dreams of the many Americas. His books, written both in Spanish and English, have been translated into over 30 languages and his plays staged in more than 100 countries. His works include the acclaimed memoir, HEADING SOUTH, LOOKING NORTH, THE NOVELS WIDOWS, KONFIDENZ and THE NANNY AND THE ICEBERG, as well as plays, among them DEATH AND THE MAIDEN, made into a film by Roman Polanski. Among his many international awards are the Sudamericana Award, the Laurence Olivier, and two from the Kennedy Center, where SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER; his latest play, premiered last year He is distinguished professor at Duke University and lives with his wife Angelica in Durham, North Carolina.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
Winner of the London TIME OUT Award for best play of 1991. ‘Magnificent . . . This is one of those rare plays which, with the limpid simplicity of classical myth, seem to grasp the pulse of the century.' - The Financial Times (London) . . . ‘A master work. The period is the immediate aftermath of the dictatorship. The events take place at a beach house on the night that the lawyer, Gerardo, is asked to investigate the crimes of the recent past. His wife, Paulina, was one such victim. And when Roberto gives her husband a lift after his tire blows out, she recognizes in his voice the suave menace of the doctor who raped her, who judged how much current to send through her body?' - The Times (London) . . . ‘A nail-bitingly tense thriller . . . underlaid with political, social, and feminist arguments which give immense ethical power to a revenge drama . . . ‘ - International Herald Tribune . . . ‘Dorfman has assumed the mantle from the late poet Pablo Neruda as Chile's leading literary voice.' - Los Angeles Times . . . ‘This play is like Sophocles. .a terrifying moral thriller which combines brilliant theatricality with clear thought and fierce compassion.' - Sunday Times (London).
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
On October 16, 1998, the world awoke to amazing news: General Augusto Pinochet, Chile's former dictator, had been arrested by Scotland Yard in England and was awaiting extradition to Spain on charges of torture and genocide. What ensued became one of the most important human rights trials of the last fifty years: for the first time in the twentieth century, a former head of state was being judged by a foreign court. In EXORCISING TERROR, renowned author Ariel Dorfman, obsessed for twenty-five years with the malignant shadow General Pinochet cast upon Chile and the world, follows every twist and turn of the four- year-old trial in Great Britain, Spain, and Chile, as well as in the U.S., the country that had created Pinochet. Reading like a suspense thriller, filled with courtroom drama and sudden reversals of fortune, the book also addresses some of today's burning issues, made all the more urgent after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. What are the limits of national sovereignty in a globalizing world? How does an ever more interconnected world judge crimes committed against humanity? What role do memory and pain and the rights of the survivors play in this struggle for a new system of justice? But above all, the author, by listening carefully to the voices of Pinochet's many victims, explores how we can purge ourselves of terror and fear once we have been traumatized, and asks if we can build peace and reconciliation without facing a turbulent and perverse past.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
Hailed by Salman Rushdie as ‘one of the most important voices coming out of Latin America,' the best-selling author and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman delivers a memoir excavating for the first time his profound and provocative journey as an exile. In September 1973, the military took power in Chile, and Ariel Dorfman, allied to deposed president Salvador Allende, was forced to flee for his life. FEEDING ON DREAMS is the story of the transformative decades of exile that followed. Dorfman portrays, through visceral scenes and powerful intellect, the personal and political maelstroms underlying his migrations from Buenos Aires, on the run from Pinochet's death squads, to safe houses in Paris and Amsterdam, and eventually to America, his childhood home. And then, seventeen years after he was forced to leave, there is a yearned-for return to Chile, with an unimaginable outcome. The toll on Dorfman's wife and two sons, the ‘earthquake of language' that is bilingualism, and his eventual questioning of his allegiance to past and party - all these crucibles of a life in exile are revealed with wry and startling honesty. FEEDING ON DREAMS is a passionate reminder that ‘we are all exiles,' that we are all ‘threatened with annihilation if we do not find and celebrate the refuge of common humanity,' as Dorfman did during his ‘decades of loss and resurrection.'
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
It was bound to happen one day: a writer, a victim, a revolutionary, capable of seeing God in the vertigo of experience. It was bound to happen - but not necessarily accompanied by Dorfman's accessibility and greatness.' - John Berger . . . ‘This is a rich, exciting and provocative book . . . Profoundly, critically, passionately revolutionary in its narrative.' - Julio Cortazar . . . In 1973 Ariel Dorfman published his first novel, a bold look at Chile's tense and chaotic days before the military coup. Some 20 years later - and now recognized as one of Latin America's finest writers - he returns in HARD RAIN to the concerns of his earlier work, turning the narrative form upside down, reexamining Chile's past, and giving us a great artist's vision full of hope for his country's future. ‘One of the most important voices of Latin America' - Salman Rushdie.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
Ariel Dorfman has been hailed as one of the greatest living Latin American novelists' (Newsweek) and a ‘storyteller of almost mythic intensity' (The Financial Times). In his brilliant memoir, HEADING SOUTH, LOOKING NORTH, Dorfman explores the many exiles of a life torn, from age two, between the United States arid Latin America, between revolution and repression. Interwoven with the remarkable story of how he switched languages and cultures - riot once, but three times - is a day-by-day account of his multiple escapes from death during a military takeover in Chile. Dorfman filters these events through his dual and hybrid life, speaking, reading, thinking at times in Spanish, at times in English. Beautifully written and deeply moving, HEADING SOUTH, LOOKING NORTH is at once a vivid account of a life as complex and mysterious as the fictional characters Dorfman creates and an enthralling meditation about true personal conviction and courage in the late twentieth century. Of all the Latin American writers to come out of that explosion of creativity familiarly known as ‘el boom,' Ariel Dorfman is the one whose work I love best He pushes the outer limit of the fictional envelope as daringly and imaginatively as Julio Cortazar and Gabriel Garcia Márquez, but what makes Dorfman's books especially appealing is the humanism of his vision.' - WENDY SMITH, Clevand Plain Dealer.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
A woman enters a room. The phone rings. A male voice on the other end of the line seems to know everything about her, down to the most intimate details. Someone is watching. The woman has just fled her homeland, but the whereabouts of her lover, Martin, remain a mystery. Is Martin in danger? Can the voice on the phone be trusted? Is she telling the truth? Has Martin betrayed his country, or his cause, or her? A tense, political allegory that inevitably challenges our assumptions about character, the foundations of our knowledge, and the making of history, KONFIDENZ stands as Ariel Dorfman's most fully realized fiction to date, and confirms his reputation as ‘one of the most important voices coming out of Latin America' (Salman Rushdie).
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
Acclaimed by Newsweek as ‘one of the six greatest living Latin American novelists,' Ariel Dorfman has now written a novel in English. MASCARA is the story of a man born with a face no one remembers, a man who has never been loved because he is not recognizable, who has never loved because he sees in people only their most obscene, most naked, most hidden secrets. One day Oriana comes to his doorstep. She is being pursued; he takes her in. That she has the memory of a five-year-old, has no secrets, makes Oriana the perfect woman. She is the only one he can love, the only soul he wants to protect - from the men who are trying to kill her and from the forgotten woman who might come back to repossess her. For if Oriana awakens from her amnesia, she will become like the others, ‘someone with a past, with a mask, with a piece of lipstick.' Written with inexorable logic, taut and sinister, Mascara is about sexual domination, about power and betrayal, about memory. ‘Memory is always a fraud,' says Oriana's lover, ‘erased, manipulated, sweetened by somebody, somebody always swearing it was some other way, until you are not sure yourself.' As haunting as Kafka's Metamorphosis, Ariel Dorfman's third novel is both a tragic story of doomed love and a call to arms against a world of fabricated personalities and television truths. ‘Who owns this city?' the faceless man asks his enemy and collaborator, the plastic surgeon, Maleverdi. ‘You who disguise people, or I who open the shutters of their pretense?. Born in Argentina in 1942, ARIEL DORFMAN is a Chilean citizen. A supporter of Salvador Allende, he was forced into exile after the coup of 1973. He is the author of How to Read Donald Duck and The Empire's Old Clothes, both nonfiction; the novels Widows and The Last Song of Manuel Sendero; Last Waltz in Santiago and Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance; and a play based on Widows. His books have been translated into twenty languages. A professor at Duke University, Dorfman is a regular contributor to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the Village Voice. He lives with his wife and two sons in Durham, North Carolina, and, whenever possible, in Chile. . .
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
In these short stories of lyrical, often brutal beauty, Ariel Dorfman writes of love and betrayal, of families broken apart by hope and fear, of individuals for whom political authority and violence make private life impossible. In the. title story, a brother and sister build the ‘castle' of chairs and blankets all children have assembled, but their need to believe in its protection is all too real. In ‘Consultation,' a doctor being tortured for his alleged treatment of rebels is consulted by the lieutenant in charge of his interrogation. The lieutenant wants to lose weight and wonders whether the biscuits and butter he eats during tea break (while the doctor sits bound, naked, and hooded) will make him fat. In ‘Godfather,' a woman is thwarted by the authorities when she tries to register the provocative name of her newborn child. And in ‘Family Circle,' a son explains to his broken father that he has no choice but to join the army; worse, that his assignment guarding prisoners may lead him to the ultimate betrayal. MY HOUSE IS ON FIRE is about family life under siege, about boundaries that protect, those that inhibit, and those that violate. Ariel Dorfman ‘s voice ranges from lush exuberance to spareness so raw that it burns. In spite of the terror in his landscapes, Dorfman's stories are lit by a resilient faith and hope. This collection is the perfect introduction to ‘the most recent virtuoso from Latin America' (Washington Post Book World). . ARIEL DORFMAN, born in Argentina, is a Chilean citizen who was forced into exile after the coup of 1973 that overthrew Salvador Allende. He is the author of HOW TO READ DONALD DUCK and THE EMPIRE'S OLD CLOTHES, both nonfiction; the novels MASCARA, THE LAST SONG OF MANUEL SENDERO, and WIDOWS; LAST WALTZ IN SANTIAGO AND OTHER POEMS OF EXILE And DISAPPEARANCE; and the plays Widows and Reader. His books have been translated into twenty languages. A professor at Duke University, Dorfman is a regular contributor to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and The Village Voice. He lives with his wife and two sons in Durham, North Carolina, and, whenever possible, in Santiago, Chile. . .
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
Formerly exiled Chilean author Arid Dorfman, one of Latin America's greatest writers and a major literary figure of the twentieth century, is known for such critically acclaimed novels as WIDOWS and THE LAST SONG OF MANUEL SENDERO. A master of various literary forms, Dorfman initially made his mark with studies of popular culture (HOW TO READ DONALD DUCK and THE EMPIRE'S OLD CLOTHES). This collection draws together yet another form of Dorfman's writings-the critical essay. Spanning more than twenty years and arranged in chronological order, the seven essays in this volume (translated into English for the first time) discuss contemporary Latin American writing. Each is devoted to a single author - Miguel Angel Asturias, Jorge Luis Borges, Jose Maria Arguedas, Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Roa Bastos - and one final essay looks at the ‘testimonial' or concentration camp literature from Chile. Although the writing discussed is diverse, common themes unite these pieces. Attentive to the relationship between culture and politics, Dorfman looks to the important role literature can play in the liberation of the people of Latin America and in the formation of national consciousness. At the same time, he explores the ways in which contemporary fiction subverts prevalent power, or submits to it, thus revealing its underlying character. Finally, these writings can be perused for ‘signals' of Dorfman's own literary evolution and interests. Themes that run throughout his own fiction - violence, the creative intervention of memory, and the role of myth and language in resistance - emerge as organizing categories in the writing of other Latin American writers as well.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
Nothing could seem more innocent than Babar the Elephant, the Lone Ranger, Donald Duck, or the Reader's Digest. Yet, in this daring book, Ariel Dorfman explores the hidden political and social messages behind the smiling faces that inhabit these familiar books, comics, and magazines. In so doing, he provides a stunning map to the secret world inside the most successful cultural symbols of our time. Dorfman first examines the meteoric rise of Babar the Elephant from orphan to king of the jungle and the way stories like his teach the young a rosy version of underdevelopment and colonialism. He then turns to purely American comic-book figures and shows how Donald Duck, the Lone Ranger, Superman, and other heroes offer a set of simple, disarming answers to the deepest dilemmas of our time without ever calling an established value into question. Along the way, with wit and a wily style, he raises a series of always provocative questions: Why does the Lone Ranger really have that mask? Why do Disney comics teem with uncles and nephews but no mothers and fathers? How could a comic book help overthrow a government? How does an adult's' magazine like the Reader's Digest continually transform us into children? Here is a book that will appeal to those who want to understand the connection between politics and culture, between Ronald Reagan and Mickey Mouse, between economic theories of development and children's literature. It is for those who are fascinated by the mass media, for parents and teachers who are worried about what their children are watching and reading, for anyone who wants to understand the way ideas are produced and manipulated in the twentieth century.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
In an unnamed country, in a time that might be now, the son of Manuel Sendero refuses to be born. And so begins the revolution of fetuses. In the wombs of women everywhere, those who would be the future deny the future, because, they say, in the present there is no justice. Until government leaders end repression, return to men and women their basic human rights, there will be no more children; there will be no more future victims or future oppressors. But then the fetuses begin to argue. You can't fight the world unless you're in it, some say. One by one, they choose to be born, and when they leave the womb, they forget everything they knew there; they become like the others. Finally, only the son of Manuel Sendero is left, and maybe he is never born, or maybe he follows Pamela, his love, into the world. Woven into the timeless and mesmerizing story of Pamela and the son of Manuel Sendero is the fierce dialogue between David and Felipe, fragments of which are discovered thousands of years later by archaeologists. Exiles from Chile, David and Felipe must make their own choice: Should they fight from inside the country they have lost or from outside? Do they betray themselves by returning or by staying away? And who is to blame when the agony of exile makes them destroy the people they love? Part Kafka, part Günter Grass, part Dante, Ariel Dorfman writes as if the world might end, or begin, tomorrow. Steeped in imagery both mythic and surreal, driven by extraordinary passion and faith, The Last Song of Manuel Sendero is a stunning achievement from ‘one of Latin America's greatest living novelists.' - Jacobo Timerman.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
Gabriel McKenzie was conceived one night in October 1967 in Santiago de Chile-exactly when, his mother claims, ChE Guevara was being buried hundreds of miles north in Bolivia. The next day, his father, Cristobal, made a wild bet with his best friend, Pablo Baron: Cristobal wagered that he would make love with a woman every night until his fiftieth birthday in 1992, while Pablo bet that by then he would be the most powerful man in Chile. By 1991, Gabriel is a twenty-three-year-old virgin living in exile in New York. Traumatized by the presence of a Don Juan progenitor in Chile, Gabriel returns home to seek help from his father. But before he can lift the curse on his sex life, he must travel to the South Pole and solve the mystery of who is threatening the iceberg Pablo wants to carve out of Antarctica and tow to Seville to celebrate America's five hundred years. Will Cristobal make it into the Guinness Book of Records? Will Gabriel fall in love-and into bed? Will Gabriel's ancient nanny, who might be the very last member of a Patagonian tribe, save the family from disaster? Rabelaisian, picaresque, and erotic, The Nanny and the Iceberg is a tour de force from one of Latin America's foremost writers.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
In a country ruled by a military regime, in a village where most men have been taken away as rebels, on a dusty riverbank, a body, unrecognizably battered by water and rocks, washes ashore. An old peasant woman, missing her tow sons, her husband, and her father, claims the body and refuses to turn it over to the local military officials for an anonymous burial. Within days, thirty-seven such women have come forward to claim the body, each in the name of a different ‘disappeared' man. Military officers, a judge, and a powerful landowner and his brother, believing a conspiracy is afoot, try to convince, intimidate, or force the women to turn over the body. In this spare book, Dorfman spins out a complex, moving drama of a nation under siege and vividly creates a village where the servile and the arrogant, the weary and the caste-conscious, the religious and the romantic struggle to survive. In the end, though, the book is the women's, for it is they who resist the soldiers, question the dictatorship, unsettle the officers, and in a final moment when two side face each other on the same riverbank. . . The setting is ostensibly Nazi-occupied Greece in 1940, but Dorfman's Greece could be Argentina, El Salvador, Chile, or a host of other places around the world today. Only the classic power and the tragedy embodied in this stark, wise book are truly Greek. WIDOWS is a rare book, a political novel that works at the deepest human level.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
DIARY OF A CIVIL SERVANT (O amanuense Belmiro) is one of the most important novels to emerge during Brazil's turbulent years from 1930 to 1940. It was first published by the author and Os Amigos do Livro in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1937. A year later Jose Olympio Ltda., of Rio de Janeiro, published a commercial edition, and since then it has been reprinted at least nine times. The novel chronicles approximately fifteen months in the life of Belmiro Borba - an intelligent, well-educated, introspective Brazilian state employee with literary pretentions that he brings to fruition in his diary. During a period of intense political and social turmoil (1935-36), the narrator/diarist agonizes as his friends and acquaintances argue and sever relations over ideology, while he flounders because of his skepticism and timidity. Diary belongs both to the nostalgic (saudosista) and to the erudite traditions in Luso-Brazilian letters. Its purposely fragmentary narrative; conservative, classical language; and abundant artistic, literary, and intellectual allusions link it to the work of Brazil's master novelist, Machado de Assis, and contribute to making it a significant work in the Western tradition. Well-grounded in his knowledge of Gide, Proust, and Duhamel, dos Anjos updates a Brazilian existentialist legacy that began with Machado. Belmiro asks over and over, ‘Why was I put on this planet?' He grapples with the perennial issues of space and time, reason versus emotion, faith in God, communication and understanding, poetry and science, mind, and body, love and friendship. He realizes that his ability to understand and sympathize with both sides of an argument checkmates his desire for a greater involvement in life, yet he is incapable of making a leap of faith in order to accept wholeheartedly any of the philosophies or ideologies that seem to placate and guide his friends. No one in the novel ever manages to lead a totally satisfying existence. Those who want more than material comfort, who feel that the human spirit should be free to soar to great heights, to be wise and to love, are unable to synthesize their intellectual, emotional, and physical selves. Philosophical novels are rare in Brazil, a country where verse is the most highly valued literary genre, where literati believe, with Aristotle, that poetry is more philosophical than history. (In Portuguese, historia means both ‘history' and ‘story.') Dos Anjos also published a collection of poems (Poemas Coronários, 1963). One wonders, however, whether his verse could in fact exceed the poetic quality of some of the passages in DIARY OF A CIVIL SERVANT. Arthur Brakel's English translation will undoubtedly help bring to this work of art the critical attention it rightly deserves in the English-speaking world.
CYRO VERSIANI DOS ANJOS (October 5, 1906 - August 4, 1994) was born in 1906, in Montes Claros, in the northern reaches of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. He evidenced journalistic inclinations early in life, writing for an adult newspaper while still a teenager. He studied law in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais, and supported himself by writing for newspapers and working for the state. After graduation dos Anjos became editor in chief of the state press and president of the state advisory board. He moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1946, where he continued working with the government. In the sixties he moved, with the seat of government, to Brasilia, where he worked and taught until his retirement. He is currently living in Rio with his wife, Zelita, and is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He teaches writing at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. ARTHUR BRAKEL has a Ph.D. in Portuguese language and literature from the University of Wisconsin. He has taught courses in literature, language, and theoretical linguistics at three American universities - Kent State, the State University of New York at Albany, and the University of Michigan - as well as at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, in Brazil. He has written articles and book reviews for European, American, and South American academic journals and newspapers and has published one book, Phonological Markedness and Distinctive Features. Having recently returned from a stint as a Fulbright Scholar/Lecturer in Brazil, he is currently working as a translator/consultant, free-lance writer, Spanish teacher, and writer of fiction.
The story of Brazil's gigantic road building programme.
John Roderigo Dos Passos (January 14, 1896 - September 28, 1970) was a radical American novelist and artist active in the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in Chicago, Illinois and he went on to Harvard College, graduating in 1916. He was well-traveled, visiting Europe and the Middle East, where he learned about literature, art, and architecture. During World War I he was a member of the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in Paris and Italy, later joining the U.S. Army Medical Corps. In 1920 he had his first novel published, One Man's Initiation: 1917, and in 1925 his Manhattan Transfer became a commercial success. In 1928, he went to Russia to study socialism, and later became a leading participator in the April 1935 First Americans Writers Congress sponsored by the Communist-leaning League of American Writers. He was in Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, when the murder of good friend Jose Robles soured his attitude toward communism and severed his relationship with fellow writer Ernest Hemingway. He is best known for his critically praised U.S.A. trilogy which consisted of the novels The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936). In 1998, the Modern Library ranked the U.S.A. Trilogy 23rd on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. By the 1950s his political views had changed dramatically, and in the 1960s, he actively campaigned for presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and Richard M. Nixon. An artist as well as a novelist, Dos Passos created cover art for his books, was influenced by the modernist movements in 1920s Paris, and continued to paint throughout his lifetime. He died in 1970.
A HIDDEN LIFE, the first novel by Autran Dourado to be translated into English, is the quiet, simply told story of a Brazilian farm girl suddenly confronted with a sophisticated environment. When her father dies, Biela is taken from a remote, rural existence to live in town with the worldly cousins who are her only relatives, The change is a tremendous one, and she feels bewildered and lost, though for a brief moment the trappings of her new life fascinate her. But quickly they prove alien to her temperament and upbringing; she cannot change her ways or become another person. What she succeeds in doing-through a combination of her own stubborn, peasant will and the passage of time-is to make her way in the new environment on her own terms. Her whole being turns inward, In the face of bitter opposition from her ‘elegant' relatives, she quietly and unobtrusively assumes her natural role-the role of a servant, living out her life in the obscure and humble manner that satisfies her. This simple but curiously moving tale, reminiscent of Flaubert's Un Ceur Simple, conveys great warmth of feeling and a brilliant sense of verisimilitude as it reveals the heart and soul of this ‘hidden life.'
Waldomiro Freitas Autran Dourado (1926 - September 30, 2012) was a Brazilian novelist. Dourado was born in Patos de Minas, state of Minas Gerais. Going against current trends in Brazilian literature, Dourado's works display much concern with literary form, with many obscure words and expressions. Minas Gerais is the setting for most of Dourado's books, resembling the early to mid-20th century regionalist trend in Brazilian literature. Most literary critics consider Dourado's work to have similarities to Baroque literature. In 1981, Dourado won the prestigious Goethe Prize. In 2000, Dourado won the Camões Prize, the most important literary prize in the Portuguese sprachraum. In 2001, Brazilian filmmaker Suzana Amaral released the film Uma Vida em Segredo. It was based on the novel of same title by Autran Dourado. Dourado died of stomach bleeding on September 30, 2012, in Rio de Janeiro. He was 86 years old.
One of the most important and exciting of contemporary Brazilian writers, Autran Dourado is now establishing an international reputation. THE VOICES OF THE DEAD, the last of his novels to be published in English translation, was highly praised on both sides of the Atlantic, and in 1982 he was awarded Germany's prestigious Goethe Prize. A visit to a brothel, a deathbed scene, Joao's romance with a circus tightrope walker, the fantastic secrets of his eccentric relations, the exploits of a notorious bandit - all these are elements in a work of extraordinary richness by ‘a poetic and symbolist novelist who transforms the particulars of the everyday world into the universals of myth and tragedy' (Peter Lewis in the Times Literary Supplement).
Waldomiro Freitas Autran Dourado (1926 - September 30, 2012) was a Brazilian novelist. Dourado was born in Patos de Minas, state of Minas Gerais. Going against current trends in Brazilian literature, Dourado's works display much concern with literary form, with many obscure words and expressions. Minas Gerais is the setting for most of Dourado's books, resembling the early to mid-20th century regionalist trend in Brazilian literature. Most literary critics consider Dourado's work to have similarities to Baroque literature. In 1981, Dourado won the prestigious Goethe Prize. In 2000, Dourado won the Camões Prize, the most important literary prize in the Portuguese sprachraum. In 2001, Brazilian filmmaker Suzana Amaral released the film Uma Vida em Segredo. It was based on the novel of same title by Autran Dourado. Dourado died of stomach bleeding on September 30, 2012, in Rio de Janeiro. He was 86 years old.
THE BELLS OF AGONY is a tale of passion and treachery set in eighteenth-century Brazil, A powerful reworking of the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus, it is at the same time an allegory of the situation in modern Brazil under an authoritarian military government. In this version of the myth, the devilish but beautiful Malvina plays the part of Phaedra, the woman who has conceived an incestuous passion for her stepson, here represented by Gaspar, with the hapless Januario, consumed by love for Malvina, cast in the role of her pawn. The action takes place in the affluent town of Vila Rica in the state of Minas Gerais, Gold, discovered in the 1696s, had given the city its baroquely magnificent churches and accompanying festivities. Yet there is a strong sense of decline, the rugged individualism of the old, uneducated pioneers being contrasted with the cultivation and political sophistication of the new generation. All of this parallels the short-lived ‘Brazilian miracle' of the early 1976s and the rapid dEbicle already under way when The Bells of Agony was being written, The bells toll not just for the individuals enmeshed in a tragic web, but for a society in the thrall of absolute political power, a country of unfulfilled promise, its splendour more an outward show than a reality. In keeping with the conventions of tragic drama, Autran Dourado has preserved the unities of time and space while using the novelist's licence to broaden and deepen his canvas by the use of perspective. We are shown the events leading up to the tragic outcome from the viewpoints of each of the three main protagonists. By drawing the reader into their consciousness, the author is able to create considerable tension and drama in a timeless story of forbidden love, all-devouring passion and tragic destiny. AUTRAN DOURADO was born in 1926 in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. From the age of fourteen he lived in the state capital, Belo Horizonte, where he attended high school and university. In 1954 he accompanied the future president of Brazil, Juscelino Kubitschek, to Rio de janeiro as press secretary. He has continued to live in Rio, although most of his stories and novels are set in Minas Gerais. His books have been translated into French, Spanish and German, In 1982 he was awarded the Goethe Prize. Dourado's major works include: A barco dos homens (The Ship of Men, 1961); Uma vida em segredo (1964; A Hidden Life, 1967); Opera dos mortos (1967; The Voices of the Dead, 1986); O risco do bordado (1976; Pattern for a Tapestry, 1984); Os sinos da agonia (1974; The Bells of Agony); Novelario de Donga Novais (Donga Novaiss Story Book, 1976); Armas & Coracoes (Weapons and Hearts, 1978) and As imaginacoes pecaminosas (Sinful Minds, 1981).
Waldomiro Freitas Autran Dourado (1926 - September 30, 2012) was a Brazilian novelist. Dourado was born in Patos de Minas, state of Minas Gerais. Going against current trends in Brazilian literature, Dourado's works display much concern with literary form, with many obscure words and expressions. Minas Gerais is the setting for most of Dourado's books, resembling the early to mid-20th century regionalist trend in Brazilian literature. Most literary critics consider Dourado's work to have similarities to Baroque literature. In 1981, Dourado won the prestigious Goethe Prize. In 2000, Dourado won the Camões Prize, the most important literary prize in the Portuguese sprachraum. In 2001, Brazilian filmmaker Suzana Amaral released the film Uma Vida em Segredo. It was based on the novel of same title by Autran Dourado. Dourado died of stomach bleeding on September 30, 2012, in Rio de Janeiro. He was 86 years old. JOHN M. PARKER is an Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Aveiro, Portugal.
In the manor house of a small Brazilian town live two women, Rosalina and her dumb servant-companion Quiquina. By day Rosalina makes fabric flowers and observes the life of the town from her window; by night she drinks, secretly. Her isolation-the legacy of a political feud between her father and the townspeople -is absolute until the arrival of Jose Feliciano, a bastard mulatto who obtains the job of handyman at the manor. His presence adds a volatile element to the intense and claustrophobic atmosphere, and when he becomes Rosalina's lover her precarious stability is destroyed. Beneath this surface lies the real turmoil of the novel. Each of the characters is dominated by conflicting forces from the past. Rosalina is torn between the influence of her dead ancestors: her father, who restrains and controls her during the day, and her grandfather, a local tyrant and spawner of bastards, who seems to direct her nocturnal orgies with Feliciano. Similarly, Quiquina and Feliciano are governed by forces and personalities from the past. In a style reminiscent of the best of Faulkner, Autran Dourado weaves these elements into an immensely powerful and compelling narrative. The Voices of the Dead, regarded by many as one of the finest pieces of fiction to come out of Latin America in recent years and the first of Dourado's works to appear in England, confirms his place in the front rank of modern Latin American novelists. AUTRAN DOURADO was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1926. From the age of fourteen he lived in the state capital. Belo Horizonte, where he attended high school and university. In 1954 he went to Rio de Janeiro as press secretary to Juscelino Kubitschek, the future president of Brazil, and he has lived there ever since. Since 1947 he has published novels and short stories, most of them set in his home state of Minas Gerais. Uma vida em segredo (1964) was published in English translation, A HIDDEN LIFE, in New York in 1967. Opera dos mortos (THE VOICES OF THE DEAD) was published in Brazil in 1967, since when it has been through six editions.
Waldomiro Freitas Autran Dourado (1926 - September 30, 2012) was a Brazilian novelist. Dourado was born in Patos de Minas, state of Minas Gerais. Going against current trends in Brazilian literature, Dourado's works display much concern with literary form, with many obscure words and expressions. Minas Gerais is the setting for most of Dourado's books, resembling the early to mid-20th century regionalist trend in Brazilian literature. Most literary critics consider Dourado's work to have similarities to Baroque literature. In 1981, Dourado won the prestigious Goethe Prize. In 2000, Dourado won the Camões Prize, the most important literary prize in the Portuguese sprachraum. In 2001, Brazilian filmmaker Suzana Amaral released the film Uma Vida em Segredo. It was based on the novel of same title by Autran Dourado. Dourado died of stomach bleeding on September 30, 2012, in Rio de Janeiro. He was 86 years old.
In the manor house of a small Brazilian town live two women, Rosalina and her servant-companion, Quiquina. By day Rosalina makes fabric flowers and observes the life of the town from her window; by night she drinks, secretly Her isolation-the legacy of a political feud between her father and the townspeople-is absolute until the arrival of Jose Feliciano, a bastard mulatto who obtains the job of handyman at the manor. His presence adds a volatile element to the intense and claustrophobic atmosphere, and when he becomes Rosalina's lover her precarious stability is destroyed. Beneath this surface lies the real turmoil of the novel. Each of the characters is dominated by conflicting forces from the past. Rosalina is torn between the influence of her dead ancestors: her father, who restrains and controls her during the day, and her grandfather, a local tyrant and spawner of bastards, who seems to direct her nocturnal orgies with Feliciano. Similarly, Quiquina and Feliciano are governed by forces and personalities from the past. In a style reminiscent of the best of Faulkner, Autran Dourado weaves these elements into an immensely powerful and compelling narrative. Only the second of his works to appear in this country (the first being A HIDDEN LIFE, 1967), THE VOICES OF THE DEAD is regarded by many as one of the finest pieces of fiction to come out of Latin America in recent years and confirms Dourado's place in the front rank of modern Latin American novelists. Autran Dourado was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1926. From the age of fourteen he lived in the state capital, Belo Horizonte, where he attended high school and college. In 1954 he went to Rio de Janeiro as press secretary to Juscelino Kubitschek, the future president of Brazil, and he has lived there ever since. Dourado has been publishing novels and short stories since 1947, most of them set in his home state of Minas Gerais.
Waldomiro Freitas Autran Dourado (1926 - September 30, 2012) was a Brazilian novelist. Dourado was born in Patos de Minas, state of Minas Gerais. Going against current trends in Brazilian literature, Dourado's works display much concern with literary form, with many obscure words and expressions. Minas Gerais is the setting for most of Dourado's books, resembling the early to mid-20th century regionalist trend in Brazilian literature. Most literary critics consider Dourado's work to have similarities to Baroque literature. In 1981, Dourado won the prestigious Goethe Prize. In 2000, Dourado won the Camões Prize, the most important literary prize in the Portuguese sprachraum. In 2001, Brazilian filmmaker Suzana Amaral released the film Uma Vida em Segredo. It was based on the novel of same title by Autran Dourado. Dourado died of stomach bleeding on September 30, 2012, in Rio de Janeiro. He was 86 years old.
When drought strikes a Brazilian native family, they trek to find a new home. Along the way, they encounter Carnauba, a woman turned into a palm tree by the Moon. She instructs the young boy in how to obtain food, drink, shelter, medicine and clothing from the palm and asks him to plant palm nuts in return for her help. Years later, when a plantation grows on what once was desert, the boy carries the nuts of the Tree of Providence to other native Brazilians.
A bilingual edition, parallel texts. Includes a brief biographical sketch with a bibliography of selected works of criticism on Echeverria (pp. 36-37). The story was written near 1840, but because it is a symbolic attack on the regime of dictator Rosas, it was not published until after the author's death. The Slaughter Yard (Spanish El matadero, title often imprecisely translated as The Slaughterhouse, is a short story by the Argentine poet and essayist Esteban Echeverría (1805–1851). It was the first Argentine work of prose fiction. It is one of the most studied texts in Latin American literature. Written in exile and published posthumously in 1871, it is an attack on the brutality of the Federalist regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas and his parapolice thugs, the Mazorca. In the story, the protagonist is seized by a crowd of brutal slaughtermen for belonging to the political opposition, and dies.
Jose Esteban Antonio Echeverría (September 2, 1805 - January 19, 1851) was an Argentine poet, fiction writer, cultural promoter, and political activist who played a significant role in the development of Argentine literature, not only through his own writings but also through his organizational efforts. He was one of Latin America's most important Romantic authors. Echeverría spent five decisive years in Paris (1825 to 1830), where he absorbed the spirit of the Romantic Movement, then in its heyday in France. He became one of the movement's promoters once he returned to Argentina. Once he returned to Buenos Aires, he wrote "Los Consuelos" in 1834 and "Las rimas" in 1837. He was a member of the group of young Argentine intellectuals who in 1840 organized the Asociacion de Mayo ("May Association", after the May Revolution that initiated Argentina's move towards independence). This institution aspired to develop a national literature responsive to the country's social and physical reality. Echeverría also devoted himself to the overthrow of the caudillo of Buenos Aires, Juan Manuel de Rosas. In 1840 he was forced to go into exile in nearby Uruguay, where he wrote La Insurreccion del Sur and El Matadero. He remained in Uruguay until his death in 1851. His remains are said to be buried at Buceo Cemetery. Echeverría's renown as a writer rests largely on his powerful short story El matadero ("The Slaughter Yard", often mistranslated as "The Slaughterhouse"), written in sometime during 1838-1840 but not published until 1871), a landmark in the history of Latin American literature. It is mostly significant because it displays the perceived clash between "civilization and barbarism", that is, between the European and the "primitive and violent" American ways. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, another great Argentine writer and thinker, saw this clash as the core of Latin American culture. Read in this light, "The Slaughterhouse" is a political allegory. Its more specific intention was to accuse Rosas of protecting the kind of thugs who murder the cultivated young protagonist at the Buenos Aires slaughterhouse. Rosas and his henchmen stand for barbarism, the slain young man for civilization. Echeverría's La cautiva ("The Captive"), a long narrative poem about a white woman abducted by Mapuche Indians, is also among the better-known works of 19th-century Latin American literature.
bibliog. Informative introduction to the work that has inspired the novels and stories of Nobel Prize winner Miguel Angel Asturias (Guatemala). The Popol Vuh appeared in English translation earlier. See: Popol Vuh: The sacred book of the ancient Quiche Maya. English version Delia Goetz and Sylvanus 0. Morley from the trans. (into Spanish) of Adrian Recinos. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950. xix, 267 p.
Four Northeastern Masters - JOSE LINS DO REGO, JORGE AMADO, GRACILIANO RAMOS, RACHEL DE QUEIROZ. The ‘novel of the Northeast' has been the dominant genre in Brazilian fiction from its inception in the 1930's. Jose Lins do Rego, Jorge Amado, Rachel de Queiroz, and Graciliano Ramos are the outstanding creators of this genre. These four novelists and their significance in Latin American literature are the subject of this study. In Brazil the period of the 193O's was one of tropical efllorescence, when literature, along with almost all other phases of creativity, seemed to enter upon a new life. Here, as elsewhere, the age was marked by social and political ferment, some of which is reflected in the novel as social protest or political intent. The present study shows how, despite the documentary and sociological aspects of the new writing, the fiction of these four novelists often attained the level of art. Usually relying on the conventional techniques of the realistic novel, they have created vivid scenes, told captivating stories, and, above all, have created characters of abiding import in the nation's literature. The introduction gives the reader a sound concept of the region called the ‘Northeast ‘-with its geography that resembles both our arid Southwest and our southern tidelands-and outlines its political, social, and cultural history. It then surveys the background of the 1930's and shows how that period influenced Brazilian literature in general and fiction in particular. Individual studies of Jose Lins do Rego, Jorge Amado, Rachel de Queiroz, and Graciliano Ramos make up the main section of the book. All four have been close friends and associates. Both Jose Lins do Rego and Jorge Amado are noteworthy for their handling of the panoramic sociological theme. The former, in particular, has projected the complex fictional world of the declining plantation aristocracy with artistry and understanding. Amado, by contrast, has achieved art only when his works have been free of political contentiousness. Rachel de Queiroz and Graciliano Ramos are psychological novelists-Rachel de Queiroz with a woman's acute insight, Graciliano Ramos with perhaps the most penetrating vision of psychological motive of any contemporary writer. This timely book will be of particular value to students of Latin American literature, but can be enjoyed as well by all those interested in modern fiction. . .
Fred Pittman Ellison (January 11, 1922 - October 4, 2014) was born in Denton, Texas, the son of Lee Monroe Ellison and Hixie Pittman Ellison and brother of the late Edith Lanier Ellison. Early on he pursued an interest in foreign languages, starting with Latin, Spanish, and French in high school and continuing with German and Portuguese, principally at the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation with a bachelor's degree in Spanish in 1941, he went to New York to work for the FBI as a translator and later as a special agent with foreign language specialization until 1944. To be part of America's effort in World War II, he joined the U.S. Navy as an ensign, serving two years as a communications officer. After World War II he earned his master's and Ph.D. degrees in romance languages and literatures from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1952. While stationed in California during his time in the Navy, Fred met his future wife, Adeline Story, a fellow officer in the Navy. Family lore has it that Fred's marriage proposal was greatly influenced by the fact that Ad owned a set of The Great Books, she outranked him, and as a payroll officer, she toted a side arm - a special kind of woman, indeed. They were married for 65 happy years. Though primarily involved in literary studies, Fred also worked to develop, with others, methods and materials for the teaching of foreign languages. He received awards from his professional organization, the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) in recognition of 30 years of pioneering work in the field of Portuguese. As an assistant professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, he taught experimental classes in Spanish at both elementary and high school levels in a research project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. In 1962, on arriving at the University of Texas, he initiated the teaching of Portuguese in Austin, at Saint Edward's High School and was coordinator, with a Brazilian colleague, of a major project involving four other writers that eventuated in Modern Portuguese, an influential textbook used in U.S. universities for many years. In the sixties he founded the Portuguese Language Development Group of the AATSP, a nationwide group that continues to meet every year. Throughout his career Fred was especially drawn to Brazil, its people and its literature, a little-studied area which he had begun to explore in his dissertation on the Brazilian novel. As a way to make that country's novelists and poets better known in the English-speaking world, he contributed translations of contemporary Brazilian works such as The Three Marias by Rachel de Queiroz and Memories of Lazarus by Adonias Filho, as well as books and articles on literary history and criticism. In 1964 he was invited to the White House by President Lyndon B. Johnson to attend a luncheon honoring the president of Brazil. He was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1982. After his retirement in 1991, the Brazilian government decreed him a special distinction accorded non-Brazilian honorees, membership in the Order of Rio Branco, with the rank of Commander. This honor was conferred upon him in a ceremony at the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
‘Ana spent one perfect night with Manuel. She told me about it quite unexpectedly, knowing in advance how hopelessly caught up I would become in her reminiscences. She went into a detailed description of her expensive, provocative outfit, and I could visualise her walking forward, her legs deliberately restricted by her shiny black dress. Ana confessed that she was so driven by her depraved desire that night that she consciously sought to focus people's looks on the violent rippling of her thighs, barely disguised beneath the shiny black material. I watched her smiling and it hurt.' As the forces of political repression encircle Santiago, the capital of Chile, the narrator raises the question of the relationship between her sexual cravings and fantasies and the domination of women in Chilean society. Sacred Cow is an intense, erotic unveiling of the human psyche.
Diamela Eltit (born 1949, Santiago de Chile) is a writer and a Spanish professor from Chile. She currently holds a teaching appointment at New York University, where she teaches creative writing. Eltit received a bachelor's degree in literature and works in the Universidad Tecnologica Metropolitana. She was culture attachE during Patricio Aylwin's government at the Chilean Embassy in Mexico. In her books, she breaks traditional novel conventions with sordid places, marginal characters and a prose marked by an ambiguous speech and exaltations to the body of the injured or hurt woman. She's one of the members of the so-called generacion del 87, after Salvador Allende's administration. Eltit is and was, especially during the junta government, a performance artist and social examiner. Her work often subverts the norm and examines the structure of oppression and repressed desire. ltit is married to Jorge Arrate, the communist candidate in the 2009 Chilean presidential elections. Eltit supported Arrate in his campaign.
ESPERANZA'S BOX OF SAINTS is a magical, humorous, and passion-filled odyssey about a beautiful young widow's search for her missing child - a mission that takes her from a humble Mexican village to the rowdy brothels of Tijuana and a rarely seen side of Los Angeles. Rescued from turmoil by her favorite saint, Esperanza embarks on a journey that tests her faith, teaches her the ways of the world, and transforms her from a fervently religious innocent to an independent, sexual, and passionately devout woman. .
María Amparo Escandon (Mexico City, Mexico, June 19, 1957) is a Mexican born, US citizen. She is a professional communicator in various media: best-selling bilingual novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, advertising creative director, and film producer. Her award-winning literary work is known for addressing bicultural themes that deal with the immigration experience of Mexicans crossing over to the United States. Her stories concentrate on family relationships, loss, forgiveness, faith, and self-discovery. A linguist with a sharp ear for dialogue, she explores the dynamics of language in border sub-cultures and the evolution of Spanglish. Her innovative style of multiple voice narrations and her cleverly humorous, quirky, and compassionate stories with a feminine angle capture the magical reality of everyday life and place her among the top Latin American female writers. Her work has been translated into over 21 languages and is currently read in more than 85 countries
Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit. The classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef. She shares special points of her favorite preparations with listeners throughout the story. With more than two million copies in print, this beloved novel has become a treasured part of America's literary memory.
Laura Esquivel (born September 30, 1950) is a Mexican novelist, screenwriter and a politician who serves in the Chamber of Deputies (2012-2018) for the Morena Party. Her first novel Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) became a bestseller in Mexico and the United States, and was later developed into an award-winning film.
As the millions of fans of ‘Like Water for Chocolate ‘know, Laura Esquivel is a romanticist whose novels explore the power of love and the truths of the human heart. She returns to those themes in Swift as Desire, the story of a loving and passionate man who has the gift of bringing happiness to everyone except his own wife. The hero of this novel' ‘is Jubilo Chi, a telegraph operator who is born with the ability to ‘hear' people's true feelings and respond to their most intimate, unspoken desires. His life changes forever the day he falls deeply and irrevocably in love with Lucha, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy family. She believes money is necessary to insure happiness, while for Jubilo, who is poor, love and desire are more important than possessions. But their passion for each other enables them to build a happy life together -- until their idyll is shattered by a terrible event that drives them bitterly apart. Only years later, as Jubilo lies dying, is his daughter able to unravel the mystery behind her parents' long estrangement and bring about a surprising reconciliation.
Laura Esquivel (born September 30, 1950) is a Mexican novelist, screenwriter and a politician who serves in the Chamber of Deputies (2012-2018) for the Morena Party. Her first novel Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) became a bestseller in Mexico and the United States, and was later developed into an award-winning film.
Marilene Felinto is one of a new wave of young Brazilian writers, and her work is among the very best. Born in 1957 in the northeast of Brazil, she moved to São Paulo in early adolescence and completed her university education there. Her fiction connects the striking contrasts of a young woman's experience and the cross-purposes of modern Brazil. In The Women of Tijucopapo nothing can be taken for granted since everything might be taken away. Risia is a heroine little interested in being heroic. All she wants is for her life ‘to have a happy ending.' To find it she must go back to Tijucopapo, where her mother was born. One moonlit night her grandmother gave away a baby, and that baby was Risia's mother. Sharing the trauma of her mother's miserable marriage, Risia recollects and invents tales of Tijucopapo in the happier days before she was born. When she was a little girl she clung to the idea that she would kill her father for the way he treated women. Now, a woman herself, Risia hasn't lost the urge to kill. The time is ripe for it - war is in the air. Amid the disruptions of discovery and revolution, Risia walks toward Tijucopapo. Step by step she goes farther through the forest, closer to Tijucopapo, to find the beautiful side of her shamelessness, to leave behind her losses. As Mulheres de Tijucopapo, Marilene Felinto's first novel was originally published in 1982.
Marilene Felinto lives in São Paulo. . Irene Matthews is an assistant professor of comparative literature at Northern Arizona University.
Contains 3 stories originally translated by Mr. Casement in Cuentos ticos; short stories of Costa Rica. See No. 237. Goldberg's rev, translations include 'A miraculous saint,' Politics,'' and ''Chivalry.'
Ricardo Fernandez Guardia (Alajuela, January 4, 1867 - San Jose, February 25, 1950 ) was a Costa Rican writer, politician and diplomat. He was the son of Isabel Guardia Gutierrez and the historian Leon Fernández Bonilla. Not only did he continue his father's historical studies and contribute to the development of new research incorporating key texts in the country's history, he also elevated Costa Rican history to a higher category merging scientific and literary material to create his chronicles. A cultivator and follower of the best of the Spanish and French literary traditions, Fernández Guardia identified himself with the birth of literary realism and the Costa Rican theater. He is considered by some to be the first classical author in Costa Rica. His concern for the purity of the language and the logical structuring of the expression of his ideas make up a unit of style unprecedented in Costa Rican letters. He was Secretary of Foreign Relations and attached portfolios from 1909 to 1910. He wrote numerous and documented historical works, including: The Discovery and the Conquest, Historical Book of Costa Rica, Colonial Chronicles, Historical Review of Talamanca, Morazán in Costa Rica, Independence, Things and People of Yesteryear, the League War and the Quijano invasion, Gleaning in the past and Don Florencio del Castillo in the Cortes of Cádiz . He was also the author of several literary works and political essays, including a 1916 message, in which the policies of President Alfredo González Flores were criticized. He was Secretary of the Legation of Costa Rica in Europe (1885-1889) and Charge d'Affaires ad interim in Spain (1886-1887), First Secretary of the Legation in Europe (1897-1901), Minister on a special mission in Italy (1900 ), Minister on special mission in Honduras (1904), Confidential agent of Costa Rica in the United States (1917), Minister on special mission in Panama (1920) and in Mexico (1921), Consul General in Spain (1929-1930) and Minister Plenipotentiary of Costa Rica in Guatemala (1944-1945). Declared Benemerito de la Patria by the Costa Rican legislature in 1944.
Many years ago a well-known young writer made a journey through a part of Central America, and on his return home wrote several bright and interesting articles about the countries he had seen. They were written in a satirical tone, and no doubt did much to increase the prejudice already so common amongst us against Spanish-American countries. He made the mistake of judging the whole from a part. Americans are apt to group all of these republics together in the contempt which they feel for them. If we are correctly informed, this writer visited only Honduras and a little corner of Nicaragua, which are commonly held to be the most backward and unprogressive republics of Central America. If he had continued his journey south to Costa Rica, or north to Guatemala, he might have written in a different strain.
Ricardo Fernandez Guardia (Alajuela, January 4, 1867 - San Jose, February 25, 1950 ) was a Costa Rican writer, politician and diplomat. He was the son of Isabel Guardia Gutierrez and the historian Leon Fernández Bonilla. Not only did he continue his father's historical studies and contribute to the development of new research incorporating key texts in the country's history, he also elevated Costa Rican history to a higher category merging scientific and literary material to create his chronicles. A cultivator and follower of the best of the Spanish and French literary traditions, Fernández Guardia identified himself with the birth of literary realism and the Costa Rican theater. He is considered by some to be the first classical author in Costa Rica. His concern for the purity of the language and the logical structuring of the expression of his ideas make up a unit of style unprecedented in Costa Rican letters. He was Secretary of Foreign Relations and attached portfolios from 1909 to 1910. He wrote numerous and documented historical works, including: The Discovery and the Conquest, Historical Book of Costa Rica, Colonial Chronicles, Historical Review of Talamanca, Morazán in Costa Rica, Independence, Things and People of Yesteryear, the League War and the Quijano invasion, Gleaning in the past and Don Florencio del Castillo in the Cortes of Cádiz . He was also the author of several literary works and political essays, including a 1916 message, in which the policies of President Alfredo González Flores were criticized. He was Secretary of the Legation of Costa Rica in Europe (1885-1889) and Charge d'Affaires ad interim in Spain (1886-1887), First Secretary of the Legation in Europe (1897-1901), Minister on a special mission in Italy (1900 ), Minister on special mission in Honduras (1904), Confidential agent of Costa Rica in the United States (1917), Minister on special mission in Panama (1920) and in Mexico (1921), Consul General in Spain (1929-1930) and Minister Plenipotentiary of Costa Rica in Guatemala (1944-1945). Declared Benemerito de la Patria by the Costa Rican legislature in 1944.
THE MUSEUM OF ETERNA'S NOVEL (THE FIRST GOOD NOVEL) is the very definition of a novel written ahead of its time. Macedonio (known to everyone by his unusual first name) worked on this novel in the 1930s and early '40s, during the heyday of Argentine literary culture, and around the same time that AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS was published, a novel that has quite a bit in common with Macedonio's masterpiece. In many ways, MUSEUM is an ‘anti-novel.' It opens with more than fifty prologues - including ones addressed ‘To My Authorial Persona,' ‘To the Critics,' and ‘To Readers Who Will Perish If They Don't Know What the Novel Is About' - that are by turns philosophical, outrageous, ponderous, and cryptic. These pieces cover a range of topics from how the upcoming novel will be received to how to thwart ‘skip-around readers' (by writing a book that's defies linearity!). The second half of the book is the novel itself, a novel about a group of characters (some borrowed from other texts) who live on an estancia called ‘la novella' . . . A hilarious and often quite moving book, THE MUSEUM OF ETERNA'S NOVEL redefined the limits of the genre, and has had a lasting impact on Latin American literature. Authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, and Ricardo Piglia have all fallen under its charm and high-concepts, and, at long last, English-speaking readers can experience the book that helped build the reputation of Borges's mentor.
Macedonio Fernández (1 June 1874 - 10 February 1952) was an Argentine writer, humorist, and philosopher. His writings included novels, stories, poetry, journalism, and works not easily classified. He was a mentor to Jorge Luis Borges and other avant-garde Argentine writers. Seventeen years of his correspondence with Borges was published in 2000. He also published poetry, including "Creía yo" ("I believed"). Macedonio (like Uruguay's Felisberto Hernández, he is commonly referred to by his first name only) was the son of Macedonio Fernández, farmer and military officer, and Rosa del Mazo Aguilar Ramos. In 1887, he enrolled in the Argentine Colegio Nacional Central. In 1891-1892, as a university student, he published in El Progreso, a series of critical essays on customs and manners later included in Papeles antiguos. Like his intimate friend Jorge Guillermo Borges (father of Jorge Luis Borges), he was interested in psychology and in the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. In 1897 he was granted a degree as a doctor of jurisprudence by the law faculty of the University of Buenos Aires. In this period, he wrote for La Montaña, a socialist daily directed by Leopoldo Lugones and Jose Ingenieros. He was a personal friend of physician, journalist, politician, and writer Juan B. Justo, with whom he maintained a correspondence. In 1898, he was admitted to the bar, and in 1899 he married Elena de Obieta, with whom he had four children (Macedonio, Adolfo, Maite, plus one) In 1904 he published some poems in a magazine called Martín Fierro (not the more famous magazine of the same name published two decades later). In 1910, he obtained the position of public prosecutor in the Juzgado Letrado de Posadas, which he held for several years. His wife died in 1920, and their children were left in the care of grandparents and aunts. Macedonio abandoned the profession of a lawyer. On the return of the Borges family from Europe in 1921, he renewed his friendship with his old friend, and also began a friendship with Jorge Luis Borges, at this time a young ultraist poet. In 1928 he published No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos, at the request of Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz and Leopoldo Marechal; the next year he published Papeles de Recienvenido. En 1938 he published "Novela de Eterna" y la Niña del dolor, la "Dulce-persona" de un amor que no fue sabido, an anticipation of Museo de la Novela de la Eterna (published posthumously in 1967); in 1941 he published, in Chile Una novela que comienza, and in 1944 a new edition of Papeles de Recienvenido. In 1947, Macedonio moved into the home of his son Adolfo de Obieta, where he lived for the rest of his life. Macedonio was Jorge Luis Borges's most important Argentine mentor and influence. The relationship between the writers, however, was far more complex than Borges or his contemporaries represented it to be. In his later years, Borges made a point of naming Macedonio as an early influence whom, in the exuberance of his youth, Borges imitated "to the point of plagiarism." At the same time, Borges denied that Macedonio possessed any literary talent or importance, reinforcing the long-held perception of the older man as a kind of local Socratic philosopher, specific to Argentina and constitutive of an Argentine mythic dimension. Recent studies by Ana Camblong, Julio Prieto, Daniel Attala and Todd S. Garth, among others, indicate that Macedonio's literary impact on Borges was far more profound and enduring than Borges ever admitted, and that Borges went to great pains to hide this influence. Many of the most fundamental concepts underpinning Borges's fiction come directly from Macedonio. These include the questioning of space and time and their continuity; the confusion of dreaming and wakefulness; the unreliability of memory and the importance of forgetfulness; the slipperiness (or nonexistence) of personal identity; the denial of originality and the emphasis on texts as being recyclings and translations of prior texts; and the questioning and commingling of the roles of author, reader, editor and commentator. These influences extend to thematic material. Such themes include the conceit of an alternative, fictional dimension, elaborated anonymously in collaboration, that invades the known, tangible world (Borges's "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" and Macedonio's campaign to transform Buenos Aires by turning it into a novel, a component of his Museo de la Novela de la Eterna); and the hermetic world of immigrant working girls who must negotiate the city on their own, secret terms based purely on instinct and passion (Borges's "Emma Zunz" and Macedonio's Adriana Buenos Aires). While it is evident both men were inspired by ideas they read in the works of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century philosophers (specifically Schopenhauer and Bergson), there is little question that the two Argentines developed some of their most characteristic and enduring ideas together, in conversation, throughout the 1920s. Macedonio appears explicitly in Borges's "Dialogue about a Dialogue," in which the two discuss the immortality of the soul. The relationship between these two men began in earnest in 1921, when Borges returned to Buenos Aires with his family after their extended stay in Switzerland (and travels elsewhere in Europe), where he had completed his education. Borges's father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam, had been a close companion to Macedonio and attended law school with him. Upon graduating law school, Macedonio, the elder Borges, and companion Julio Molina y Vedia hatched a plan to found a utopian colony based on the anarchist principles of ElisEe Reclus. This plan apparently never went beyond an exploratory visit the three made around 1897 to a plantation the Molina y Vedia family owned in the Argentine Chaco, near the Bolivian border. During the years prior to 1921, Macedonio married, started a law practice and went about raising a family. This idyll came to an end when Macedonio's wife, Elena de Obieta, died suddenly in 1920. Macedonio then shuttered his law practice, dismantled his household and, about the same time as he renewed his friendship with the now adult Jorge Luis Borges, embarked on a life as an idiosyncratic writer-philosopher. Borges and other members of the generacion martinfierrista were drawn to Macedonio as a mentor and figurehead who could serve as an anchor to the nascent Buenos Aires avant-garde and a foil to Leopoldo Lugones, leader of the modernista movement of a generation earlier. Macedonio made noteworthy, if infrequent, contributions to the literary gatherings of the ultraísta movement and the related "Florida" group of writers and artists. Borges was an active participant in Macedonio's intimate tertulias, both in Buenos Aires bars and cafEs and in a shack Macedonio sometimes borrowed on a friend's ranch outside the city. He also was one of the collaborators in Macedonio's burlesque campaigns for the presidency of the Argentine Republic (in 1921 and again in 1927), episodes which apparently gave rise to the analogous fictional campaign in Museo. In addition, Borges was responsible for urging Macedonio to publish at least one of the two book-length works printed in Macedonio's lifetime, No toda es vigilia la de los ojos abiertos, in 1926. The relationship between Borges and Macedonio appears to have begun to deteriorate around 1927 or 1928, when correspondence (published and analyzed by Carlos García) indicates a rift between them. This is also about the time that Borges made his famous break with the avant-garde and pronounced the death of Argentine ultraísmo, essentially forcing the closure of its most important publication, the little magazine Martín Fierro, after its sixteenth issue. The two events may not be coincidental. From 1927 onward, Borges not only started to write, publish and promote his characteristic short fiction (beginning with "Hombre de la esquina rosada"), he aggressively renounced his prior aesthetic production and put considerable energy into burying it forever. A number of sources (Donald Shaw in particular) suggest that Borges began to regard most of his early writings, and the ideas behind them, as potentially pernicious, especially in the hands of nationalists. Supporting this notion is the fact that many of Borges's stories in which Macedonio's influence is most evident imply a warning against concepts and principles Macedonio represented: absolute relativism; the priority of thought, emotion and imagination over a nominal existence; and the implicit heroism of a hermetic existence.
"This novel should come not with blurbs but with a hazardous-material warning: There's bone and gristle here, be ready for that taste in your mouth you can't spit out. First words to last, it's strong stuff." - James Sallis, author of Drive. The first novel to appear in English by the "subway janitor by night, novelist by day," who began his writing career while an undocumented immigrant in the United States, Like Flies from Afar will demonstrate why K. Ferrari is already an award-winning star of international crime fiction. A hardboiled noir thriller, a whodunit, a black comedy, and a filthy catalog of the excesses of wealth, this is a Jim Thompson novel for the globalized world. Mr. Luis Machi is an unforgettably loathsome and hilarious Argentinian oligarch who made his fortune collaborating with the worst elements of society - parasites, pushers, and secret policemen. He has a cocaine habit, a collection of three hundred ties, ten million dollars in the bank, and a bloody corpse in the trunk of his BMW . . . but as far as the body goes, he's completely innocent. He has no idea who the victim could be, or who among his many, many enemies might be trying to frame him for murder, and he doesn't have much time to find out. The profane and uproarious Like Flies from Afar follows Machi through twenty-four hours of his eventful life - one full day in which to solve this mystery, or at least to make sure he isn't the one to take the fall.
K. Ferrari was born in Buenos Aires in 1972. He is the author of more than five novels, including Like Flies from Afar, collections of short fiction, and a book of nonfiction. Ferrari works as a janitor for the Buenos Aires metro at the Pasteur-Amia station on line B. In the 1990s, he was deported from the United States, where he and his wife were trying to find work.
In ECCENTRIC NEIGHBORHOODS, National Book Award finalist Rosario FerrE tells the story of two families whose lives, loves, and steamy intrigues coincided with the demise of Puerto Rico's plantation society and the rise of the nouveaux riches. Elvira Vernet comes from a male-dominated family of merchants living in the Puerto Rican town of La Concordia. Her father, Santiago Vernet, and his four sons help transform Puerto Rico from a bucolic island where hunger is a part of the landscape into a bustling industrial society with all of its contradictions and attendant ills. Handsome, eloquent, and enormously successful, he can't help but charm his only daughter. Yet, in understanding her obsession with her father, Elvira must first come to terms with her mother, who died many years before, and whose family, the Rivas de Santillanas, had roots in an old plantation culture that could not survive the era of mechanization. ECCENTRIC NEIGHBORHOODS is an attempt to lay bare the psychological conflicts that determine the relationships between mothers and daughters, and it is also the story of Puerto Rico's transformation, from the beginning of the century, into a spearhead of the Caribbean. Lush, vibrant, and disarmingly funny, Eccentric Neighborhoods confirms Rosario FerrE's reputation as one of the most colorful and captivating novelists in the Latin American tradition. Praise for the novel HOUSE ON THE LAGOON by Rosario Ferre - ‘Colorful characters . . . playful, baroque a family saga in the manner of Gabriel Garcia Márquez.' - SUZANNE RUTA. THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW. ‘Epic, inspired, absorbing, humorous, ironic . . . a five-generation chronicle with abundant dirty laundry and assorted skeletons. . Rosario FerrE is one of Latin America's most gifted novelists.' - EDWARD RIVERS, THE WASHINGTON POST ROOK WORLD. ‘Maintaining her balance with all the delicate power of a dancer on point, Rosario FerrE here elegantly manipulates a daunting complex of themes into a narrative that is both coherent and provocative . . . stylish and wise.' - JAMES POLK, CHICAGO TRIBUNE. ROSARIO FERRE is the author of THE YOUNGEST DOLL, SWEET DIAMOND DUST, and THE HOUSE ON THE LAGOON (FSG, 1995), among many other works. She is a frequent lecturer in the United States and lives in Puerto Rico. . .
Dr. Rosario Ferre (born September 28, 1938) is a Puerto Rican writer, poet, and essayist. Her father, Luis A. Ferre, was the third elected Governor of Puerto Rico and the founding father of the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico. When her mother, Lorenza Ramírez de Arellano, died in 1970 during her father's term as Governor, Rosario fulfilled the duties of First Lady until 1972. She was the recipient of the ‘Liberatur Prix' award from the Frankfurt Book Fair for ‘Kristallzucker', the German translation of ‘Maldito Amor'.
FLIGHT OF THE SWAN is the irrepressibly charming tale of a world-famous Russian prima ballerina touring in Puerto Rico in 1917. Because of extraordinary political upheaval at home, her troupe is forced to remain in the Caribbean for an eventful three months. During that time, Madame falls desperately in love with Diamantino, a young local revolutionary, and their passionate affair threatens the stability - indeed, the very survival - of the small, intense, and highly competitive world of the corps de ballet. Narrated by Madame's devotee Masha, FLIGHT OF THE SWAN explores the complexities of love and betrayal, of personal sacrifice for the sake of public art. Gradually Masha comes to recognize that in spite of what she sees as Madame's propensity toward pretense and vanity, the prima ballerina's true love is dance, and she is prepared to forsake almost everything for it. But Madame's tenacious commitment to this noble ideal demands nothing less from her acolytes, eventually forcing Masha to question what choices she herself is willing to make when it comes to her own loyalties and loves, while raising the question of where true happiness lies. A novel grounded in Puerto Rican history and one that soars above it, FLIGHT OF THE SWAN is at once playful, provocative, compassionate, and compelling, and confirms Rosario Ferre's reputation as ‘one of Latin America's most gifted novelists' (Edward Rivera, The Washington Post Book World). . ROSARIO FERRE is the author of THE HOUSE ON THE LAGOON - a National Book Award finalist - and ECCENTRIC NEIGHBORHOODS. She is a frequent lecturer in the United States and lives in Puerto Rico. . .
Dr. Rosario Ferre (born September 28, 1938) is a Puerto Rican writer, poet, and essayist. Her father, Luis A. Ferre, was the third elected Governor of Puerto Rico and the founding father of the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico. When her mother, Lorenza Ramírez de Arellano, died in 1970 during her father's term as Governor, Rosario fulfilled the duties of First Lady until 1972. She was the recipient of the ‘Liberatur Prix' award from the Frankfurt Book Fair for ‘Kristallzucker', the German translation of ‘Maldito Amor'.
Dona Elvira sang her beloved ‘Maldito Amor' frequently after she met and married Don Julio and he became administrator of the diamond Dust Sugar Mills. With the birth of Ubaldino, the dynasty was founded and the family was thrown into the turbulence of Puerto Rico's early twentieth-century history. Rosario Ferre brings forth a vibrant cast of colorful and often eccentric characters all under the sway of ‘Maldito Amor'. In addition to the title story are three others richly peopled with her unique vision of island life.
Dr. Rosario Ferre (born September 28, 1938) is a Puerto Rican writer, poet, and essayist. Her father, Luis A. Ferre, was the third elected Governor of Puerto Rico and the founding father of the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico. When her mother, Lorenza Ramírez de Arellano, died in 1970 during her father's term as Governor, Rosario fulfilled the duties of First Lady until 1972. She was the recipient of the ‘Liberatur Prix' award from the Frankfurt Book Fair for ‘Kristallzucker', the German translation of ‘Maldito Amor'.
Novelist, short-story master, poet, and critic, Rosario Ferre is Puerto Rico's preeminent literary figure, and her new novel is destined to establish her a s a writer of international renown. THE HOUSE ON THE LAGOON is the story of Quintin Mendizabal and his wife, Isabel Monfort, Isabel, a fledgling novelist, is writing a multigenerational novel about the history of their families, of Spanish and Corsican origins, and their arrival in Puerto Rico. Her ambition is great, but her sense of history comically weak. When Quintin, who happens to be a historian, finds her manuscript, he begins to write alternate chapters expressing his own point of view. Isabel colorfully weaves a tapestry of life among the ruling classes of Puerto Rico, with their passionate debates about independence, statehood, racism; their links to Spain and Europe; and their ambivalence toward the United States. But as she draws a self-portrait of her marriage as well, it becomes clear that her relationship with her husband is far from picture-perfect. Quintin becomes incensed at Isabel's version of events, at her audacity in writing a book, and an autobiographical one at that. And Isabel, in her struggle to forge a new identity and free herself from her coercive marriage and the constraints of the culture, precipitates a conflagration that threatens to consume the entire family. A shattering story of love and death, privilege and servitude, THE HOUSE ON THE LAGOON is a brilliant evocation of Puerto Rico in the twentieth century. . .
Dr. Rosario Ferre (born September 28, 1938) is a Puerto Rican writer, poet, and essayist. Her father, Luis A. Ferre, was the third elected Governor of Puerto Rico and the founding father of the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico. When her mother, Lorenza Ramírez de Arellano, died in 1970 during her father's term as Governor, Rosario fulfilled the duties of First Lady until 1972. She was the recipient of the ‘Liberatur Prix' award from the Frankfurt Book Fair for ‘Kristallzucker', the German translation of ‘Maldito Amor'.
Novelist, short-story master, poet, and critic, Rosario Ferre is Puerto Rico's preeminent literary figure, and her new novel is destined to establish her a s a writer of international renown. THE HOUSE ON THE LAGOON is the story of Quintin Mendizabal and his wife, Isabel Monfort, Isabel, a fledgling novelist, is writing a multigenerational novel about the history of their families, of Spanish and Corsican origins, and their arrival in Puerto Rico. Her ambition is great, but her sense of history comically weak. When Quintin, who happens to be a historian, finds her manuscript, he begins to write alternate chapters expressing his own point of view. Isabel colorfully weaves a tapestry of life among the ruling classes of Puerto Rico, with their passionate debates about independence, statehood, racism; their links to Spain and Europe; and their ambivalence toward the United States. But as she draws a self-portrait of her marriage as well, it becomes clear that her relationship with her husband is far from picture-perfect. Quintin becomes incensed at Isabel's version of events, at her audacity in writing a book, and an autobiographical one at that. And Isabel, in her struggle to forge a new identity and free herself from her coercive marriage and the constraints of the culture, precipitates a conflagration that threatens to consume the entire family. A shattering story of love and death, privilege and servitude, THE HOUSE ON THE LAGOON is a brilliant evocation of Puerto Rico in the twentieth century. . .
Dr. Rosario Ferre (born September 28, 1938) is a Puerto Rican writer, poet, and essayist. Her father, Luis A. Ferre, was the third elected Governor of Puerto Rico and the founding father of the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico. When her mother, Lorenza Ramírez de Arellano, died in 1970 during her father's term as Governor, Rosario fulfilled the duties of First Lady until 1972. She was the recipient of the ‘Liberatur Prix' award from the Frankfurt Book Fair for ‘Kristallzucker', the German translation of ‘Maldito Amor'.
A gentle maiden aunt who has been victimized for years unexpectedly retaliates through her talent for making life-sized dolls filled with honey. ‘The Youngest Doll', based on a family anecdote, is a stunning literary expression of Rosario Ferre's feminist and social concerns. It is the premier story in a collection that was originally published in Spanish in 1976 as Papeles de Pandora and is now translated into English by the author. The daughter of a former governor of Puerto Rico, Ferre portrays women who are loosening the constraints that have bound them to a patriarchal culture. Anger takes creative rather than polemical form in ten stories that started Ferre on her way to becoming a leading writer in Latin America. The upper-middle-class women in THE YOUNGEST DOLL, mostly married to macho men, rebel against their doll-like existence or retreat into fantasy; those without money or the right skin color are even more oppressed. In terms of power and influence, these women stand in the same relation to men as Puerto Rico does to the United States, and Ferre stretches artistic boundaries in writing about their situation. The stories, moving from the realistic to the nightmarish, are deeply felt, full of irony and black humor, often experimental in form. The imagery is striking: an architect dreams about a beautiful bridge that ‘would open and close its arches like alligators making love'; a Mercedes Benz ‘shines in the dark like a chromium rhinoceros.' One story, ‘The Sleeping Beauty', is a collage of letters, announcements, and photo captions that allows chilling conclusions to be drawn from what is not said. The collection includes Ferre's discussion of ‘When Women Love Men', her story about a prostitute and a society lady who unite in order to survive, and one that illustrates the woman writer's ‘art of dissembling anger through irony.' In closing, she considers how her experiences as a Latin American woman with ties to the United States has brought to her writing a dual cultural perspective. . ROSARIO FERRE now lives in Washington , D.C. Her works include a 1986 novel that she translated into English as SWEET DIAMOND DUST (1989) and a book of fables, SONATINAS (1989).
Dr. Rosario Ferre (born September 28, 1938) is a Puerto Rican writer, poet, and essayist. Her father, Luis A. Ferre, was the third elected Governor of Puerto Rico and the founding father of the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico. When her mother, Lorenza Ramírez de Arellano, died in 1970 during her father's term as Governor, Rosario fulfilled the duties of First Lady until 1972. She was the recipient of the ‘Liberatur Prix' award from the Frankfurt Book Fair for ‘Kristallzucker', the German translation of ‘Maldito Amor'.
In the depths of the Brazilian jungle, cut off from civilization and surrounded by the twin dangers of savages and fever, lie the great rubber plantations of the Amazon. The avenues of trees, hostile and unguarded, stretch from the little clearings on the river miles into the swampy interior. Along them the tappers go, tending the trees and collecting the raw gum. This setting, beautiful and strange, forms the background for JUNGLE. It is the story of a young man, a university student, exiled from Europe and thrust suddenly into the unfamiliar and almost hopeless life of the tapper. The account of his struggle against his surroundings, his rise from the slavery of the avenues to a position of trust and eventually to freedom, provides exciting reading in an entirely new field. JUNGLE is vivid with details of first-hand information. Senhor de Castro knows the hopes and desires which occupy the workers in these little colonies, the feverish strain of life far from civilization, and the frequently ugly and perverse outbursts of passions which result from their unnatural lives. He describes them with a sympathetic understanding which cannot fail to move and interest the reader.
Jose Maria Ferreira de Castro (Oliveira de AzemEis, May 24, 1898 - Oporto, June 29, 1974) was a Portuguese writer and journalist. At age 12, he immigrated to Brazil, where his work at a rubber plantation for the next four years would be the inspiration for his most famous book, A Selva (1930), which was adapted for a 2002 film of the same title (released in English as The Forest). He returned to Portugal in 1919, and started working as a journalist. He was a noted oppositionist to Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. He was also famous for his travel literature, namely his book A Volta ao Mundo, recounting his travels around the world in the outset of World War II.
Early science fiction has often been associated almost exclusively with Northern industrialized nations. In this groundbreaking exploration of the science fiction written in Latin America prior to 1920, Rachel Haywood Ferreira argues that science fiction has always been a global genre. She traces how and why the genre quickly reached Latin America and analyzes how writers in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico adapted science fiction to reflect their own realities. Among the texts discussed are one of the first defenses of Darwinism in Latin America, a tale of a time-traveling history book, and a Latin American Frankenstein. Latin American science fiction writers have long been active participants in the sf literary tradition, expanding the limits of the genre and deepening our perception of the role of science and technology in the Latin American imagination. The book includes a chronological bibliography of science fiction published from 1775 to 1920 in all Latin American countries.
RACHEL HAYWOOD FERREIRA is an associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Iowa State University. Her articles on early and golden age Latin American science fiction have appeared in Science Fiction Studies, Hispania, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, and Extrapolation.
Figueiredo's version of the Amphitryon legend.
Guilherme Figueiredo (1915–1997) was a Brazilian dramatist. He is best known for his play The Fox and the Grapes (A raposa e as uvas) in 1953 about Aesop's life.
Shows more interest in ideas than dramatic effect.
Guilherme Figueiredo (1915–1997) was a Brazilian dramatist. He is best known for his play The Fox and the Grapes (A raposa e as uvas) in 1953 about Aesop's life.
These are the recollections of Alexandre - of his life, his death-in-life, and his ultimate death as they are played out against the mobile tapestry of the valley where he was born. The valley itself, in the backlands of the state of Bahia, Brazil, alternates at different stages in Alexandre's consciousness between reality and symbol. It swings from a harsh regional specificity to become the panorama of all human life, its endless, eroding wind the devouring hostility of all environments and its pain the pain of every human being in the face of his own brutality and that of others. Throughout the novel Alexandre's mind ranges from sharp awareness, through hallucination, to oblivion (‘a man dies while alive,' says Jeronimo, his mentor), and back again as he experiences the violent, obtuse phenomena of life in the valley - his universe and ours. This latter-day Lazarus leaves the resisting hills and black sky once only, hounded by the valley dwellers who believe he has murdered his wife, her father, and her brother. Yet despite his awareness of the horror of the valley and his intuition of something beyond it, it is precisely his contact with the gentler existence to which he escapes that forces Alexandre to recognize his nature for what it is. Turning his back on a greater and more varied range of feeling and experience, he chooses the narrow ferocity of the valley, to which he returns to die the final death for which the earlier deaths have prepared him.
Adonias Aguiar Filho (November 27, 1915 - August 2, 1990) was a writer and novelist from Bahia, Brazil, and a member of the Academia Brasileira de Letras. Filho was born in Itajuípe, Brazil, the son of Adonias Aguiar and Rachel Bastos de Aguiar. In 1936, 2 years after finishing high school in Salvador, he moved from the south of Bahia to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's capital at the time, where he continued his career in Journalism, previously started in Salvador. He worked in renowned newspapers such as Correio da Manhã as well as a literary critic for Cadernos da ‘Hora Presente', from São Paulo em 1937, ‘A Manhã', from 1944 to 1945, besides ‘Jornal de Letras' (from 1955 to 1960) and ‘Diário de Notícias' (1958 to 1960). In São Paulo, he also collaborated with O Estado de S. Paulo and ‘Folha da Manhã'. Between 1946 and 1950, he ran the book publishing company ‘A Noite'. He was the director of the Serviço Nacional de Teatro, in 1954, and director of the Biblioteca Nacional from 1961 to 1971. At the same time, he worked at the Agência Nacional at the MinistErio da Justiça. In 1966 he was elected vice-president of the Associação Brasileira de Imprensa and in the following year, member of the Conselho Federal de Cultura. He was re-elected in 1969, 1971 and 1973. He was the presidente of the Associação Brasileira de Imprensa in 1972 and president of the Conselho Federal de Cultura from 1977 to 1990, when he died. As a writer, Adonias Aguiar Filho searched for inspiration for his fiction in the ‘zona cacaueira' (Cocoa plantations) close to IlhEus, back to his origins in the South of Bahia, where he was born and raised. This ambiance is noticed soon in his first novel, ‘Os servos da morte', published in 1946. In the romance novel, that reality served as an opportunity to recreate a world charged with symbolism, in the book passages as well as in the characters, bearing a tragic sense to life and the view of the world. He was part of the Grupo Festa. The use of original and sophisticated resources, adapted to the internal violence of his characters gave Adonias Filho a fundamental role at the Literature group that created the 3rd phase of Brazilian Modernism in 1945, which was based in a return to certain more formal disciplines of writing. They were concerned about writing, on one hand, using less formal research of language, though trying to expand their regional meanings to a universal paradigm. Their work is still an integral influence in contemporary Brazilian literature and fiction. He was honored with the 21st chair at the Brazilian Academy of Letters (Academia Brasileira de Letras) at the age of 53, May 23, 1969. The title was handed to him by his fellow writer also from Bahia, Jorge Amado. His literary work was translated to English, German, Spanish, French and Slovac. He died in IlhEus shortly after his wife died.
A strong statement against the cruel affects of war.
RODOLFO L. FONSECA always wanted to be a writer, but his father insisted on a more practical career - engineering. Born 58 years ago in Uruguay and educated at the University of Montevideo, Harvard and the University of Berlin, he returned to Montevideo to take the Chair in Physics at the Department of Engineering of the University, and later he built Uruguay's telephone system. Now he is devoting his full time to writing. TOWER OF IVORY is his first novel. It received the Jose JanEs International Prize, awarded by a jury which included Somerset Maugham and AndrE Maurois.
A story of martyrdom, love and faith. Winner of the Jose Jane's Award. Fifteen women boarded the boat at Shanghai. One by one, they filed aboard, silently, their faces lowered. Only the rhythmic rustle of their skirts betrayed their passing. They were like great birds brought down by the soul-shattering experience which is the explosive central theme of this novel. These women had shared the illumination of a vocation (they were missionary nuns); now they shared the irrevocable memory of horror . . . the end of one life ... the beginning of another in which each would have to make her choice again . . . as a woman. Mother Gabriela did her best for them, and she was a strong woman, full of calm energy, with an enquiring mind and a captivating charm. Still, each of her charges had her own hard choice to make. Sister Praxedes had, perhaps, the most difficult role of all. Even before the birth of her daughter she was torn by the conflict between the universal love to which she was pledged and the instinctive mother love she already felt. Sister Juana, with no more reason than any of the others, was nevertheless one of those who tear up the page if they have made a single blot. Just as she had wanted, passionately, to suffer for her love of the Lord, so she now wanted others to suffer for love of her. These three are central figures in an intense drama that moves outside the quiet peace of the nuns' retreat at Villa Cesi and telescopes the glittering life of Europe's cosmopolitan set, moving restlessly from love city to city . . . love to love. The result is a novel of unusual force, written with delicacy, tolerance, and warmth.
RODOLFO L. FONSECA always wanted to be a writer, but his father insisted on a more practical career - engineering. Born 58 years ago in Uruguay and educated at the University of Montevideo, Harvard and the University of Berlin, he returned to Montevideo to take the Chair in Physics at the Department of Engineering of the University, and later he built Uruguay's telephone system. Now he is devoting his full time to writing. TOWER OF IVORY is his first novel. It received the Jose JanEs International Prize, awarded by a jury which included Somerset Maugham and AndrE Maurois.
On a dead-end street in Rio, Delfina Delamare, socialite wife of multimillionaire Eugenio, is found shot in the heart. The original verdict of suicide is soon dismissed, but this is no ordinary murder. Delfina's jewels are still on her body, and whoever pulled the trigger carefully unbuttoned her blouse first, then rebuttoned it, leaving a serene, scarcely blemished corpse. In the glove compartment is a new novel, The Lovers, with a personal inscription from the author, Gustavo Flavio. He is the first suspect. Gustavo, one of Brazil's leading writers, has stolen Gustave Flaubert's name, not his life-style. Foutre ton encrier, says Flaubert, but Gustavo doesn't screw his inkwell. The writing medium he prefers is the computer, a TRS 80, and as for abstinence in the interests of creativity, being a womanizer and a glutton has never interfered with his scheduled book per year. It is sexual deprivation, rather, and the intrusions of police inspector Guedes that are interrupting progress on Gustavo's Bufo & Spallanzani, due at the publishers shortly. For Gustavo has a past he'd rather not divulge: he is Ivan Canabrava, once a bumbling insurance investigator who discovered the secrets of toad serum emitted from the species Bufo marinus. Thrown into a prison for the criminally insane (he believed too fiercely in the quest for truth), Ivan escaped disguised as a priest, and for twenty years he has lived the life of a hedonist, gaining weight and notoriety in direct proportion. First published in Brazil in 1985, Bufo & Spallanzani was a huge best-seller there, now in its thirty-third printing, and has been one of Europe's most successful Latin American novels in translation. It has taken a Latin American as acrobatically agile as Fonseca to answer the question: ‘Can a writer successfully narrate a detective novel in which he himself is one of the principal suspects?' . RUBEM FONSECA is a former newspaperman, policeman, teacher, lawyer, and business executive who has become, in the last few years, Brazil's most popular literary writer. High Art, his first novel translated into English, was published here in 1986.
Rubem Fonseca (born May 11, 1925) is a Brazilian writer. He was born in Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais, but he has lived most of his life in Rio de Janeiro. In 1952, he started his career as a low-level cop and, later became a police commissioner, one of the highest ranks in the civil police of Brazil. Following the steps of American novelist Thomas Pynchon, a close friend of Fonseca, he refuses to give interviews and feels strongly about maintaining his privacy. His writing is pretty dark and gritty, filled with violence and sexual content, and it usually happens in an urban setting. He says that a writer should have the courage to show what most people are afraid to say. His work is considered groundbreaking in Brazilian literature, up until then mostly focused on rural settings and usually treating cities with less interest. Authors from the rising generation of Brazilian writers, such as Patrícia Melo or Luis Ruffato, have stated that Fonseca's writing has influenced their work. He started his career by writing short stories, considered by some critics as his strongest literary creations. His first popular novel was A Grande Arte (High Art), but ‘Agosto' is usually considered his best work. In 2003, he won the Camões Prize, considered to be the most important award in the Portuguese language.
HIGH ART is a crime/thriller story set in Brazil that is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler, with vivid descriptions of the urban landscape and interiors and a fast-paced dialogue. A criminal lawyer in Rio named Mandrake is working on a case involving the murder of two prostitutes. a case that grows and has implications far beyond what it first appears to be. There are other murders and also Mandrake's continual entanglements with different women. Against an erotic and violent background the story unfolds with the discovery of a mysterious organization that traffics in cocaine out of Bolivia. The novel gives a stark portrait of Brazilian society from the European postcolonial oligarchy (complete with incest, madness, political-financial wheeling and dealing) to the extremes of poverty both urban and in the interior. Finally the pieces of the puzzle come together. though leaving still an element of mystery as Mandrake finds solace with the nubile Bebel.
Rubem Fonseca (born May 11, 1925) is a Brazilian writer. He was born in Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais, but he has lived most of his life in Rio de Janeiro. In 1952, he started his career as a low-level cop and, later became a police commissioner, one of the highest ranks in the civil police of Brazil. Following the steps of American novelist Thomas Pynchon, a close friend of Fonseca, he refuses to give interviews and feels strongly about maintaining his privacy. His writing is pretty dark and gritty, filled with violence and sexual content, and it usually happens in an urban setting. He says that a writer should have the courage to show what most people are afraid to say. His work is considered groundbreaking in Brazilian literature, up until then mostly focused on rural settings and usually treating cities with less interest. Authors from the rising generation of Brazilian writers, such as Patrícia Melo or Luis Ruffato, have stated that Fonseca's writing has influenced their work. He started his career by writing short stories, considered by some critics as his strongest literary creations. His first popular novel was A Grande Arte (High Art), but ‘Agosto' is usually considered his best work. In 2003, he won the Camões Prize, considered to be the most important award in the Portuguese language.
Most widely admired for his short fiction, THE TAKER AND OTHER STORIES is Fonseca's first collection to appear in English translation, and it ranges across his oeuvre, exploring the sights and sounds of the modern landscape of Rio de Janeiro. Rubem Fonseca's Rio is a city at war, a city whose vast disparities - in wealth, social standing, and prestige - are untenable. In the stories of The Takei; rich and poor live in an uneasy equilibrium, where only overwhelming force can maintain order, and violence and deception are essential tools of survival. Whether recounting the story of a businessman who runs over pedestrians to let off steam, a serial killer being pushed to ever greater crimes by his bourgeois lover, the desperate poor rushing to butcher a cow that has been killed in a traffic accident, or a man seeking out confirmation for a past that his friends deny, Fonseca repeatedly reaffirms his status as one of the purest storytellers on the contemporary Brazilian literary scene.
Rubem Fonseca (born May 11, 1925) is a Brazilian writer. He was born in Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais, but he has lived most of his life in Rio de Janeiro. In 1952, he started his career as a low-level cop and, later became a police commissioner, one of the highest ranks in the civil police of Brazil. Following the steps of American novelist Thomas Pynchon, a close friend of Fonseca, he refuses to give interviews and feels strongly about maintaining his privacy. His writing is pretty dark and gritty, filled with violence and sexual content, and it usually happens in an urban setting. He says that a writer should have the courage to show what most people are afraid to say. His work is considered groundbreaking in Brazilian literature, up until then mostly focused on rural settings and usually treating cities with less interest. Authors from the rising generation of Brazilian writers, such as Patrícia Melo or Luis Ruffato, have stated that Fonseca's writing has influenced their work. He started his career by writing short stories, considered by some critics as his strongest literary creations. His first popular novel was A Grande Arte (High Art), but ‘Agosto' is usually considered his best work. In 2003, he won the Camões Prize, considered to be the most important award in the Portuguese language.
A grieving film director in Rio- the nameless narrator-is visited by a Carnival dancer who leaves him with a box full of precious gems. A few days later, the dancer is dead, a man in a raincoat lurks outside the director's door, and a mysterious German producer surfaces with an irresistible offer: to make a film based on a story by the director's favorite author, the great Russian writer Isaac Babel. From this elemental framework the adventure begins. Dodging a horde of local smugglers, the director soon finds himself fleeing to Berlin, where a web of literary and political skullduggery awaits him. Rumor has it that an unpublished Babel manuscript has survived the Stalinist purges and is being shopped by a lovesick Soviet bureaucrat. Forsaking caution, money, and at times his own sanity, the director makes a foray into Fast Berlin in pursuit of the one true thing that still stirs his heart. Already a bestseller in Italy, Mexico, and Fonseca's native Brazil, VAST EMOTIONS AND IMPERFECT THOUGHTS is a smart, fast-paced adventure. It is also a piercing account of a man whose life is resurrected by art just when tragedy threatens to paralyze him.
Rubem Fonseca (born May 11, 1925) is a Brazilian writer. He was born in Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais, but he has lived most of his life in Rio de Janeiro. In 1952, he started his career as a low-level cop and, later became a police commissioner, one of the highest ranks in the civil police of Brazil. Following the steps of American novelist Thomas Pynchon, a close friend of Fonseca, he refuses to give interviews and feels strongly about maintaining his privacy. His writing is pretty dark and gritty, filled with violence and sexual content, and it usually happens in an urban setting. He says that a writer should have the courage to show what most people are afraid to say. His work is considered groundbreaking in Brazilian literature, up until then mostly focused on rural settings and usually treating cities with less interest. Authors from the rising generation of Brazilian writers, such as Patrícia Melo or Luis Ruffato, have stated that Fonseca's writing has influenced their work. He started his career by writing short stories, considered by some critics as his strongest literary creations. His first popular novel was A Grande Arte (High Art), but ‘Agosto' is usually considered his best work. In 2003, he won the Camões Prize, considered to be the most important award in the Portuguese language.
All the places where those people lived are now submerged forever in silence and darkness at the bottom of a lake . . . There as the seamstress Dona Zulmira, whose husband had to be watched like a hawk lest he wander naked from the house; the rancher Rodolfo, who could not stay away from his neighbor's wife; Eugenio, the mama's boy with an unexpected head for business; the little girl Elisa, who plucked the feathers from her father's singing bird but couldn't say why; the young husband Paulo Roberto, whose childhood interest in girls was branded on his flesh in the form of two deep scars; the schoolteacher Dona Laisa who interrupted her own bridal procession to discipline her students; the hotel owner Adolfo whose affair with a prostitute ended when she drank some poison just before making love to him for the last time, and so many others.
OSWALDO FRANCA, JR., was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1936. He is the owner of a fleet of taxis as well as the author of seven novels. .
Jorge, the captivating hero and narrator of this epic journey through the Brazilian interior, is a truckdriver. His boss has ordered him to rescue a fleet of trucks stranded on the way to Belo Horizonte. No matter what happens, they must arrive in time for an inauguration ceremony, or the boss will be in trouble. Jorge discovers that the recently constructed highway to Belo Horizonte is washed out, the lead driver has quit, and all along the way torrential rains have made roads and bridges impassable. But Jorge is not to be discouraged. With courage and good humor he leads his fleet of brightly painted trucks along narrow back roads, across swollen streams, and through sleepy country towns. What emerges from this landscape of gas stations, roadside bars and whorehouses is a distinctive fellowship of the road, a fellowship that has inspired novelists as disparate as de Maupassant and Kerouac. In Jorge, the author has created an unforgettable character, at once typically Brazilian and universal. By the time the novel reaches its climax, with Jorge toying with the idea of getting back at his boss through the boss's wife, we have no doubt what Jorge's decision will be. Through the pages of this novel we have hitched a ride with a remarkable human being - and a friend . . . ‘A unique, original novelist, like no one else.' - Jorge Amado .
OSWALDO FRANCA, JR., was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1936. He is the owner of a fleet of taxis as well as the author of seven novels. THE LONG HAUL won Brazil's most prestigious literary prize when it was published. A bestseller, it is now in its fourth edition and is considered a classic. THOMAS COLCHIE most recently translated THE KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN by Manuel Puig and THE EX-MAGICIAN AND OTHER STORIES by Murilo Rubião.
‘You can always figure out why something happens; all you have to do is take a good long look and give it some thought and you discover why. Don't you think?' Maybe it wasn't the best deal. Alfonso had even agreed to keep on four incompetent workers, just to pay off what was owed to the health fund, and avoid trouble. But once the garage was his, he was determined to run it better than any of the places he'd worked at before. Nothing was going to stop him from making a success of it, not even the stabbing death of a worker. ‘Hard times don't mean a thing. What matters is that you don't lose heart.' THE MAN IN THE MONKEY SUIT portrays the struggle of a man who will not give up, as he spars with co-workers and former business partners, the women he could have (and did), the one he couldn't have (but wanted), and finally, the police. . Oswaldo Franca, Junior is among the most acclaimed of the new South American authors. Born in Brazil in 1936, he was expelled from its Air Force for refusing to participate in the 1964 coup. A succession of odd jobs followed, including the truckdriving that provided the background for his first novel, The Long Haul, which won the prestigious Walmap award in 1967 Franca's ten novels and collected short stories led Jorge Amado to proclaim him ‘a uniquely original novelist, incomparable among us, the most Brazilian of us all.'
Oswaldo Franca, Junior is among the most acclaimed of the new South American authors. Born in Brazil in 1936, he was expelled from its Air Force for refusing to participate in the 1964 coup. A succession of odd jobs followed, including the truckdriving that provided the background for his first novel, The Long Haul, which won the prestigious Walmap award in 1967 Franca's ten novels and collected short stories led Jorge Amado to proclaim him ‘a uniquely original novelist, incomparable among us, the most Brazilian of us all.'
From one of Colombia's leading novelists, a tragicomic story of unrequited love and a view of New York through the wide eyes of an illegal immigrant PARADISE TRAVEl recounts the adventures of Marlon Cruz, a naïve young man from Medellín, Colombia, who agrees to accompany the beautiful, ambitious woman he loves to New York. On their first night in Queens, Marlon and Reina lose each other, thus initiating Marlon's descent into the underbelly of our country. A leader of the gritty-realist movement known as McOndo, Jorge Franco evokes the follies and pains of unrequited love at the same time that he explores deeper inequalities between North and South America. Moving between lower-middle-class Colombia and immigrant New York (specifically, the Jackson Heights neighborhood), PARADISE TRAVEL is an exciting work from a rising star, celebrated by Gabriel García Márquez as ‘one of those to whom I should like to pass the torch' of Colombian fiction.
Jorge Franco Ramos (born 1962 in Medellín) is a writer from Colombia, known primarily for his novel Rosario Tijeras, which has been adapted for film and television. Son of Olga Stella Ramos and Humberto Franco, Jorge Franco Ramos studied film at the London Film School and literature at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, but did not finish his studies. He began his writing career in 1991 and obtained his first award, the Pedro Gomez Valderrama, in 1996 for the short story collection Maldito amor (Cursed love). His first novel, Mala noche (Bad night), won the national Ciudad de Pereira competition of 1997. His second novel Rosario Tijeras was published in 1999 and won the Premio Beca Nacional Colcultura and the Premio yermen pajaro of the literature event referred to as Semana Negra (Black week) in the Spanish city Gijon in 2000. The Mexican film maker Emilio MaillE adapted this novel for film under the title Rosario Tijeras in 2005. In 2010 the RCN TV made a television adaptation, composed of 60 episodes and starring Maria Fernanda Yepes. His third novel Paraíso Travel (Paradise Travel) was also made into a film by Colombian director Simon Brand. It was released in January 2008 with a musical score directed by renowned Colombian singer Fonseca. In March 2014 Franco won the XVII edition of the international Alfaguara prize with his work "El mundo de afuera" (The world from outside). Gabriel García Márquez has stated about the artist that he "is one of the Colombian writers to whom I wish to pass the torch."
‘Since they shot her at point-blank range while she was being kissed, she confused the pain of love with that of death.' Rosario Tijeras is the violent, violated character at the center of Jorge Franco's delicately balanced novel, set in self-destructing 1980s Medellin. Her very name-evoking the rosary and scissors-bespeaks her conflict as a woman who becomes a contract killer to insulate herself from the random violence of the streets (in a country where it is common practice among her colleagues to boil bullets in holy water before using them). Then she is shot, gravely wounded, and the circle of contradiction is closed. From the corridors of the hospital where Rosario is fighting for her life, Antonio, the narrator, waits to learn if she will recover. We join him in his nighttime vigil. Piece by piece, as he moves through layers of recollection and speculation, we reconstruct the friendship between the two, the story of her many lovers, and her life as a hitwoman. Rosario Tijeras is a work in the Latin American social realist tradition, possessed of fast and vibrant prose, and poetic flourish. It has sold over eighty thousand copies in Columbia alone. Heralded in The New York Times as part of ‘Colombia's new wave of novelists,' Jorge Franco has in a few years pieced together a billiant career. Born in Medellin, he is the recipient of the Pedro Gomez Valderrama National Narrative prize for a collection of short stories and the Ciudad de Pereira National Novel Competition Prize. Rosario Tijeras received Colombia's Dashiell Hammett Prize (2000). It is Ramos' first novel to be published in the United States. . Gregory Rabassa (Translator) received the National Book Award for translation in 1967 for Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch.
Jorge Franco Ramos (born 1962 in Medellín) is a writer from Colombia, known primarily for his novel Rosario Tijeras, which has been adapted for film and television. Son of Olga Stella Ramos and Humberto Franco, Jorge Franco Ramos studied film at the London Film School and literature at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, but did not finish his studies. He began his writing career in 1991 and obtained his first award, the Pedro Gomez Valderrama, in 1996 for the short story collection Maldito amor (Cursed love). His first novel, Mala noche (Bad night), won the national Ciudad de Pereira competition of 1997. His second novel Rosario Tijeras was published in 1999 and won the Premio Beca Nacional Colcultura and the Premio yermen pajaro of the literature event referred to as Semana Negra (Black week) in the Spanish city Gijon in 2000. The Mexican film maker Emilio MaillE adapted this novel for film under the title Rosario Tijeras in 2005. In 2010 the RCN TV made a television adaptation, composed of 60 episodes and starring Maria Fernanda Yepes. His third novel Paraíso Travel (Paradise Travel) was also made into a film by Colombian director Simon Brand. It was released in January 2008 with a musical score directed by renowned Colombian singer Fonseca. In March 2014 Franco won the XVII edition of the international Alfaguara prize with his work "El mundo de afuera" (The world from outside). Gabriel García Márquez has stated about the artist that he "is one of the Colombian writers to whom I wish to pass the torch."
In a departure from previous scholarly analyses, THE EMPEROR'S KITES argues that each of the seventy tales by the Argentine master Jorge Luis Borges recast a single underlying story or paradigm. Lusky Friedman identifies this narrative schema in Borges' tales and carefully studies its origins in his early texts. Her study explores the meaning of Borges' ur-text by bringing contemporary ego psychology and object relations theory to bear on his earliest tales, the narrative sketches of A Universal History of Infamy, and elements in the early essays and poetry. Lusky Friedman discerns in the paradigm a complex expression of Borges' ambivalence in his feelings for his father, an ambivalence intensified by his father's death in 1938. The author speculates that Borges' mourning for his father may have led him to alter his narrative paradigm in fruitful ways that account for his sudden maturation into a writer of genius.
Mary Lusky Friedman is a faculty member in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University. She has published articles in such diverse journals as Political Science Quarterly, Cuadernos americanos, The Texas Quarterly, Latin American Research Review, and Hispania.
Originally published in English translation only (1965), Aura is a captivating and horrifying novella of phantasmagorical dimensions. First bilingual edition.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Carlos Fuentes' final work of scholarship, a brilliant, extended essay that considers myth, legend, geography, the clash of cultures, and the development of literary voices and identities, empowers readers to comprehend the long, complex evolution of the multifaceted genre known as the Latin American novel. Drawing upon his own literary experience, and many famous friendships, Fuentes offers penetrating critical, historical, psychological and personal insights into the work and lives of many writers, including Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Luis Borges, Jose Lezama Lima, and Julio Cortazar. erudite distillation of a lifetime of learning from one of Mexico's preeminent literary figures is sure to offer fresh insights for experienced readers of Latin American literature as well as provide a fascinating introduction for those new to this vast field.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won. Brendan Riley holds degrees in English from Santa Clara University and Rutgers University. An ATA Certified Translator of Spanish to English, he has also earned certificates in translation from U.C. Berkeley and the University of Illinois. Riley's many translations include Alvaro Enrigue's Hypothermia and Juan Filloy's Caterva, He is currently translating the Antagony tetralogy by Spanish novelist Luis Goytisolo, the first volume of which is due to be published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2017.
Originally published 1968. On Palm Sunday, four persons decide to drive from Mexico City to Veracruz for Semana Santa-Holy Week. On the way they stop over at Cholula, the pantheon city of the Aztecs, where Cortez betrayed and massacred the Indians. The driver of the car is Franz, an expatriate Sudeten German who• was once in the service of the Nazis. With him is Isabel, his lover, a Mexican ‘pussycat,' a hipster always in search of some new ‘kick.' The other two members of the party are Javier and his wife Elizabeth. In his youth Javier published ‘a fine, sensitive book of poetry.' He was awarded a fellowship to New York, and has done nothing since. Now in his forties, he is a talented failure. Elizabeth is an embittered woman whose love for Javier is not returned. A fifth person is present when this diverse group reaches the pyramids of Cholula: the Narrator, who tells the story. The Narrator is ironical, humorous, serious, joking; he mixes truth and lies, fact and fiction. Through his eyes we see that the four others have one thing in common; they are in search of some real value: love in the case of Elizabeth, creation for Javier, experience for Isabel, redemption for Franz. In March, 1967, A CHANGE OF SKIN was awarded the Biblioteca Breve Prize given by the distinguished Spanish publishing house of Seix Barral. In April Carlos Fuentes wrote from Barcelona: ‘The official Spanish censors this morning informed Seix Banal that the publication of A CHANGE OF SKIN is forbidden in this country. The reasons: it is pornographic, communistic, anti-Christian, anti-German and pro-Jewish. Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it!'
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Cholula, once pantheon city of ancient Mexico and, site of an historic Aztec massacre, is now a listless and dusty town. Here, on Palm Sunday, four people on their way from Mexico City to Veracruz for Holy Week stay overnight. In the leisure of the long hot night, they interchange passion and confession, revealing to themselves and to each other the suppressed truth of many years. Javier, a Mexican who in his youth published a ‘fine and sensitive book of poetry', is now a tired and sterile man, drained of his creative energy by his rapacious wife, Elizabeth. Their relationship, once passionate communion, has become a bitter habit, resting on a mutual need to destroy and be destroyed. Franz, greying ex-patriot German, was the architect assigned to a Nazi concentration camp and responsible for the erection of a crematorium. For twenty-five years he has attempted to atone with a life of decency and honesty but, this night, he is compelled to seek absolution from his young lover Isabel, ‘Pussycat', swinging sensualist of the new generation. A fifth person is also present, unseen, the Narrator, who in telling his story mixes irony and indictment, truth and fantasy. He is their observer and, finally, the judge presiding at their orgiastic trial and execution of sentence among the pyramids of Cholula. A CHANGE OF SKIN is a magnificent novel in its breadth of imagination, the intensity of its energy and the vividness of its images; masterly in its re-creation of history and the mood of the present.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
On Palm Sunday, four persons decide to drive from Mexico City to Veracruz for Semana Santa-Holy Week. On the way they stop over at Cholula, the pantheon city of the Aztecs, where Cortez betrayed and massacred the Indians. The driver of the car is Franz, an expatriate Sudeten German who• was once in the service of the Nazis. With him is Isabel, his lover, a Mexican ‘pussycat,' a hipster always in search of some new ‘kick.' The other two members of the party are Javier and his wife Elizabeth. In his youth Javier published ‘a fine, sensitive book of poetry.' He was awarded a fellowship to New York, and has done nothing since. Now in his forties, he is a talented failure. Elizabeth is an embittered woman whose love for Javier is not returned. A fifth person is present when this diverse group reaches the pyramids of Cholula: the Narrator, who tells the story. The Narrator is ironical, humorous, serious, joking; he mixes truth and lies, fact and fiction. Through his eyes we see that the four others have one thing in common; they are in search of some real value: love in the case of Elizabeth, creation for Javier, experience for Isabel, redemption for Franz. In March, 1967, A CHANGE OF SKIN was awarded the Biblioteca Breve Prize given by the distinguished Spanish publishing house of Seix Barral. In April Carlos Fuentes wrote from Barcelona: ‘The official Spanish censors this morning informed Seix Banal that the publication of A CHANGE OF SKIN is forbidden in this country. The reasons: it is pornographic, communistic, anti-Christian, anti-German and pro-Jewish. Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it!'
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
From time immemorial, Mexico's legendary beauty - from its torrid tropical coasts and lush valleys to its high, dry plateaus and towering volcanoes - has been matched by intense historical drama. Mayan mythmakers, Aztec emperors, Spanish conquistadors, Yankee and French invaders, dictators, and peasant revolutionaries are not only part of Mexico's past but still vivid influences in its present. And now, writes Carlos Fuentes, Mexico is facing a new time, even as it must stay true to its place in history. Torn between tradition and modernity, impatient with an exhausted political system but unsure how and with what to replace it, Mexicans are struggling to make the transition from authoritarian to democratic politics. But where will they find the serenity and strength to respond to their political, economic, and moral crises? Fuentes's bold and timely study discusses the origins and nature of the unforeseen, tumultuous events that have recently transformed Mexico's politics and society. The year 1994 began with the rebellion in Chiapas and continued with a rash of assassinations, the break between Presidents Salinas and Zedillo, and continual traumas for a society that has never known - yet hungers for - democratic self-rule. Fuentes takes us on his personal quest for the human meaning of this new time; his urgent assessment is a major statement from one of Mexico's wisest, most influential commentators.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
In this comic novel of political intrigue, Adam Gorozpe, a respected businessman in Mexico, has a life so perfect that he might as well be his namesake in the Garden of Eden - but there are snakes in this Eden too. For one thing, Adam's wife Priscila has fallen in love with the brash director of national security - also named Adam - who uses violence against token victims to hide the fact that he's letting drug runners, murderers, and kidnappers go free. Another unlikely snake is the little Boy-God who's started preaching in the street wearing a white tunic and stick-on wings, inspiring Adam's brother-inlaw to give up his job writing soap operas to follow this junior deity. Even L, Adam's lover, thinks the boy is important to their salvation - especially now that it seems the other Adam has put out a contract on Adam Gorozpe. To save his relationship, his marriage, his life, and the soul of his country, perhaps Adam will indeed have to call upon the wrath of the angels to expel all these snakes from his Mexican Eden.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
In AURA, young scholar, Felipe Montero, is employed in the house of an aged widow to work on her deceased husband's papers. There Felipe meets her beautiful green-eyed niece, Aura. His passion for Aura and his gradual discovery of the true relationship between- the young woman and her aunt make this a Baudelairean tale of the beauty of horror.' Latin American critics have hailed AURA as one of the most beautiful and powerful stories ever written in the Western Hemisphere, in which fantasy is pursued to its ultimate consequences.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Carlos Fuentes's protean gifts, ranging from the sly ingenuities of his recent thriller, THE HYDRA HEAD, to the vast historical and metaphysical canvas of TERRA NOSTRA, have won for him a deserved reputation as one of the world's most important contemporary novelists. Now, for the first time, his equally strong craftsmanship in the demanding form of the short story is made available to readers of English. In this collection, named after the ancient lake on which Mexico City stands, Fuentes examines the life of the capital from its street kids to its aesthetes. Rich or poor, coarse or delicate, noble or brutish, all are here incarnated-and all treated with the grave understanding that is the mark of the great observer. A bureaucrat whose career and very life are gradually submerged by an ancient water god; a man who receives an eerie visitation from a more recent period of Mexico's violent past; an adolescent caught between the political and sexual models provided by his grandfather, a heroic figure from the cruel revolutionary epoch, and his father, who exemplifies present-day corruption; an expatriate fading away in his ‘ideal' life abroad; the maimed occupants of a brutish tenement, once a grand colonial edifice; a girl who never grew up; a boy seduced by his dour, rigidly religious aunt; an effete dandy who meets a horrifying end; a young slum dweller embroiled in the confusing provocations of strong-arm politics-these are some of the characters who gradually coalesce into a group portrait of Mexico City, a city whose past is inextricably bound up with its present. Combining horror with compassion, comedy with outrage, this collection of eleven stories unified by a common setting (like Joyce's Dubliners and Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio) provides new evidence of Carlos Fuentes's major stature.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Carlos Fuentes's protean gifts, ranging from the sly ingenuities of his recent thriller, THE HYDRA HEAD, to the vast historical and metaphysical canvas of TERRA NOSTRA, have won for him a deserved reputation as one of the world's most important contemporary novelists. Now, for the first time, his equally strong craftsmanship in the demanding form of the short story is made available to readers of English. In this collection, named after the ancient lake on which Mexico City stands, Fuentes examines the life of the capital from its street kids to its aesthetes. Rich or poor, coarse or delicate, noble or brutish, all are here incarnated-and all treated with the grave understanding that is the mark of the great observer. A bureaucrat whose career and very life are gradually submerged by an ancient water god; a man who receives an eerie visitation from a more recent period of Mexico's violent past; an adolescent caught between the political and sexual models provided by his grandfather, a heroic figure from the cruel revolutionary epoch, and his father, who exemplifies present-day corruption; an expatriate fading away in his ‘ideal' life abroad; the maimed occupants of a brutish tenement, once a grand colonial edifice; a girl who never grew up; a boy seduced by his dour, rigidly religious aunt; an effete dandy who meets a horrifying end; a young slum dweller embroiled in the confusing provocations of strong-arm politics-these are some of the characters who gradually coalesce into a group portrait of Mexico City, a city whose past is inextricably bound up with its present. Combining horror with compassion, comedy with outrage, this collection of eleven stories unified by a common setting (like Joyce's Dubliners and Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio) provides new evidence of Carlos Fuentes's major stature.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Carlos Fuentes's protean gifts, ranging from the sly ingenuities of his recent thriller, THE HYDRA HEAD, to the vast historical and metaphysical canvas of TERRA NOSTRA, have won for him a deserved reputation as one of the world's most important contemporary novelists. Now, for the first time, his equally strong craftsmanship in the demanding form of the short story is made available to readers of English. In this collection, named after the ancient lake on which Mexico City stands, Fuentes examines the life of the capital from its street kids to its aesthetes. Rich or poor, coarse or delicate, noble or brutish, all are here incarnated-and all treated with the grave understanding that is the mark of the great observer. A bureaucrat whose career and very life are gradually submerged by an ancient water god; a man who receives an eerie visitation from a more recent period of Mexico's violent past; an adolescent caught between the political and sexual models provided by his grandfather, a heroic figure from the cruel revolutionary epoch, and his father, who exemplifies present-day corruption; an expatriate fading away in his ‘ideal' life abroad; the maimed occupants of a brutish tenement, once a grand colonial edifice; a girl who never grew up; a boy seduced by his dour, rigidly religious aunt; an effete dandy who meets a horrifying end; a young slum dweller embroiled in the confusing provocations of strong-arm politics-these are some of the characters who gradually coalesce into a group portrait of Mexico City, a city whose past is inextricably bound up with its present. Combining horror with compassion, comedy with outrage, this collection of eleven stories unified by a common setting (like Joyce's Dubliners and Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio) provides new evidence of Carlos Fuentes's major stature.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
The city has always been one of the great themes of Carlos Fuentes's work. In early novels like WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR AND THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ, Fuentes all but single-handedly shifted the focus of the Latin American novel from the countryside into the metropolis. More particularly, Fuentes's work, taken as a whole, is a monumental chronicling of twentieth-century Mexico City and constitutes the most comprehensive and original dramatic rendering of an entire society to have been produced by a major writer since the era of Dickens and Balzac. In books like Aura and Burnt Water, Fuentes's imagination encompassed his country's past, ranging from the palaces of the new revolutionary elite to the lost children of the slums, and from Mexico's Catholic surface to the Aztec gods that lie underneath. In Terra Nostra, Fuentes succeeded in nothing less than evoking the birth of Ibero-America and the foundations of Hispanic-American culture. In THE OLD GRINGO, he returned to the theme of the Mexican revolution and the always difficult relations between Mexico and the United States. Now, in his latest and most ambitious novel, Christopher Unborn, Fuentes has written what may be his final portrait of Mexico City, daringly imagining not only its abraded present but, in the end, its apocalyptic destruction.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
The city has always been one of the great themes of Carlos Fuentes's work. In early novels like WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR AND THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ, Fuentes all but single-handedly shifted the focus of the Latin American novel from the countryside into the metropolis. More particularly, Fuentes's work, taken as a whole, is a monumental chronicling of twentieth-century Mexico City and constitutes the most comprehensive and original dramatic rendering of an entire society to have been produced by a major writer since the era of Dickens and Balzac. In books like Aura and Burnt Water, Fuentes's imagination encompassed his country's past, ranging from the palaces of the new revolutionary elite to the lost children of the slums, and from Mexico's Catholic surface to the Aztec gods that lie underneath. In Terra Nostra, Fuentes succeeded in nothing less than evoking the birth of Ibero-America and the foundations of Hispanic-American culture. In THE OLD GRINGO, he returned to the theme of the Mexican revolution and the always difficult relations between Mexico and the United States. Now, in his latest and most ambitious novel, Christopher Unborn, Fuentes has written what may be his final portrait of Mexico City, daringly imagining not only its abraded present but, in the end, its apocalyptic destruction.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
The city has always been one of the great themes of Carlos Fuentes's work. In early novels like WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR AND THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ, Fuentes all but single-handedly shifted the focus of the Latin American novel from the countryside into the metropolis. More particularly, Fuentes's work, taken as a whole, is a monumental chronicling of twentieth-century Mexico City and constitutes the most comprehensive and original dramatic rendering of an entire society to have been produced by a major writer since the era of Dickens and Balzac. In books like Aura and Burnt Water, Fuentes's imagination encompassed his country's past, ranging from the palaces of the new revolutionary elite to the lost children of the slums, and from Mexico's Catholic surface to the Aztec gods that lie underneath. In Terra Nostra, Fuentes succeeded in nothing less than evoking the birth of Ibero-America and the foundations of Hispanic-American culture. In THE OLD GRINGO, he returned to the theme of the Mexican revolution and the always difficult relations between Mexico and the United States. Now, in his latest and most ambitious novel, Christopher Unborn, Fuentes has written what may be his final portrait of Mexico City, daringly imagining not only its abraded present but, in the end, its apocalyptic destruction.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Renowned as a novelist of unsurpassed invention, Carlos Fuentes here presents his second collection of stories to appear in English. Where his first, Burnt Water, published in 1980, had as its underlying theme Mexico City itself, CONSTANCIA AND OTHER STORIES FOR VIRGINS extends its imaginative boundaries out to Savannah, to Cádiz, to Glasgow, to Seville and Madrid, both past and present. This new collection is more mysterious, more magical, too, than its predecessor, and in its five related stories Fuentes comes closer to the registers of language and feeling that he explored so memorably in Aura. It reveals Fuentes at the height of his powers-bold, erudite, enthralling. In the title story, a man discovers his wife's secret complicity with the Russian actor who is their neighbor-a complicity that includes not just a previous life but possibly a previous death as well. He finds himself ‘a mediator . . . a point between one sorrow and another, between one hope and the next, between two languages, two memories, two ages, and two deaths.' In ‘La Desdichada,' two students steal-and fall in love with-a store-window mannequin. In ‘The Prisoner of Las Lomas,' a wealthy lawyer in possession of a powerful secret is held hostage by the past he has attempted to subvert and keep at bay. The celebrated bullfighter whose fame is the theme of ‘Viva Mi Fama' steps from the present into a past immortalized by Goya's portrait of the matador Pedro Romero; and the architects who are the ‘Reasonable People' of that story find themselves drawn into the irrational mysteries not only of religious fervor but of their famous mentor's identity-they discover ‘there are no empty houses, only a present fraught with the past. Though each of these novella-length stories offers compelling evidence of Fuentes's talent for narrative free rein as well as for containment and closure, they are also brilliantly interwoven. Readers of his earlier work, especially of his acclaimed ribald epic, CHRISTOPHER UNBORN, will recognize with pleasure Fuentes' s undiminished mastery of recurrent images and themes, and all readers will delight in the witty and evocative changes he rings on them. For those few readers who do not yet know the work of Mexico's foremost man of letters, these stories offer them the full gift of his imaginative resourcefulness. CONTENTS: Constancia; La Desdichada; The Prisoner of Las Lomas; Viva Mi Fama; Reasonable People.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Winner of the Cervantes Prize. Carlos Fuentes, one of the world's most acclaimed authors, is at the height of his powers in this stunning new novel - a magnificent epic of passion, magic, and desire in modern Mexico, a rich and remarkable tapestry set in a world where free will fights with the wishes of the gods. JosuE Nadal has lost more than his innocence: He has been robbed of his life - and his posthumous narration sets the tone for a brilliantly written novel that blends mysticism and realism. JosuE tells of his fateful meeting as a skinny, awkward teen with Jerico, the vigorous boy who will become his twin, his best friend, and his shadow. Both orphans, the two young men intend to spend their lives in intellectual pursuit - until they enter an adult landscape of sex, crime, and ambition that will test their pledge and alter their lives forever. Idealistic JosuE goes to work for a high-tech visionary whose stunning assistant will introduce him to a life of desire; cynical Jerico is enlisted by the Mexican president in a scheme to sell happiness to the impoverished masses. On his journey into a web of illegality in which he will be estranged from Jerico, JosuE is aided and impeded by a cast of unforgettable characters: a mad, imprisoned murderer with a warning of revenge, an elegant aviatrix and addict seeking to be saved, a prostitute shared by both men who may have murdered her way into a brilliant marriage, and the prophet Ezekiel himself. Mixing ancient mythologies with the sensuousness and avarice and need of the twenty-first century, DESTINY AND DESIRE is a monumental achievement from one of the masters of contemporary literature.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
It is New Year's Eve, 1969: the narrator, an internationally renowned writer in his forties. A self-proclaimed Don Juan who is faithful only to literature (he says to himself), he meets the beautiful American movie actress Diana Soren at a party and is fascinated by her oddly elusive charm. To love her blond beauty is to love an image coveted by thousands, and it is to experience a passion that must be turned into art. But infatuation becomes doomed pursuit as Diana spurns him, as she flees enigmatically into an intrigue of paranoia and the FBI, sexual jealousy and Black Panthers, and as the impassioned narrator is forced to reconsider the foundations of his life as a writer. An extraordinary exploration of love, lust, betrayal, and humiliation, DIANA is also a powerfully affecting novel about a vital moment in the narrator's life and in the chronicle of our times: a crucial intersection when history crossed with art, salvation was no longer to be found in literature, and love was thwarted by the very forces that nourished it.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
After the metaphysical and historical pyrotechnics of TERRA NOSTRA and the violence and deceptions of his Third World thriller, THE HYDRA HEAD, Carlos Fuentes's new novel, Distant Relations (already hailed throughout Latin America as his most personal), presents an elegant surface of unruffled, civilized conversation. During a long, lingering lunch at the Automobile Club de France, and into the afternoon at the club's solarium and pool, the elderly Comte de Branly tells a story to a friend, unnamed until the closing pages, who, in turn, is the first-person narrator of the novel. The story is of a family (or families) named Heredia, with all the symbolic resonances of heredity and inheritance the name has in Spanish: Hugo, a noted Mexican archaeologist, and his young son, Victor, whom Branly met in Cuernavaca and who become his house guests in Paris. There they are gradually drawn into a mysterious connection with the French Victor Heredia and his son, known as AndrE. But then the story expands into several leads. There is a hard-edged emphasis on the theme of relations between the Old World and the New, as Branly's twilit, Proustian existence is invaded and overcome by the hot, chaotic, and baroque proliferation of the Caribbean jungle. It is as if Henry James's ‘international theme' had come to the final turn of the screw: the New World corrupts the Old. There is also a more intangible level of lost memories, failed promises, cruelties. Unlike the two young boys, Victor and AndrE, the adults are unaware that the past is never behind or beyond us but that it surrounds us. Distant Relations, as it winds its rich wreath of emotional and literary illusion, proposes that, in like manner, ghosts surround us and then replace us when we die and replace them, that the perfect unity is death, that no one can tell a story completely, and that novels are written in order to reinvent destinies-those of the d reader and the author no less than those of the characters.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
The internationally acclaimed author Carlos Fuentes, winner of the Cervantes Prize and the Latin Civilization Award, delivers a stunning work of fiction about family and love across an expanse of Mexican life, reminding us why he has been called ‘a combination of Poe, Baudelaire, and Isak Dinesen' (Newsweek). In these masterly vignettes, Fuentes explores Tolstoy's classic observation that ‘happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' In ‘A Family Like Any Other,' each member of the Pagan family lives in isolation, despite sharing a tiny house. In ‘The Mariachi's Mother,' the limitless devotion of a woman is revealed as she secretly tends to her estranged son's wounds. ‘Sweethearts' reunites old lovers unexpectedly and opens up the possibilities for other lives and other loves. These are just a few of the remarkable stories in Happy Families; but they all inhabit Fuentes's trademark Mexico, where contemporary obsessions bump up against those of the mythic past, and the result is a triumphant display of the many ways we reach out to one another and find salvation through irrepressible acts of love. In this spectacular translation, the acclaimed Edith Grossman captures the full power of Fuentes's range. Whether writing in the language of the street or in straightforward, elegant prose, Fuentes gives us stories connected by love, including the failure of love - between spouses, lovers, parents and children, siblings. From the Mexican presidential palace to the hovels of the poor and the vast expanse of humanity in between, Happy Families is a magnificent portrait of modern life in all its complicated beauty, as told by one of the world's most celebrated writers.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
This novel is indeed a stunning combination of the cosmopolitan present and the mythological past, the two extended metaphors in the work being Circe and the cinema - the goddess who turns men into swine and the medium that turns reality into celluloid. Before he metaphorically turns into a dog, the protagonist, a young Mexican man, spends all of his time and energy trying to achieve a greater intimacy with his mother, who, in turn, avoids him as zealously as he pursues her. The son is something of a Wildean dandy, living in an Art Nouveau grotto where he has enshrined his mama and her films. The mother is a Mexican movie star, as brash and flamboyant as they come, who is always being photographed or filmed - turned into celluloid. But just as the mother becomes increasingly transformed into a ‘goddess' by the film industry, so does she, knowingly or not, change her son into an acolyte of her own unreal personality and finally into a living fetish. Fuentes delicately shifts from voice to voice, from time to time and from Medusa to Mexico City with such grace and lyricism that even his most radical transitions in time or image blend effortlessly into this, a most beautiful and bizarre fiction.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
October-78. Perhaps Fuentes' most controlled stylistic achievement, HOLY PLACE is, in Leonard Michaels' opinion, ‘ . . . a dazzling salad of traditional and contemporary myth . . . a virtuoso performance in paradox.' This novel is indeed a stunning combination of the cosmopolitan present and the mythological past, the two extended metaphors in the work being Circe and the cinema - the goddess who turns men into swine and the medium that turns reality into celluloid. Before he metaphorically turns into a dog, the protagonist, a young Mexican man, spends all of his time and energy trying to achieve a greater intimacy with his mother, who, in turn, avoids him as zealously as he pursues her. The son is something of a Wildean dandy, living in an Art Nouveau grotto where he has enshrined his mama and her films. The mother is a Mexican movie star, as brash and flamboyant as they come, who is always being photographed or filmed - turned into celluloid. But just as the mother becomes increasingly transformed into a ‘goddess' by the film industry, so does she, knowingly or not, change her son into an acolyte of her own unreal personality and finally into a living fetish. Fuentes delicately shifts from voice to voice, from time to time and from Medusa to Mexico City with such grace and lyricism that even his most radical transitions in time or image blend effortlessly into this, a most beautiful and bizarre fiction.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Following the rich historical drama of THE YEARS WITH LAURA DIAZ Carlos Fuentes returns with an entirely different new work-a magical novel of love and art, life and death. Two narratives are intertwined here: one concerns Gabriel Atlan-Ferrara, a fabled orchestra conductor, and his great passion for a red-haired Mexican diva, Inez Prada; the other is a mysterious, unforgettable telling of the first encounter in human history between a man and a woman. The dissonant drama of Berlioz's music for The Damnation of Faust, which brings Atlan-Ferrara and Inez together, resounds on every page of this haunting work, while the emergent love of neh-el and ah-nel-the original lovers - reminds us of the Faustian pact of love and death. Linking these two stories is a beautiful crystal seal that belongs to Atlan-Ferrara, its meaning an enigma that obsesses him. It may be that this ancient, strange, and seductive object gives its bearer the ability to read unknown languages and hear music of impossible beauty. The duality of Inez mirrors two eras, one deeply remote and one perhaps yet to come, but the passions evoked in both transcend the limits of time and space. And, like the light refracted through the seal, they spill forth from prehistory and spiral out through infinity. INEZ is Carlos Fuentes at the height of his magical and realist powers-a profound and artful work that confirms his standing as Mexico's preeminent novelist.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
The present problems in Latin America arise from unresolved historical and cultural situations. Only Latin America can solve these conflicts; making them part of the East-West confrontation only makes them worse. The 1984 Massey Lectures study the roots of Latin America's war with the past through the experience of conquest, colonialism and independence, the relations of the United States with Mexico in Revolution, and the present choice in Central America; escalating warfare or diplomatic negotiations with the Contradora framework.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Few major novelists have had important careers as intellectuals as well, but in this, as in so many other aspects of his writing, Carlos Fuentes is remarkable. As an essayist and a political writer, Fuentes has moved energetically between fiction and nonficton, a pursuit which has involved him in explorations in a second language. All the essays in MYSELF WITH OTHERS were written in English, a language which Fuentes understands and uses in a way few foreigners ever have. In MYSELF WITH OTHERS, Fuentes has assembled a group of essays reflecting three of the great elements in his work; autobiography, love of literature, and politics. The book opens with essays in which Fuentes describes his beginnings as a writer and ends with perhaps the most important of his recent political statements, his celebrated commencement address at Harvard University. But Fuentes is, above all, a literary figure, and the core of MYSELF WITH OTHERS concerns literature itself. Fuentes writes about the interplay of culture - the complex relationships between art, politics, and history, and, of course, the demands of his own tradition: the Spanish language, the tradition of Cervantes. Included in the volume is Fuentes's classic examination of the author of DON QUIXOTE. There are also considerations of such modern masters as the filmmaker Luis Bunuel and the writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. There is also Fuentes's moving, imaginative tribute to Jorge Luis Borges. MYSELF WSITH OTHERS is in no sense fixed on Ibero-America. Fuentes, who is one of the most cosmopolitan of writers, is equally concerned with Western European, Russian, and North American writers, and his essays on Diderot, Gogol, and Kundera are among the finest works of literary criticism in any language. CONTENTS: PART ONE: MYSELF - How I Started to Write; How I Wrote One of My Books; PART TWO: OTHERS - Cervantes, or The Critique of Reading; Two Centuries of Diderot; Gogol; Luis Bunuel and the Cinema of Freedom; Borges in Action; The Other K; Gabriel Garcia Márquez and the Invention of America; PART THREE: WE - A Harvard Commencement.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
In this magnificent translation, TERRA NOSTRA is also destined to take a permanent place in the literary consciousness of English-speaking readers. It is a work of magnitude and grandeur, its subject nothing less than the birth, the life, the passion and death of civilizations. History and fiction intertwine here: a fictionalized history of Spain and a historicized fiction of the culture that Spain inherited from Roman, Arabic, and Jewish sources and then, thoroughly deformed, shipped over to the New World. In this novel, chronology is abolished: all times meet, fuse, separate in circles, spirals, mandalas. And space is concentrated in one area: the half-built palace and necropolis of the Escorial; and perhaps in one mind, that of Felipe, the King, El Señor. Immensely rich in vivid, dramatic stories and characters, blasphemous and grotesque, scatological and erotic, a work of poetry and politics, TERRA NOSTRA resembles a gigantic tapestry or fresco painting or pageant or multi-dimensional film. The masterwork of a superbly sophisticated artist, it ranges through all levels of society and touches on every aspect of human-experience, action, and thought. ‘The supreme example of a total literary creation, of the creative disruption of writing, of the cultural ransacking of the totality of the Spanish language. TERRA NOSTRA is not only Carlos Fuentes's major work. It is also, beyond any doubt, one of the great monuments of the Spanish-language novel.' - Juan Goytisolo. CARLOS FUENTES was born in Mexico City in 1928. Among his earlier books, published and honored in many countries, are the novels WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR, THE GOOD CONSCIENCE, AURA, THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ, and A CHANGE OF SKIN. Most recently, Carlos Fuentes has also represented his country as ambassador to France.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
IIn his introduction to this passionate history of Spain and the Spanish-speaking peoples of the Americas, Carlos Fuentes asks the question: What do we really have to celebrate of Columbus's historic voyage to the New World? After all, the quincentennial of the ‘discovery of America' finds Latin American republics in a state of deep crisis, with inflation, unemployment, and excessive foreign debt threatening their still precarious economic and political institutions. From the mysterious cave drawings at Altamira to the explosive graffiti on the walls of East Los Angeles, images of Spain and the Americas speak to us of the great variety of Spanish culture. Carlos Fuentes knows this culture intimately. Combining a sophisticated perspective on world events and a novelist's eye for irony and metaphor, he weaves a historical narrative of dazzling color and vibrancy. Sweeping across centuries of tumultuous history, Fuentes gives new life to monarchs and conquistadors, to Indian cultures and revolutions, and finally to modern-day Spain, Latin America, and the Hispanic United States, History and its players come alive on every page, in the stories of the famous and the little-known, the heroes and tyrants, martyrs and saints, virgins and kings. Using the illuminating metaphor of mirrors, inspired by mirrors found in ancient burial caches in the Americas, Fuentes challenges us to think in new ways about how a national character is formed, how a stereotype evolves, and what continuities are discovered when a human community truly understands its roots.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
On the night of May 24, 1810, my friend Baltasar Bustos entered the bed room of the Marquise de Cabra, the wife of the President of the Superior Court for the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, and kidnapped her newborn child. In its place. he put a black baby! the child of a prostitute who had just been publicly flogged. In this witty and enthralling saga of revolutionary South America, Carlos Fuentes explores the period of profound upheaval he calls ‘the romantic time.' His hero, Baltasar Bustos, the son of a wealthy Argentine ranch owner, is Rousseau's divided being. On one hand, he is a citizen with a public role to play, that of the inflamed revolutionary democrat whose boldly subversive act - the kidnapping - sets the dramatic narrative in motion. But he is also an individual with a private life to live, for on the night he steals the child born of privilege he catches a fleeting glimpse of the infant's mother, the exquisite Marquise de Cabra, and it is enough to set him on an anguished journey to repent his act and win her love. His public and personal campaign of redemption takes him through Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, and Mexico and through the struggles and contradictions that have plagued and ultimately shaped Spanish America, Only Fuentes could have orchestrated the voices of literature and history in such a complex and compelling way-surely meant to tell us as much about our own conflicted selves as about the nineteenth century.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
The nine stories comprising this brilliant new novel from Carlos Fuentes all concern people who in one way or another have had something to do with, or still are part of, the family of one Leonardo Barroso, a powerful oligarch of northern Mexico with manifold connections to the United States. Each story concerns a Mexican - American encounter - sometimes hilarious, often tragic, frequently ambivalent, inevitably poignant - and each unique drama in its own way epitomizes some striking contrast along the invisible, reflective, dangerous frontier that divides the American - Mexican world. Beyond the emblematic power of Mr. Fuentes's exuberant fiction to make us think about the political and cultural themes which affect and distort that double world, there is the sheer human diversity of life on the ‘crystal frontier.' These extraordinary stories pulse with vivid experience - of love in its many guises, of loneliness, of youth and age, of heartbreak and redemption. Like many of the greatest Spanish-language novels, The Crystal Frontier contains and alludes to famous tall tales, journalism, politics, picaresque adventures, economics, and these are all united by the ‘vitality, variety, and narrative force that Fuentes always gives his work' (La Jornada).
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
This is a novel in the grand style, with a sense of the grandeur and degradation of life, a sense of history and, above all, a sense of place-Mexico. It opens with Artemio Cruz in a dying coma, with the voices of his wife Catalina, his daughter Teresa, and his close associates in his ears. He is a very rich man, a great power in Mexico, owner of much land, proprietor of a powerful newspaper. At 71, returning from a meeting with some government officials he has bribed and coerced, he collapses with a fatal illness. Lying on his deathbed, he begins to remember. What Artemio Cruz remembers - his whole life - is also in essence the story and the tragedy of Mexico, ‘where each generation must destroy its masters and replace them with new masters equally ambitious and rapacious.' Artemio, as a young soldier in the Mexican Revolution, fought with an idealism he never exercised in his private life. The disillusionment and opportunism that came in the aftermath of the Revolution infected Artemio, and his country, with a driving urge for material possessions and power. That is why he married the cold, beautiful Catalina, daughter of the aristocratic rancher, Don Gamaliel Bernal, whose lands Artemio administered and took over. THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ is panoramic in scope. Its vivid scenes proceed, not in exact chronology, but as the haunting associations of memory bring them to Artemio's mind. W'e hear his voice in three persons: ‘I' for the present, as he dies surrounded by his family, business associates, and the frozen world of his power; ‘he' for the past, the man who lived and fought and intrigued so passionately; and ‘you' for the future, the ironic intelligence that clings to the hope of making other choices, and finding freedom, in this room of death. Only at the end of the novel does the reader fully comprehend the truth of Artemio's violent and passionate life, so full of contradictions - cowardice and heroism, idealism and treachery, good and evil, victory and defeat. . Carlos Fuentes, recognized as a major writer in his own language, has had two books, WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR and THE GOOD CONSCIENCE, previously published in English: They have been called the most remarkable novels to come out of Mexico. With this new book Carlos Fuentes takes his place among the leading writers of our time, for THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ is one of the most remarkable novels to appear anywhere. . .
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
This is a novel in the grand style, with a sense of the grandeur and degradation of life, a sense of history and, above all, a sense of place-Mexico. It opens with Artemio Cruz in a dying coma, with the voices of his wife Catalina, his daughter Teresa, and his close associates in his ears. He is a very rich man, a great power in Mexico, owner of much land, proprietor of a powerful newspaper. At 71, returning from a meeting with some government officials he has bribed and coerced, he collapses with a fatal illness. Lying on his deathbed, he begins to remember. What Artemio Cruz remembers - his whole life - is also in essence the story and the tragedy of Mexico, ‘where each generation must destroy its masters and replace them with new masters equally ambitious and rapacious.' Artemio, as a young soldier in the Mexican Revolution, fought with an idealism he never exercised in his private life. The disillusionment and opportunism that came in the aftermath of the Revolution infected Artemio, and his country, with a driving urge for material possessions and power. That is why he married the cold, beautiful Catalina, daughter of the aristocratic rancher, Don Gamaliel Bernal, whose lands Artemio administered and took over. THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ is panoramic in scope. Its vivid scenes proceed, not in exact chronology, but as the haunting associations of memory bring them to Artemio's mind. W'e hear his voice in three persons: ‘I' for the present, as he dies surrounded by his family, business associates, and the frozen world of his power; ‘he' for the past, the man who lived and fought and intrigued so passionately; and ‘you' for the future, the ironic intelligence that clings to the hope of making other choices, and finding freedom, in this room of death. Only at the end of the novel does the reader fully comprehend the truth of Artemio's violent and passionate life, so full of contradictions - cowardice and heroism, idealism and treachery, good and evil, victory and defeat. . Carlos Fuentes, recognized as a major writer in his own language, has had two books, WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR and THE GOOD CONSCIENCE, previously published in English: They have been called the most remarkable novels to come out of Mexico. With this new book Carlos Fuentes takes his place among the leading writers of our time, for THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ is one of the most remarkable novels to appear anywhere.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
This is a novel in the grand style, with a sense of the grandeur and degradation of life, a sense of history and, above all, a sense of place-Mexico. It opens with Artemio Cruz in a dying coma, with the voices of his wife Catalina, his daughter Teresa, and his close associates in his ears. He is a very rich man, a great power in Mexico, owner of much land, proprietor of a powerful newspaper. At 71, returning from a meeting with some government officials he has bribed and coerced, he collapses with a fatal illness. Lying on his deathbed, he begins to remember. What Artemio Cruz remembers - his whole life - is also in essence the story and the tragedy of Mexico, ‘where each generation must destroy its masters and replace them with new masters equally ambitious and rapacious.' Artemio, as a young soldier in the Mexican Revolution, fought with an idealism he never exercised in his private life. The disillusionment and opportunism that came in the aftermath of the Revolution infected Artemio, and his country, with a driving urge for material possessions and power. That is why he married the cold, beautiful Catalina, daughter of the aristocratic rancher, Don Gamaliel Bernal, whose lands Artemio administered and took over. THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ is panoramic in scope. Its vivid scenes proceed, not in exact chronology, but as the haunting associations of memory bring them to Artemio's mind. W'e hear his voice in three persons: ‘I' for the present, as he dies surrounded by his family, business associates, and the frozen world of his power; ‘he' for the past, the man who lived and fought and intrigued so passionately; and ‘you' for the future, the ironic intelligence that clings to the hope of making other choices, and finding freedom, in this room of death. Only at the end of the novel does the reader fully comprehend the truth of Artemio's violent and passionate life, so full of contradictions - cowardice and heroism, idealism and treachery, good and evil, victory and defeat. . Carlos Fuentes, recognized as a major writer in his own language, has had two books, WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR and THE GOOD CONSCIENCE, previously published in English: They have been called the most remarkable novels to come out of Mexico. With this new book Carlos Fuentes takes his place among the leading writers of our time, for THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ is one of the most remarkable novels to appear anywhere. . .
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Here is a true literary event–the long-awaited new novel by Carlos Fuentes, one of the world's great writers. By turns a tragedy and a farce, an acidic black comedy and an indictment of modern politics, THE EAGLE'S THRONE is a seriously entertaining and perceptive story of international intrigue, sexual deception, naked ambition, and treacherous betrayal. In the near future, at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, Mexico's idealistic president has dared to vote against the U.S. occupation of Colombia and Washington's refusal to pay OPEC prices for oil. Retaliation is swift. Concocting a ‘glitch' in a Florida satellite, America's president cuts Mexico's communications systems–no phones, faxes, or e-mails–and plunges the country into an administrative nightmare of colossal proportions. Now, despite the motto that ‘a Mexican politician never puts anything in writing,' people have no choice but to communicate through letters, which Fuentes crafts with a keen understanding of man's motives and desires. As the blizzard of activity grows more and more complex, political adversaries come out to prey. The ineffectual president, his scheming cabinet secretary, a thuggish and ruthless police chief, and an unscrupulous, sensual kingmaker are just a few of the fascinating characters maneuvering and jockeying for position to achieve the power they all so desperately crave.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
This second novel by the brilliant young Mexican author of WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR is a powerful, lusty, and searching story of youth in a world of change. The scene is Guanajuato, a provincial capital in Central Mexico, once one of the world's richest mining centers. The Ceballos family has been reinstated to power, and adolescent Jaime Ceballos, its only heir, is torn between the practical reality of his family's world and the idealism of his youth and Catholic education. His father is a good man, but weak; his uncle is powerful, yet his actions are inconsistent with his professed beliefs. Jaime's struggle to emerge as a man with a ‘good conscience' forms the theme of the book: can a rebel correct the evils of an established system, and, at the same time, retain the integrity of his principles? . Carlos Fuentes has spent a large part of his life in France, England and the United States as the son of a Mexican diplomat. Having studied law at the University of Mexico and the University of Geneva, he decided against law as a career and began to devote himself to writing. A keen student of the people, politics and history of Mexico, he has frequently made these topics the basis for his writings. His first novel, La Region Mas Transparente, was a bestseller in Mexico. Published here under the title WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR, it was an immediate critical success.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
In an astonishing turnabout, Carlos Fuentes follows his most recent novel, the huge, complex, baroque, historical fantasy TERRA NOSTRA, with what is probably the first Third World spy thriller, an action-filled, quick-paced, terse novel of intrigue as contemporary as a headline. One fateful morning, Felix Maldonado, a minor official in the Mexican bureaucracy, steps into a nightmare world in which he is ensnared in a murder he never intended: the assassination of the President. As he is gradually divested of his identity, he struggles between his Dostoevskian frenzy for affirmation and the Kafkaesque passivity of oblivion others try to impose on him: the Director General of his Ministry, who first proposes that Felix surrender his name in exchange for his life; the fat economics professor, Bernstein, who believes a man is recognized only when he is not being hunted down; and the ambiguous master spy, ‘Timon,' who prefers defeat to success. They are surrounded by a cast of twilight figures: Ayub, a Lebanese punk; the posturing coward Rossetti and his ambitious wife, Angelica, a lady with a penchant for adventures in swimming pools; Licha, a sensual but unsatisfied nurse; the teenage Mexican agents Rosita and Emiliano; and the women in Felix's life, all three Jewish: Ruth, his wife; Sara Klein, a survivor of the Holocaust; and Mary Benjamin, who tortures her ugly merchant husband with her infidelities. Set in the houses of the rich and in sleazy hotels and sinister hospitals in Mexico City, in the steamy Gulf ports of Coatzacoalcos and Galveston and the luxury clubs and corporate offices of Houston, THE HYDRA HEAD has a constant political reality as backdrop: the permanent tension in the Middle East and the vast new oil resources of Mexico. Behind the individual drives for power, justice, money, love, or simple survival lurk the cold imperatives of the international chessboard and its masked players. Felix is caught between both, making it impossible to know where his lust for Mary, his tenderness for Ruth, and his love for Sara stop and the hard facts of political reality begin.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
A Third World spy thriller, action-filled, quick-paced, and terse novel of intrigue from Carlos Fuentes. One fateful morning, Felix Maldonado, a minor official in the Mexican bureaucracy, steps into a nightmare world in which he is ensnared in a murder he never intended: the assassination of the President. As he is gradually divested of his identity, he struggles between his Dostoevskian frenzy for affirmation and the Kafkaesque passivity of oblivion others try to impose on him: the Director General of his Ministry, who first proposes that Felix surrender his name in exchange for his life; the fat economics professor, Bernstein, who believes a man is recognized only when he is not being hunted down; and the ambiguous master spy, ‘Timon,' who prefers defeat to success. They are surrounded by a cast of twilight figures: Ayub, a Lebanese punk; the posturing coward Rossetti and his ambitious wife, Angelica, a lady with a penchant for adventures in swimming pools; Licha, a sensual but unsatisfied nurse; the teenage Mexican agents Rosita and Emiliano; and the women in Felix's life, all three Jewish: Ruth, his wife; Sara Klein, a survivor of the Holocaust; and Mary Benjamin, who tortures her ugly merchant husband with her infidelities. Set in the houses of the rich and in sleazy hotels and sinister hospitals in Mexico City, in the steamy Gulf ports of Coatzacoalcos and Galveston and the luxury clubs and corporate offices of Houston, THE HYDRA HEAD has a constant political reality as backdrop: the permanent tension in the Middle East and the vast new oil resources of Mexico. Behind the individual drives for power, justice, money, love, or simple survival lurk the cold imperatives of the international chessboard and its masked players.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
I have lived with this story for a longtime. It was conceived about forty years ago in Mexico, when I first read the stories of Ambrose Bierce. It lay dormant until 1964, when I wrote the first ten pages during a train trip through Chihuahua, San Luis Potosi, and Zacatecas. It was resuscitated in 1970 during a month I spent in Durango, when I was able to speak with men and women who had fought alongside Pancho Villa . . . ‘Was he here to die or to write a novel about a Mexican general and an old gringo and a Washington schoolteacher lost in the deserts of northern Mexico?' The man asking this question is the old gringo himself: an embittered American journalist who has made an abrupt break with his past and is riding into Mexico to join Pancho Villa's revolutionary army. There are clues suggesting that if this man were ever named he would prove to be Ambrose Bierce, who vanished from the United States into Mexico during 1913. Not the old gringo but Fuentes has finally written that novel, The Mexican general is Tomas Arroyo, who is laying waste the estate where he was fathered by the landowner on a peasant woman and was raised in utter humiliation, The school- teacher is Harriet Winslow, employed by the landowner as a governess and arriving to the chaos left by the family's flight from the revolution, Both are drawn to the mysterious gringo, the woman because she glimpses in him the lost father for whom she still yearns, the general because the old man proves to be brave beyond belief. These three powerful characters immersed in the solvent of civil war are manipulated to hallucinating ends by the hand of a master. Many subjects eddy through the story: the conflict between instinct and reason; the historical relationship between the United States and Mexico; the nature of revolution; the beauty of courage, and its absurdity; the different ways in which two men need one woman, and the rivalry which results; the drive to find one's true self, and the impossibility of holding onto what is found.,, And all these themes are contained within a novel which has a single presence so bold and seductive that it makes most other contemporary fiction look pale.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Carlos Fuentes has long been concerned with the Mexico of Pancho Villa. As Mexico's greatest living novelist - one whose work is suffused with the weight of history - it is not surprising that in his new novel, THE OLD GRINGO, he brings the Mexico of 1914 uncannily to life. But Fuentes also knows a great deal about the United States, and his novel is, most of all, about the tragic history of these two cultures in conflict. THE OLD GRINGO tells the story of Ambrose Bierce, the American writer, soldier, journalist, and his last mysterious days in Mexico among Villa's soldiers. In particular, the book is about the encounter between Bierce (the ‘old gringo' of the title) and Tomás Arroyo, one of Villa's generals. The novel also concerns Harriet Winslow, an American woman in Mexico, whose relations with Bierce and Arroyo become crucial to the book's conclusion. In the end, the incompatibility of Mexico and the United States (or, paradoxically, their intimacy) claims both Bierce and Arroyo. THE OLD GRINGO is a wise book, full of toughness and humanity. It is without question one of the finest works of modern Latin American fiction. Fuentes is a master storyteller, and he has written a book of enormous ambition in a way that is at once challenging and accessible. THE OLD GRINGO is a profound work about politics, love, the human tragedy.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
In the five novellas that comprise THE ORANGE TREE, Carlos Fuentes continues the passionate and imaginative reconstruction of past and present history that has distinguished TERRA NOSTRA and THE CAMPAIGN. From the story of Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean, to the fate of Hernán CortEs' s two sons, to the destruction of the Spanish city of Numantia by the Romans and the annihilation of Hollywood by Acapulco, Fuentes couples the epic grandeur of the spiritual and the historical with the many pleasures of the flesh. ‘In THE ORANGE TREE,' he remarks, ‘I gather together not only all my most immediate sensual pleasures-I see, touch, peel, bite, swallow-but also the most primordial sensations: my mother, wet nurses, breasts, the sphere, the world, the egg.' The result is a sensitive exploration of cultural conflict that is also a feast for the senses. . CARLOS FUENTES is the author of such acclaimed novels as THE OLD GRINGO, THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ, and, THE CAMPAIGN. In 1987, he received the Cervantes Award, the highest award bestowed on a Spanish-language writer. Mr. Fuentes divides his time between Mexico City and London. He has been hailed as ‘Mexico's most gifted storyteller' (Virgil Suarez, Los Angeles Times).
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Filled with brilliantly colored scenes and heartbreaking dramas, the epic story of THE YEARS WITH LAURA DIAZ is also a novel of subtle and penetrating psychological insight. As in Fuentes's masterpiece The Death of Artemio Cruz, the action begins in the state of Veracruz and then moves to Mexico City, tracing a migration during the Revolution and its aftermath that is an important element in Laura Diaz's life as well as in Mexico's history. This extraordinary young woman, born in 1898, grows into a devoted wife and mother, becomes the lover of great men, and, before her death in 1972, is celebrated as a politically committed artist on whom none of the poignant paradoxes of Mexican life have been lost. Significantly, her life story comes to us thanks to her Chicano great-grandson, inheritor of both her gifts and her paradoxes: the novel opens in Detroit and closes in Los Angeles with him. Laura Diaz is a complicated and alluring heroine whose brave honesty and good heart prevail despite her losing a brother and a grandson to the darkest forces of Mexico's turbulent, corrupt politics, and a son to the ravages of a disease that consumes him before his greatness can be fulfilled. Yet in the end she is a happy woman, despite the tragedy and loss, for she has borne witness to and helped to affect her country's life, and she has loved and understood with unflinching honesty. In this his most important novel in decades,
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Arranged alphabetically from ‘Amore' to ‘Zurich,' THIS I BELIEVE takes us on a marvelous inner journey with a great writer. Fuentes ranges wide, from contradictions inherent in Latin American culture and politics to his long friendship with director Luis Buñuel. Along the way, we find reflection on the mixed curse and blessing of globalization; memories of a sexual initiation in Zurich; a fond tracing of a family tree heavy with poets, dreamers, and diplomats; evocations of the streets, cafEs, and bedrooms of Washington, Paris, Santiago de Chile, Cambridge, Oaxaca, and New York; and a celebration of literary heroes including Balzac, Cervantes, Faulkner, Kafka, and Shakespeare. Throughout, Fuentes captivates with the power of his intellect and his prose. Here, too, are vivid, often heartbreaking glimpses into his personal life. ‘Silvia' is a powerful love letter to his beloved wife. In ‘Children,' Fuentes recalls the births of his daughters and the tragic death of his son; in ‘Cinema' he relives the magic of films such as Citizen Kane and The Wizard of Oz. Further extending his reach, he examines the collision between history and contemporary life in ‘Civil Society,' ‘Left,' and ‘Revolution.' And he poignantly addresses the experiences we all hold in common as he grapples with beauty, death, freedom, God, and sex. By turns provocative and intimate, partisan and universal, this book is a brilliant summation of an international literary career.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Arranged alphabetically from ‘Amore' to ‘Zurich,' THIS I BELIEVE takes us on a marvelous inner journey with a great writer. Fuentes ranges wide, from contradictions inherent in Latin American culture and politics to his long friendship with director Luis Buñuel. Along the way, we find reflection on the mixed curse and blessing of globalization; memories of a sexual initiation in Zurich; a fond tracing of a family tree heavy with poets, dreamers, and diplomats; evocations of the streets, cafEs, and bedrooms of Washington, Paris, Santiago de Chile, Cambridge, Oaxaca, and New York; and a celebration of literary heroes including Balzac, Cervantes, Faulkner, Kafka, and Shakespeare. Throughout, Fuentes captivates with the power of his intellect and his prose. Here, too, are vivid, often heartbreaking glimpses into his personal life. ‘Silvia' is a powerful love letter to his beloved wife. In ‘Children,' Fuentes recalls the births of his daughters and the tragic death of his son; in ‘Cinema' he relives the magic of films such as Citizen Kane and The Wizard of Oz. Further extending his reach, he examines the collision between history and contemporary life in ‘Civil Society,' ‘Left,' and ‘Revolution.' And he poignantly addresses the experiences we all hold in common as he grapples with beauty, death, freedom, God, and sex. By turns provocative and intimate, partisan and universal, this book is a brilliant summation of an international literary career.
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Where, Carlos Fuentes asks, is a modern-day vampire to roost? Why not Mexico City, populated by ten million blood sausages (that is, people), and a police force who won't mind a few disappearances? ‘Vlad' is Vlad the Impaler, of course, whose mythic cruelty was an inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. In this sly sequel, Vlad really is undead: dispossessed after centuries of mayhem by Eastern European wars and rampant blood shortages. More than a postmodern riff on ‘the vampire craze,' Vlad is also an anatomy of the Mexican bourgeoisie, as well as our culture's ways of dealing with death. For -- as in Dracula -- Vlad has need of both a lawyer and a real-estate agent in order to establish his new kingdom, and Yves Navarro and his wife Asuncion fit the bill nicely. Having recently lost a son, might they not welcome the chance to see their remaining child live forever? More importantly, are the pleasures of middle-class life enough to keep one from joining the legions of the damned?
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
It is rare that a big novel equal to the demands of readers in the United States comes to us from Mexico. It is even more rare for a novelist of the first rank to emerge from that country. Carlos Fuentes is such a writer. WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR is a narrative of power and beauty which Carlos Fuentes has painted upon the broad panorama of Mexico. The metropolis of Mexico City in all its lights and shades, splendor and squalor, lives through the eyes of Mr. Fuentes' characters. There is Robles, the aging revolutionist now surveying the multitudes from the windows of his baronial hall. There is Ixca Cienfuegos, journalist, and the modern conscience of Mexico, who assails both young and old for their apathy. There is Norma Larrogoiti, who pretends to belong to the old aristocracy. The only ones who know all about her are Ixca and her first love, Rodrigo Pola, a writer, whose father, a member of Zapata's army, was executed by Huerta. There is Pimpinella de Ovando, the beautiful young aristocrat who marries Rodrigo against her family's wishes. There is Roberto Regules, Pimpinella's lover, who becomes as powerful and rich as Robles. WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR is a mature work, covering both the vulgar and the delicate, the rich and the poor, the smugly satisfied and the desperately searching. Above all, it brings into focus certain kinds of relationships which we here in the United States have omitted from our lives - the gad and devil struggle, the mother and father in their separate moral concepts, the price of revolution. WHERE THE AIR IS CLEAR is a novel of tremendous scope, fierce and tender by turn. In it, Carlos Fuentes has brought all of Mexico alive. . CARLOS FUENTES, a young man in his early thirties when this book was written, has spent a large part of his life in France, England and the United States. He is the son of a Mexican diplomat and a keen student of the history and ways of his country. He lives in Mexico City. . .
Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist'. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.
Finca Vigia. Martha Gellhorn found it. Ernest Hemingway bought it. Mary Hemingway made it home. By what marvelous alchemy did Ernest Hemingway come to spend 22 of his 61 years living in Cuba? It began with a fishing expedition. It continued with his meeting an attractive blonde journalist in Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West, Florida, in December of 1936. By 1939, Hemingway was dissolving his marriage to second wife Pauline Pfeiffer with the aid of Martha Gellhorn. Martha helped him in the same ways that Pauline Pfeiffer had helped him tear apart his first marriage to Hadley Richardson. He was just starting to write For Whom the Bell Tolls, his novel about the Spanish Civil War. He arrived in Key West, to work on the novel in the room above the pool house. Work became impossible: Pauline's guests were too noisy and intrusive. In desperation, Hemingway fled to Havana, where he isolated himself in a room in the Ambos Mundos Hotel. He appeared from time to time to descend to the Floridita to quench his thirst with his patented Papa Doble Daiquiri. Martha Gellhorn, visiting Papa in his desolate hotel room, decided that she wanted something of a different order. She located a rental house in the hills of San Francisco de Paula. At first, Hemingway resisted it. He said it was too run down. Martha hastened to fix it and staff it. Thus began the saga of Hemingway in Cuba. In these pages you will understand the Cuban magic that shaped the destiny of one of America's most important writers.
NORBERTO FUENTES is one of the most promising young Cuban writers to emerge since the Revolution. Born in Havana in 1943, he studied art and sculpture before working as a journalist. Between 1961 and 1966 he was a front-line reporter in the Sierra de Escambray when government forces sought out counter-revolutionary bands. Out of that experience came his collection of short stories, Condenados de Condado, which in 1968 won him the Casa de las Americas award, the most presigious literary prize in Latin America. The book was translated into English, Italian and other languages. Fuentes is a roving journalist, always ready to go on the march. For the past two years he has been with the Cuban troops in Angola, covering the conflict there. He has contributed to major Cuban publications-Granma, Cuba International, RevoIucion y Cultura, La Gaceta. His reportages are an invaluable testimony of the struggles, successes and shortcomings of a people building a revolution. Fuentes graduated at Havana University in 1977, obtaining a degree in Cuban and Latin American literature. In addition to his journalism, for the past seven years he has been engaged in writing Hemingway in Cuba, based on the novelist's long stay at Finca Vigia, now one of Cuba's most popular museums. Norberto Fuentes is the only person granted access by the Cuban government to all of Hemingway's papers, books and files.
It is Wednesday, SEPTEMBER 3, 1980, one week before a referendum is to take place that will decide whether dictator Augusto Pinochet's new constitution is to be accepted by the Chilean people. The tension in Santiago is omnipresent. The city (and the country in general) is totally split politically. The right-wing majority (rich businessmen, people connected to the government, poor people who've been bribed, etc.) are all for Pinochet. The left~wing minority (poor people who have principles, university radicals, communist wanna-bes) hate him. The city is under military siege: curfews, disappearances, riots, and the like. Bad Vibes is one week in the life of an adolescent living through this chaos. Matias Vicuña is a seventeen-year-old rich kid who doesn't know what to think. Chilean politics are getting him down; so is life in general. His family is rich and well-connected, and he goes to a classy private school-even though he spends most of his time cutting class. He's got too much time on his hands, too much alcohol, too many drugs, and all the usual teenage trappings. His parents' marriage is rocky, his two sisters are spoiled, high-class mall rats, and there's some ugly family secret that unravels as the week goes by. To top it all off, the girl he's crazy about is a haughty, prudish, gorgeous bitch who'd rather spend time with someone else. He's dissatisfied. Mired in adolescent ennui, Matias has a fling with a hot carioca named Cassia on a school trip to Rio de Janeiro; snorts a bunch of coke (some of it his dad's); has clandestine meetings with Flora, his one left-wing schoolteacher; hangs out poolside with his Santiago surfer friends; and then has a semi-breakdown. Nearing the end of the week (and leading up to the referendum), he runs away from home and hides in a hotel. When he returns, his parents have divorced, his aunt has died of an overdose, and yes, the dictator's still in power. Matias's life has changed. ALBERTO FUGUET has published three critically acclaimed works in Chile, including Overdose (Sobredosis, 1994), a collection of short stories, and the novel Be Kind, Rewind (Por Favor, Robobinar. His first novel, BAD VIBES (Mala Ondo, Editorial Planeta, 1991), was published to critical acclaim in Chile and now serves as his introduction to American audiences.
Alberto Fuguet de Goyeneche (born 1964) is a Chilean writer, journalist, film critic and film director who rose to critical prominence in the 1990s as part of the movement known as the New Chilean Narrative. Although he was born in Santiago, he spent his first 13 years of life in Encino, California. He was among the fifty Latin American leaders selected by Time Magazine and CNN in 1999, and he appeared on the front page of Newsweek Magazine in 2002.
BELTRAN SOLER IS FROM CHILE, a land in constant movement. A seismologist who knows more about the science of tectonic plate movement than about life, he is cocooned in a world of seismic data, scientific articles, and natural disasters. Beltrán believes he can protect himself from the world around him by losing himself to theoretical pursuits, but thousands of feet above the ground he so meticulously analyzes, on a flight to L.A. - the capital of film and the city in which he was raised - he has a conversation that sparks in him a firestorm of nostalgia. Suddenly, Beltrán finds himself recalling the fifty most important movies of his life - films both precious and absurd that affected him during his childhood and adolescence in the i960s and ‘70s. From ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' to ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind' to kitschy disaster films such as ‘Earthquake!', as well as cult classics of ‘70s sci-fi such as ‘Logan's Run', Beltrán connects with his past by remembering the films he saw, the people with whom he saw them, and even the theaters in which they were shown. Recalling one movie after another, he reconstructs the unusual history of his eccentric and dysfunctional family, coming to terms with his obsession with the movies that helped define him - often whether he wanted them to or not. Set in the oddly parallel worlds of Nixon's suburban California and Pinochet's Santiago de Chile, this ingenious novel throws us into the claustrophobic world of an adolescent who tries to escape from a tumultuous and fragmented existence, one caught between two languages, two cultures, and two families that watch the same movies. Written in the eloquent, compelling, and often hilarious style that has brought Alberto Fuguet world renown, THE MOVIES OF MY LIFE is a book about film and about how movies embed themselves in our souls, helping us all share a blinding fondness for the magic of make-believe.
Alberto Fuguet de Goyeneche (born 1964) is a Chilean writer, journalist, film critic and film director who rose to critical prominence in the 1990s as part of the movement known as the New Chilean Narrative. Although he was born in Santiago, he spent his first 13 years of life in Encino, California. He was among the fifty Latin American leaders selected by Time Magazine and CNN in 1999, and he appeared on the front page of Newsweek Magazine in 2002.
Carlos Gagini's REDEMPTIONS is a classic novel of Costa Rica, first published with the title El Arbol Enfermo in 1918. Set in and around San Jose during the first years of the twentieth century, when the influence of the United States - economic, cultural, political and military - intensified rapidly, REDEMPTIONS tells the story of the seduction and betrayal of a young Costa Rican woman - and symbolically of her country and region - by a North American entrepreneur. In the same genre as the novels and essays of Uruguayan Jose Enrique Rodo and Mexican Jose Vasconcellos, REDEMPTIONS is a work of cultural nationalism which urges Costa Ricans to take pride in their traditions, to resist the encroachment of outside forces, and to recognize and solve their own problems. CONTENTS: Translator's Introduction; The Estate; The Fig Tree; The Premiere; Conversations; The Hunt; The Playing Field; Politics; Exile; Yankee Expansior; Under the Tree; A Shadow Falls; The Return; Face to Face; The Latin Heart; Catastrophe. . Carlos Gagini (1865-1925) was one of Costa Rica's leading writers. He expressed in his work the spirit of a new nationalism which was centered in the emerging urban middle class. . E. Bradford Burns, the translator, is Professor of History at the University of California at Los Angeles. He is the author of many books and articles on Latin America. Francisco Amighetti, whose drawings illustrate REDEMPTIONS, is a distinguished Costa Rican artist. His works have been displayed in prominent museums and galleries throughout the Americas and Europe. Most of the drawings reproduced here were displayed for the first time in Buenos Aires in 1932
Carlos Gagini (15 March 1865 - 31 March 1925) was a Costa Rican intellectual, philologist writer, esperantist and linguist. He was born in Costa Rica, in a family of Swiss descent. He was a significant figure in linguistics and literature in Costa Rica. His work in language studies formed the basis for a large part of Costa Rican academic exploration during the twentieth century. He published many works about education, grammar, and anthropology. In literature, he supported the national character of Costa Rican writing, in contrast to other authors who looked to European models for inspiration. As a strong defender of national identity and independence, he wrote a novel which criticized imperialism. In 2001, on the 75th anniversary of his death, in the faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Costa Rica, an esperanto memorial was inaugurated in his memory.
Carlos Gagini's REDEMPTIONS is a classic novel of Costa Rica, first published with the title El Arbol Enfermo in 1918. Set in and around San Jose during the first years of the twentieth century, when the influence of the United States - economic, cultural, political and military - intensified rapidly, REDEMPTIONS tells the story of the seduction and betrayal of a young Costa Rican woman - and symbolically of her country and region - by a North American entrepreneur. In the same genre as the novels and essays of Uruguayan Jose Enrique Rodo and Mexican Jose Vasconcellos, REDEMPTIONS is a work of cultural nationalism which urges Costa Ricans to take pride in their traditions, to resist the encroachment of outside forces, and to recognize and solve their own problems. CONTENTS: Translator's Introduction; The Estate; The Fig Tree; The Premiere; Conversations; The Hunt; The Playing Field; Politics; Exile; Yankee Expansior; Under the Tree; A Shadow Falls; The Return; Face to Face; The Latin Heart; Catastrophe. . Carlos Gagini (1865-1925) was one of Costa Rica's leading writers. He expressed in his work the spirit of a new nationalism which was centered in the emerging urban middle class. . E. Bradford Burns, the translator, is Professor of History at the University of California at Los Angeles. He is the author of many books and articles on Latin America. Francisco Amighetti, whose drawings illustrate REDEMPTIONS, is a distinguished Costa Rican artist. His works have been displayed in prominent museums and galleries throughout the Americas and Europe. Most of the drawings reproduced here were displayed for the first time in Buenos Aires in 1932.
Carlos Gagini (15 March 1865 - 31 March 1925) was a Costa Rican intellectual, philologist writer, esperantist and linguist. He was born in Costa Rica, in a family of Swiss descent. He was a significant figure in linguistics and literature in Costa Rica. His work in language studies formed the basis for a large part of Costa Rican academic exploration during the twentieth century. He published many works about education, grammar, and anthropology. In literature, he supported the national character of Costa Rican writing, in contrast to other authors who looked to European models for inspiration. As a strong defender of national identity and independence, he wrote a novel which criticized imperialism. In 2001, on the 75th anniversary of his death, in the faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Costa Rica, an esperanto memorial was inaugurated in his memory.
Unfurling like a medieval book of days, each page of Eduardo Galeano's Children of the Days has an illuminating story that takes inspiration from that date of the calendar year, resurrecting the heroes and heroines who have fallen off the historical map, but whose lives remind us of our darkest hours and sweetest victories. Challenging readers to consider the human condition and our own choices, Galeano elevates the little-known heroes of our world and decries the destruction of the intellectual, linguistic, and emotional treasures that we have all but forgotten. Readers will discover many inspiring narratives in this collection of vignettes: the Brazilians who held a smooch-in to protest against a dictatorship for banning kisses that undermined public morals; the astonishing day Mexico invaded the United States; and the sacrilegious women who had the effrontery to marry each other in a church in the Galician city of A CoruÑa in 1901. Galeano also highlights individuals such as Pedro Fernandes Sardinha, the first bishop of Brazil, who was eaten by CaetE Indians off the coast of Alagoas, as well as Abdul Kassem Ismael, the grand vizier of Persia, who kept books safe from war by creating a walking library of 117,000 tomes aboard four hundred camels, forming a mile-long caravan. Beautifully translated by Galeano's longtime collaborator, Mark Fried, Children of the Days is a majestic humanist treasure that shows us how to live and how to remember. It awakens the best in us.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (September 3, 1940, Montevideo, Uruguay - April 13, 2015, Montevideo, Uruguay) was a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
DAYS AND NIGHTS OF LOVE AND WAR is the personal testimony of Uruguayan-born writer and political activist Eduardo Galeano. It is both journal and history, spanning more than two decades of the lives and struggles of the Latin American people, from Guatemala and Cuba in the north to Chile and Argentina in the south. Alternating between reportage and personal vignettes, Galeano vividly conveys what it is like to live with constant fear-of arrest or torture-never knowing when you or someone you love will be picked up or killed one night, or the next day. Galeano movingly records the joys and hopes and desperation of those who continue to believe in, and fight for, a more human existence, his words informed with a deep anger as well as great love for these people. Through Galeano's writing we share his understanding that joy is not a crime. ‘To be alive: a small victory. To be alive, that is: to be capable of joy, despite the good-byes and the crimes, so that exile will be a testimony to another, possible country. . . . Joy takes more courage than grief. In the end, we are accustomed to grief.' . Eduardo Galeano was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1940, and worked there as a journalist and editor until he was arrested and obliged to flee the country. In 1973 he founded the literary magazine, Crisis, in Argentina, which he edited until it was closed down in 1976. One of Latin America's most respected journalists and writers, his best-known works in English include OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA AND GUATEMALA: OCCUPIED COUNTRY both published by Monthly Review Press. Originally published in Havana in 1978, Dias y noches de amor y de guerra won the Casa de las Americas prize in 1978. This English edition also includes a previously unpublished article called ‘In Defense of the Word,' which argues for the need to rescue the power of writing and claim it for the revolution and the people of Latin America.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
GUATEMALA: OCCUPIED COUNTRY by Eduardo Galeano Translated by Cedric Belfrage Officially 1967 was designated as ‘the year of peace' in Guatemala, but in the Gualen area no one fishes any more. Too many corpses have been caught in the weirs. The armed bands of the extreme Right operate with impunity and efficiency, protected by the army and police. On the Left, the guerrillas organize in the mountains and even in the cities. The entire impoverished and miserable country moves inexorably toward the explosion which the CIA had hoped to stifle forever through its invasion of 1954. This book surveys the Guatemalan scene with a thoroughness unusual in so small a compass. Eduardo Galeano lived with the guerrillas in the mountains, and his picture of their thinking and daily life is authoritative. His descriptions of the entire Guatemalan political and social scene show close study and long familiarity with the region. Galeano covers in these pages the period since the CIA-sponsored coup. He describes the Indian population, on whose aching shoulders the economy of Guatemala rests, and shows what has happened to the rich Mayan culture. He portrays living conditions in a country where average per capita income is only four percent that of the U.S., and where three-fourths of the people live on less than twenty cents a day. The exploitation by U.S. corporations, the failure of the Alliance for Progress, the political developments of the past decade, Guatemala in the overall Latin American scene-all this is fully set forth. Special attention is given to the guerrilla movement, and to the reunification of Cosar Montes' FAR (Rebel Armed Forces) with Yon Sosa's MR-13 (the 13th of November Revolutionary Movement). Already published in Latin America, this book has been hailed as ‘brilliant' by El Dia in Mexico City, and as ‘valuable' in providing ‘the point of view of the Guatemalan guerrillas' by Marcha in Monte- video. This edition contains a new introduction by the author, and three documentary appendices, one of which consists of the statement of Father Thomas Melville, suspended as a priest by the Maryknoll order for his connection with the guerrillas. EDUARDO HUGHES GALEANO was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1940, and before becoming a writer and editor he worked in an insecticide plant, as a bill collector, commercial artist, caricaturist, stenographer, bank clerk, and fashion- page artist. At twenty he was managing editor of the Left weekly Marcha-considered the best of its kind in Latin America-and four years later became editor of the daily Epoca, a post he held until 1966. Since then he has been in charge of publications for the University of Montevideo Press. He is the author of five books and numerous articles in newspapers and magazines throughout the world. Cover design by Martin Stephen Moskof Assoc. Inc. . Born in London in 1904, Cedric Belfrage came to the U.S. in 1925 and began writing about movies in Hollywood. He was a co-founder of the National Guardian in 1948 and its editor until 1955, when a brush with McCarthy led to his deportation. He has written ten books and novels, published in this country, including AWAY FROM IT ALL, ABIDE WITH ME, MY MASTER COLUMBUS, and THE AMERICAN INQUISITION 1945-1960. He lives with his wife, Mary, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. . .
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
Now, the long-awaited third volume of Eduardo Galeano's highly praised history of the Americas offers us our own turbulent century, from its first apocalyptic intimations to the Age of Reagan. CENTURY OF THE WIND is a fitting climax to a trilogy the Washington Post has hailed as an ‘epic work of literary creation. There could be no greater vindication of the wonders of the lands and people of Latin America than Memory of Fire: ' In hundreds of vivid vignettes, Galeano brings us a fresh, compassionate, magical vision of our own history: Pancho Villa reading the Thousand and One Nights; the fifteen-year-old Evita Peron entering Buenos Aires, cardboard suitcase in hand; Carmen Miranda dancing for the King of Belgium; Generalismo Trujillo fluttering an ivory fan as he reviews the cadets at West Point; the movies coming to Havana and the exiles landing at the Bay of Pigs; Superman taking off and Buster Keaton landing. Offering us a panorama of the Americas never previously imagined, Eduardo Galeano has created a book - and a trilogy - that will surely rank as one of the great contri- butions to Latin American literature.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
Now, the long-awaited third volume of Eduardo Galeano's highly praised history of the Americas offers us our own turbulent century, from its first apocalyptic intimations to the Age of Reagan. CENTURY OF THE WIND is a fitting climax to a trilogy the Washington Post has hailed as an ‘epic work of literary creation. There could be no greater vindication of the wonders of the lands and people of Latin America than Memory of Fire: ' In hundreds of vivid vignettes, Galeano brings us a fresh, compassionate, magical vision of our own history: Pancho Villa reading the Thousand and One Nights; the fifteen-year-old Evita Peron entering Buenos Aires, cardboard suitcase in hand; Carmen Miranda dancing for the King of Belgium; Generalismo Trujillo fluttering an ivory fan as he reviews the cadets at West Point; the movies coming to Havana and the exiles landing at the Bay of Pigs; Superman taking off and Buster Keaton landing. Offering us a panorama of the Americas never previously imagined, Eduardo Galeano has created a book - and a trilogy - that will surely rank as one of the great contri- butions to Latin American literature. . The author was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940. His full name is Eduardo Hughes Galeano. He entered journalism as a political caricaturist for ike socialist weekly El Sol, signing himself ‘Gius' the nearest approximation to the Spanish pronunciation of his paternal surname. Later he was an editor of the weekly Marcha, and he edited the daily Epoca and various Montevideo weeklies. In 1973 he went into exile in Argentina, where he founded and edited the magazine Crisis. He lived in Spain from 1976 to 1984, but has now returned to Uruguay. Among his books, OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA (1971), DAYS AND NIGHTS OF LOVE AND WAR (1978), AND THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES OF THIS TRILOGY, GENESIS (1982) and FACES AND MASKS (1984), have been published in English. . Born in London in 1904, Cedric Belfrage came to the U.S. in 1925 and began writing about movies in Hollywood. He was a co-founder of the National Guardian in 1948 and its editor until 1955, when a brush with McCarthy led to his deportation. He has written ten books and novels, published in this country, including AWAY FROM IT ALL, ABIDE WITH ME, MY MASTER COLUMBUS, and THE AMERICAN INQUISITION 1945-1960. He lives with his wife, Mary, in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
Genesis, the first volume of Eduardo Galeano's epic history of the Americas, Memory of Fire, was published to great critical acclaim in 1986. Now, in Faces and Masks, the second volume of this astounding Latin-American-eye view of a New World in the making, Eduardo Galeano takes us to the dawn of our own century - and from Robinson Crusoe and Toussaint L'Ouverture to Teddy Roosevelt and Billy the Kid. Magi- cally, from the known and forgotten historical ruins of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he creates a totally new, flesh-and-blood America seen as if for the first time: Bolivar sails down the Magdalena River in defeat; Lincoln dreams eerily of his impending death; in a distant land Napoleon crowns himself Emperor. Galeano's richly varied vignettes make a pageant out of cowboys and gauchos, Coca-Cola and blue jeans, Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull, soccer and the tango, rubber, tin, gold, and all those who lusted for control of the raw materials and the lives the New World had to offer. With a brilliant blend of fiction, fine journalism, character insight and political irony, Faces and Masks sweeps us to the very threshold of our own time in a panorama of the Americas no one has ever previously imagined. . Eduardo Galeano, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940, entered journalism as a political caricaturist, and later was editor of various weekly and daily papers. In 1973 he went into exile in Argentina, where he founded and edited the magazine Crisis. He lived in Spain from 1976 to 1984, and has only recently returned to Uruguay. He is the author of Genesis, volume one of Memory of Fire, as well as Open Veins of Latin America and Days and Nights of Love and War, among other books.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
GENESIS, the first volume of Eduardo Galeano's epic history of the Americas, MEMORY OF FIRE, was called ‘triumphant . . . sure to scorch the sensibility of English-language readers' by the New York Times. Now, in FACES AND MASKS, the second volume of this astounding Latin-American-eye view of a New World in the making, Eduardo Galeano takes us to the dawn of our own century - and from Robinson Crusoe and Toussaint L'Ouverture to Teddy Roosevelt and Billy the Kid. Magically, from the known and forgotten historical ruins of the eighteenth and nineteenth tunes, he creates a totally new, flesh-and-blood America seen as if for the first time: Bolivar sails down the Magdalena River in defeat; Lincoln dreams eerily of his impending death; the creation story is told as John D. Rockefeller might have imagined it; women like Benjamin Franklin's sister, belittled by historians, are brought vividly back to life in this book full of the sights and sounds of the New World. Galeano's hundreds of fiction-style vignettes make a pageant out of cowboys and gauchos, Coca-Cola and blue jeans, Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull, soccer and the tango, rubber, tin, gold, and all those who lusted for control of the raw materials and the lives the New World had to offer. With a brilliant blend of fiction, fine journalism, character insight, and political irony, FACES AND MASKS sweeps us to the very threshold of our own time in a panorama of the Americas no one has ever previously imagined. . The author was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940. His full name is Eduardo Hughes Galeano. He entered journalism as a political caricaturist for ike socialist weekly El Sol, signing himself ‘Gius' the nearest approximation to the Spanish pronunciation of his paternal surname. Later he was an editor of the weekly Marcha, and he edited the daily Epoca and various Montevideo weeklies. In 1973 he went into exile in Argentina, where he founded and edited the magazine Crisis. He lived in Spain from 1976 to 1984, but has now returned to Uruguay. Among his books, OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA (1971), DAYS AND NIGHTS OF LOVE AND WAR (1978), AND THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES OF THIS TRILOGY, GENESIS (1982) and FACES AND MASKS (1984), have been published in English. . Born in London in 1904, Cedric Belfrage came to the U.S. in 1925 and began writing about movies in Hollywood. He was a co-founder of the National Guardian in 1948 and its editor until 1955, when a brush with McCarthy led to his deportation. He has written ten books and novels, published in this country, including AWAY FROM IT ALL, ABIDE WITH ME, MY MASTER COLUMBUS, and THE AMERICAN INQUISITION 1945-1960. He lives with his wife, Mary, in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
A unique work, Memory of Fire: Genesis is the extraordinary first volume of a great and ambitious project, a kind of historical fiction that resists categorization. In a voice stirring in its originality, Eduardo Galeano re-creates the turbulent saga of the conquest of the Americas, and above all Latin America. Folklore, fiction, journalism, history, poetry, political analysis all in one, Genesis takes us from the indigenous myths of America's Indian peoples through the trauma of the colonization of the New World. In 308 vignettes, none more than a few pages long, Galeano's fresh, compassionate, magical voice gives us a vast array of characters: conquistadores, popes, inquisitors, pirates, scholars and poets, European monarchs and native chiefs, Indian and African slaves, rebels and turncoats, and above all, ordinary people whose lives the European conquest ended or turned upside down. While the focus is on Latin America, there are stories from North America (the Salem witch trials) and Europe ‘(Shakespeare writing The Tempest, Cervantes in jail dreaming the New World). Filled with irony and written in anger as well as love and pity, Memory of Fire is no less than an attempt, as the author says, ‘to rescue the kidnapped memory of all America, but above all of Latin America, that despised and beloved land' from the military juntas in their ‘uniforms fresh from the dry cleaners' - like the junta that drove Galeano from his country not so long ago. This book will surely rank as one of the great twentieth-century contributions to Latin American literature. . Eduardo Galeano, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940, entered journalism as a political caricaturist, and later was editor of various weekly and daily papers. In 1973, he went into exile in Argentina, where he founded and edited the magazine Crisis. He lived in Spain from 1976 to 1984, and has only recently returned to Uruguay. He is the author of Open Veins of Latin America and Days and Nights of Love and War. . (original title: Memoria del fuego I: Los nacimientos, 1982 - Siglo Veintiuno de Espana Editores, S.A.).
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
A unique work, MEMORY OF FIRE: GENESIS is the extraordinary first volume of a great and ambitious project, a kind of historical fiction that resists categorization. In a voice stirring in its originality, Eduardo Galeano re-creates the turbulent saga of the conquest of the Americas, and above all Latin America. Folklore, fiction, journalism, history, poetry, political analysis all in one, GENESIS takes us from the Indigenous myths of America's Indian Peoples through the trauma of the colonization of the New World. In 308 vignettes, none more than a few pages long, Galeano's fresh, compassionate, magical voice give. us a vast array of characters: conquistadores, popes, inquisitors, pirates, scholars and poets, European monarchs and native chiefs, Indian and African slaves, rebels and turncoats, and above all, ordinary peop1e whose lives the European conquest ended or turned upside down. While the focus is on Latin America, there are stories from North America (the Salem witch trials) and Europe (Shakespeare writing THE TEMPEST, Cervantes in jail dreaming the New World). Filled with irony and written in anger as well as love and pity, MEMORY OF FIRE is no less than an attempt , as the author says, ‘to rescue the kidnapped memory of all America, but above all of Latin America, that despised and beloved land' from the military juntas in their ‘uniforms fresh from the dry cleaners' - like the junta that drove Galeano from his country not so long ago. This book will surely rank as one of the great twentieth-century contributions to Latin American literature. ‘This is an epic book that will destroy your preconceptions.' - Ariel Dorfman. . Eduardo Galeano, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940, entered journalism as a political caricaturist, and later was editor of various and daily papers. In 1973, he went into exile in Argentina, where he founded and edited the magazine CRISIS. He lived in Spain from 1976 to 1984, and has only recently returned to Uruguay. He is the author of OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERCA and DAYS AND NIGHTS OF LOVE AND WAR. . Born in London in 1904, Cedric Belfrage came to the U.S. in 1925 and began writing about movies in Hollywood. He was a co-founder of the National Guardian in 1948 and its editor until 1955, when a brush with McCarthy led to his deportation. He has written ten books and novels, published in this country, including AWAY FROM IT ALL, ABIDE WITH ME, MY MASTER COLUMBUS, and THE AMERICAN INQUISITION 1945-1960. He lives with his wife, Mary, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. . (original title: Memoria del fuego I: Los nacimientos, 1982 - Siglo Veintiuno de Espana Editores, S.A.).
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
A unique work, MEMORY OF FIRE: GENESIS is the extraordinary first volume of a great and ambitious project, a kind of historical fiction that resists categorization. In a voice stirring in its originality, Eduardo Galeano re-creates the turbulent saga of the conquest of the Americas, and above all Latin America. Folklore, fiction, journalism, history, poetry, political analysis all in one, GENESIS takes us from the Indigenous myths of America's Indian Peoples through the trauma of the colonization of the New World. In 308 vignettes, none more than a few pages long, Galeano's fresh, compassionate, magical voice give. us a vast array of characters: conquistadores, popes, inquisitors, pirates, scholars and poets, European monarchs and native chiefs, Indian and African slaves, rebels and turncoats, and above all, ordinary peop1e whose lives the European conquest ended or turned upside down. While the focus is on Latin America, there are stories from North America (the Salem witch trials) and Europe (Shakespeare writing THE TEMPEST, Cervantes in jail dreaming the New World). Filled with irony and written in anger as well as love and pity, MEMORY OF FIRE is no less than an attempt , as the author says, ‘to rescue the kidnapped memory of all America, but above all of Latin America, that despised and beloved land' from the military juntas in their ‘uniforms fresh from the dry cleaners' - like the junta that drove Galeano from his country not so long ago. This book will surely rank as one of the great twentieth-century contributions to Latin American literature. ‘This is an epic book that will destroy your preconceptions.' - Ariel Dorfman. . Eduardo Galeano, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940, entered journalism as a political caricaturist, and later was editor of various and daily papers. In 1973, he went into exile in Argentina, where he founded and edited the magazine CRISIS. He lived in Spain from 1976 to 1984, and has only recently returned to Uruguay. He is the author of OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERCA and DAYS AND NIGHTS OF LOVE AND WAR. . Born in London in 1904, Cedric Belfrage came to the U.S. in 1925 and began writing about movies in Hollywood. He was a co-founder of the National Guardian in 1948 and its editor until 1955, when a brush with McCarthy led to his deportation. He has written ten books and novels, published in this country, including AWAY FROM IT ALL, ABIDE WITH ME, MY MASTER COLUMBUS, and THE AMERICAN INQUISITION 1945-1960. He lives with his wife, Mary, in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
‘ . . . . truly a majestic book. It drives ahead with a great emotional and intellectual power. The range and depth of Galeano's knowledge is stupendous. His style is superb and fits his perfect grasp of this vast mass of material which at the same time is admirably and competently organized. There is not a minute's letdown. He is as remorseless as a tornado and rips away every defense of imperialism with a determined yet quiet rage. This book surpasses any I have ever read on the theme, and it will endure through all the years to come. It is truly a great book.'- Carleton Beals. ‘This book may in time rival all others in providing general ideas for analyses of both the colonial and modern periods. . Although a writer-journalist by trade, Galeano possesses a grasp of history and historicism that is often missing in the writings of persons trained in the field. . . . He is brilliant in his description of poverty in the cities, the international system of domination suffered by each country, and the reproduction of similar systems within each of them . . . . a dazzling barrage of words and ideas' - History. ‘Eminent Latin American author Galeano is both impassioned and a hard-nosed scholar in this well-documented, Marxist-oriented history of Latin America as an exploited continent from the time of Columbus to the present. Galeano focuses on the despoliation of the land, people and culture of those countries . . . Gold, silver, cocoa, cotton, rubber, coffee, fruit, sugar, oil, iron, tin, copper and nitrates are among the open veins' whose drainage Galeano traces and analyzes ‘ - Publishers' Weekly. cover art: From a woodcut of The Gnat, the Lion, and the Spiderweb' by Antonio Frasconi, a Uruguayan artist who lives in the United States. . .
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
In a sequence of elegiac and deliciously droll observations, the distinguished Latin American writer Eduardo Galeano here reflects on mortality and immortality in the world's greatest game. Tragedy spins a continuous thread through these pages: We learn of Abdon Porte of the Uruguayan club Nacional who, after a disastrous run of bad form, was found dead in the center circle of the club stadium, revolver in hand; of Andres Escobar, the Colombian defender, whose own goal lost his country a game in the 1994 World Cup and who was subsequently gunned down in Medellin; of the 1942 Dynamo Kiev team who were warned not to win a game against the occupying Nazis but who could not resist the urge to glory, trounced the German side, and were all eleven shot, still wearing their shirts, at the end of the game. But where there is shadow there is also the bright sunlight of joy and beauty. Here are stories of the Italian striker Giuseppe Meazza whose shorts, in the run up to a penalty kick during the 1938 World Cup, fell down around his knees - he pulled them back up and, with the stadium and goalkeeper in pleats of laughter, scored the goal that saw Italy into the final; of the ice-cool legend Lev Yashin who calmed his nerves before extraordinary performances in the Soviet goal with a smoke and a strong drink; of Ferenc Puskas who, having seen his goal from a beautifully executed free kick disallowed because the referee had not blown his whistle, picked up the ball, took it back to the same spot, and produced an identical shot which landed again in the upper left corner of the net. Football fans, we learn, number in their ranks William Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Albert Camus. They were drawn, like countless millions around the world today, to a bewitching game that is exquisitely rendered in the magical stories of SOCCER IN SUN AND SHADOW.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
‘Turn loose the voices, undream the dream. Through my writing I try to express the magical reality, which I find at the core of the hideous reality of America.' Eduardo Galeano's epic three-volume history of the Americas, Memory of Fire, has established him as one of the most brilliant and passionate literary voices from Latin America today. His newest work, The Book of Embraces, employs a similar vignette style of composition to more personal, but no less moving and mesmerizing ends. Here, through parable and paradox and anecdote and dream and fragments of autobiography, Galeano constructs a world view - one that will enchant readers with its passion and irony and sheer joy in existence. In the universe of THE BOOK OF EMBRACES, the private and the political seamlessly blend; and reality speaks in a multiplicity of voices. What emerges is a stunning brief for love, friendship, courage, perseverance, and imagination - for human possibility. The Book of Embraces will capture readers in its own magical embrace and delight them. A particular delight as well of THE BOOK OF EMBRACES is Galeano's more than 100 collages and drawings. Witty and slyly surreal, these illustrations add a crucial dimension to the reader's experience of the book. . EDUARDO GALEANO, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940, entered journalism as a political caricaturist and later was the editor of various weekly and daily papers. In 1973, he went into exile in Argentina, where he founded and edited the magazine Crisis. He lived in Spain from 1976 to 1984, and then returned to Uruguay, where he now lives. He is the author of MEMORY OF FIRE: VOLUME ONE, GENESIS; VOLUME TWO, FACES AND MASKS; and VOLUME THREE, CENTURY OF THE WND; AS WELL AS OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA, DAYS AND NIGHT OF LOVE AND WAR and other books. . CEDRIC BELFRAGE was the translator of the three volumes of Memory of Fire, for which he received a special citation from PEN. His book on the McCarthy era, The American Inquisition, has recently been reissued. He died in 1990. . (original title: Libro de los abrazos, 1989).
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
From the author of the incomparable MEMORY OF FIRE trilogy, winner of the 1989 American Book Award, a bitingly funny, kaleidoscope vision of the First World through the eyes of the Third Recipient of the first Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, Eduardo Gateano combines a novelist's intensity, a poet's lyricism, a journalist's fearlessness, and the strong judgments of an engaged historian. His classic Memory of Fire trilogy caught as never before the history of the Americas through a panoramic series of vignettes that swept the reader from the first native creation myth to Last night's news. Now, in Upside Down, Galeano offers an eloquent, passionate, sometimes hilarious exposE of our First World privileges and assumptions. In a series of lesson plans and a ‘program of study' about our beleaguered planet, Upside Down takes us on a wild trip through the global looking glass. From a master class in ‘The Impunity of Power' to a seminar on ‘The Sacred Car,' with tips along the way on ‘How to Resist Useless Vices' and a declaration of ‘The Right to Rave,' Gateano surveys a world unevenly divided between abundance and deprivation, carnival and torture, power and its Lack. We have accepted a ‘reality' we should reject, he teaches us, one where poverty kills, people are hungry, machines are more precious than humans, and children work from dark to dark. In the north, we are fed on a diet of artificial need and all made the same by the things we own; the south is the galley slave enabling our greed. A work of fire and charm, UPSIDE DOWN makes us see our world anew and even glimpse how we might set it right.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
A striking mosaic of memories, observations, and legends that together reveal the author's own story and a grand, compassionate vision of life itself. In this kaleidoscope of reflections, renowned South American author Eduardo Galeano ranges widely, from childhood to love, music, plants, fear, indignity, and indignation. In the signal style of his bestselling and much-admired MEMORY OF FIRE trilogy-brief fragments that build steadily into an organic whole - Galeano offers a rich, wry history of his life and times that is both calmly philosophical and fiercely political. Beginning with blue algae, the earliest of life forms, these 333 vignettes alight on the Galeano family's immigration to Uruguay in the early twentieth century, the fate of love letters intercepted by a military dictatorship, abuses by the rich and powerful, the latest military outrages, and the author's own encounters with all manner of living matter, including generals, bums, dissidents, soccer stars, ducks, and trees. Out of these meditations emerges neither anger nor bitterness, but a celebration of a blessed life in a harsh world. Poetic and passionate, scathing and lyrical, delivered with Galeano's inimitable mix of gentle comedy and fierce moral judgment, VOICES OF TIME is a deeply personal statement from a great and beloved writer. Eduardo Galeano is one of Latin America's most admired writers, as well as a distinguished journalist and historian. Winner of the first Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize in 1998, he is the author of UPSIDE DOWN, the MEMORY OF FIRE trilogy (for which he won the 1989 American Book Award), OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA, and many other works. He lives in Montevideo, Uruguay. .
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
WALKING WORDS is a unique collaboration between the world-renowned author Eduardo Galeano and the Brazilian woodcut artist Jose Francisco Borges-a brilliant feat of storytelling in the tradition of Italo Calvino's ITALIAN FOLKTALES. With the same literary genius that Galeano applied to his epic history of the Americas, Memory of Fire, he here tells, as he puts it, ‘the stories of ghouls and fools that I'd like to write, voices I've collected in my dream-like wanderings or heard in my wakeful dreams.' Galeano's narrative sources are to be found in the folklore of rural and urban Latin America, but this is far more than an exercise in literary anthropology. Instead, these tales and riddles and aphorisms and paradoxes become testaments to the power of stories to make and remake and enchant the world. Through the medium of Galeano's eloquent language and Borges's equally rich images, ‘reality' stands revealed as a poor imitation of the real magic of human life and imagination. EDUARDO GALEANO is also the author of, among other books, OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA, DAYS AND NIGHTS OF LOVE AND WAR, THE BOOK OF EMBRACES, and WE SAY NO. He lives in Montevideo, Uruguay. . JOSE FRANCISCO BORGES lives and works in the remote town of Bezerros in the hinterlands of Brazil's Northeast. An artist of the vanishing cordel tradition, he writes the verse narratives and creates the woodcuts for booklets which he then prints and sells on his own in town marketplaces in rural Brazil.
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
Almost three decades of committed journalism and polemic from one of Latin America's most passionate and irreplaceable voices. The title of WE SAY NO is drawn from a speech delivered by Eduardo Galeano in support of democracy in Chile in 1988. It eloquently states the case that by saying no to a global system of greed, repression, and exploitation one says yes to the universal values of equality, freedom, and love. All of the thirty-four pieces that comprise this book affirm the elemental struggle of the forgotten and the dispossessed for simple human dignity. From vivid portraits of the ‘last emperor' Pu Yi, Pele, and Che Guevara to a defense of the political nature of the literary enterprise in Latin America to stinging critiques of the end-of-history thesis and the ‘celebrations' of Columbus's voyages of discovery (and conquest) to the genesis of MEMORY OF FIRE, the pieces in WE SAY NO are united by Galeano's unique ability to blend stirring political commitment, a magical literary facility, and a large historical imagination into a seamless web. The result is a volume indispensable to the growing legion of Galeano's American readers and to all concerned with the issues of peace and justice in the Americas and, indeed, in the entire post-Cold War world. EDUARDO GALEANO, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940, entered journalism as a political caricaturist and later was the editor of various weekly and daily papers. In 1973 he went into exile in Argentina, where he founded and edited the magazine Crisis. He lived in Spain from 1976 to 1984 and then returned to Uruguay, where he now lives. He is the author of MEMORY OF FIRE- GENESIS (VOLUME ONE), FACES AND MASKS (VOLUME TWO), AND CENTURY OF THE WIND (VOLUME THREE)- as well as OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA, DAYS AND NIGHTS OF LOVE AND WAR, and THE BOOK OF EMBRACES. Jacket design by Francine Kass. . .
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
Almost three decades of committed journalism and polemic from one of Latin America's most passionate and irreplaceable voices. The title of WE SAY NO is drawn from a speech delivered by Eduardo Galeano in support of democracy in Chile in 1988. It eloquently states the case that by saying no to a global system of greed, repression, and exploitation one says yes to the universal values of equality, freedom, and love. All of the thirty-four pieces that comprise this book affirm the elemental struggle of the forgotten and the dispossessed for simple human dignity. From vivid portraits of the ‘last emperor' Pu Yi, Pele, and Che Guevara to a defense of the political nature of the literary enterprise in Latin America to stinging critiques of the end-of-history thesis and the ‘celebrations' of Columbus's voyages of discovery (and conquest) to the genesis of MEMORY OF FIRE, the pieces in WE SAY NO are united by Galeano's unique ability to blend stirring political commitment, a magical literary facility, and a large historical imagination into a seamless web. The result is a volume indispensable to the growing legion of Galeano's American readers and to all concerned with the issues of peace and justice in the Americas and, indeed, in the entire post-Cold War world. EDUARDO GALEANO, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940, entered journalism as a political caricaturist and later was the editor of various weekly and daily papers. In 1973 he went into exile in Argentina, where he founded and edited the magazine Crisis. He lived in Spain from 1976 to 1984 and then returned to Uruguay, where he now lives. He is the author of MEMORY OF FIRE- GENESIS (VOLUME ONE), FACES AND MASKS (VOLUME TWO), AND CENTURY OF THE WIND (VOLUME THREE)- as well as OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA, DAYS AND NIGHTS OF LOVE AND WAR, and THE BOOK OF EMBRACES. Jacket design by Francine Kass. . .
Eduardo Hughes Galeano (born 3 September 1940) is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de AmErica Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has proclaimed his obsession as a writer saying, ‘I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.'
The narration is conveyed in fragments of dialogue, interior monologues, and brief narrative sketches . . . The quest for identity, the role of the individual in a modern society, the ambivalent role of sex as a means of communication as well as degradation are familiar themes which unify the fragments of La comparsa.' - Joseph Sommers in AFTER THE STORM: LANDMARKS OF THE MODERN MEXICAN NOVEL . . . ‘La Comparsa is a fascinating view, often amusing and occasionally eyebrow-raising, of a whole town that has collectively ‘let its hair down . . . The variegated procession of images, incidents, and conversations provides a satisfying characterization of these humorous persons caught up in uninhibited celebration!' - Walter M. Langford in THE MEXICAN NOVEL COMES OF AGE . . . ‘La comparsa looks deeply into the part of his fictional world that Galindo knows most intimately - he captures the customs and attitudes of the people who live in the provincial capital of Veracruz. (Provincial in the selection of themes and characters, Galindo once again cleverly avoids the dangers of writing a regional novel.) The city of Jalapa, as it appears in these pages, freed from moral restraints because of Carnival, allows its inhabitants to behave more or less as they really are rather than as what they seem to be. A brief periodic catharsis, Carnival serves as the law of the three unities (time, place and action in this novel!' - Emmanuel Carballo in La Cultura en Mexico.
Sergio Galindo (September 2, 1926 - January 3, 1993) was a Mexican novelist and short-story writer. He was born in Jalapa in the state of Veracruz, a region of Mexico that figures prominently in much of his writing. His most widely acclaimed novels are El Bordo (The Precipice, 1960) and Otilia Rauda (1986), the latter filmed as La Mujer del Pueblo in 2001. Galindo studied at the Mexican National Autonomous University (UNAM) and in Paris. He was the founder and first director of the University of Veracruz Press, where he also founded and edited the journal La Palabra y el Hombre (The Word and the Man). He was Director of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (National Institute of Fine Arts) from 1974 to 1976. Galindo was awarded the following prizes and honours: Honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire, Polish award for Cultural Merit, Order of the Star of Yugoslavia, Mariano Azuela Prize, the Bellas Artes Literature Prize, the Xavier Villarrutia Prize and the Jose Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature. He was elected to the Mexican Academy of the Language in 1975 and to the Spanish Royal Academy the following year. In 2006, the University of Veracruz and its International University Book Festival inaugurated an annual prize for first novels by Latin American writers, called the Premio Latinoamericano de Primera Novela Sergio Galindo. His works have been translated into English, French, Polish, German and Italian.
Winner of Mexico's prestigious Xavier Villaurrutia prize in 1986, Otilia Rauda is here translated into English for the first time as OTILIA'S BODY. Widely considered Sergio Galindo's best work, the novel unfolds the drama of a sexually liberated woman's obsession with an outlaw lover, played against the backdrop of events in Mexican history from 1910 to 1940 as they affected conservative, provincial society in the state of Veracruz. Galindo and his contemporaries initiated ‘intimist' fiction in Mexico, and Otilia's Body is noteworthy for its penetratingly described characters who transcend the limits of time and place to become universally recognizable. Otilia's tragedy comes not from the constricted life she leads in a provincial Mexican town but from fate itself. All the admirable characters in OTILIA'S BODY defy social convention in some way, and the tapestry of their lives produces tragic ironies that make Galindo's people unforgettable . . . FROM REVIEWS OF THE SPANISH EDITION: ‘A novel of exemplary structure, multiple climaxes, with narrative intensity, Otilia Rauda takes its place among the best works that Mexican fiction has produced.' - Hector GaIly, Sábado. ‘Otilia is one of the few feminine characters in Mexican fiction who handle their sexuality confidently and credibly' - Federico Patan, Contrapuntos. ‘With homely features, but with a body so shapely and exciting that it sets men (priests included) aflame throughout the novel, with an incandescent voluptuousness and delightful amorality (surely explosive in the conservative Mexican society) of her time and place), equally disposed to give and receive pleasure or to order the murder of the man she loves most, Otilia Rauda could be the protagonist of a Greek tragedy or of a soap opera made of improbable happenings and as many turns of fate as there are chapters used to tell the story of her life.' - Jorge Ruffinelli, Punto y Aparte. . SERGIO GALINDO was one of Mexico's most prominent writers of the twentieth century. Winner of both the Mariano Azuela Prize and the Jose Fuentes Mares Prize, he was the author of thirteen novels and many shorter works. . CAROLYN BRUSHWOOD is a professional translator whose works also include Galindo's THE PRECIPICE. John Brushwood is a professor emeritus of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He has written extensively on Mexican literature, including Mexico in its Novel, also published by UT Press. . (original title: Otila Rauda, 1986).
Sergio Galindo (September 2, 1926 - January 3, 1993) was a Mexican novelist and short-story writer. He was born in Jalapa in the state of Veracruz, a region of Mexico that figures prominently in much of his writing. His most widely acclaimed novels are El Bordo (The Precipice, 1960) and Otilia Rauda (1986), the latter filmed as La Mujer del Pueblo in 2001. Galindo studied at the Mexican National Autonomous University (UNAM) and in Paris. He was the founder and first director of the University of Veracruz Press, where he also founded and edited the journal La Palabra y el Hombre (The Word and the Man). He was Director of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (National Institute of Fine Arts) from 1974 to 1976. Galindo was awarded the following prizes and honours: Honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire, Polish award for Cultural Merit, Order of the Star of Yugoslavia, Mariano Azuela Prize, the Bellas Artes Literature Prize, the Xavier Villarrutia Prize and the Jose Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature. He was elected to the Mexican Academy of the Language in 1975 and to the Spanish Royal Academy the following year. In 2006, the University of Veracruz and its International University Book Festival inaugurated an annual prize for first novels by Latin American writers, called the Premio Latinoamericano de Primera Novela Sergio Galindo. His works have been translated into English, French, Polish, German and Italian.
It is going to seem strange to sleep in a boy's bed, Camerina Rabasa thought. With these opening words, Sergio Galindo paints a portrait in depth of ageing, loneliness, and self-deception on a canvas of family life in Jalapa and Mexico City; of a spinster who transcends the merely pathetic to reach epic dignity; of the mutations of love and time. Published in 1958, Polvos de Arroz was the author's first novel and initiated one of his important themes. Dr. Bert Patrick of Kansas State University, aided by his wife, has produced a moving translation that captures the spirit of the original. The work was made possible by a grant from the Center for Inter-American Relations. PERIVALE TRANSLATION SERIES . Originally published in Spanish as Polvos de Arroz in 1958.
Sergio Galindo (September 2, 1926 - January 3, 1993) was a Mexican novelist and short-story writer. He was born in Jalapa in the state of Veracruz, a region of Mexico that figures prominently in much of his writing. His most widely acclaimed novels are El Bordo (The Precipice, 1960) and Otilia Rauda (1986), the latter filmed as La Mujer del Pueblo in 2001. Galindo studied at the Mexican National Autonomous University (UNAM) and in Paris. He was the founder and first director of the University of Veracruz Press, where he also founded and edited the journal La Palabra y el Hombre (The Word and the Man). He was Director of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (National Institute of Fine Arts) from 1974 to 1976. Galindo was awarded the following prizes and honours: Honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire, Polish award for Cultural Merit, Order of the Star of Yugoslavia, Mariano Azuela Prize, the Bellas Artes Literature Prize, the Xavier Villarrutia Prize and the Jose Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature. He was elected to the Mexican Academy of the Language in 1975 and to the Spanish Royal Academy the following year. In 2006, the University of Veracruz and its International University Book Festival inaugurated an annual prize for first novels by Latin American writers, called the Premio Latinoamericano de Primera Novela Sergio Galindo. His works have been translated into English, French, Polish, German and Italian.
THE PRECIPICE, an intimate picture of the complexity of life in a contemporary Mexican family, is a novel of anticipation. The reader is involved immediately and joins the characters in their anxiety about what will happen. Although he may sense, in a general way, what the outcome will be, the details become clear only with Galindo's careful development of the story. Events of earlier times play a role in present reality. Memories of revolutionary upheaval and of a moment of socialist indoctrination cast their long shadows over the present, and these echoes are as characteristically Mexican as the aspects of contemporary life, which Galindo reveals. We become aware of attitudes toward foreigners, for example, and of the importance of tourism, of Spanish immigrants in commerce, of the vanishing old aristocracy, of the changing attitudes when class lines are crossed. But all this is background. The novel's plot is based on human emotions as universal as love, resentment, and resignation. Galindo shows how members of a single family behave as they try to reconcile their egos with tile requirements of family living. Each individual can fulfill his personal destiny (at least as it appears to him) by following a certain course of action. Some are denied this fulfillment by inexplicable fate. Others destroy it through a kind of self-punishment. Still others find it is possible to make a satisfactory compromise. Galindo views the search for fulfillment from the standpoint of those who have missed the opportunity and also as it appears to those who are still seeking. He brings his people to life by his genius for selecting just the right detail to make a situation or an emotion absolutely real.
Sergio Galindo (September 2, 1926 - January 3, 1993) was a Mexican novelist and short-story writer. He was born in Jalapa in the state of Veracruz, a region of Mexico that figures prominently in much of his writing. His most widely acclaimed novels are El Bordo (The Precipice, 1960) and Otilia Rauda (1986), the latter filmed as La Mujer del Pueblo in 2001. Galindo studied at the Mexican National Autonomous University (UNAM) and in Paris. He was the founder and first director of the University of Veracruz Press, where he also founded and edited the journal La Palabra y el Hombre (The Word and the Man). He was Director of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (National Institute of Fine Arts) from 1974 to 1976. Galindo was awarded the following prizes and honours: Honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire, Polish award for Cultural Merit, Order of the Star of Yugoslavia, Mariano Azuela Prize, the Bellas Artes Literature Prize, the Xavier Villarrutia Prize and the Jose Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature. He was elected to the Mexican Academy of the Language in 1975 and to the Spanish Royal Academy the following year. In 2006, the University of Veracruz and its International University Book Festival inaugurated an annual prize for first novels by Latin American writers, called the Premio Latinoamericano de Primera Novela Sergio Galindo. His works have been translated into English, French, Polish, German and Italian.
The first English translation of Venezuelan novelist Romulo Gallegos' great epic of the Orinoco Rivet during the Gomez dictatorship of the 1930s. This luxury edition of CANAIMA was commissioned by the North American Association of Venezuela to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Gallegos' birth in 1884. The book is set in the 1930s in Venezuela, a time when barbarism and civilization were in conflict and when men resorted to daring manliness and unpunished violence. First published in 1915 in Spain, where Gallegos was living in self-imposed exile, the book was banned in Venezuela. Readers will find this complete edition the perfect introduction to Gallegos' world and work. The translation is excellent, and the scholarly apparatus is supportive and enlightening. Twenty-five color plates illustrate the distinctive jungle setting. An endpaper map shows the many places mentioned in the novel.
Romulo Ángel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos Freire (2 August 1884 - 7 April 1969) was a Venezuelan novelist and politician. For a period of some nine months during 1948, he was the first cleanly elected president in his country's history. Romulo Gallegos was born in Caracas to Romulo Gallegos Osío and Rita Freire Guruceaga, into a family of humble origin. He began his work as a schoolteacher, writer, and journalist in 1903. His novel Doña Bárbara was first published 1929, and it was because of the book's criticisms of the regime of longtime dictator Juan Vicente Gomez that he was forced to flee the country. He took refuge in Spain, where he continued to write: his acclaimed novels Cantaclaro (1934) and Canaima (1935) date from this period. He returned to Venezuela in 1936 and was appointed Minister of Public Education. In 1937 he was elected to Congress and, in 1940–41, served as councillor of Caracas. In 1945, was involved in the coup d'Etat that brought Romulo Betancourt and the ‘Revolutionary Government Junta' to power, in the period known as El Trienio Adeco. In the 1947 general election he ran for the presidency of the republic as the Accion Democrática candidate and won in what is generally believed to be the country's first honest election. He took office in February 1948, but officers Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Marcos PErez JimEnez and Luis Felipe Llovera Páez, threw him out of office in November in the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'Etat. He took refuge first in Cuba and then in Mexico. From 1960 to 1963, he was Commissioner of the newly created Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (created on 18 August 1959), and he was also its first President (1960). He was able to return to Venezuela in 1958. He was appointed a senator for life, awarded the National Literature Prize (1958, for La doncella), and elected to the Venezuelan Academy of the Language (the correspondent agency in Venezuela of the Spanish Royal Academy). He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960, largely due to the efforts of Miguel Otero Silva, and gained widespread support in Latin America, but ultimately lost out to Saint-John Perse. The Romulo Gallegos international novel prize was created in his honor in 1964, with the first award being made in 1967. Romulo Gallegos Freire died in Caracas on 5 April 1969.
THE PITTSBURGH EDITIONS OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE. Romulo Gallegos was a literary giant in Venezuela, as well as its president. CANAIMA, first published in 1935 takes the reader into the just-being-ravaged world of the primeval jungle of Venezuela early in the twentieth century. The world Gallegos creates is one of gold and diamonds and raw rubber, of foreigners and criollos, of Indians of many tongues and tribes fleeing the incursions of the white man, of Africans imported from the Caribbean to dig the gold. His prose, like the jungle, is florid, lush, and tangled, and Will Kirkland preserves the exoticism of the original in a colorful and idiomatic translation. This critical edition contains a general introduction, a glossary, notes to the novel, and five critical essays, deepening the enjoyment of those who love serious literature and making it ideal for classroom use. . Michael I. Doudoroff is professor of Spanish, University of Kansas, and coordinator for the humanities of Venezuela Network, a professional association of specialists on Venezuela in the humanities and social sciences. His research areas include contemporary Venezuelan writers, contemporary Spanish American poetry, Hispanic folklore, and translation. He has published on Hispanic folk theatre, the Spanish American novel, the artistic context of Spanish American ‘Modernismo,' Mexican and Venezuelan poets, and translations of poetry and essays. Will Kirkland is a San Francisco Bay area writer and translator whose works include The Gypsy Ballads by Federico Garcia Lorca, fiction by Max Aub of Spain, and poetry from the Generation of 1955 in Spain. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Tamaqua, Tri-Quarterly, and other journals and magazines, and he is currently working on a volume of FLAMENCO CANTE and a volume of short stories titled IXAT TALES. . .
Romulo Ángel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos Freire (2 August 1884 - 7 April 1969) was a Venezuelan novelist and politician. For a period of some nine months during 1948, he was the first cleanly elected president in his country's history. Romulo Gallegos was born in Caracas to Romulo Gallegos Osío and Rita Freire Guruceaga, into a family of humble origin. He began his work as a schoolteacher, writer, and journalist in 1903. His novel Doña Bárbara was first published 1929, and it was because of the book's criticisms of the regime of longtime dictator Juan Vicente Gomez that he was forced to flee the country. He took refuge in Spain, where he continued to write: his acclaimed novels Cantaclaro (1934) and Canaima (1935) date from this period. He returned to Venezuela in 1936 and was appointed Minister of Public Education. In 1937 he was elected to Congress and, in 1940–41, served as councillor of Caracas. In 1945, was involved in the coup d'Etat that brought Romulo Betancourt and the ‘Revolutionary Government Junta' to power, in the period known as El Trienio Adeco. In the 1947 general election he ran for the presidency of the republic as the Accion Democrática candidate and won in what is generally believed to be the country's first honest election. He took office in February 1948, but officers Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Marcos PErez JimEnez and Luis Felipe Llovera Páez, threw him out of office in November in the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'Etat. He took refuge first in Cuba and then in Mexico. From 1960 to 1963, he was Commissioner of the newly created Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (created on 18 August 1959), and he was also its first President (1960). He was able to return to Venezuela in 1958. He was appointed a senator for life, awarded the National Literature Prize (1958, for La doncella), and elected to the Venezuelan Academy of the Language (the correspondent agency in Venezuela of the Spanish Royal Academy). He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960, largely due to the efforts of Miguel Otero Silva, and gained widespread support in Latin America, but ultimately lost out to Saint-John Perse. The Romulo Gallegos international novel prize was created in his honor in 1964, with the first award being made in 1967. Romulo Gallegos Freire died in Caracas on 5 April 1969.
Doña Bárbara is a novel by Venezuelan author Romulo Gallegos, first published in 1929.[1] It was described in 1974 as "possibly the most widely known Latin American novel". This regionalist novel deals with the confrontation between civilization and the barbaric aspects of the rural environment and its inhabitants. It is written in the third person and mixes vernacular language and regionalisms with literary narrative, making the main conflict more obvious and at the same time more tangible. This novel is considered a masterpiece of Venezuelan literature and a classic in Latin American literature. It establishes a psychological study of the people of the Venezuelan plains:[3] victims of unfortunate situations, but at the same time strong and courageous.
Romulo Ángel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos Freire (2 August 1884 - 7 April 1969) was a Venezuelan novelist and politician. For a period of some nine months during 1948, he was the first cleanly elected president in his country's history. Romulo Gallegos was born in Caracas to Romulo Gallegos Osío and Rita Freire Guruceaga, into a family of humble origin. He began his work as a schoolteacher, writer, and journalist in 1903. His novel Doña Bárbara was first published 1929, and it was because of the book's criticisms of the regime of longtime dictator Juan Vicente Gomez that he was forced to flee the country. He took refuge in Spain, where he continued to write: his acclaimed novels Cantaclaro (1934) and Canaima (1935) date from this period. He returned to Venezuela in 1936 and was appointed Minister of Public Education. In 1937 he was elected to Congress and, in 1940–41, served as councillor of Caracas. In 1945, was involved in the coup d'Etat that brought Romulo Betancourt and the ‘Revolutionary Government Junta' to power, in the period known as El Trienio Adeco. In the 1947 general election he ran for the presidency of the republic as the Accion Democrática candidate and won in what is generally believed to be the country's first honest election. He took office in February 1948, but officers Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Marcos PErez JimEnez and Luis Felipe Llovera Páez, threw him out of office in November in the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'Etat. He took refuge first in Cuba and then in Mexico. From 1960 to 1963, he was Commissioner of the newly created Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (created on 18 August 1959), and he was also its first President (1960). He was able to return to Venezuela in 1958. He was appointed a senator for life, awarded the National Literature Prize (1958, for La doncella), and elected to the Venezuelan Academy of the Language (the correspondent agency in Venezuela of the Spanish Royal Academy). He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960, largely due to the efforts of Miguel Otero Silva, and gained widespread support in Latin America, but ultimately lost out to Saint-John Perse. The Romulo Gallegos international novel prize was created in his honor in 1964, with the first award being made in 1967. Romulo Gallegos Freire died in Caracas on 5 April 1969.
On his first voyage to the New World, Columbus discovered the beautiful island of Hispaniola in the West Indies. Having lived to see the greater part of the Indian population exterminated, an(l the remainder crushed by a vile servitude, he began to regret his fame and to accuse himself of a crime against Nature, of having sacrilegiously violated her closely guarded secrets and laid open her loveliest haunts to the infernal greed of the despoiler. Skillfully translated by Robert Graves, THE CROSS AND THE SWORD is all historical novel of action and intrigue which portrays the heroic struggle of the Indians for freedom from Spanish colonial rule. It is the story of ENRIQULLLO, a young native chief brought up as a Spanish gentleman, who is humiliatingly inscribed on the list of serfs and who fights for and finally gains liberty for his people from Ferdinand; of the injuries and indignities suffered by the House of Columbus as a result of the plotting and chicanery of the greedy and malicious rivals of Diego Colon, son of Columbus; of the Spanish priest Las Casas' courageous crusade to recover dignity and justice for the Indians; and the Dominican friars, who openly denounced the inhuman cruelties which blackened the name of conquest. Combining factual accuracy with great imaginative scope, THE CROSS AND THE SWORD is a masterpiece in its genre which provides a new and refreshing experience in historical fiction.
MANUEL DE JESUS GALVAN knew well the island of which he wrote. Santo Domingo gained independence from Haiti during Galván's early youth. As a result of his activities in cultural and diplomatic affairs, he was appointed Secretary to General Pedro Santana, President of the Republic, at the age of twenty-five. In his closeness to the President, Galván actively supported Santana's resolution to re-annex the Dominican territory to Spain as a barrier to Haitian invasions. As this arrangement with Spain lasted but four years, when the Spanish forces evacuated the Dominican territory, Galván left his country for a number of years. Upon his return he became active as a lawyer, educator, legislator, diplomat, and writer. Galván's only novel, issued in 1879 in Spanish as Enriqüillo, THE CROSS AND THE SWORD is now published for the first time in English. It is translated by Robert Graves, novelist and poet known throughout the English-speaking world as author of I, Claudius and many other books. Guest lecturer at Cambridge University in his native England, Mr. Graves has lived for many years in Spain. . Robert Graves, novelist and poet known throughout the English-speaking world is the author of I, Claudius and many other books. Guest lecturer at Cambridge University in his native England, Mr. Graves has lived for many years in Spain. . issued in 1879 in Spanish as Enriqüillo .
This Latin-American classic is a novel of action: its setting Santo Domingo in the island of Hispaniola during the early years of the Spanish conquest. When it opens, the recently appointed Governor, Nicolas de Ovando, has just carried out one of those appalling massacres of trusting Indians which were a feature of every stage of the conquest of the New World. Eighty Indian chiefs had been betrayed and slain, and their queen, Anacoana, had been taken to the capital and executed there, Possibly, the author suggests, Ovando's conscience troubled him : anyway he ordered that the queen's daughter, Higuemota, and her daughter, little Mencia, should be protected and should be accorded all the respect due to their rank. He may have been influenced in this decision by the fact that Higuemota was now the widow of one of his most distinguished officers, and that Mencia was half Spanish. But no such scruples influence her late husband's next of kin, Pedro de Mojica, who has been appointed her major-domo and seeks by fair means or foul - preferably foul - to secure possession of her estates, Meanwhile, news has reached Santo Domingo that Columbus has been wrecked on the island of Jamaica, and is in desperate need of help. The jealous Ovando refuses to give it until public out- cry and finally the threat of ex- communication force his hand, When at last, sick and disillusioned, Columbus reaches Santo Domingo, he is horrified to learn of the brutal nature of Ovando's rule, and returns to Spain to plead for the Indians, but soon dies there, Years pass, and at last his son Diego succeeds in recovering the family inheritance and goes out to Hispaniola as Viceroy, to dis- place Ovando. By now the novel has centred upon Enriquillo, who in spite of his (adopted) Spanish name is of pure Indian descent, the grand-nephew of the dead queen Anacoana. He has been brought up under the protection of the saintly priest Las Casas, whose Christian charity has sometimes tempered even Ovando's savagery and has considerably influenced the naturally blood-thirsty General Velazquez. Under Don Diego's rule the lot of the Indians greatly improves, [please turn to back and Enriquillo grows up-and becomes betrothed to Mencia in a world which is comparatively at peace. But when Enriquillo is about to be married, the evil forces on the island again win control. Don Diego has been recalled to Spain, Las Casas is also away, Enriquillo's good guardian, Francisco de Valenzuela, dies, and the infamous schemer Mojica sees his chance at last to secure the estates which he has never ceased to covet, He has as his ally Valenzuela's worthless son AndrEs, who wants Mencia for himself. The marriage, though once prevented, does finally take place, but AndrEs, with the support of local landowners and corrupt officials, forces Enriquillo into the position of a serf. Enriquillo first tries all legal methods of recovering his inheritance, but they only lead to prison and the stocks. So at last he rebels, gathers the Indians around him, and retreats into the mountains, The Indians repel several military expeditions sent against them, and they take Mojica prisoner and hang him - against Enriquillo's orders, but he manages to save AndrEs, also a prisoner, and his magnanimity makes AndrEs a changed character. The rebellion is at last ended through the mediation of Las Casas, with pardons for the Indians and the restitution of their rights. Vastly readable, and distinguished by continuous zest and inventiveness, "The Cross and the Sword" is in an altogether different category from that of the historical novel of commerce.
MANUEL DE JESUS GALVAN knew well the island of which he wrote. Santo Domingo gained independence from Haiti during Galván's early youth. As a result of his activities in cultural and diplomatic affairs, he was appointed Secretary to General Pedro Santana, President of the Republic, at the age of twenty-five. In his closeness to the President, Galván actively supported Santana's resolution to re-annex the Dominican territory to Spain as a barrier to Haitian invasions. As this arrangement with Spain lasted but four years, when the Spanish forces evacuated the Dominican territory, Galván left his country for a number of years. Upon his return he became active as a lawyer, educator, legislator, diplomat, and writer. Galván's only novel, issued in 1879 in Spanish as Enriqüillo, THE CROSS AND THE SWORD is now published for the first time in English. It is translated by Robert Graves, novelist and poet known throughout the English-speaking world as author of I, Claudius and many other books. Guest lecturer at Cambridge University in his native England, Mr. Graves has lived for many years in Spain. . Robert Graves, novelist and poet known throughout the English-speaking world is the author of I, Claudius and many other books. Guest lecturer at Cambridge University in his native England, Mr. Graves has lived for many years in Spain. . issued in 1879 in Spanish as Enriqüillo .
A member of Brazil's avant-garde in its heyday. Patrícia Galvão (or to use her nickname, Pagu) was extraordinary. Not only was her work among the most exciting and innovative published in the 1930s, it was unique in portraying an avant-garde woman's view of women in Sao Paulo during that audacious period. Industrial Park, first published in 1933, is Galvão's most notable literary achieve-ment. Like Döblin's portrayal of Berlin in Alexanderplatz or Biely's St Petersburg, it is a book about the voices, clashes, and traffic of a city in the middle of rapid change. It includes fragments of public documents as well as dialogue and narration, giving a panorama of the city in a sequence of colorful slices. The novel dramatizes the problems of exploitation, poverty, racial prejudice, prostitution, state repression, and neocolonialism, but it is by no means a doctrinaire tract. Galvão's ironic wit pervades the novel, aspiring not only to describe the teeming city but also to put art and politics in each other's service. Like many of her contemporaries Galvão was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party. She attracted Party criticism for her unorthodox behavior and outspokenness. A visit to Moscow in 1934 disenchanted her with the communist state, but she continued to militate for change upon returning to Brazil. She was imprisoned and tortured under the Vargas dictatorship between 1935 and 1940. In the 1940s she returned to the public through her journalism and literary activities. She died in 1962.
Patrícia Rehder Galvão , known by the pseudonym Pagu (São João da Boa Vista, June 9, 1910 - Santos , December 12, 1962) was a writer, poet, theater director, translator, and journalist. A member of Brazil's avant-garde in its heyday. Patrícia Galvão (or to use her nickname, Pagu) was extraordinary. Not only was her work among the most exciting and innovative published in the 1930s, it was unique in portraying an avant-garde woman's view of women in Sao Paulo during that audacious period. Like many of her contemporaries Galvão was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party. She attracted Party criticism for her unorthodox behavior and outspokenness. A visit to Moscow in 1934 disenchanted her with the communist state, but she continued to militate for change upon returning to Brazil. She was imprisoned and tortured under the Vargas dictatorship between 1935 and 1940. In the 1940s she returned to the public through her journalism and literary activities. She died in 1962.
Written by a noted South American author, this is a novel of real distinction, intense in its human appeal and tragic in the classic sense. Set forth in truly beautiful prose, it fills the reader with pity and purges him with the fire of wholesome emotion. Essentially, here is the story of the life-long struggle of a heroic priest against what he feels to be the evil within him, and this fight, in all its aspects, is breathlessly shown through the events of a more or less routine day - Holy Wednesday. Upon this day, in Buenos Aires, Father Solanas was more weary than usual. And as often happens, he was in the midst of a poignant personal tragedy, battling for the very best that was in him while friends and acquaintances see him merely as a man getting through the routine of the daily job. But the reader sees with the eyes of the author, and shares in the Father's secret thoughts. The conflict in Father Solanas, once a handsome, idealistic boy, now a fat hulk of a man, is that between the life he might have led out- side the priesthood, with a wife, home, children, and his present lonely and ascetic life in which all that is in him is given to hard duties. The conflict comes to a head on this Holy Wednesday when almost everything that happens to him emphasizes all he has lost as a man. With superb organization, characterization, and atmosphere, the novel rushes to its tremendous climax wherein the reader learns what the years have been preparing as the fate of Father Solanas.
Manuel Gálvez (born 18 July 1882 in Paraná, Entre Ríos - died 14 November 1968 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentine novelist, poet, essayist, historian and biographer. Gálvez, a member of one of the leading patrician families of Entre Ríos Province, was educated by the Jesuits before attending the University of Buenos Aires, graduating in 1904 with a law degree. He was employed as a schools inspector from 1906 to 1931. His early political idea were somewhat fluid. At university he had helped to found a highly traditionalist literary review called Ideas but soon after graduation he was involved in liberalism before becoming enamoured of the Spanish Generation of '98. As such along with the likes of Ricardo Rojas he became part of a Hispanidad movement within Argentine literature that sought closer cultural ties with Spain. By widely reading the Hispanidad authors and examining their works for a specifically Argentine audience in his own writing Gálvez has been credited for ensuring the spread of the ideology amongst the country's nationalist intellectuals. He also emphasised the centrality of the Roman Catholic Church to Argentine identity. Between 1906 and 1910 Gálvez became a regular visitor to Spain and these journeys helped to solidify his belief in Hispanidad, as expounded in his 1913 book El Solar de la Raza. Politically he became associated with the rightist nationalism of the country's upper classes and indeed claimed in his collection of essays El Diario de Gabriel Quiroga that he was the first genuine Argentine nationalist in history. He was particularly fixated on the dilution of Argentine culture that he feared was taking place due to what he believed was the influx of Jews, whom he identified with anarchism, Italian peasants, whom he identified with materialism, and international finance, which he believed fuelled decadence and cosmopolitanism. He was the first of the nationalist writers to promote Juan Manuel de Rosas as an archetype of Argentine values, which was later shared by most of his contemporaries. Gálvez's hero worship of Rosas led him to pen a series of five novels set during his rule, to become joint editor of a journal named after Rosas and to serve as Vice President of the Instituto de Investigaciones Historicas 'Juan Manuel de Rosas'. The latter group, which came to specialise in historical revisionism about Argentina, had been established in 1938 by Gálvez, Roberto de Laferrère, Carlos Ibarguren, Ernesto Palacio and Rodolfo and Julio Irazusta. In 1925 Gálvez adopted Italian fascism as his preferred mode of government, arguing that it was the only way to prevent the weak government that he felt was aiding the growth of his declared enemies of communism, immigration and American imperialism. He would also look to the example of the Falange, arguing that these fascist groups were the only ones capable of defending religion and tradition from ‘Satanic' communism. He denied charges of anti-Semitism, claiming that he opposed Jewish immigration to Argentina simply because he was anti-immigration rather than anti-Jewish, although he regularly criticised perceived Jewish influence in Argentina and as late as 1962 his novel El Mal Metafisico was criticised for the highly stereotypical portrayal of Jewish characters. However despite publicly endorsing versions of fascism he always stopped short of full fascism in his writing due to the innate conservatism of his traditionalism and his main political influences were fellow ultra-traditionalists Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès. Gálvez was a prolific writer whose works covered a number of styles and genres. As a novelist his works included La sombra del convento, El cántico espiritual, MiErcoles Santo, La tragedia de un hombre fuerte, La noche toca a su fin y Cautiverio, La muerte en las calles (1949), Nacha Regules (1919) and Historia de arrabal (1923), the latter two works proving his most widely celebrated. He was a literary prize winner for both Los caminos de la muerte (1928) and El general Quiroga (1932). His theatrical works include El hombre de los ojos azules (1928) and Calibán (1943). His volume of work increased significantly in the 1950s, as he wrote Tiempo de odio y angustia (1951), Han tocado a degüello (1840–1842) (1951), Bajo la garra anglo-francesa (1953), Y así cayo Don Juan Manuel (1954), Las dos vidas del pobre Napoleon (1954), El uno y la multitud (1955), Tránsito Guzmán (1956), Poemas para la reciEn llegada (1957), Perdido en su noche (1958), Recuerdos de la vida literaria (1961), Me mataron entre todos (1962) and La locura de ser santo (1967) amongst others. His first poetic work was 1907's El enigma interior, followed in 1909 by the similar Sendero de humildad. As an essayist, polemicist and critic he published El solar de la raza (1913), La vida múltiple (1916), Amigos y maestros de mi juventud (1944) and El novelista y las novelas (1959) as well as biographies of such historic figures as Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Hipolito Yrigoyen and Gabriel García Moreno.
A serious, earnest, sociological novel by one of Argentina's leading novelists. Rich in incident, with vivid pictures of life in Buenos Aires, ‘Nacha Regules' approaches an old theme with dignity and a deep moral purpose new to books of its kind, and shows the Latin mind of South America striking a new path for itself among the prejudices and institutions inherited from Europe. MANUEL GALVEZ through the mouth of his hero asks his countrymen to think of the Americas as something more than a place where Europeans, remaining Europeans, can get rich. He askes them to create a new moral and social consciousness. ‘Nacha Regules' is an expression of the moral awakening through which, far in advance of countries in the Old World, Argentina is passing at this moment. ‘Nacha Regules' , says the ‘Boston Transcript', ‘exemplifies the beauty which Galvez sees in suffering, the power of sorrow to correct and redeem the lost.' In view of the recent success of the book in Argentina, the city of Buenos Aires awarded it the Prize for Letters in the year 1920.
Manuel Gálvez (born 18 July 1882 in Paraná, Entre Ríos - died 14 November 1968 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentine novelist, poet, essayist, historian and biographer. Gálvez, a member of one of the leading patrician families of Entre Ríos Province, was educated by the Jesuits before attending the University of Buenos Aires, graduating in 1904 with a law degree. He was employed as a schools inspector from 1906 to 1931. His early political idea were somewhat fluid. At university he had helped to found a highly traditionalist literary review called Ideas but soon after graduation he was involved in liberalism before becoming enamoured of the Spanish Generation of '98. As such along with the likes of Ricardo Rojas he became part of a Hispanidad movement within Argentine literature that sought closer cultural ties with Spain. By widely reading the Hispanidad authors and examining their works for a specifically Argentine audience in his own writing Gálvez has been credited for ensuring the spread of the ideology amongst the country's nationalist intellectuals. He also emphasised the centrality of the Roman Catholic Church to Argentine identity. Between 1906 and 1910 Gálvez became a regular visitor to Spain and these journeys helped to solidify his belief in Hispanidad, as expounded in his 1913 book El Solar de la Raza. Politically he became associated with the rightist nationalism of the country's upper classes and indeed claimed in his collection of essays El Diario de Gabriel Quiroga that he was the first genuine Argentine nationalist in history. He was particularly fixated on the dilution of Argentine culture that he feared was taking place due to what he believed was the influx of Jews, whom he identified with anarchism, Italian peasants, whom he identified with materialism, and international finance, which he believed fuelled decadence and cosmopolitanism. He was the first of the nationalist writers to promote Juan Manuel de Rosas as an archetype of Argentine values, which was later shared by most of his contemporaries. Gálvez's hero worship of Rosas led him to pen a series of five novels set during his rule, to become joint editor of a journal named after Rosas and to serve as Vice President of the Instituto de Investigaciones Historicas 'Juan Manuel de Rosas'. The latter group, which came to specialise in historical revisionism about Argentina, had been established in 1938 by Gálvez, Roberto de Laferrère, Carlos Ibarguren, Ernesto Palacio and Rodolfo and Julio Irazusta. In 1925 Gálvez adopted Italian fascism as his preferred mode of government, arguing that it was the only way to prevent the weak government that he felt was aiding the growth of his declared enemies of communism, immigration and American imperialism. He would also look to the example of the Falange, arguing that these fascist groups were the only ones capable of defending religion and tradition from ‘Satanic' communism. He denied charges of anti-Semitism, claiming that he opposed Jewish immigration to Argentina simply because he was anti-immigration rather than anti-Jewish, although he regularly criticised perceived Jewish influence in Argentina and as late as 1962 his novel El Mal Metafisico was criticised for the highly stereotypical portrayal of Jewish characters. However despite publicly endorsing versions of fascism he always stopped short of full fascism in his writing due to the innate conservatism of his traditionalism and his main political influences were fellow ultra-traditionalists Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès. Gálvez was a prolific writer whose works covered a number of styles and genres. As a novelist his works included La sombra del convento, El cántico espiritual, MiErcoles Santo, La tragedia de un hombre fuerte, La noche toca a su fin y Cautiverio, La muerte en las calles (1949), Nacha Regules (1919) and Historia de arrabal (1923), the latter two works proving his most widely celebrated. He was a literary prize winner for both Los caminos de la muerte (1928) and El general Quiroga (1932). His theatrical works include El hombre de los ojos azules (1928) and Calibán (1943). His volume of work increased significantly in the 1950s, as he wrote Tiempo de odio y angustia (1951), Han tocado a degüello (1840–1842) (1951), Bajo la garra anglo-francesa (1953), Y así cayo Don Juan Manuel (1954), Las dos vidas del pobre Napoleon (1954), El uno y la multitud (1955), Tránsito Guzmán (1956), Poemas para la reciEn llegada (1957), Perdido en su noche (1958), Recuerdos de la vida literaria (1961), Me mataron entre todos (1962) and La locura de ser santo (1967) amongst others. His first poetic work was 1907's El enigma interior, followed in 1909 by the similar Sendero de humildad. As an essayist, polemicist and critic he published El solar de la raza (1913), La vida múltiple (1916), Amigos y maestros de mi juventud (1944) and El novelista y las novelas (1959) as well as biographies of such historic figures as Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Hipolito Yrigoyen and Gabriel García Moreno.
THE IMPENETRABLE MADAM X is a naughty, comedic romp through the fields of desire and pleasure in nineteenth-century Spain. At the apex of the triangle is Madam X, flanked by two pursuers, Jonathan and her maid Marie. With tongue in cheek, Gambaro concocts hilariously exaggerated scenes of sexual acrobatics, poking fun at virile prowess, aging femininity, heterosexual hypocrisy and homosexual taboos. Gambaro wrote this tour de force for a contest on the erotic novel held by a Barcelona publishing house and had it published in her native Argentina. It is unique among her other works where violence and humiliation prevail in sadomasochistic relationships. For most Spanish American writers, the woman is consistently the object of male desire and domination, although she is frequently and idealistically masked as a vehicle or medium of the male metaphysical quest for self-understanding and self-definition. In this work, Gambaro shuns the well-trodden path to domination and pain for the sometimes frustrating one of erotic union and pleasure. Latent desires are not played out in victimizations of women by men but in a ‘battle without blood,' where the booty is shared and the contenders alternate as victors without cruelty and as vanquished without humiliation. Furthermore, Gambaro explores the sensually boundless space of woman's desire and pleasure, while poking fun at phallocentric sexuality that tends to dominate not only in erotic literature but also in traditional psychoanalytic theories of Western culture as well. THE IMPENETRABLE MADAM X is a publication in the Latin American Literature and Culture Series.
Griselda Gambaro (born July 24, 1928) is an Argentine writer, whose novels, plays, short stories, story tales, essays and novels for teenagers often concern the political violence in her home country that would develop into the Dirty War. One recurring theme is the desaparecidos and the attempts to recover their bodies and memorialize them. Her novel, Ganarse la muerte, was banned by the government because of the obvious political message. Gambaro is Argentina's most celebrated playwright, and she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982, as well as many other prizes. Translator Evelyn Picon Garfield is professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has written several books on Hispanic authors including Julio Cortázar and women authors from Latin America. Together with Ivan A. Schulman, she has written and edited volumes on Hispanic Modernity and a three-volume series designed for the teaching of Hispanic literatures.
A translation of 21 stories from La venganza del condor (1924). Garcia Calderon's stylized view of the Peruvian Andes and his rather negative portrayal of the Indian caused a strong reaction by subsequent Peruvian writers who strived to present a more authentic picture of life in that region. Illustrated
Calderon Ventura Garcia-Rey (Paris, February 23, 1886 - Paris, October 27, 1959 ) was a Peruvian writer, diplomat, and critic. He lived most of his life in Paris and a good part of his work is written in French. He was, therefore, a bilingual writer. As such he developed under the modernist influence and belonged to the Generation of 900 or Arielista, which also included his brother Francisco García Calderon Rey, Jose de la Riva Agüero, Jose Gálvez Barrenechea, and Víctor AndrEs Belaunde, among others. He stood out in various literary genres, but most especially in the short story, his most representative work being his collection entitled The Vengeance of the Condor. His poetry and chronicles are also notable. But more extensive was his work as a critic and anthologist of the literature of his country and of Latin America.
Never had a death been foretold more widely. Twenty-two people had heard the Vicario twins discussing their intentions in the market on the morning of the murder, It was as if they were challenging someone to stop their crime. By the time the Bishop's boat arrived, there were very few people in the village who did not know that young, open-hearted, wealthy Santiago Nasar was the twins' declared victim - or why. Yet twenty-three years later, when the narrator pieces this fascinating chronicle together, witnesses cannot explain why Santiago was not warned - or whether he was guilty of anything at all. The day before his murder, Santiago, like almost everyone else in the village, revelled at the wedding of Angela Vicario, Her groom, Bayardo San Roman, was a relative newcomer to the community, but he had a large fortune, a hero General for a father, and a mother and sisters whose fashionable appearance at the ceremony left a deep impression. Some thought Bayardo a strange man, not least of all his bride, He had decided to marry Angela, having seen her only once, crossing the square. He never tried to seduce her, just bewitched the family. And even if he hadn't succeeded in bewitching them himself his money would have, Angela made one other mistake beyond that of marrying a man she didn't love: she dared to put on the veil and take the orange blossoms which were to signify her purity. Gabriel Garcia Márquez's ability to recreate the intrigue and claustrophobia - the curious notion of morality and honour - which can entangle a small, close community, is well known from his masterpiece, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD is another such intensely vivid drama, in which the quality of innocence takes on unpredictable shapes.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
Never had a death been foretold more widely. Twenty-two people had heard the Vicario twins discussing their intentions in the market on the morning of the murder, It was as if they were challenging someone to stop their crime. By the time the Bishop's boat arrived, there were very few people in the village who did not know that young, open-hearted, wealthy Santiago Nasar was the twins' declared victim - or why. Yet twenty-three years later, when the narrator pieces this fascinating chronicle together, witnesses cannot explain why Santiago was not warned - or whether he was guilty of anything at all. The day before his murder, Santiago, like almost everyone else in the village, revelled at the wedding of Angela Vicario, Her groom, Bayardo San Roman, was a relative newcomer to the community, but he had a large fortune, a hero General for a father, and a mother and sisters whose fashionable appearance at the ceremony left a deep impression. Some thought Bayardo a strange man, not least of all his bride, He had decided to marry Angela, having seen her only once, crossing the square. He never tried to seduce her, just bewitched the family. And even if he hadn't succeeded in bewitching them himself his money would have, Angela made one other mistake beyond that of marrying a man she didn't love: she dared to put on the veil and take the orange blossoms which were to signify her purity. Gabriel Garcia Márquez's ability to recreate the intrigue and claustrophobia - the curious notion of morality and honour - which can entangle a small, close community, is well known from his masterpiece, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD is another such intensely vivid drama, in which the quality of innocence takes on unpredictable shapes.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
After twelve years in exile, Chile's leading film director, Miguel Littin, returned - in disguise - to shoot a clandestine film about Pinochet's Chile. His voice and experience are recorded here by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Miguel Littin, permanently exiled by Chile's dictator, illegally entered his native country in the fall of 1985, disguised as a Uruguayan businessman. Formerly dark, bearded, and portly, his new persona-reflected in this revealing first-person account-finds him slimmed down, beardless, and light-haired. Littin's laugh, his walk, and each of his gestures were newly learned. While simultaneously directing five film crews on several locations, he became an actor playing a role that required perfection: anything less would spell exposure. His purpose: to film his beloved, despoiled country as it is today, to record the ‘abominable silences' of a country under siege. So successful was his disguise that the filmmaker's own mother failed to recognize him on a surprise visit to her village. The experience and sentiments of a man who traded his own identity for an invented one turn out to be another form of disguise in the hands of the Nobel Prize winner for literature, Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Beyond recounting the daily living of a clandestine life in dangerous circumstances, this remarkable story contains layers of experience and meaning to reveal what happens to an individual when he takes on a new identity. Intelligence, wisdom, humor, and subtlety inform Garcia Márquez's writing to give this important contemporary adventure the unmistakable mark of literature. ‘At the time of General Augusto Pinochet's 1973 military coup against Salvador Allende's Popular Unity government, Miguel Littin was one of Chile's most renowned filmmakers. In 1970, Allende had appointed him head of the newly nationalized Chile Films, through (and against) which Chilean filmmakers sought to implement their theories of ‘popular culture/popular power' by developing new production and distribution methods.' - Susan Linfield American Film. . . Littin fled Chile after the coup, and has since lived in Mexico and Spain. His film Alsino and the Condor received a 1983 Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. ‘One's homeland is where one is born,' Littin has said, ‘but it's also the place where one has a friend, the place where there is justice, the place where one can contribute with his art.' ‘They have the power, they can enslave us, but social processes can never he halted by criminal deeds nor by force. History belongs to us and it is the people who make it.' - Pablo Neruda, September 11, 1973 (the date of the coup d'etat).
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
Three classic short novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, now available in one volume for the first time. Contents: LEAF STORM; NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL; CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
These twenty-six brilliant and enchanting short stories by the 1982 Nobel Laureate are now collected in one volume for the first time. They appear in the order in which they were originally published in Spanish in three separate volumes. They were published in English in NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES (1968), LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES (1972), and INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND OTHER STORIES (1978). Beautifully written, these stories explore, with a deceptive simplicity the different faces of reality, the miracles and mysteries of life, and the humorous, tragic and ironic patterns of the human condition. Published in many countries and languages and universally praised, the stories, dating from 1947, are the work of a master. It is the genius of Garcia Márquez that the ordinary and exotic coexist, that death and laughter, despair and celebration commingle. The strength and originality of his imagination create a sense of lasting wonder.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter, film critic and foreign correspondent for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador He received an honorary doctorate of letters from Columbia University in 1971. In 1982 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. His books published in English are: NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR and CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD.
Available in English for the first time in the U.S., a collection of the speeches of Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez. Throughout his life, Gabriel García Márquez spoke publicly with the same passion and energy that marked his writing. Now the wisdom and compassion of these performances are available in English for the first time. I'm Not Here to Give a Speech records key events throughout the author's life, from a farewell to his classmates delivered when he was only seventeen to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Written across a lifetime, these speeches chart the growth of a genius: each is a snapshot offering insights into the beliefs and ideas of a world- renowned storyteller. Preserving García Márquez's unmistakeable voice for future generations, I'm Not Here to Give a Speech is a must-have for anyone who ever fell in love with Macondo or cherished a battered copy of Love in the Time of Cholera.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
The widow Monteil may have been going slowly mad, but her warning was ominously full of truth: for years they had been complaining that nothing ever happened in their town, then all of a sudden tragedy began. A young man well loved by everyone in the village was shot by a jealous husband out of passion. The mayor, who was supposed to keep order, was suffering the agonies of a badly decayed tooth, which would have to be extracted at gunpoint since the dentist was a suspected enemy of the government. Someone was stalking the streets at night, pinning lampoons on the doors of the people, and although there was reason enough in his scandalous charges, it was the nefarious moralist himself who was the greatest corrupter. Then came the endless rains - two weeks of swelling floods washing away at the foundations of poor wooden houses. Father Angel found dead mice in his font and a rotting cow was washed up on shore, its pervading stench reminding the villagers of the decomposition of their own social order, A curfew was put up to stop the lampoons, but all the armed deputies achieved by their fierce nocturnal vigilance was to interrupt the clandestine love affairs that had at least made people happy, to send away the circus that might have brightened their lives and finally to perpetrate a senseless police shooting. With its atmosphere colored by eloquent felicities and oddities reminiscent of the novels of Graham Greene, IN EVIL HOUR is a powerful evocation of corruption political and individual - as it steadily overtakes a small South American village. It was written early in the remarkable career of Gabriel Garcia Márquez and points expressively towards his later achievements in ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE and THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
Appearing for the first time in English, translated by Gregory Rabassa, this earlier work by Garcia Márquez chronicles the life of a Colombian town very similar to the famous Macondo. One morning slanderous posters start appearing all over the town. They reveal family secrets and defame individuals. Ghosts of the past reappear, old feuds, infidelities, incests. Torrential rains flood the town and chaos is everywhere. Neighbors suspect each other yet no one knows who is responsible for the scurrilous posters. Finally, a boy is made the scapegoat and is killed. The rains cease and things return to some sense of normalcy but everyone knows in his heart he is guilty. Filled with strong yet hidden undercurrents, In Evil Hour contains vivid characters who reflect the humor and pathos of everyday life. This brooding novel clearly points the way to the flowering of Garcia Marquez's genius in his later ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
IN EVIL HOUR is the eerie, magical story of a small Colombian village suddenly haunted by mysterious lampoons - incendiary posters spreading monstrous rumors about the town's most respected citizens. Overnight, the rainy tranquility of the village becomes a smoldering chaos of scandal, deceit, and murder. Full of the imaginative marvels, comic exaggerations, and exotic dreams that made ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE a world-wide legend, IN EVIL HOUR combines the real and the fantastic, as Gabriel Garcia Marquez conjures up a dreamy Latin American village that discovers, in its very midst, the many faces of evil.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
This new collection of short fiction by one of the world's greatest living writers includes a novella and eleven short stories and represents some of Garcia Márquez's earlier work of the 1950s as well as stories written in the 1960s and 1970s. The interest, audience and critical reception of Garcia Márquez continues to grow, and in these stories one finds the uniquely original qualities that have made his work famous throughout the world-myth and mystery, pathos and passion, imagination and reality, characters of magic and truth. Brilliantly translated by Gregory Rabassa, this is the first time these marvelous stories have appeared in book form in English.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
This new collection of short fiction by one of the world's greatest living writers includes a novella and eleven short stories and represents some of Garcia Márquez's earlier work of the 1950s as well as stories written in the 1960s and 1970s. The interest, audience and critical reception of Garcia Márquez continues to grow, and in these stories one finds the uniquely original qualities that have made his work famous throughout the world-myth and mystery, pathos and passion, imagination and reality, characters of magic and truth. Brilliantly translated by Gregory Rabassa, this is the first time these marvelous stories have appeared in book form in English.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
LEAF STORM (La Hojarasca) is the first book Garcia Marquez wrote. He began it when he was nineteen; it was published eight years later. But here already we see the colorful historical background that forms the basis of his later work. It covers the history of Macondo from 1903 to 1928, ending the year the author was born. A man dies, and three people reflect on the story of Macondo's boom and decline as shown in the family fortunes over three generations. As theq attend the wake, the members of the family recall the tragedy that involves them all. Grim, ironic, powerful, Leaf Storm creates a mysterious and ominous atmosphere that lingers on in the reader's mind. The six shorter stories are all marvelously original and different. They tell of such things as a drowned man whose appearance changes the life and patterns of a village, the strange last voyage of a ghost ship and a man with enormous wings. As always, the writings of Gabriel Garcia Márquez provide an incomparable experience that is enhanced by Gregory Rabassa's superb translation.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
LIFE IN MACONDO is filled with mysteries and miracles. Some are as old as man himself and somehow easier to understand: the strange finality of death, the furious activity that swells up around prosperity and then disappears just as suddenly as it came. Others are almost incredibly fantastic: a man dropping from the heavens, a sinister transformation, a death that brings people together as life never could. Probable or fantastic, mystery or miracle, each inspires wonder in the people of Macondo and the reader. ‘The feeling one comes away with,' said The Washington Post, ‘is one of enchantment, which is a sense of having endured terror and magic.' The Christian Science Monitor called LEAF STORM ‘Wild, comic, surreal . . . A savory potpourri of first-rate South American gothic.'
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ established his literary reputation more than twenty years ago with the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a legendary book that has been read by millions of people around the world. It was followed by other works, each of which drew new readers and new praise from the critics-culminating in the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Now Garcia Marquez has written a book that takes its place alongside that earlier, famous work, in the company of the true masterpieces of modern literature. ‘It was inevitable . . . ‘ So begins this story set in a country on the Caribbean coast of South America-a story that ranges from the late nineteenth century to the early decades of our own, tracing the lives of three people and their entwined fates. And yet, at first nothing seems inevitable, for this is a tale of unrequited love. Fifty years, nine months, and four days' worth, to be exact. For that is how long Florentino Ariza has waited to declare, once again, his undying love to Fermina Daza, whom he courted and almost won so many years before. He has the bad grace, however, to make his declaration at the funeral of her husband, one of the most illustrious men of his time, a patron of the arts, distinguished professor of medicine, and leader in the fight against the cholera epidemics that once ravaged the country. Shaken by Florentino's bold speech, Fermina banishes him from her house. But that is only the beginning. With the craft, humor, and accumulated wisdom of a master of fiction, Garcia Márquez transports them (and the reader) back to those early days when they first met, courted, and were forced apart. He shows them going their very different ways-Florentino with his poetry, his rise to prominence in business, and (his devotion to Fermina Daza notwithstanding) his constant pursuit of women. And we see Fermina as she is wooed by the most sought-after bachelor of their time, Doctor Juvenal Urbino de la Calle; as they wed; as they experience all the events and emotions-honeymoon, passion, children, small betrayals, separations, dependencies, and adventures-that constitute a long, sturdy marriage. And then, at what might seem the end of their lives, Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza are brought together once more, in a meeting whose outcome is as fateful, as suspenseful, as any in literature. As the title suggests, Garcia Marquez has written a novel about love, love in all its guises: young love, married love, romantic love, carnal love, even love with the symptoms of cholera. More than that, he has written a work of art radiant with humanity that readers will savor and will remember for the rest of their lives.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ established his literary reputation more than twenty years ago with the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a legendary book that has been read by millions of people around the world. It was followed by other works, each of which drew new readers and new praise from the critics-culminating in the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Now Garcia Marquez has written a book that takes its place alongside that earlier, famous work, in the company of the true masterpieces of modern literature. ‘It was inevitable . . . ‘ So begins this story set in a country on the Caribbean coast of South America-a story that ranges from the late nineteenth century to the early decades of our own, tracing the lives of three people and their entwined fates. And yet, at first nothing seems inevitable, for this is a tale of unrequited love. Fifty years, nine months, and four days' worth, to be exact. For that is how long Florentino Ariza has waited to declare, once again, his undying love to Fermina Daza, whom he courted and almost won so many years before. He has the bad grace, however, to make his declaration at the funeral of her husband, one of the most illustrious men of his time, a patron of the arts, distinguished professor of medicine, and leader in the fight against the cholera epidemics that once ravaged the country. Shaken by Florentino's bold speech, Fermina banishes him from her house. But that is only the beginning. With the craft, humor, and accumulated wisdom of a master of fiction, Garcia Márquez transports them (and the reader) back to those early days when they first met, courted, and were forced apart. He shows them going their very different ways-Florentino with his poetry, his rise to prominence in business, and (his devotion to Fermina Daza notwithstanding) his constant pursuit of women. And we see Fermina as she is wooed by the most sought-after bachelor of their time, Doctor Juvenal Urbino de la Calle; as they wed; as they experience all the events and emotions-honeymoon, passion, children, small betrayals, separations, dependencies, and adventures-that constitute a long, sturdy marriage. And then, at what might seem the end of their lives, Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza are brought together once more, in a meeting whose outcome is as fateful, as suspenseful, as any in literature. As the title suggests, Garcia Marquez has written a novel about love, love in all its guises: young love, married love, romantic love, carnal love, even love with the symptoms of cholera. More than that, he has written a work of art radiant with humanity that readers will savor and will remember for the rest of their lives.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ established his literary reputation more than twenty years ago with the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a legendary book that has been read by millions of people around the world. It was followed by other works, each of which drew new readers and new praise from the critics-culminating in the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Now Garcia Marquez has written a book that takes its place alongside that earlier, famous work, in the company of the true masterpieces of modern literature. ‘It was inevitable . . . ‘ So begins this story set in a country on the Caribbean coast of South America-a story that ranges from the late nineteenth century to the early decades of our own, tracing the lives of three people and their entwined fates. And yet, at first nothing seems inevitable, for this is a tale of unrequited love. Fifty years, nine months, and four days' worth, to be exact. For that is how long Florentino Ariza has waited to declare, once again, his undying love to Fermina Daza, whom he courted and almost won so many years before. He has the bad grace, however, to make his declaration at the funeral of her husband, one of the most illustrious men of his time, a patron of the arts, distinguished professor of medicine, and leader in the fight against the cholera epidemics that once ravaged the country. Shaken by Florentino's bold speech, Fermina banishes him from her house. But that is only the beginning. With the craft, humor, and accumulated wisdom of a master of fiction, Garcia Márquez transports them (and the reader) back to those early days when they first met, courted, and were forced apart. He shows them going their very different ways-Florentino with his poetry, his rise to prominence in business, and (his devotion to Fermina Daza notwithstanding) his constant pursuit of women. And we see Fermina as she is wooed by the most sought-after bachelor of their time, Doctor Juvenal Urbino de la Calle; as they wed; as they experience all the events and emotions-honeymoon, passion, children, small betrayals, separations, dependencies, and adventures-that constitute a long, sturdy marriage. And then, at what might seem the end of their lives, Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza are brought together once more, in a meeting whose outcome is as fateful, as suspenseful, as any in literature. As the title suggests, Garcia Marquez has written a novel about love, love in all its guises: young love, married love, romantic love, carnal love, even love with the symptoms of cholera. More than that, he has written a work of art radiant with humanity that readers will savor and will remember for the rest of their lives.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's first work of fiction in ten years, written at the height of his powers, the Spanish edition of which Ilan Stavans called, ‘Masterful, Erotic, As hypnotizing as it is disturbing' (Los Angeles Times). On the eve of his ninetieth birthday, our unnamed protagonist - an undistinguished journalist and lifelong bachelor - decides to give himself ‘the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin'. The virgin, whom an old madam procures for him, is splendidly young, with the silent power of a sleeping beauty. The night of love blossoms into a transforming year. It is a year in which he relives, in a rush of memories, his lifetime of (paid-for) sexual adventures and experiences a revelation that brings him to the edge of dying - not of old age, but, at long last, of uncorrupted love. MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES is a brilliant gem by the master storyteller. Edith Grossman is widely recognized as the preeminent Spanish-to-English translator of out time.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
This astonishing book by the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Márquez chronicles the 1990 kidnappings of ten Colombian men and women - all journalists but one - by the Medellin drug boss Pablo Escobar. The carefully orchestrated abductions were Escobar's attempt to extort from the government its assurance that he, and other narcotics traffickers, would not be extradited to the United States if they were to surrender. From the highest corridors of government to the domain of the ruthless drug cartels, we watch the unfolding of a bizarre drama replete with fascinating characters: Cesar Gaviria, the nation's cool and secretive president; Diana Turbay, a famous television journalist and magazine editor; three indomitable women who are imprisoned for miserable months in a small room with a light perpetually on; an eighty-two-year-old priest with a mission to bring the regime and the cartel to the negotiating table; and Escobar himself, the legendary drug baron who changes his bodyguards daily and main- tains a private zoo with giraffes and hippos from Africa. All of this takes place in a country where presidential candidates and cabinet officers are routinely assassinated; where police go into the Medellin slums to murder boys they think may be working for Escobar; but where brave and honest citizens are trying desperately to make democracy survive. An international bestseller, News of a Kidnapping combines journalistic tenacity with the breathtaking language and perception that distinguish the writings of Gabriel Garcia Márquez. It draws us into a world that, like some phantasmagorical setting in a great Garcia Márquez novel, we can scarcely believe exists - but that continually shocks us with its cold, hard reality.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
This novella and eight short stories introduce a new Latin American writer to the English-speaking public. With a solid reputation in Latin America and a growing one in Europe, Garcia Marquez gives further evidence of the new vitality in Latin American literature and the new independence of style and content in the works of the younger generation of authors-such contemporaries of Garcia Márquez as Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes. The title story is a masterly short novel about life in a decaying tropical town in Colombia-Macondo by name -and the cycles of hope and despair, tragedy and comedy that grip the inhabitants with the regularity of the rains and the heat that dominate their lives. The Colonel, desperately poor, is a beautifully drawn Quixotic character who languishes on the faded dreams of his revolutionary past, the false hopes of his pride and his one tangible asset, a fighting cock which has become a symbol for him and, indeed, for the whole town. Alternately humorous and tragic, the Colonel, his asthmatic wife and the other characters in this moving story stand out sharply and are intensely alive. The stories also tell of town and village life in South America, of the frightfully poor and outrageously rich, of memories and illusions, lost opportunities and present joys. They are written with compassionate realism and wit. The direct and pure prose style underlines the truth and the ridiculousness of the human condition.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
‘STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN in the land of Márquez. As with Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, every sentence breaks the silence of a vast emptiness, the famous New World ‘solitude' that is the unconscious despair of his characters but the sign of Márquez's genius.' - The New York Times . . . ‘Here are nine more miracles of Macondo, that strange, steaming South American village, which has become part of our literary heritage. They are ‘told in spare, unpretentious but picturesque prose, compassionate of human frailty, but also rich in wit and irony. The characters are all too human, alternately humorous and tragic.' - Library Journal.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
From the Nobel Prize-winning author of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE and LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, a startling new novel-the story of a doomed love affair between an unruly copper-haired girl and the bookish priest sent to oversee her exorcism. OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS is set in a South American seaport in the colonial era, a time of viceroys and bishops, enlightened men and Inquisitors, saints and lepers and pirates. Sierva Maria, only child of a decaying noble family, has been raised in the slaves' courtyard of her father's cobwebbed mansion while her mother succumbs to fermented honey and cacao on a faraway plantation. On her twelfth birthday the girl is bitten by a rabid dog, and even as the wound is healing she is made to endure therapies indistinguishable from tortures. Believed, finally, to be possessed, she is brought to a convent for observation. And into her cell stumbles Father Cayetano Delaura, the Bishop's protEgE, who has already dreamed about a girl with hair trailing after her like a bridal train; who is already moved by this kicking, spitting, emaciated creature strapped to a stone bed. As he tends to her with holy water and sacramental oils, breathing gently on her chafed skin to cool it, feeding her smuggled pastries, Delaura feels something immense and irreparable' happening to him. It is love, ‘the most terrible demon of all.' And it is not long before Sierva Maria, though dreaming of snow, joins in his fevered misery. Unsettling and indelible, Of Love and Other Demons haunts us with its evocation of an exotic world while it treats, majestically, of the most universal experiences known to woman and man.
Gabriel Garcia Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH, and STRANGE PILGRIMS. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. He lives in Mexico City and Bogota. Edith Grossman is the award-winning translator of major works by many of Latin America's most important writers, including Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Alvaro Mutis. Born in Philadelphia, she attended the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California at Berkeley before receiving her Ph.D. from New York University. Ms. Grossman is the author of The Antipoetry of Nicanor Parra and of many articles and book reviews. She lives in New York City.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOUTUDE tells the rich and lusty story of the rise and fall of the Buendia family. Love and death, war and peace, youth and age - the noble and stunningly beautiful story of this family is alive with a truth and understanding that strike the soul. ‘You emerge from this marvelous novel as if from a dream, the mind on fire . . . . With a single bound, Gabriel Garcia Márquez leaps onto the stage with Günter Grass and Vladimir Nabokov. Dazzling.' - John Leonard, The New York Times. . . ‘One of the best novels to be published in this country in several years. . . . One of the rare novels that can continually surprise the reader.' - Peter S. Prescott, Look Magazine. . . A best seller and critical success in Latin America, Europe, and the United States, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death and the tragicomedy of man. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendia family one sees all mankind, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo one sees all of Latin America. Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility-the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth-these, the universal themes, dominate the novel. Whether lie is describing an affair of passion or the voracity of capitalism and the corruption of government, Garcia Marquez always writes with the simplicity, ease, and purity that are the mark of a master. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, alive with unforgettable men and women, and with a truth and understanding that strike the soul, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE is a masterpiece of the art of fiction.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
A best seller and critical success in Latin America, Europe, and the United States, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death and the tragicomedy of man. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendia family one sees all mankind, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo one sees all of Latin America. Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility-the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth-these, the universal themes, dominate the novel. Whether lie is describing an affair of passion or the voracity of capitalism and the corruption of government, Garcia Marquez always writes with the simplicity, ease, and purity that are the mark of a master. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, alive with unforgettable men and women, and with a truth and understanding that strike the soul, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE is a masterpiece of the art of fiction.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE tells the rich and lusty story of the rise and fall of the Buendia family. Love and death, war and peace, youth and age - the noble and stunningly beautiful story of this family is alive with a truth and understanding that strike the soul. ‘You emerge from this marvelous novel as if from a dream, the mind on fire. ...With a single bound, Gabriel Garcia Marquez leaps onto the stage with Gunter Grass and Vladimir Nabokov. Dazzling.' - John Leonard, THE NEW YORK TIMES. ‘One of the best novels to be published in this country in several years.... One of the rare novels that can continually surprise the reader.' Peter S. Prescott, LOOK MAGAZINE.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
From the moment Melquiades the gipsy walks into the jungle settlement of Macondo, nothing is ever the same again. Melquiades - an appealing serpent - brings to this protected Eden knowledge and the tools of discovery. With them the patriarch Jose Arcadio Buendia painstakingly reinvents man's seminal discoveries. The only time his wife, Ursula, loses patience with him is when he rediscovers that the world is round like an orange. But Jose Arcadio's primitive laboratory contains the seeds of destruction, bringing down war, pestilence and other sorrows upon his many descendants. Only Ursula remains uncorrupted, a touchstone of reality in a world of shifting standards. In prosperity or decay, Macondo is the centre around which giant events slowly revolve: there, the superstitious rites surrounding birth, puberty, marriage and death go on regardless of change. This phantasmagorical novel is a modern parable told without moralizing: its genius lies not only in making us laugh at the human predicament, but in making us laugh in sympathy.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
These twelve extraordinary stories by South America's preeminent man of letters, the Nobel Prize-winning author of the renowned classic ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE and the international bestseller LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, are set in contemporary Europe and recount the peculiar and amazing experiences that befall Latin Americans visiting or living abroad. An ailing Caribbean ex-President is befriended in Geneva by an ambitious ambulance driver and his headstrong wife. Margarito Duarte comes to Rome from the Colombian Andes with a box the shape and size of a cello case in order to show the Pope its contents. A woman who wears a snake ring with emerald eyes and is known only as Frau Frieda to the Latin American students in Vienna makes a living by telling her dreams to wealthy families. A pretty Mexican music hall performer is returning to Barcelona when her car breaks down, and she ends up in an insane asylum. In Tuscany, a vacationing family visits a Renaissance castle now owned by a famous Venezuelan writer and meets up with a phantom. Maria dos Prazeres, once Barcelona's most sought-after lady of the night, has a dream in which death appears, so she begins to plan her own funeral. A widow dressed in the habit of Saint Francis sails to Rome from Argentina to meet the Pope. A beautiful Caribbean boy is driven mad in Spain. A German governess destroys the summer for her wards - and is herself destroyed. Billy Sanchez takes his pregnant wife with a cut on her ring finger to a hospital in Paris - and never sees her again. Once again in this breathtaking collection, Gabriel Garcia Márquez invites us into worlds of majesty and magic, from which we emerge spellbound.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
A dictator's body is discovered in his Enormous, crumbling palace. Revolutionaries burst in and find his rotting corpse in an anarchic tangle of past and present - a present already lost and decayed, a past of almost unimaginable richness in which the palace was crowded with the dictator's ministers, bodyguards and servants, who kept him precariously balanced in power, and also with a tribe of women and children. The atmosphere is dreamlike - even nightmarish - real, vibrant and sensually exact, and at the same time vague and almost unbelievable. From this very definite beginning the novel moves round and round in time - backward, forward and sideways in a narrative of reminiscence. The action takes place in a Latin American country in an advanced state of corruption, anarchy, savagery, and physical exuberance. The time is the modern period, though not specified. An air force is mentioned; a League of Nations exists somewhere; American ambassadors with names like Wilson move in and out and occasionally the Pope sends messages. Dominating the action is the dictator-general, at first an almost messianic presence loved by the people, appearing suddenly among the peasants like a vision, walking alone or with a few colleagues, but as a rule going unguarded and unafraid. Then, as his rule tightens, as things become harsher, be becomes more suspicious and frightened and goes out only in a closely guarded car and with a bodyguard; or else he appears on a balcony, a distant, scarcely human figure. The discovery of a man who is his double makes appearances much easier for him; the double is dressed as people expect the leader to dress, and is sent to appear where the leader is expected. When there is an assassination, it is the double, not the leader, who is killed. This is an extraordinary novel by one of the world's leading writers. Rich, vivid and brilliantly original, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH is a masterful work of imagination, narrative and description superbly translated by Gregory Rabassa.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
A dictator's body is discovered in his Enormous, crumbling palace. Revolutionaries burst in and find his rotting corpse in an anarchic tangle of past and present - a present already lost and decayed, a past of almost unimaginable richness in which the palace was crowded with the dictator's ministers, bodyguards and servants, who kept him precariously balanced in power, and also with a tribe of women and children. The atmosphere is dreamlike - even nightmarish - real, vibrant and sensually exact, and at the same time vague and almost unbelievable. From this very definite beginning the novel moves round and round in time - backward, forward and sideways in a narrative of reminiscence. The action takes place in a Latin American country in an advanced state of corruption, anarchy, savagery, and physical exuberance. The time is the modern period, though not specified. An air force is mentioned; a League of Nations exists somewhere; American ambassadors with names like Wilson move in and out and occasionally the Pope sends messages. Dominating the action is the dictator-general, at first an almost messianic presence loved by the people, appearing suddenly among the peasants like a vision, walking alone or with a few colleagues, but as a rule going unguarded and unafraid. Then, as his rule tightens, as things become harsher, be becomes more suspicious and frightened and goes out only in a closely guarded car and with a bodyguard; or else he appears on a balcony, a distant, scarcely human figure. The discovery of a man who is his double makes appearances much easier for him; the double is dressed as people expect the leader to dress, and is sent to appear where the leader is expected. When there is an assassination, it is the double, not the leader, who is killed. This is an extraordinary novel by one of the world's leading writers. Rich, vivid and brilliantly original, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH is a masterful work of imagination, narrative and description superbly translated by Gregory Rabassa.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
‘HYPNOTIC AND BRILLIANT' - Publishers Weekly . . . ‘A book of incredible depth, breadth, richness, vitality, intelligence, humor, wisdom, subtlety . . . Like all great fiction, it contains endless layers of experience and meaning, and a first reading can only give hints of its richness . . . . It has the odor of the jungle and the ocean, the insouciance of a prostitute, the astonishments of a magician, the sad yet hopeful wisdom of an old man.' - The Miami Herald . . . ‘A stunning portrait of a monstrous Caribbean tyrant. He is a bird woman's bastard, conceived in a storm of bluebottle flies, born in a convent doorway, gifted at birth with huge, deformed feet and an enlarged testicle the size of a fig, which whistles a tune of pain to him every moment of his impossibly long Life . . . . Mystical, surrealistic. Rabelaisian in its excesses, its distortions, and its exotic language.' - The New York Times . . . ‘We seldom see a novel as fine as this one.' - The Chicago Tribune.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
A dictator's body is discovered in his Enormous, crumbling palace. Revolutionaries burst in and find his rotting corpse in an anarchic tangle of past and present - a present already lost and decayed, a past of almost unimaginable richness in which the palace was crowded with the dictator's ministers, bodyguards and servants, who kept him precariously balanced in power, and also with a tribe of women and children. The atmosphere is dreamlike - even nightmarish - real, vibrant and sensually exact, and at the same time vague and almost unbelievable. From this very definite beginning the novel moves round and round in time - backward, forward and sideways in a narrative of reminiscence. The action takes place in a Latin American country in an advanced state of corruption, anarchy, savagery, and physical exuberance. The time is the modern period, though not specified. An air force is mentioned; a League of Nations exists somewhere; American ambassadors with names like Wilson move in and out and occasionally the Pope sends messages. Dominating the action is the dictator-general, at first an almost messianic presence loved by the people, appearing suddenly among the peasants like a vision, walking alone or with a few colleagues, but as a rule going unguarded and unafraid. Then, as his rule tightens, as things become harsher, be becomes more suspicious and frightened and goes out only in a closely guarded car and with a bodyguard; or else he appears on a balcony, a distant, scarcely human figure. The discovery of a man who is his double makes appearances much easier for him; the double is dressed as people expect the leader to dress, and is sent to appear where the leader is expected. When there is an assassination, it is the double, not the leader, who is killed.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
The text of a speech on nuclear disarmament given in 1986 at the Ixtapa Conference in Mexico, presented in the original Spanish together with an English translation by Marina Castañeda.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
TWO YEARS AFTER his internationally acclaimed and best-selling LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, author also of the classic ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, gives us a magnificent new novel in which one of the Western Hemisphere's supreme heroes is rescued from myth and made real- yet seen, at the same time, in the shining romantic aura of the legend that formed around him. Transmuting historical truth into magical narrative, Gabriel Garcia Márquez recounts the turbulent life of the great Simon Bolivar. He shows us the Liberator, the dreamer fired by the vision of a South America free from Spanish domination and splendidly united-a vision he both succeeded and failed in realizing. He shows us Bolivar the dazzling orchestrator of political and military intrigue; the lover, the libertine, the fighter capable of heroism, mercy, ruthlessness. He gives us the man of flesh and blood, worthy of both adoration and anger, seen among his enemies and his partisans. The story is told in the framework of a fantastic seven months' voyage down the wide Magdalena River from Bogota to the sea. Bolivar, not yet fifty, but made old by the pressures of war, passion, triumph, and treachery, and now forced from power, embarks with his retinue on this journey that is at once a fantasy of triumphal progress from port to port and a nightmare of loss and disillusion. As Bolivar, in the fierce light of death's imminence, reexamines his life-confronting the phantoms of his past, re-living the campaigns that brought him renown and the amorous offensives that colored his sensibility-history rushes in and the reader is immersed in the momentous, decades - long adventure that Bolivar set in motion and that ultimately shaped the destiny of a continent.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
From one of the titans of twentieth-century literature, collected here for the first time: a selection of his journalism from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s--work that he considered even more important to his legacy than his universally acclaimed works of fiction. "I don't want to be remembered for One Hundred Years of Solitude or for the Nobel Prize but rather for my journalism," Gabriel García Márquez said in the final years of his life. And while some of his journalistic writings have been made available over the years, this is the first volume to gather a representative selection from across the first four decades of his career--years during which he worked as a full-time, often muckraking, and controversial journalist, even as he penned the fiction that would bring him the Nobel Prize in 1982. Here are the first pieces he wrote while working for newspapers in the coastal Colombian cities of Cartagena and Barranquilla . . . his longer, more fictionlike reportage from Paris and Rome . . . his monthly columns for Spain's El País. And while all the work points in style, wit, depth, and passion to his fiction, these fifty pieces are, more than anything, a revelation of the writer working at the profession he believed to be "the best in the world." The articles and columns in The Scandal of the Century demonstrate that his forthright, lightly ironical voice just seemed to be there, right from the start . . . He’s among those rare great fiction writers whose ancillary work is almost always worth finding . . . He had a way of connecting the souls in all his writing, fiction and nonfiction, to the melancholy static of the universe. --Dwight Garner, The New York Times.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
In 1955, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was working for a newspaper in Bogota, Colombia. In February of that year, several crew members of a Colombian destroyer were washed overboard and disappeared. Ten days later, one of them turned up half dead on a deserted beach in northern Colombia. This book, which originally appeared as a series of newspaper articles, is Garcia Marquez's account of that sailor's ordeal. As the story opens, Luis Alejandro Velasco and his mates are preparing to leave Mobile, Alabama, where they have spent the previous eight months while their ship underwent repairs. A veteran sailor, Velasco is a little uneasy about the voyage home, and within a few hours of casting off, his premonitions are borne out. As the dangerously overloaded ship plunges through heavy seas, he is suddenly pitched into the angry waters. Now, and for days to come, he must struggle for his life and his sanity.
Gabriel Jose de la Concordia García Márquez, also known as Gabo (born March 6, 1928 in Aracataca, Colombia) is a Colombian novelist, journalist, editor, publisher, political activist, and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. García Márquez has lived mostly in Mexico and Europe and currently spends much of his time in Mexico City. Widely credited with introducing the global public to magical realism, he has secured both significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success. Many people hold that García Márquez ranks alongside his co-writers of the Latin American Boom, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Angel Asturias, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar as one of the world's greatest 20th-century authors. Gabriel García Márquez is the father of television and film director Rodrigo Garcia. Gabriel García Márquez was born in the town of Aracataca, Magdalena. His parents left him to be brought up by his grandparents. The writer often credited his grandmother's way of telling a story as an important influence on his own story telling. After starting his early education at a boarding school in Barranquilla, García Márquez at the age of 16 was awarded a scholarship to a secondary school for gifted students called the Liceo Nacional in Zipaquirá which he attended until he was 18. He then moved 30 miles south to Bogotá and studied law and journalism at the National University of Colombia. García Márquez started his career as a reporter and editor for regional newspapers - El Heraldo in Barranquilla and El Universal in Cartagena. It was during this time that he became an active member of the informal group of writers and journalists known as the Barranquilla Group, an association that provided great motivation and inspiration for his literary career. García Márquez then worked as a foreign correspondent in Caracas, Rome, Paris, Barcelona, India, and New York City. García Márquez's first major work was The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (Relato de un náufrago), which he wrote as a newspaper series in 1955. The book told the true story of a shipwreck by exposing the fact that the existence of contraband aboard a Colombian Navy vessel had contributed to the tragedy due to overweight. This resulted in public controversy, as it discredited the official account of the events, which had blamed a storm for the shipwreck and glorified the surviving sailor. This led to the beginning of his foreign correspondence, as García Márquez became a sort of persona non grata to the government of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. The series was later published in 1970 and taken by many to have been written as a novel. Several of his works have been classified as both fiction and non-fiction, notably Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Cronica de una muerte anunciada) (1981), which tells the tale of a revenge killing recorded in the newspapers, and Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del colera) (1985), which is loosely based on the story of his parents' courtship. Many of his works, including those two, take place in the ‘García Márquez universe,' in which characters, places, and events reappear from book to book. The works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez often cross genres and most integrate at least a few elements of magical realism. Furthermore, many of his novels and short stories integrate actual history as well as complete fabrication, making his genres sometimes difficult to pin down. His most commercially successful novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) (1967; English translation by Gregory Rabassa 1970), has sold more than 36 million copies worldwide. It chronicles several generations of the Buendía family who live in a fictional South American village called Macondo. García Márquez won the Romulo Gallegos Prize in 1972 for One Hundred Years of Solitude. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, with his short stories and novels cited as the basis for the award. In 2002, he published the memoir Vivir para contarla, the first of a projected three-volume autobiography. The book was a bestseller in the Spanish-speaking world. Edith Grossman's English translation, Living to Tell the Tale, was published in November 2003 and has become another bestseller. On September 10, 2004, the Bogotá daily El Tiempo announced a new novel, Memoria de mis putas tristes (Memories of My Melancholy Whores), a love story that follows the romance of a 90-year old man and a drugged, pubescent concubine, was published the following October with a first print run of one million copies. The most important relatives of García Márquez were undoubtedly his maternal grandfather and grandmother. His grandfather was Colonel Nicolás Ricardo Márquez Mejía, a Liberal veteran of the Thousand Days War. He lived in Aracataca, a banana town by the Caribbean, a village which he helped found. The Colonel was something of a hero to the costeños, for among other things, he refused to stay silent about the banana massacres, delivering a searing denunciation of the murders to Congress in 1929. A very complex and interesting man, the Colonel was also an excellent storyteller who had lead quite an intriguing life-when he was younger he shot and killed a man in a duel, and it is said that he had fathered over sixteen children. He would speak of his wartime exploits as if they were ‘almost pleasant experiences-sort of youthful adventures with guns.' The old Colonel taught the young Gabriel lessons from the dictionary, took him to the circus each year, and was the first one who introduced his grandson to ice-a miracle to be found at the United Fruit Company store. He also told his young grandson that there was no greater burden than to have killed a man, a lesson that García Márquez would later put into the mouths of his characters. His grandmother was Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes, and would be no less an influence on the young García Márquez than her husband. She was impressively filled with superstitions and folk beliefs, as were her numerous sisters, and they filled the house with stories of ghosts and premonitions, omens and portents-all of which were studiously ignored by her husband, who once said to young Gabriel, ‘Don't listen to that. Those are women's beliefs.' And yet listen he did, for his grandmother had a unique way of telling stories. No matter how fantastic or improbable her statements, she always delivered them as if they were the irrefutable truth. It was a deadpan style that, some thirty years later, her grandson would adopt for his greatest novel. García Márquez's parents were more or less strangers to him for the first few years of his life. His mother, Luisa Santiaga Márquez Iguarán, was one of the two children born to the Colonel and his wife. A spirited girl, she unfortunately fell in love with a man named Gabriel Eligio García. ‘Unfortunately,' for García was something of an anathema to her parents. For one thing, he was a Conservative as well as an ‘hojarasca', a derogatory term applied to the recent residents of the town drawn by the banana trade. (La hojarasca means ‘dead leaf,' as in something that descends in useless flurries and is best swept away.) García also had a reputation as a philanderer, the father of four illegitimate children. He was not exactly the man the Colonel had envisioned winning the heart of his daughter-and yet he did, wooing her with violin serenades, love poems, countless letters-and even telegraph messages. They tried all they could to get rid of the man, but he kept coming back, and it was obvious that their daughter was committed to him. Finally they surrendered to his romantic tenacity, and the Colonel gave her hand in marriage to the former medical student. In order to ease relations, the newlyweds settled in the Colonel's old home town of Riohacha. (The tragicomic story of their courtship would later be adapted and recast as Love in the Time of Cholera.) García Márquez married Mercedes Barcha in 1958. They have two sons. In 1999, García Márquez was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. This event incited García Márquez to start writing his memoirs. In 2000, his impending death was incorrectly reported by Peruvian daily newspaper La Republica. The next day other newspapers republished his farewell poem, ‘La Marioneta'. Later, in an interview at the same García Márquez, the poem was determined to be the work of a Mexican ventriloquist, Johnny Welch. A number of films have been made of García Márquez's work (such as Ruy Guerra's ErEndira), but few have been critical or popular successes. Most recently, British director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) has completed production in Cartagena, Colombia, of a film based on García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, with the screenplay written by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist). The film's cast includes Spaniard Javier Bardem and Italian Giovanna Mezzogiorno, as well as Colombian actress Catalina Sandino. Colombian-born U.S. actor John Leguizamo and Benjamin Bratt, of Peruvian descent, also star in the film. The film was released in the U.S. on November 16, 2007.
In this long-awaited first volume of a planned trilogy, the most acclaimed and revered living Nobel laureate begins to tell us the story of his life. Like all his work, LIVING TO TELL THE TALE is a magnificent piece of writing. It spans Gabriel García Márquez's life from his birth in 1927 through the start of his career as a writer to the moment in the 1950s when he proposed to the woman who would become his wife. It has the shape, the quality, and the vividness of a conversation with the reader - a tale of people, places, and events as they occur to him: the colorful stories of his eccentric family members; the great influence of his mother and maternal grandfather; his consuming career in journalism, and the friends and mentors who encouraged him; the myths and mysteries of his beloved Colombia; personal details, undisclosed until now, that would appear later, transmuted and transposed, in his fiction; and, above all, his fervent desire to become a writer. And, as in his fiction, the narrator here is an inspired observer of the physical world, able to make clear the emotions and passions that lie at the heart of a life - in this instance, his own. Living to Tell the Tale is a radiant, powerful, and beguiling memoir that gives us the formation of Gabriel García Márquez as a writer and as a man.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He is the author of many novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERËNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Garcia Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
As Octavio Paz says in his introduction, ‘in all of Garcia Ponce's stories (four of which are included in this volume) we are present at the gradual unveiling of a secret, but once they arrive at the very brink of revelation, they hang back: the nucleus, the essential truth, is what is not said. . . It is easier to feel the fascination of these stories than to describe them; it is a sort of religious ecstasy that it would not be inaccurate to call quietistic. In one, a couple finds a cat, or rather the cat finds them. Without self-consciousness, they simply accept the presence of this intruder as they play their erotic games; almost imperceptibly the little creature becomes a talisman; without ‘the fixed gaze of those half-open yellow eyes on her naked body,' the woman is not able to give herself to the man nor does he really desire her. Their passion depends upon a third party: a small animal presence, as enigmatic as desire, which like desire appears out of nowhere. and leads them to the unknown. . . ‘The Square' also centers on an encounter, not with an emissary from the world of desire, but with time itself. An elderly man searches for the time past, his time, in a public square of the provincial city where he has lived all his life, but what he finds is an infinite, nameless happiness, a far vaster time, a time that is never gone though it is always going by. . . . ‘The Seagull' is the story of the meeting of two adolescents at a Mexican seaside beach. Their passion isolates them from their playmates and, like the cat that intrudes upon the lovers in the first story, that passion leads them to discover a violent and awesome reality: that of their own selves. . . . The final revelation is instantaneous and terrible: sex is violence, murder, destruction. The children cease to be children as they wallow in the dust soaked with the blood of the seagull that the boy has killed. Is the sexual act inseparable from crime?' In ‘Anticipation' a man, talking to a childhood friend, evokes what he considers to be the most important episode of his life: a vision, which occurred at the end of a long journey to Spain, of the girl he loved during his adolescence. What emerges from Garcia Ponce's narrative is a mystical tale, a religious experience, but one in which God does not exist. CONTENTS: Introduction by Octavio Paz; The Cat; The Square; Anticipation; The Seagull. Juan Garcia Ponce was born in MErida, Yucatan in 1952 and now lives in Mexico City. He is one of the most prominent Mexican contemporary writers. His novels, short-stories, plays, and essays are widely read in Latin America and Spain, yet this is his first book to appear in English. He has translated into Spanish and written extensively about such authors as Musil, Klossowski, Pavese, Joyce, and Mann. He is a founder-member of the review Vuelta, directed by Octavio Paz. Helen Lane is among the most prolific and acclaimed translators working today. Among her many translations: CONVERGENCES and THE MONKEY GRAMMARIAN by Octavio Paz; AUNT JULIA and THE WAR OF THE END OF THE WORLD by Mario Vargas Llosa; COUNT JULIAN and JUAN THE LANDLESS by Juan Goytisolo.
Juan García Ponce (September 22, 1932 - December 27, 2003) was a Mexican novelist, short-story writer, essayist, translator and critic of Mexican art. He was born in MErida, state of Yucatán, Mexico. Notable works include La aparicion de lo invisible (1968) and Las huellas de la voz (1982). In his novels Figura de paja (1964), La casa en la playa (1966), La presencia lejana (1968), La cabaña (1969), La invitacion (1972), El nombre olvidado (1970), El libro (1978), Cronica de la intervencion (1982), Inmaculada o los placeres de la Inocencia (1989) he intertwines the erotic with philosophic rigor and the aesthetic, illuminating the secret, demonic side of reality, accepting all of its risks.
Like waves ebbing and flowing, love surges and sub sides among four friends who share a vacation at the house on the beach. As they navigate the seas of love and friendship, jealousy and unfaithfulness, Elena, Marta, Eduardo, and Rafael are swept up in the opposing currents that flow between security and personal freedom, marriage and sexual liberation, family and work, provincial and city life, and traditional and unconventional gender roles. This deceptively simple novel, published in Mexico in 1966 as La casa en la playa and here translated into English for the first time, is an important work by one of Mexico's, and indeed Latin America's, major writers of the twentieth century. Juan Garcia Ponce helped Mexican arts and letter break out of the ossified styles and themes of the post-Revolutionary ‘Mexican School' with works that explore the conflict between individual desire and the demands of family and work. Written at a turning point in his career, THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH foreshadows his embrace of the erotic encounter as a means of undermining rigid, socially constructed personal identity. It supports feminist views and probes deeply into the contradictions, backwardness, and progress of modern Mexican society. Juan Garcia Ponce is one of the most respected contemporary essayists in Latin America. Translator Margarita Vargas is an assistant professor of Spanish at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Juan Bruce-Novoa is a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California at Irvine.
Juan García Ponce (September 22, 1932 - December 27, 2003) was a Mexican novelist, short-story writer, essayist, translator and critic of Mexican art. He was born in MErida, state of Yucatán, Mexico. Notable works include La aparicion de lo invisible (1968) and Las huellas de la voz (1982). In his novels Figura de paja (1964), La casa en la playa (1966), La presencia lejana (1968), La cabaña (1969), La invitacion (1972), El nombre olvidado (1970), El libro (1978), Cronica de la intervencion (1982), Inmaculada o los placeres de la Inocencia (1989) he intertwines the erotic with philosophic rigor and the aesthetic, illuminating the secret, demonic side of reality, accepting all of its risks.
Cristina Garcia's vivid, funny, and endearing first novel moves back and forth between Havana and Brooklyn, and takes us into the heart of the del Pino family, introducing four wonderfully various, strong- willed women who are divided by conflicting political loyalties and bound together by their complicated love for one another. In Cuba: Celia, the aging del Pino matriarch whose consuming passion is for El Lider, Fidel. For his sake, she has worked the sugarcane harvest, acted as local judge, and now in old age - in her best housedress and drop pearl earrings - sits on her porch scanning the sea for the yanqui invaders she is certain will come . Also in Cuba, Celia's mad (and possibly murderous) daughter Felicia, who can't stay away from men or black magic. She is a lapsed hairdresser, a ‘social malcontent,' the despair of her mother (‘If only Felicia would take an interest in the revolution . . . it would give her a higher purpose'). In Brooklyn, we meet Celia's other daughter, her feisty antagonist, Lourdes-immigrant, capitalist, obsessed by her hatred of Fidel, proud proprietor of the Yankee Doodle Bakery, which is a hotbed of counterrevolution, a gathering place - according to Lourdes's daughter, Pilar - for ‘shady Cuban extremists who talk dinosaur politics and drink her killer espresso.' And finally, the sweet, skeptical, artistic punk, Pilar herself at war with her own impossible mother, visited in dreams by the abuela she has not seen since she was two - her faraway grandmother Celia-and determined to get them all back to Cuba before her own vision of it vanishes completely. (‘Every day Cuba fades a little more inside me, my grandmother fades a little more inside me. And there's only my imagination where our history should be.') A novel suffused with a generous and comic sense of life -about women and politics, women and magic, women caught in a far-flung, intricate, unbreakable web of family. CRISTINA GARCIA was born in Havana and has been a correspondent for TIME magazine. She lives in Los Angeles. DREAMING IN CUBAN is her first novel. Jacket design by Chip Kidd. . .
Cristina García (born July 4, 1958) is a Cuban-born American journalist and novelist. After working for Time Magazine as a researcher, reporter, and Miami bureau chief, she turned to writing fiction. Her first novel, Dreaming in Cuban (1992), received critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has since published her novels The Agüero Sisters (1997) and Monkey Hunting (2003), and has edited books of Cuban and other Latin American literature. Her fourth novel, A Handbook to Luck, was released in hardcover in 2007 and came out in paperback in April 2008.
The new novel-her first in six years - from the acclaimed author of DREAMING IN CUBAN and THE AGUERO SISTERS follows one family from China to Cuba to America in an emotionally resonant tale of immigration, assimilation, and the powerful integrity of self. In 1857, when Chen Pan signs a contract that will take him from China ‘beyond the edge of the world to Cuba,' he has no idea that he will be enslaved on a sugarcane plantation. . . or that he will eventually, miraculously, escape his bonds and embark on a prosperous life in Havana's Chinatown. . . or that he will buy a mulatto woman out of slavery and take her into his home and heart. . . or that he will end his long days in Havana, surrounded by children and grandchildren, as Cuban as he is Chinese. In a vivid tapestry of incident and feeling, Chen Pan's life story is interwoven with those of two of his descendants: his granddaughter, Chen Fang, born in China and raised as a boy so she could be educated, her life coming to its end in one of Mao's hellish prisons, and Domingo, Chen Pan's great-great-grandson, who, with his father, becomes an American citizen after Castro's revolution, only to lose his parent to the false promises of the American dream, and himself, finally, to the madness of wartime Vietnam. Deeply stirring, wonderfully evocative of time and place, rendered in the lyrical prose that is Cristina Garcia's hallmark, MONKEY HUNTING brilliantly illuminates a generations - long struggle toward a sense of true belonging. . CRISTINA GARCIA was born in Havana and grew up in New York City. Her first novel, Dreaming in Cuban, was nominated for a National Book Award and has been widely translated. Ms. Garcia has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, and the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award. She lives in Santa Monica with her daughter, Pilar. . .
Cristina García (born July 4, 1958) is a Cuban-born American journalist and novelist. After working for Time Magazine as a researcher, reporter, and Miami bureau chief, she turned to writing fiction. Her first novel, Dreaming in Cuban (1992), received critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has since published her novels The Agüero Sisters (1997) and Monkey Hunting (2003), and has edited books of Cuban and other Latin American literature. Her fourth novel, A Handbook to Luck, was released in hardcover in 2007 and came out in paperback in April 2008.
THE AGUERO SISTERS tells the story of Reina and Constancia Agiiero, Cuban sisters who have been estranged for thirty years. Reina, forty-eight years old, living in Cuba in the early 1990s, was once a devoted daughter of la revolucion; Constancia, an eager to assimilate naturalized American, smuggled herself off the island in 1962. Reina is tall, darkly beautiful, unmarried, and magnetically sexual, a master electrician who is known as Compañera Amazona among her countless male suitors, and who basks in the admiration she receives in her trade and in her bed. Constancia is petite, perfectly put together, pale skinned, an inspirationally successful yet modest cosmetics saleswoman, long resigned to her passionless marriage. Reina believes in only what she can grasp with her five senses; Constancia believes in miracles that ‘arrive every day from the succulent edge of disaster.' Reina lives surrounded by their father's belongings, the tangible remains of her childhood; Constancia has inherited only a startling resemblance to their mother - the mysterious Blanca - which she wears like an unwanted mask. The sisters' stories are braided with the voice from the past of their father, Ignacio, a renowned naturalist whose chronicling of Cuba's dying species mirrored his own sad inability to prevent familial tragedy. It is in the memories of their parents - dead many years but still powerfully present - that the sisters' lives have remained inextricably bound. Tireless scientists, Ignacio and Blanca understood the perfect truth of the language of nature, but never learned to speak it in their own tongue. What they left their daughters - the picture of a dark and uncertain history sifted with half-truths and pure lies - is the burden and the gift the two women struggle with as they move unknowingly toward reunion.
Cristina García (born July 4, 1958) is a Cuban-born American journalist and novelist. After working for Time Magazine as a researcher, reporter, and Miami bureau chief, she turned to writing fiction. Her first novel, Dreaming in Cuban (1992), received critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has since published her novels The Agüero Sisters (1997) and Monkey Hunting (2003), and has edited books of Cuban and other Latin American literature. Her fourth novel, A Handbook to Luck, was released in hardcover in 2007 and came out in paperback in April 2008.
Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. Three policemen have been killed over the course of a few days. They were mediocre cops, and their deaths have a lot in common: they were eliminated by a cold-blooded assassin, who leaves no traces and likes to fire at point-blank range. Immediately, the police world is thrown into turmoil, Who would risk running around the city killing cops, even unpopular ones? People involved in drug trafficking? Other policemen? Espinosa, chief of the 12th Precinct, doesn't have much to go on. And when the body of a woman connected to one of the dead cops is found on the sidewalk below her apartment window, things get even more complicated, as a reputed ‘witness'-the wife of a high-ranking government official-becomes obsessed with the case, and with Espinosa. Nothing is quite as it appears, as Espinosa finds himself in his old haunts of Leme and Copacabana, and in the murky terrain of corruption, secret lives, greed, and fear. A Window in Copacabana is the best novel yet in what Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times Book Review calls a ‘beguiling series.'
Luiz Alfredo Garcia Roza (born 1936 in Rio de Janeiro) is a retired Brazilian professor and current novelist. As an academic he wrote philosophy and psychology textbooks. After retiring from academia he became known as a novelist and shared the Prêmio Jabuti for Literature in 1997. He is known for his Detective fiction, in particular his Inspector Espinosa Mystery series. He had little knowledge of crime or police-work before he began writing. Some of his works have been translated into English.
‘IF GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ WROTE CRIME FICTION, HE MIGHT CREATE A DETECTIVE LIKE INSPECTOR ESPINOSA.' - THE BALTIMORE SUN. A sultry December night in Rio de Janeiro. A retired policeman spends a typically alcohol-filled evening with his girlfriend, a prostitute. When he wakes up the next morning, his wallet and car key are missing, his girlfriend has been murdered, and he can remember none of the events of the previous night. Called in to investigate is Inspector Espinosa, veteran detective and friend of the ex-cop. It's a seemingly open-and-shut case, but Espinosa is convinced there's more here than meets the eye, and when other bodies begin turning up, he finds himself not only racing a killer but falling in love. Hailed by critics for ‘his existential sensibility, his exotic beat, and his literary merit' (San Francisco Chronicle), Inspector Espinosa won over American audiences with his debut in THE SILENCE OF THE RAIN. DECEMBER HEAT, the second in this bestselling Brazilian series, shares the first book's steamy evocation of exotic Rio de Janeiro, its singular narrative approach, and, above all, its highly appealing protagonist. And once again, Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza delivers a story as unusual as it is complex, with a resolution sure to elude - and ultimately delight - even the most discerning crime readers.
Luiz Alfredo Garcia Roza (born 1936 in Rio de Janeiro) is a retired Brazilian professor and current novelist. As an academic he wrote philosophy and psychology textbooks. After retiring from academia he became known as a novelist and shared the Prêmio Jabuti for Literature in 1997. He is known for his Detective fiction, in particular his Inspector Espinosa Mystery series. He had little knowledge of crime or police-work before he began writing. Some of his works have been translated into English.
A young man predicts a murder and identifies the perpetrator-himself-in this third entry in the critically acclaimed Brazilian crime series. Chief of the Copacabana precinct Espinosa is more than happy to interrupt his paperwork when a terrified young man arrives at the station with a bizarre story. A psychic has predicted that he would commit a murder, it seems, and the prediction has become fact in the young man's mind. It's a case more appropriate for a psychiatrist or philosopher, but, rising to the challenge, Espinosa slowly enters the web of a psychologically conflicted man. As the weather shifts and the southwesterly wind-always a sign of dramatic change-starts up, what at first seems like paranoia becomes brutal reality. Two violent murders occur, and their only link is the lonely, clever man who had sought Espinosa out a few days earlier for help. In SOUTHWESTERLY WIND, the third in this atmospheric, erotic series featuring Inspector Espinosa, Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza returns his hero to the tangled, sultry streets of Rio de Janeiro, and delivers another masterful twist on the crime fiction genre.
Luiz Alfredo Garcia Roza (born 1936 in Rio de Janeiro) is a retired Brazilian professor and current novelist. As an academic he wrote philosophy and psychology textbooks. After retiring from academia he became known as a novelist and shared the Prêmio Jabuti for Literature in 1997. He is known for his Detective fiction, in particular his Inspector Espinosa Mystery series. He had little knowledge of crime or police-work before he began writing. Some of his works have been translated into English.
In a parking garage in the center of Rio de Janeiro, corporate executive Ricardo Carvalho is found dead in his car, a bullet in his head. it appears he has been robbed and murdered - the gun, his wallet, and his briefcase are nowhere to be found - and so Inspector Espinosa is called in to investigate. Not your typical detective, the world-weary Espinosa has the mind of a philosopher, the heart of a romantic, and enough experience to realize that things are not always as they seem. So ensues Espinosa's dedicated attempt to unravel the mystery, without advanced forensic technology and in a police force rife with corruption. What really happened to Carvalho and his secretary, Rose, who disappeared shortly thereafter? That Carvalho had recently taken out a $1 million life insurance policy complicates matters - as does Espinosa's attraction to Bia Vasconcelos, Carvalho's beautiful widow and one of the murder suspects. When two more people turn up dead, Espinosa's investigation takes on a new urgency, ultimately leading to an unconventional, shocking conclusion. A runaway bestseller in Brazil, The Silence of the Rain is a compelling tale of murder, sex, corruption, and intrigue that subverts the crime genre. And in Espinosa, it introduces a complex and appealing new sleuth to American readers.
Luiz Alfredo Garcia Roza (born 1936 in Rio de Janeiro) is a retired Brazilian professor and current novelist. As an academic he wrote philosophy and psychology textbooks. After retiring from academia he became known as a novelist and shared the Prêmio Jabuti for Literature in 1997. He is known for his Detective fiction, in particular his Inspector Espinosa Mystery series. He had little knowledge of crime or police-work before he began writing. Some of his works have been translated into English.
In a parking garage in the center of Rio de Janeiro, corporate executive Ricardo Carvalho is found dead in his car, a bullet in his head. it appears he has been robbed and murdered - the gun, his wallet, and his briefcase are nowhere to be found - and so Inspector Espinosa is called in to investigate. Not your typical detective, the world-weary Espinosa has the mind of a philosopher, the heart of a romantic, and enough experience to realize that things are not always as they seem. So ensues Espinosa's dedicated attempt to unravel the mystery, without advanced forensic technology and in a police force rife with corruption. What really happened to Carvalho and his secretary, Rose, who disappeared shortly thereafter? That Carvalho had recently taken out a $1 million life insurance policy complicates matters - as does Espinosa's attraction to Bia Vasconcelos, Carvalho's beautiful widow and one of the murder suspects. When two more people turn up dead, Espinosa's investigation takes on a new urgency, ultimately leading to an unconventional, shocking conclusion. A runaway bestseller in Brazil, The Silence of the Rain is a compelling tale of murder, sex, corruption, and intrigue that subverts the crime genre. And in Espinosa, it introduces a complex and appealing new sleuth to American readers.
Luiz Alfredo Garcia Roza (born 1936 in Rio de Janeiro) is a retired Brazilian professor and current novelist. As an academic he wrote philosophy and psychology textbooks. After retiring from academia he became known as a novelist and shared the Prêmio Jabuti for Literature in 1997. He is known for his Detective fiction, in particular his Inspector Espinosa Mystery series. He had little knowledge of crime or police-work before he began writing. Some of his works have been translated into English.
A precocious and controversial figure in his native Colombia, GUSTAVO ALVAREZ GARDEAZABAL has published nine novels and written numerous short stories and essays. Ever since he burst onto the literary scene in the mid-1970s, Alvarez Gardeazábal has been competing with fellow Colombian novelist, Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as the country's most popular writer. When it was first published, BAZAAR OF THE IDIOTS became the number one bestselling novel in Colombia. ‘The skillful blend of reality and fantasy, social criticism, picturesque characters, and outrageously funny situations makes BAZAAR OF THE IDIOTS a worthy successor to ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. Delightful reading.' - Professor Seymour Menton, University of California . . . ‘This topsy-turvey fictional world satirizes and parodies some of Colombia's most cherished icons including the church and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. There are no sacred cows in the writings of Alvarez Gardeazábal and his account of two onanistic miracle workers is no exception. It is a fascinating, humorous, and ultimately, tragic story.' - Professor Raymond D. Souza, The University of Kansas.
Gustavo Álvarez Gardeazábal (born 31 October 1945) is a Colombian writer, and politician. He attended the University of Valle and was the runner-up for a Premio Nadal in 1971 for Dabeiba. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984. and was Governor of Valle del Cauca Department from 1998-1999. He also wrote the highly rated telenovela El Bazar de los Idiotas. The translators: JONATHAN TITTLER is professor of Romance studies at Cornell University, where he specializes in Spanish-American literature. He has published numerous books and articles of criticism on the contemporary narrative and has translated into English two Afro-Hispanic novels, Adalberto Ortiz's JUYUNGO, and Manuel Zapata Olivella's CHAMBACU: BLACK SLUM, published by the Latin American Literary Review Press in 1989. SUSAN F. HILL is a lecturer in Spanish at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and previously collaborated in the translation of JUYUNGO. Professor RAYMOND LESLIE WILLIAMS, a leading critic in the field of Colombian literature, provides the introduction for this volume.
These two novellas are characterized by clarity of style and dramatic presentation of affairs of the heart. FIRST LOVE examines the consequences of two tourists befriending German prisoners of war in France, and explores the tension between primal human kindness and social conventions. LOOK FOR MY OBITUARY explores a surrealistic, haunting love affair set in a world of arranged marriages. ‘Elena Garro is the best writer in Mexico today' - Emmanuel Caballo. ‘A fascinating read by a groundbreaking voice among Mexican author' - Demteria Martinez, author of MOTHER TONGUE. ELENA GARRO was born in 1920 in Puebla, Mexico. The author of over a dozen novels, short story collections and plays, she has consistently been concerned about the status of women and the plight of the marginalized. (original titles: Primer amor & Busca mi esquela).
Elena Garro (December 11, 1920 - August 22, 1998) was a Mexican writer. She was once married to writer Octavio Paz. Elena Garro was born to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother on December 11, 1920 in Puebla, Mexico. (Birth Certificate says ‘11 Diciembre de PROX. Pasado,' which means Dec. 11, 1916: She spent her childhood in Mexico City but moved to Iguala, Guerrero, during the Cristero War. She studied literature, choreography and theater in the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. While she lived in Mexico City she met Octavio Paz, whom she married in 1937. They had one daughter, Helena, but divorced in 1959. However, according to her final will, Elena died without knowing she was divorced. After the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre, she accused certain Mexican intellectuals of being responsible of instigating the students and later abandoning them. These accusations caused resentment in the intellectual community who repudiated her. In 1972, Garro left the country and lived in exile in France for twenty years. She suffered from lung cancer due to smoking and Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (CONACULTA) covered her medical expenses. She later died from this illness. Her work touches on the themes of the marginalization of women and racism. Most important was her criticism of the Mexican government. She also portrayed a critical vision of the Mexican Revolution (1910) in her master novel ‘Los recuerdos del porvenir' (1963), which was awarded the Xavier Villarutia Prize, and which has been translated into several languages. Her novel ‘Y Matarazo no llamo . . . ‘ criticizes how the government used excessive force to stop the labor strike. In her short story, ‘La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas,' she vindicates la Malinche. Her play ‘Felipe Angeles' is a documentary drama where she resurrects the General Felipe Angeles, a revolutionary leader who was executed in 1919 by the government of Venustiano Carranza] against the will of the people. This was a result of his success in saving the lives of many people in Chihuahua, when Pancho Villa ordered the execution of one hundred soldiers. He is also known for his triumph in Zacatecas. Angeles fought against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz with Francisco Madero, president of Mexico who was also assassinated.
RECOLLECTIONS OF THINGS TO COME is a first novel - but the reader forgets this after a very few pages, because it is also, as John Brushwood says in Mexico in Its Novel, ‘mature, profound, sensitive, and written with professional assurance that is apparent from beginning to end.' Octavio Paz, the internationally recognized poet and critic, has called it ‘truly an extraordinary work, one of the most perfect creations in contemporary Latin American literature.' The setting of Recollections is the small Mexican town of Ixtepec; the time is during the cristero revolts that broke out in the latter part of the 1920's. The town has been occupied by General Francisco Rosas and his troops, and when Rosas orders the closing of the church, the ensuing struggle-often clandestine-of the townspeople against the government forces leads to a climactic series of tragic events. Closely interwoven with the main narrative are the stories of Rosas and his mistress Julia, the Moncada and MelEndez families, the amiable lunatic Juan Cariño, and other vividly realized characters. Miss Garro creates scene after scene with a realism that can range from starkness to almost lyrical evocation. Now and then she introduces an element of outright fantasy, but with such skill that it never seems out of keeping with the overall tone of the novel. These realities and unrealities are expressively suggested by the thirty illustrations which Alberto Beltrán, the well-known Mexican artist, has prepared for this translation.
Elena Garro (December 11, 1920 - August 22, 1998) was a Mexican writer. She was once married to writer Octavio Paz. Elena Garro was born to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother on December 11, 1920 in Puebla, Mexico. (Birth Certificate says ‘11 Diciembre de PROX. Pasado,' which means Dec. 11, 1916: She spent her childhood in Mexico City but moved to Iguala, Guerrero, during the Cristero War. She studied literature, choreography and theater in the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. While she lived in Mexico City she met Octavio Paz, whom she married in 1937. They had one daughter, Helena, but divorced in 1959. However, according to her final will, Elena died without knowing she was divorced. After the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre, she accused certain Mexican intellectuals of being responsible of instigating the students and later abandoning them. These accusations caused resentment in the intellectual community who repudiated her. In 1972, Garro left the country and lived in exile in France for twenty years. She suffered from lung cancer due to smoking and Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (CONACULTA) covered her medical expenses. She later died from this illness. Her work touches on the themes of the marginalization of women and racism. Most important was her criticism of the Mexican government. She also portrayed a critical vision of the Mexican Revolution (1910) in her master novel ‘Los recuerdos del porvenir' (1963), which was awarded the Xavier Villarutia Prize, and which has been translated into several languages. Her novel ‘Y Matarazo no llamo . . . ‘ criticizes how the government used excessive force to stop the labor strike. In her short story, ‘La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas,' she vindicates la Malinche. Her play ‘Felipe Angeles' is a documentary drama where she resurrects the General Felipe Angeles, a revolutionary leader who was executed in 1919 by the government of Venustiano Carranza] against the will of the people. This was a result of his success in saving the lives of many people in Chihuahua, when Pancho Villa ordered the execution of one hundred soldiers. He is also known for his triumph in Zacatecas. Angeles fought against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz with Francisco Madero, president of Mexico who was also assassinated. The translator, Ruth L. C. Simms, has traveled extensively in Latin America and is well acquainted with its literature. Among her other translations is Jorge Luis Borges' Other Inquisitions, published by the University of Texas Press in 1964.
No other group of writers in the last twenty years has created so much interest throughout the world than have Latin American writers. Here in one volume are extensive interviews with fifteen of the most influential of them: novelists as well as poets, playwrights, and journalists. While each of the writers has specific concerns, the interviewer's careful use of recurring questions allows this collection to double as an invaluable forum on important themes: the presence of the occult in Latin American life and literature; the effect of censorship and exile on writing; the pressure exerted by North American politics and manners; the challenge of literary translation; the extent and nature of the so-called Boom in Latin American literature; and thoughts on the impending five hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the New World. With an introduction to the interviews by the editor, along with a list of the authors' books, this is a ground-breaking work that will have an immediate appeal to anyone interested in this literature and will exercise a permanent influence on readers and critics for years to come. Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier has a remarkable ability to bring out the best of these writers in an interview format, serving to introduce both the writer and the work. Includes interview with: Isabel Allende; Guillermo Cabrera Infante; Jose Donoso; Rosario Ferrë; Carlos Fuentes; Isaac Goldemberg; Juan Carlos Onetti; Nicanor Parra; Elena Poniatowska; Manuel Puig; Ernesto Sábato; Luis Rafael Sanchez; Severo Sarduy; Luisa Valenzuela; Mario Vargas Llosa; Selected Bibliography. . MARIE-USE GAZARIAN GAUTIER is Professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at St. John's University. She has written and lectured widely on Latin and South American writers, and has been the host for interview shows with writers on WCBS-TV and WABC-TV (New York). . .
MARIE-LISE GAZARIAN GAUTIER is Professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at St. John's University. She has written and lectured widely on South American and Spanish writers, and has hosted interview shows with writers on WCBS-TV and WABC-TV (New York).
A classic collection of tales about the Jewish colonists in Argentina. Illustrated with wood engraving by Victor Rebuffo, including map endpapers and frontis portrait of Gerchunoff by Aleiandrio Sirio. Revised edition 1959
Alberto Gerchunoff (January 1, 1883 - March 2, 1950), was an Argentine writer born in the Russian Empire, in the city of Proskuriv, now Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine. His family emigrated in 1889 to the Argentinian Jewish agricultural colony of Moïseville, now MoisEs Ville. His father, Rab Gershon ben Abraham Gerchunoff was murdered by a gaucho on February 12, 1891. After a few months the family moved to Rajil, founded by philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch as a haven for Jews fleeing the pogroms of Europe. Later, he lived in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Jorge Luis Borges described him thus: 'He was an indisputable writer, but his reputation transcends that of a man of letters. Unintentionally and perhaps unwittingly, he embodied an older type of writer ... who saw the written word as a mere stand-in for the oral, not as a sacred object.' Although he worked primarily as a journalist for Argentina's leading newspaper La Nacion, he also wrote many important novels and books on Jewish life in Latin America, including The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas, which was later produced into a movie. For most of his life Gerchunoff espoused assimilationism for the Jews of Argentina, though altered his stance with the rise of Hitler, eventually advocating for the establishment of the state of Israel before the United Nations in 1947. He is said to have collaborated with Wilhelm Reich on a version of his orgone box designed to preserve the core of Jewish cultural memories, many of which were collected by him as oral histories and published under the title HEroes de los Intersticios in 1948.
Strong social thesis in novel of the exploitation of peasants in the rice fields of Ecuador.
Enrique Gil Gilbert (July 8, 1912 - February 21, 1973) was an Ecuadorian novelist, journalist, poet, and a high-ranking member of the Communist Party of Ecuador. Gil Gilbert was born and died in the coastal city of Guayaquil, and was the youngest member of the Guayaquil Group, which was one of the most renowned literary and intellectual groups in Ecuador in 1930–40. Gil Gilbert's most famous novel is Nuestro Pan (Our Daily Bread) (1942), which was translated into English (1943), German, Japanese, and Czech. The novel won Honourable Mention in the Latin-American Prize Novel Competition. Critics and historians agree that the Guayaquil Group emerged with the publication of Los que se van, cuentos del cholo y del motuvio (The Vanishing Ones. Stories about the Cholo and the Montuvio) (1930), a social realist book of 34 short stories by Demetrio Aguilera Malta, Joaquín Gallegos Lara, and Enrique Gil Gilbert, that dealt with the lives of the coastal peasant of Ecuador. It marked a whole new type of literature in Ecuador, which until then had been characterized by Romanticism and Modernism. The group's other members include: Demetrio Aguilera Malta, Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco, Joaquín Gallegos Lara, and Jose de la Cuadra. Their writing featured: a socialist-inspired expose of social-economic abuses; a literature rooted in popular culture; Freudianism; a grotesque vision of the world; and a concern with anthropology and indigenous culture. The Guayaquil Group is considered a forerunner of magical realism. Gil Gilberto was a registered member of the Communist Party of Ecuador. In 1944 he traveled to Moscow in his capacity as Secretary General of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ecuador. He was persecuted for his socialist and militant ideas, and in 1935, under the dictatorship of Federico Paez, he lost his teaching job at the Rocafuerte School in Guayaquil. Gil Gilberto spent fifteen months in prison under the government of the military junta of 1963. While in prison, law enforcement ransacked his home, and his wife had to flee into exile in Chile, while his children went into hiding. They burned many of his papers and books, including a completed but unpublished book, manuscripts of unfinished works, thus many of his writings were lost forever. When he was released from prison he was without a home, family, or any money. Gil Gilbert was married to Alba Calderon, a painter, feminist, and revolutionary, who founded the movement for the recognition of women in Ecuador. Gil Gilbert and Calderon had two sons: Enrique Gil Calderon, a choral director, and Antonio Gil Calderon, a doctor and businessman.
All of us, no matter whether noble or not, have our own family trees. I can trace mine back to Genesis, not as a matter of pride but because that must have been our starting point. My parents were born in the Jewish Ukraine, very different from the Ukraine of today and even more different from that Mexico where I was born . . . At the heart of this brilliant and colorful Mexican novel lies the search for a family history. Using ancestral recollections, flashbacks through history and personal memory the author traces her family roots from pre-Revolutionary Russia to contemporary Mexico. Margo Glantz's Mexico is a mysterious world - a cultural carnival where Flash Gordon crosses paths with Columbus: a Mexico of Diego Rivera, Leon Trotsky and Frida Kahlo, hijacked by Dracula and King Kong, filled with the aromas of a kosher bakery and the echoes of jokes, some corny some not. . Margo Glantz was born in Mexico where she now lives. She has been Cultural AttachE at the Mexican Embassy in London and is currently Director of the Literature Programme at the lnstituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. This edition of The Family Tree is the first English translation of a writer whose work includes novels, short stories and nonfiction and represents an important contribution to the Jewish tradition in the literature of Latin and Central America.
Margo Glantz (born January 28, 1930) is a Mexican writer, essayist, critic and academic. She has been a member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua since 1995. Margo Glantz's family immigrated to Mexico from Ukraine in the 1920s. Her father, Jacobo Glantz, met her mother, Elizabeth (Lucia) Shapiro in Odessa, where they married. They tried to emigrate to the United States of America, where they had relatives, but were denied entry and had to remain in Mexico. Although they stayed faithful to Jewish traditions, they soon moved in Mexican artistic circles. Her father was a friend of Diego Rivera, and had great interest in the new cultural currents of his new adoptive country. For many reasons, the family (including four daughters) had to move quite often. As a result, Margo went to several schools. She spent two years in the Secondary School No. 15, a year in the Israelite School of Mexico, and earned her baccalaureate in the National Preparatory School Number 1, the old school of San Ildefonso, where she was strongly influenced by one of her teachers, Agustín Yáñez. From 1947 to 1953, Margo Glantz studied English and Spanish Literature, as well as Art history, majoring in Theater History at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Here she had many outstanding professors, among them writers and philosophers such as Alfonso Reyes, Julio Torri, Rodolfo Usigli, Samuel Ramos and Leopoldo Zea. In 1953 she left for Europe, where she earned her doctorate in Hispanic Literature at the Sorbonne. It was there where she presented her thesis on 'The French Exoticism in Mexico (From 1847 to 1867)'. On her return to Mexico, she became a teacher in the Department of Theater History in the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature. In 1959 her first daughter, Alina, was born. After a journey to Cuba in 1961, she started to teach a course in Mexican Literature at the National Preparatory School Number 1, as well as courses in Universal Literature and of Mexican Literature at the Preparatory No. 5. In the same year she started to teach at the University Center of Theatre, at the School of Theater and Fine arts of the UNAM, and at the Center of Classic Theater of the 'Casa del Lago' (Lake House). During these years she published several essays and theater reviews in a variety of cultural magazines and handouts. In 1966 she became a permanent, full-time Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, specifically in Hispanic Literature and Comparative Literature. She founded and directed the university magazine Punto de Partida. She was also the director of the Israel-Mexico Cultural Institute until 1969. In 1971 her daughter Renata was born. In the same year she set out for the United States of America, where she taught classes at Montclair State College in New Jersey. She published Onda y escritura en Mexico (Wave and writing in Mexico), Jovenes de 20 a 33, which gave name to a wave of emerging literature in the 60s, the 'Onda' (the Wave). She returned to Mexico in 1974, where she rejoined the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, teaching courses in Latin American and Mexican Literature. In 1978 she edited her first fictional book, Las mil y una calorias, novela dietEtica (A Thousand and One Calories: A Dietetic Novel), which inspired a great number of other books in the field of creation and criticism. In 1981 she dedicated her autobiographic work, Las genealogias, to her father, who died one year later. In 1983 she was named Director of Literature at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), where she promoted and directed a number of publications. A year later she obtained the 'Premio Xavier Villaurrutia' (The Xavier Villaurrutia Award) for her work Síndrome de Naufragios. In 1986 she set out for England, where she worked as a Cultural Associate in the Mexican Embassy in London, until 1988. That same year she returned to Mexico, and since has led courses at the Faculty of Philosophy and in numerous universities overseas. In 1989 she was named Member of the National System of Researchers. In 1991 she obtained the National University Prize and again in 1994 she was given the title of Emeritus Professor, both by UNAM. Likewise, the University of Princeton has since awarded her the nomination of Honorary Emeritus Creator of the National System of Creators, as well as the Council of Humanities Fellow. In 1995 she was elected to be a member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua (Mexican Language Academy). In 2004 she was awarded the 'Premio Nacional, campo I, Área de Lingüística y Literatura' (National Prize, field 1, Are of Linguistics and Literature). That same year she was granted the distinction of Emeritus Investigator of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (National System of Investigators). A year later, in 2005, she was honored with the Doctorate Honoris Causa by the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana and with her nomination as an Emeritus Honorary Creator of the National System of Creators. In 2006 a web page was published about her, which was coordinated by Beatriz Aracil Varon, in the Virtual Library Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, of Alicante University.
What do I feel? asks the narrator, Nora Garcia, as she returns to a Mexican village she has not seen in years to attend the funeral of her ex-husband, a famous pianist who has died of a heart attack. This deeply moving novel is the unspoken answer to Nora's self-questioning. As Pascal said, ‘The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of,' and this aphorism of knowing-and-not-knowing is at the core of the novel. Employing motifs of ‘the heart,' modes of music from the tango to Bach, allusions to poetry, the text is a rich amalgam that reveals a life lived deep within the culture of the late twentieth century. Nora is also a musician, and so it is fitting that her story take the form of a fugue: phrases circle, repeat, variations are introduced, motifs come and go, intermingle, reflecting a paralysis of the grieving. The novel moves inexorably toward the burial and the revelation of Nora's complex, emotional reaction to Juan's death. Throughout the novel, Nora is moving in the ‘wake' of that death, being pulled along by the ceremonies of the funeral, the mass, the burial. For her rich, nuanced evocation of states of mind and emotion, Margo Glantz can stand proudly alongside such modern masters as Virginia Woolf and William Gass. ‘An original and highly recommended masterstroke.' - Library Journal . . . ‘An eloquent, erudite meditation on the link between mortality and the nature of art.' - Publishers Weekly . . . ‘Reading Margo Glantz's virtuoso novel is like ‘letting oneself go' while listening to Glenn Gould interpret Mozart: the rollercoaster of emotions is delivered with a plasticity at once dizzying and miraculous. Andrew Hurley's rendition proves, yet again, that translation isn't about servitude but about liberation.' - Ilan Stavans. A LANNAN TRANSLATION SELECTION. 2005 Winner of the Sor Juana InEs de la Cruz Prize. .
Margo Glantz (born January 28, 1930) is a Mexican writer, essayist, critic and academic. She has been a member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua since 1995. Margo Glantz's family immigrated to Mexico from Ukraine in the 1920s. Her father, Jacobo Glantz, met her mother, Elizabeth (Lucia) Shapiro in Odessa, where they married. They tried to emigrate to the United States of America, where they had relatives, but were denied entry and had to remain in Mexico. Although they stayed faithful to Jewish traditions, they soon moved in Mexican artistic circles. Her father was a friend of Diego Rivera, and had great interest in the new cultural currents of his new adoptive country. For many reasons, the family (including four daughters) had to move quite often. As a result, Margo went to several schools. She spent two years in the Secondary School No. 15, a year in the Israelite School of Mexico, and earned her baccalaureate in the National Preparatory School Number 1, the old school of San Ildefonso, where she was strongly influenced by one of her teachers, Agustín Yáñez. From 1947 to 1953, Margo Glantz studied English and Spanish Literature, as well as Art history, majoring in Theater History at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Here she had many outstanding professors, among them writers and philosophers such as Alfonso Reyes, Julio Torri, Rodolfo Usigli, Samuel Ramos and Leopoldo Zea. In 1953 she left for Europe, where she earned her doctorate in Hispanic Literature at the Sorbonne. It was there where she presented her thesis on 'The French Exoticism in Mexico (From 1847 to 1867)'. On her return to Mexico, she became a teacher in the Department of Theater History in the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature. In 1959 her first daughter, Alina, was born. After a journey to Cuba in 1961, she started to teach a course in Mexican Literature at the National Preparatory School Number 1, as well as courses in Universal Literature and of Mexican Literature at the Preparatory No. 5. In the same year she started to teach at the University Center of Theatre, at the School of Theater and Fine arts of the UNAM, and at the Center of Classic Theater of the 'Casa del Lago' (Lake House). During these years she published several essays and theater reviews in a variety of cultural magazines and handouts. In 1966 she became a permanent, full-time Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, specifically in Hispanic Literature and Comparative Literature. She founded and directed the university magazine Punto de Partida. She was also the director of the Israel-Mexico Cultural Institute until 1969. In 1971 her daughter Renata was born. In the same year she set out for the United States of America, where she taught classes at Montclair State College in New Jersey. She published Onda y escritura en Mexico (Wave and writing in Mexico), Jovenes de 20 a 33, which gave name to a wave of emerging literature in the 60s, the 'Onda' (the Wave). She returned to Mexico in 1974, where she rejoined the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, teaching courses in Latin American and Mexican Literature. In 1978 she edited her first fictional book, Las mil y una calorias, novela dietEtica (A Thousand and One Calories: A Dietetic Novel), which inspired a great number of other books in the field of creation and criticism. In 1981 she dedicated her autobiographic work, Las genealogias, to her father, who died one year later. In 1983 she was named Director of Literature at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), where she promoted and directed a number of publications. A year later she obtained the 'Premio Xavier Villaurrutia' (The Xavier Villaurrutia Award) for her work Síndrome de Naufragios. In 1986 she set out for England, where she worked as a Cultural Associate in the Mexican Embassy in London, until 1988. That same year she returned to Mexico, and since has led courses at the Faculty of Philosophy and in numerous universities overseas. In 1989 she was named Member of the National System of Researchers. In 1991 she obtained the National University Prize and again in 1994 she was given the title of Emeritus Professor, both by UNAM. Likewise, the University of Princeton has since awarded her the nomination of Honorary Emeritus Creator of the National System of Creators, as well as the Council of Humanities Fellow. In 1995 she was elected to be a member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua (Mexican Language Academy). In 2004 she was awarded the 'Premio Nacional, campo I, Área de Lingüística y Literatura' (National Prize, field 1, Are of Linguistics and Literature). That same year she was granted the distinction of Emeritus Investigator of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (National System of Investigators). A year later, in 2005, she was honored with the Doctorate Honoris Causa by the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana and with her nomination as an Emeritus Honorary Creator of the National System of Creators. In 2006 a web page was published about her, which was coordinated by Beatriz Aracil Varon, in the Virtual Library Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, of Alicante University.
There has long been need for an introduction to the cultural life of the vast republic to the South, of which we know next to nothing. This is the first volume of its kind. Part One gives a succinct account of Brazil's literary history, valuable for data in any study of comparative letters and for its light upon the evolution of the Portuguese and European spirit in the New World. Part Two consists of ten essays upon salient personalities who best represent the poetry, the fiction, the criticism and the intellectual curiousity of the land. Some of the persons studied in the second part are Castro Alves, Machado de Assis, Olavo Bilac, Oliveira Lima, Francisca Julia and a section on the newer writers.
Isaac Goldberg (1887 - July 14, 1938) was an American journalist, author, critic, translator, editor, publisher, and lecturer. Born in Boston to Jewish parents, he studied at Harvard University and received a BA degree in 1910, a MA degree in 1911 and a PhD in 1912. He traveled to Europe as a journalist during World War I writing for the Boston Evening Transcript. He wrote biographies of H. L. Mencken, Havelock Ellis, W. S. Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, and George Gershwin, books on theatrical and musical appreciation, and contributed articles for many magazines. He also founded, published, and edited a monthly news magazine called Panorama. He was fluent in Yiddish, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese and translated a variety of literary works into English. He received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation in 1932 to write a history of Spanish and Portuguese literature in America.
With this long-awaited second novel the author of the highly acclaimed FRAGMENTED LIFE OF DON JACOBO LERNER fulfills his early promise. Wildly imaginative and darkly comic, PLAY BY PLAY is, most powerfully, a deep, compassionate portrait of a young man born of two distinct and often conflicting worlds. Marquitos Karushansky, a star professional soccer player, is the son of a native Peruvian woman and an immigrant European Jew. Brought up solely by his mother, he was raised among the myths and traditions of native Peruvian culture. Then, at the age of twelve, his father returned to reclaim him, to make him a Jew. The story of Marquito's conversion and its aftermath is told in a variety of narratives: a meditation which focuses on the endless moment of circumcision; the first-person accounts of two friends, one from a Jewish boys' school and the other from a military academy; and through the frenetic voice of a sports announcer who recounts, play by play, the episodes of Marquitos's life, magically transformed into the complex tactics of a soccer game in Lima's National Stadium. For his depiction of the Jewish experience in South America, Mr. Goldemberg has no peer.
Isaac Goldemberg (born 1945) is a Peruvian-American author, founder of the Hostos Review, and a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Hostos Community College. Goldemberg was born in Peru, and immigrated to New York City, where he currently lives, in 1964. His novel The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner, was chosen by the National Yiddish Book Center as, 'one of the 100 greatest Jewish Books of the last 150 years.' The book tells the story of the life of Jacobo Lerner, a Jewish merchant, who immigrates to Peru from Eastern Europe. Jacobo has an illegitimate son, Efraín, by a Christian woman who he later abandons and thus never knows his son. Jacobo ultimately fails to achieve his goal of creating a traditional Jewish family before he dies, having been rejected by the respectable Miriam Abramowitz. Thematically, the novel presents an examination of Jewish identity and anti-Semitism. The book is divided into chapters which consist of vignettes written in the voices of the characters and an omnipotent narrator, as well as 'Cronicas', and excerpts from Alma Hebrea, a publication of the Jewish community in the novel, which features writings by the characters
This remarkable documentary novel is set in Peru. The time, the early 1930's. The characters, a small community of Jews trying to survive within a gentile culture. Don Jacobo Lerner, an immigrant from czarist Russia, lies on his bed the night before his death and tries to piece his life together. Rendered through the eyes of friends and family, through newspaper articles and cultural announcements, and most memorably, through the eyes of his bastard son Efraim whom he has never met, this novel attempts to recreate Lerner's fragmented world. Although Lerner himself is never once described physically, he looms as a character of universal significance, a tragic and almost heroic parody of the Wandering Jew.
Isaac Goldemberg (born 1945) is a Peruvian-American author, founder of the Hostos Review, and a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Hostos Community College. Goldemberg was born in Peru, and immigrated to New York City, where he currently lives, in 1964. His novel The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner, was chosen by the National Yiddish Book Center as, 'one of the 100 greatest Jewish Books of the last 150 years.' The book tells the story of the life of Jacobo Lerner, a Jewish merchant, who immigrates to Peru from Eastern Europe. Jacobo has an illegitimate son, Efraín, by a Christian woman who he later abandons and thus never knows his son. Jacobo ultimately fails to achieve his goal of creating a traditional Jewish family before he dies, having been rejected by the respectable Miriam Abramowitz. Thematically, the novel presents an examination of Jewish identity and anti-Semitism. The book is divided into chapters which consist of vignettes written in the voices of the characters and an omnipotent narrator, as well as 'Cronicas', and excerpts from Alma Hebrea, a publication of the Jewish community in the novel, which features writings by the characters
The Algarrobos Quartet is a series of four short, enigmatic novels set on the northern pampas of Argentina. In the town of Algarrobos, the rules of the game are mysterious, and terrible events occur without warning. Unexpected deaths remain unexplained. Soldiers attack innocent workers. Pampered doves die brutally as well, and a Biblical flood threatens to wash everything away. Most people in Algarrobos don't know why these things happen, and they don't want to know. Puzzles and multiple meanings abound in Goloboff's writing. A central character is known as El Negro though he isn't black. In three of these Argentine Jewish novels only a few characters identify themselves as Jews. There are assimilated Jews, an old, broken-down Jewish cemetery, and some stories of the Jewish past. The fourth novel deals with Italian-Argentine anarchists. These novels are a transmutation of reality, a veil, a façade. Goloboff's prose takes on multiple meanings, and the translation masterfully captures his use of language to evoke enigmas that challenge us to understand both the stories and how chaos and the unexpected engulf us all.
Gerardo Mario Goloboff was born March 16, 1939 in Carlos Casares, Argentina, one of the original agricultural settlements established by the Jewish Colonization Association in the late nineteenth centry. Trained as a lawyer, he devoted himself to literature, founding the literary journal Nuevos Aires. Goloboff spent many years in political exile in France where he taught literary theory and Latin American literature at the Universities of Toulouse and Paris-Nanterre. He is the author of five novels and several books of poetry. He now lives and writes in Argentina.
Virtue is not rewarded in this play which highlights social injustice in a peasant's dealings with Church officials.
Alfredo de Freitas Dias Gomes (Salvador, October 19, 1922 - São Paulo, May 18, 1999) was a playwright and author of Brazilian telenovelas. One of the themes that he frequently developed in his works was that of a "leftist" vision of opposition to popular religion, considered as an instrument of the elites to pacify and subjugate the poor masses of the country in favor of the interests of the powerful as the large landowners, politicians and "coronEis" of Northeast Brazil, as well as the religious themselves who benefited from their dark interests. He had already gained notoriety as a theater writer and national projection due to the success of his piece O Pagador de Promessas. He debuted as a soap opera author in 1969, when he wrote A Ponte dos Suspiros . In Saramandaia , seven years later, he created fantastic realism in the Brazilian soap opera. This idea would also be used in later novels by other authors, such as Aguinaldo Silva. His wife was Janete Clair, famous soap opera author on TV Globo. Alfredo de Freitas Dias Gomes died in a traffic accident, when he was thrown out of a taxi that collided by the irregular maneuver of a motorist, who survived.
THE ACT OF LOVE . . . THE ART OF DECEPTION - Subtly erotic and filled with unexpected twists, P'S THREE WOMEN aims at the heart of human vanity with an irony that pierces, but delights-for this is a look at love-Brazilian-style. In a picaresque journey from youth to old age, R, a wealthy businessman who abhors his real name, finds his passions ensnared by a married woman, a demanding mistress, and a child-like bride. But each of his three women - the beautiful Helena, the high-strung Ermengarda, the delightful ‘Her' - hides a secret. Each will involve P. in an astonishing drama touched by both tragedy and farce. Each will make him either a wise man or a fool. Richly symbolic, P'S THREE WOMEN ingeniously weaves three tales into one superbly crafted masterpiece . . . a unique and wonderful work by an outstanding.
EMILIO SALLES GOMES (December 17, 1916, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil - September 9, 1977, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil) began his career as a critic in 1941 and is considered to be the greatest critic of cinematography ever to have emerged from Brazil. In 1936 he had been imprisoned for protesting against the Fascist Vargas regime. He traveled to Europe, where he completed his film studies, which resulted in the now classic study of the films of Jean Vigo, which has been published here and in France. In 1977, he published P.'S THREE WOMEN, a three-part comic capitulation of the spirit in its battle with the flesh, in the forms of Helena, Hermengarda, and Her. TWICE WITH HELENA was made into a film, MEMORIAS DE HELENA, by the Brazilian director David Neves. Immediately upon publication, the work was hailed as a classic of erotic comedy, with critics comparing the author to Philip Roth and Machado de Assis. It was to be his only novel; he died shortly after its publication.
A four-act play in verse of the love of two Hebrew captives in Babylon. (San Francisco: A. M. Robertson, 1914).
Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda y Arteaga (March 23, 1814 - February 1, 1873) was a 19th-century Cuban-born Spanish writer. Born in Puerto Príncipe, she lived in Cuba until she was 22. Her family moved to Spain in 1836, where she started writing as La Peregrina (The Pilgrim), and she lived there until 1859, when she moved back to Cuba with her second husband until his death in 1863, after which she moved back to Spain. She died in Madrid in 1873 from diabetes at the age of 59. She was a prolific writer and wrote 20 plays and numerous poems. Her most famous work, however, is the antislavery novel Sab, published in Madrid in 1841. The eponymous protagonist is a slave who is deeply in love with his mistress Carlota, who is entirely oblivious to his feelings for her.
Purportedly a Maya tale, but apparently a creation of the author. An idealized, Romantic story of an Indian princess who eventually marries a prince. A glossary, 'Translations of the Maya words to English' (p. 45) is of some use.
CANEK is foremost a story, a latter-day telling of the life and thinking of Jocinto Caner, the real but also fabled hero of the 1761 Maya Indian revolt in the Yucatan. It is fiction, woven with history, folktale, and a lucid evocation of the temper of day-to-day existence on the great plantations of colonial Mexico. Its many thousands of readers have surrendered to the book's own special reality, its separateness from the traditional categories of literature, ethnography, or biography, Instead of borrowing myths and legends from an oral tradition and shaping them toward a standard literary form, Ermilo Abreu Gomez presents us with fragments, with photographically sharp renderings of moments, with knowledge and bits of prophetic insight very much like the ones found in the few arcane texts that remain from the pre-Conquest Maya. The resulting tapestry is surely the most vivid and involving of introductions to the folk culture of the Yucatan. CANEK has proven wonderfully durable. Since first publication in 1940. over thirty-four editions or new printings have appeared in Spanish, and translations in whole or in part in a variety of languages from Russian to Urdu.
Ermilo Abreu Gomez (September 18, 1894, Merida, Yucatán - July 14, 1971, Mexico City) was a writer, journalist and lecturer born in Merida, Yucatán, Mexico. He was a member of the Mexican Academy of the Language from 1963. He was also a professor in several Universities in the USA. He died in the Mexico City in 1971. His literary work was varied, over a long period of time - La Xtabay (1919) ; El Corcovado (1924) ; Clásicos. Románticos. Modernos (1934); Canek (1940); HEroes Mayas (1942); Un Loro y tres Golondrinas (1946); Quetzalcoatl, sueño y vigilia (1947); Naufragio de indios (1951); La conjura de Xinúm (1958); Cuentos para contar al fuego (1959); Sor Juana InEs de la Cruz, bibliografía y biblioteca (1934); Diálogo del buen decir (1961). The interest that Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz woke up in him became the passion of his life and it also led him to become her main critic. His most well-known work is Canek (1940), a story about the old Mayan people. As a curiosity the commentary of the author on the book ‘Canek': ‘And Nymph lost the best pages!'. (Nymph was his wife who typed the original).
A very rich and lucid critical meditation on the language of literature in Spanish America. an original and thought-provoking book.' - Sylvia Molloy, Emery L. Ford Professor of Spanish, Princeton University . . . By one of the most original and learned critical voices in Hispanic studies today-a timely and ambitious study of authority as theme and authority as authorial strategy in modern Latin American literature. An ideology is implicit in modern Latin American literature, argues Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, through which both the literature itself and criticism of it define what Latin American literature is and how it ought to be read. In the works themselves this ideology is constantly subject to a radical critique, and that critique renders the ideology productive and in a sense is what constitutes the work. In literary criticism, however, too frequently the ideology merely serves as support for an authoritative discourse that seriously misrepresents Latin American literature. In THE VOICE OF THE MASTERS, Gonzalez Echevarria attempts to uncover the workings of modern Latin American literature by creating a dialogue of texts, a dynamic whole whose parts are seven illuminating essays on seminal texts in the tradition. As he says, ‘To have written a sustained, expository book. . . would have led me to make the same kind of critical error that I attribute to most criticism of Latin American literature. . . . I would have naively assumed an authoritative voice while attempting a critique of precisely that critical gesture.' Instead, major works by Barnet, Cabrera Infante, Carpentier, Cortázar, Fuentes, Gallegos, Garcia Marquez, Roa Bastos, and Rodo are the object of a set of independent deconstructive (and reconstructive) readings. Writing in the tradition of Derrida and de Man, Gonzalez Echevarria brings to these readings both the penetrative brilliance of the French master and a profound understanding of historical and cultural context. His insightful annotation of Cabrera Infante's ‘Meta-End,' the full text of which is presented at the close of the study, clearly demonstrates these qualities and exemplifies his particular approach to the text. Latin American Monographs, No.64.
Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria (born 28 November 1943, Sagua La Grande, Cuba) is the R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish at Yale University, where he is also chairman of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and chairman of the Latin American Studies Program.
Legends and traditions in stories of Mexico. Contains 41 stories, legends, histories of Mexico City. Some of these essays border on fiction, like the Tradiciones of Peruvian Ricardo Palma.
Luis Gonzalez Obregon (Guanajuato, August 25, 1865 - City of Mexico, June 19, 1938 ) was a Mexican writer, bibliophile, and historian and one of the most eminent men of Mexico, in the field of History and Of letters. He was a member of the Mexican Academy of Language, and held chair XI on December 1, 1916. He was the 4th librarian and the 1st librarian-archivist there. From 1919 to 1922 he was director of the Mexican Academy of History, and occupied chair 10 from 1919 to 1938.
Already accepted in Mexico as-an authoritative work, Gonzalez Peña's History of Mexican Literature is more than an intensely interesting collection of facts: it tells the supremely thrilling story of real men and women-dramatic, varied, individual-against the background of Mexico's four centuries of conflict and creation. It includes barefoot friars and poets, conquistadors and pamphleteers, revolutionists, nuns, Indian chiefs, and archeologists-a whole pageant of splendid life. Here is portrayed the inner life of a people through the struggles and achievements of more than a hundred amazing individuals: Bernal Diaz, veteran of 110 pitched battles, whom neither poverty nor old age could break and who told the story of the Conquest for all times to come; Alarcon, the Mexican hunchback, who fought a single-handed fight against the brilliant dramatists of the Spanish Golden Age and won fame in spite of their jeers; Sister Juana InEs de la Cruz, the Spanish beauty who renounced the world but wrote the most beautiful love poems in her cloister; Mier, the Dominican friar, who broke prison six times and lived to see the triumph of Mexican liberty; Juan Valle, the blind poet of the Revolution, stoned through the streets of Guanajuato for his devotion to his country; Diaz Covarrubias, physician and romanticist, author of four distinctive novels, shot by a firing squad when he was only twenty-one. And, these are only a few of the vibrant, living personalities portrayed. Gonzalez Pena tells the tremendous story of the first Spanish missionaries in Mexico, gives the history of the miracle plays in the New World, describes the Latin works of the great Mexican humanists, and discusses the Indian manuscripts and hieroglyphic writings. He tells of the founding of the University of Mexico (nearly a century before Harvard), the first printing press in Mexico (eighty-four years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock), the influence of European literature on Mexico, and the influence of Mexico on Europe. He reveals the attitude of Mexicans toward the United States and the development of education, science, and political thought. To many Americans this book will come as an astounding revelation of the intellectual wealth of our Spanish-American neighbor. To all its readers it will reveal something of the inner secrets of Mexican life and character. .
Carlos Gonzalez Pens (born in. Lagos de Moreno , Jalisco, July 7, 1885 -. died in Mexico City August 1, 1955) was one of the most important writers in Mexico. He was an editor of El Universal, a leading newspaper of Mexico City, and professor of Mexican literature at the University of Mexico. Gonzalez Pena won distinction as a dramatist and novelist. In 1928 he published the first edition and in 1940 the second (revised and enlarged) edition of Historia de la Literatura Mexicana of which this is an authorized translation. The translators: Gusta Barfield Nance is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Southern Methodist University. Florene Johnson Dunstan is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Agnes Scott College.
A tale of love and honor in which Rosendo Arbona discovers that his young wife Dominga is missing. When he learns that she has run away with one of the young farm workers, Rosendo embarks on what will become a an almost mythic journey to find Dominga, avenge his honor, and discover the deeper purpose of his travels. A haunting, almost uncanny tale of love and honor in which the . . . characters move through a world of secret passions and silences. . . . [Set in Puerto Rico], scenes of impoverished farmers, madwomen, and men in coffee shops and cafes combine to form a blend of voices and landscapes whose essence can be distilled into three words: tobacco, coffee, and sugar - Marjorie Agosin, New York Times Book Review.
Jose Luis González (1926–1996) was born in the Dominican Republic and lived in Puerto Rico and Mexico. His novels, short stories, and essays have been widely translated and anthologized.
A riveting family drama set on the lush and dangerous Colombian coast. By one of Colombia's most acclaimed contemporary novelists, The Storm is an atmospheric, gripping portrait of the tensions that devastate one family. Twins Mario and Jose do not know how to cope with the hatred they feel for their father, an arrogant man whose pride seems to taint everything he touches. Over the course of a fateful fishing trip straight into the heart of a storm, father and sons are confronted with the unspoken secrets and resentments that are destroying them.
Tomás González (born Medellin, 1950) is a Colombian writer. He studied philosophy at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He is best known for his debut novel In the Beginning Was the Sea (1983) which was translated into English by Pushkin Press. González lived in the United States for twenty years before returning to his native Colombia in 2002. He is the nephew of the writer Fernando Gonzalez.
No one in Mexico ever imagined the revolution would pass through Monreal. Not Federico Farias, who had composed a quiet revolutionary life for himself in lectures and town meetings, far from the battlefronts. Not Rosario Alomar, whose husband's life would end in the senseless battle. Not even Valentin Cobelo, who, together with his men, chased down the federales in the small town's cobbled streets. In the once-sleepy town of Monreal, in the midst of a bloody revolution, desire unfurls between Rosario and Valentin, Their passion comes unexpected and mad, like a rainstorm approaching - it warns you of its fury but you cannot stop it. LOVING YOU WAS MY UNDOING is an unforgettable story of fervent longing, of love blooming in the most unexpected of places, and of wishes carved in the air, wishes that might better have gone unanswered.
JAVIER GONZALEZ-RUBIO was born in Mexico City. After teaching at the Universidad Nacional Autonorna, Gonzalez-Rubio worked as a journalist, writing for La Jornada and El Universal. He has held various positions, including Director of information for the President of the Republic of Mexico. YARELI ARIZMENDI translated the screenplay version of Like Water for Chocolate and the novel Simple Prayers. Arizmendi is a screen actress and has appeared in many films, including Like Water for Chocolate, The Big Green, and Gunfighter's Moon. STEPHEN LYTLE is a film producer who lives in Southern California.
Jaguars' Tomb is a novel in three parts, written by three interconnected characters. Part one, "Hidden Variables" by María Celina Igarzábal, is narrated by Bruno Seguer. Seguer in turn is the author of the second part, "Recounting from Zero" ("Contar desde zero"), in which Evelynne Harrington, author of the third, is a central character. Harrington, finally, is the author of "Uncertainty" ("La incertidumbre"), whose protagonist is the dying Igarzábal. Each of the three parts revolves around the octagonal room that is alternately the jaguars' tomb, the central space of the torture center, and the heart of an abandoned house that hides an adulterous affair. The novel, by Argentine author Angélica Gorodischer, is both an intriguing puzzle and a meditation on how to write about, or through, violence, injustice, and loss. Among Gorodischer's many novels, Jaguars' Tomb most directly addresses the abductions and disappearances that occurred under the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976–83. This is the fourth of Gorodischer's books translated into English. The first, Kalpa Imperial—translated by Ursula Le Guin—was selected for the New York Times summer reading list in 2003.
Angélica Gorodischer is the Argentine author of seventeen novels and several story collections. Gorodischer's literary awards include the Gilgamesh Prize; the Platinum Konex; the Dignity Award from the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights; the Silvina Bullrich Award from the Argentina Writers' Society; and the Esteban Echeverría Award from Gente de Letras, Argentina. Her work has previously been translated into English by Ursula K. Le Guin, Sue Burke, and Amalia Gladhart. Amalia Gladhart is a professor of Spanish at the University of Oregon.
Ursula K. Le Guin chose to translate this novel which was on the New York Times Summer Reading list and winner of the Prix Imaginales, Más Allá, Poblet and Sigfrido Radaelli awards. This is the first of Argentinean writer Angélica Gorodischer's award-winning books to be translated into English. In eleven chapters, Kalpa Imperial's multiple storytellers relate the story of a fabled nameless empire which has risen and fallen innumerable times. Fairy tales, oral histories and political commentaries are all woven tapestry-style into Kalpa Imperial: beggars become emperors, democracies become dictatorships, and history becomes legends and stories. But this is much more than a simple political allegory or fable. It is also a celebration of the power of storytelling. Gorodischer and translator Ursula K. Le Guin are a well-matched, sly and delightful team of magician-storytellers. Rarely have author and translator been such an effortless pairing. Kalpa Imperial is a powerful introduction to the writing of Angélica Gorodischer, a novel which will enthrall readers already familiar with the worlds of Le Guin.
Angélica Gorodischer (1928-2022) was born in Buenos Aires and lived in Rosario from 1936 on. She published many novels and short story collections including Kalpa Imperial, Mango Juice, and Trafalgar, as well as a memoir, History of My Mother. Her work has been translated into many languages and her translators include Ursula K. Le Guin and Alberto Manguel. With certain self-satisfaction she claimed to never have written plays or poems, not even at 16 when everybody writes poems, especially on unrequited love. She received two Fulbright awards as well as many literary awards around the world, including the Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Awards and a 2014 Konex Special Mention Award.
Prodigies explores the story of the poet Novalis's birthplace in the German town of Weissenfels after it is converted into a boarding house. Moving, subtle, and full of wit, irony, and dreams, this novel fills the house with the women who lived there throughout the nineteenth century, and across the flow of history constructs the secret drama of their destinies.
Angélica Gorodischer is the Argentine author of seventeen novels and several story collections. Gorodischer's literary awards include the Gilgamesh Prize; the Platinum Konex; the Dignity Award from the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights; the Silvina Bullrich Award from the Argentina Writers' Society; and the Esteban Echeverría Award from Gente de Letras, Argentina. Her work has previously been translated into English by Ursula K. Le Guin, Sue Burke, and Amalia Gladhart. Amalia Gladhart is a professor of Spanish at the University of Oregon.
Don't rush Trafalgar Medrano when he starts telling you about his latest intergalactic sales trip. He likes to stretch things out over precisely seven coffees. No one knows whether he actu-ally travels to the stars, but he tells the best tall tales in the city, so why doubt him? Trafalgar is Angélica Gorodischer's second novel to be translated into English. Her first, Kalpa Imperial, was selected for the New York Times summer reading list.
Angélica Gorodischer is the Argentine author of seventeen novels and several story collections. Gorodischer's literary awards include the Gilgamesh Prize; the Platinum Konex; the Dignity Award from the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights; the Silvina Bullrich Award from the Argentina Writers' Society; and the Esteban Echeverría Award from Gente de Letras, Argentina. Her work has previously been translated into English by Ursula K. Le Guin, Sue Burke, and Amalia Gladhart. Amalia Gladhart is a professor of Spanish at the University of Oregon.
A play inspired by the author's memories of life in a residential district of Buenos Aires. A movie version of the play was released in 1951. Illustrated. Justice comes to an impoverished South American town, where the indigent are humiliated by the well-to-do, when the dam breaks and the sons of different families are lost together. Snobbery and pride are leveled by sorrow; not all the riches in the world can undo the justice of God.
Carlos Gorostiza Rodríguez (June 7, 1920 - July 19, 2016) was an Argentine playwright, theatre director, and novelist. His seminal work El puente debuted in 1949 and he garnered numerous awards for his proceeding works. He later was Secretary of Culture between 1983 and 1986.
Political intrigue and swashbuckling adventure from the most important woman writer of nineteenth-century Argentina . . . One of the most dramatic figures among Latin America's romantic writers and the distinguished woman writer of her century, Juana Manuela Gorriti brings passion and intrigue to the scene of writing. An exile from her native Argentina who sought refuge first in Bolivia and then in Peru, her lifetime of travel and displacement is echoed in her fictions. Her short stories tell of homelessness and nomadic yearnings, taking the reader from the Peruvian highlands, where Spanish colonizers plot to rob the treasures of the Incas, to the Argentine capital city plagued by sinister political intentions. Her later fictions move from Chile to scenes of the California Gold Rush. Covering the wide landscape of the Americas, Gorriti tracks the spirit of nineteenth-century adventurers and dandies, nation builders and soldiers who participate in the conflicts of settlement in a new and lawless land. Women are the protagonists here, mediating episodes of civil strife as they voice their despair about the treachery of fortune seekers in Latin America in the years following Independence from Spain. DREAMS AND REALITIES offers a sampling of Gorrtis's stories, showing the range of her commitment to political fiction drawn in the romantic style. Originally published in four volumes under the titles Suenos y realidades and Panoramas de la vida, her works deal with the tyranny of the Rosas regime, the mediating role of women, and the clash of European and indigenous cultures. Notwithstanding her personal political leanings, Gorriti's stories and fictions provide a generous dose of swashbuckling adventure and romance, Translated into English for the first time by Sergio Waisman and with an Introduction, Chronology, and Critical Notes by Francine Masiello, the book gives a woman's view of the world of political intrigue and civil unrest that marks Latin America's turbulent nineteenth century.
Juana Manuela Gorriti (June 15, 1818–November 6, 1892) was an Argentine writer with extensive political and literary links to Bolivia and Peru. Juana Manuela Gorriti was born in Salta near the Bolivian border. She came from a wealthy upper-class family, and attended a convent school when she was eight. Her father, Josee Ignacio de Gorriti, was a politician and soldier, and signed the Argentine Declaration of Independence on July 9. She was also the niece of the infamous guerrilla Jose Francisco 'Pachi' Gorriti. Her family was liberal, and supported the Unitarians during a time when Juan Manuel de Rosas ran the country. Juan Manuel was a conservative who was in office from 1829 and 1852, and used genocide to steal land from the indigenous people. In 1831, when Gorriti was thirteen, the federal caudillo Facundo Quiroga forced Gorriti and much of her family into exile, so they emigrated to Tarija, Bolivia. This is where she met future husband Manuel Isidro Belzu. Manuel Isidro Belzu was a captain in the Bolivian Army at the time. They married when she was fifteen, and she bore three daughters. As his career advanced, their marriage suffered, and he abandoned her in 1842 after nine years together. He later went on to become president in 1848, and was assassinated in office to be replaced by Mariano Melgarejo. It was rumored, though unconfirmed, that Mariano himself shot Belzu during a fake embrace in order take over as President, even though he acted as a dictator. Gorriti did not receive the divorce papers until fourteen years later, during the shelling on Lima's port by the Spanish Navy in 1866. Separated, but not divorced, she left Bolivia for Peru, where her literary life would take off. She started teaching, and eventually founded a school. In Lima, a coastal city where she lived, Gorriti arose as an influential journalist, and started to regularly host tertulias. Fashionable men and women of mostly a well educated background would attend these salons, such as Ricardo Palma and Manuel González Prada, Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, Clorinda Matto de Turner and Teresa González de Fanning. They would meet to discuss literature and progress, a theme Gorriti felt passionate about, and would include in much of her literature. Gorriti was a feminist, and it showed in many of her journals. Through her writings, she instructed and inspired women to take on the modern gender roles which were so common in Europe and North America. She wanted women to stand up and be heard, to educate themselves, and not be afraid to go against the norm. In 1866, the Spanish Navy shelled ports on Peru's and Chile's coastlines, including the port of Lima. Gorriti served as a battlefield nurse. She also risked her life evacuating the wounded when the Spanish surrendered at Callao. For her heroism, and Florence Nightingale-like actions, Gorriti was seen as a Peruvian freedom fighter, and was awarded the Second Star of May by the Peruvian government. She wrote about these events in numerous articles and short stories, later collected and published in the Album of Lima founded by herself and her friend and fellow writer Carolina Freyre de Jaimes. Gorriti also founded the newspaper The Dawn of Lima with fellow poet Numa Pompilio Yona. In 1878, Gorriti returned to Argentina, and even after having faced numerous scandals in her life such as divorce, exile, and Belzu having a child out of wedlock, she was still seen as an exceptional woman who brought great pride to her country. Her daughter Mercedes became sick in Peru in 1879, but Gorriti could not go to her because of the war between Chile and Peru over the provinces of Tanca and Arica. Mercedes died later that year. Gorriti also founded the newspaper The Argentina Dawn, where she published many articles on the rights and education of women, and how Progress was limiting their freedom. When she died, Argentines hailed her as a famous, instructive, influential journalist in her day. Gorriti wrote a number of novels and short stories, including 'La hija del mazorquero' and 'El lucero de manantial.' Both of these stories are melodramatic tales with a strong anti-Rosista political message. She also wrote a number of other novels and short stories. Among these is another melodramatic novel, 'La oasis de la vida' written in the 1880s as an advertisement for the insurance company 'La Buenos Aires': the plot is the standard 'poor orphan boy can't marry his true love', but all is resolved when he finally discovers his parents had a life insurance policy with company, and so he isn't quite so poor after all. This novel was indicative of the new, more expansive literary climate in Argentina at the time. Of interest, but not often noted, was her on-again, off-again, three-year stay in Lima where she served as a mentor for a whole generation of women writers. This resulted in her publication of a short but influential novel 'La Quena' in the prestigious newspaper El Comercio. Later as Peruvian politics began to stabilize she contributed to the institutionalization of Peruvian literature by collaborating in the Revista de Lima with stories like 'El Angel Caido', 'Si haces mal no esperes bien' and others. By organizing and hosting her tertulias, she provided a great opportunity for many female writers like Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, Clorinda Matto de Turner and Teresa González de Fanning to come together and discuss literature, progress, and the progress of women. Many of the attendees would later go on to write more about these subjects, including Teresa González de Fanning, who founded an enlightened women's movement. Although perhaps not as well known as she should be, Juana Manuela Gorriti is an author not to be overlooked. Her stories are finely crafted, and not only bear witness to trends in South American literature of the 19th century, but are enjoyable reading in their own right. ABOUT THE EDITOR AND TRANSLATOR: Francine Masiello is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Sergio Waisman is Assistant Professor of Spanish at George Washington University.
A modern-day picaresque novel by one of Mexico's best This novel brings a fresh and modern perspective to a genre of Latin-American, Mexican, and Mexican-American novels and family stories. Not only are the characters well-developed, but the story itself contains the meaning, which unravels page by page into what becomes a very complex saga. This is definitely an important work of fiction. - Daniel Chacon, author of Hotel Júarez: Stories, Rooms and Loops The Brothers Corona is a novel that unfolds like a Sam Shepard story made into a Wim Wenders road movie. It is the first Mexican detective novel that reflects rural Mexican life and culture, showcasing the splendor of its customs and traditions. The novel unfolds as two revolving stories that eventually intertwine into one. The first is the story of Abel Corona and his three brothers, who are involved in a nasty feud with the neighboring Alcaraz family. The second story focuses on the journey that the young Abel Corona undertakes to search for his girlfriend by catching a ride from a truck driver who is involved in the drug trade. When he steals money from the driver, Abel starts fearing for his life. Then his brother Ismael is found dead, and Abel is confronted with an old family feud: a fight over land ending in death. Is he being lured into a trap, to fall victim to revenge? Portraying ranch life across the great expanse of northern and western Mexico, Guedea dazzles the reader with numerous subplot lines and sequences of Abel's journey. The novel doesn't hold back, and it's inventive, honest, and often beautifully brutal.
Rogelio Guedea is considered one of Mexico's most important authors. He studied law and literature in Mexico and Spain and has received numerous prizes for his writing, including the highly respected Premio Adonáis de Poesía. He currently lectures at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Peter Broad recently retired from forty-two years of teaching Spanish. He has permanent certification from the American Translators Association as a Spanish-English translator.
In a book alive with personality, erudition, opinion, and wisdom, Latin America's most brilliant writers reveal themselves. Their profoundest intellectual and spiritual insights emerge in spontaneous response to an extraordinary interviewer. The seven whose voices are heard: PABLO NERUDA, the Chilean poet-statesman, winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature. JORGE Luis BORGES, the great Argentine storyteller and mythmaker. MIGUEL ANGEL ASTURIAS, Guatemala's Nobel Prize novelist. OCTAVIO PAZ, whose poems speak for his Mexican generation. JULIO CORTAZAR, politically controversial Argentine author of Hopscotch. GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ, ‘dazzlingly accomplished' Colombian novelist, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude. GUILLERMO CABRERA INFANTE, brilliant, and inventive young Cuban novelist, author of Three Trapped Tigers. Each speaks about his life, his writing, his feelings about the literature of today and of the past, about the great events and trends-and trivia-of our times, in conversations with Rita Guibert. Acting more as catalyst than interrogator, spending in most cases a week or longer with each of the seven, she opened up avenues of discussion. They responded openly wherever their feelings and interests were involved-talking about the process of writing . . . the impulse to a. the artist's role in society. . the function of literature . . . their own feelings about other writers . about critics. . . their attitudes toward Castro and the Cuban revolution . . . socialism . . . the United States and Latin America . the generational war . . . the feminist movement. . . the sexual revolution violence. . . utopian possibilities . human imperatives. The result is an unparalleled opportunity for the North American reader to meet the men of Latin America's literary renaissance and to gain a new understanding of their works and their worlds.
Rita Guibert, who was born in Buenos Aires, has lived for fifteen years in New York, where she has worked extensively in the magazine field. Her articles have appeared in Paris Review, Intellectual Digest, Review ‘72, Revista Iberoamericana, and the Spanish edition. of Life, for which she was a reporter for five years.
Written with passion, intelligence and irony, this compelling novel tells of the downfall of a wealthy and aristocratic Argentinian family under the Peron dictatorship. Proud of their European Culture and their immense landholdings, the Praderes find the meaning of their lives lost in the violent and contradictory times of their country. Their world is crumbling, unwilling to recognize its own ruin. To avoid the expropriation of their lands, they sacrifice their reputation to the government; the father, Alejandro, accepts a diplomatic post, thereby implicating them in a social-political order they abhor. Caught hard in the dilemma are the two younger Praderes, the daughter InEs and her brother Jose Luis, who attempt to find through the revolutionary student Pablo Alcobendas a valid meaning to life. As it moves to its fatal conclusion, END OF A DAY assumes the substance of classic tragedy. It also reveals the social and political schisms of modern Latin America in a story of universal poignancy and power. Beatriz Guido is a native of Buenos Aires, her family belonging to the Argentinian upperclass represented by the Praderes in END OF A DAY. She is the author of many novels and short stories, several of which have won literary awards, and three of her works - END OF INNOCENCE, SUMMERSKIN, and THE TERRACE - have been made into motion pictures by her husband, film director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson. END OF A DAY (Spanish title: El Incendio y Las Visperas) has been one of the most successful novels published in Argentina in recent years.
Beatriz Guido (13 December 1924 - 4 March 1988) was an Argentine novelist and screenwriter. Guido was born in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, the daughter of architect Ángel Guido (renowned as the creator of the National Flag Memorial) and of Uruguayan actress Berta Eirin. She studied at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires. She wrote her first novel, La casa del ángel, in 1954. She also wrote a short story named Usurpacion. Because of her outspoken anti-Peronism, she was branded a 'right-wing writer' and a 'false aristocrat' by the government of Juan Peron. In 1959 she married film director and screenwriter Leopoldo Torre Nilsson. She started working with her husband, who took several of her works to the screen. In 1984 she won the Konex Merit Diploma on Letters. That year she was appointed cultural attachE of the Argentine Embassy in Spain. She died of a heart attack in Madrid four years later, at the age of 63.
Here in THE HOUSE OF THE ANGEL lives Ana Castro, seeing the outside world as a strange, a mysterious and fascinating place. She is not yet sixteen, the highly imaginative and romantic daughter of a man prominent in government. Her mother, an extremely strict and religious woman, keeps Ana's life, as well as those of her sister and baby brother, closely sheltered. Here, in the strange, almost medieval atmosphere of aristocratic Buenos Aires society as it existed in the late twenties, is Ana, searching and turbulent in her transition from girl to woman, jumping from one rash emotion to another, hearing and feeling things she cannot understand, finding no reality to which she can hold. One day reality does come to THE HOUSE OF THE ANGEL with fierce and shattering effect. Dueling, though outlawed, is still practiced by aristocratic Argentine families, and one of the younger members of Ana's father's political party, Pablo Aguirre, has challenged a member of the opposition. Ana's father arranges that the duel be held in the garden of THE HOUSE OF THE ANGEL. As the day of the duel draws near, Ana finds herself drawn to Pablo Aguirre, whom she does not know, and to his heroic cause. Her emotions are heightened by the tension between her father, who thrills at the thought of the duel, and her mother, hating this violence which Ana's father has imposed on her house and children. The day and night of the duel are ones Ana will remember all her days, as she will remember Pablo Aguirre, as she will remember the scapular, as she will remember her vanished innocence. Beatriz Guido has written a haunting story of the innocence and illusions of youth brought face to face with violent reality. Told in a clear, almost classic style with rare precision and economy, THE HOUSE OF THE ANGEL places Miss Guido, a native of Buenos Aires, in the forefront of Latin American novelists.
Beatriz Guido (13 December 1924 - 4 March 1988) was an Argentine novelist and screenwriter. Guido was born in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, the daughter of architect Ángel Guido (renowned as the creator of the National Flag Memorial) and of Uruguayan actress Berta Eirin. She studied at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires. She wrote her first novel, La casa del ángel, in 1954. She also wrote a short story named Usurpacion. Because of her outspoken anti-Peronism, she was branded a 'right-wing writer' and a 'false aristocrat' by the government of Juan Peron. In 1959 she married film director and screenwriter Leopoldo Torre Nilsson. She started working with her husband, who took several of her works to the screen. In 1984 she won the Konex Merit Diploma on Letters. That year she was appointed cultural attachE of the Argentine Embassy in Spain. She died of a heart attack in Madrid four years later, at the age of 63.
DON SEGUNDO SOMBRA is the great classic of the Argentine. In its vivid and haunting charm, it is reminiscent of W. H. Hudson. Yet it has masculine simplicity, and through it runs a philosophic calm, hanging even in the background of the scenes of violence and passion, as if it were the aura of the pampas themselves, a spirit born in the silence of earth and sky. DON SEGUNDO SOMBRA is the story of a gaucho in the prairie hinterlands of the Argentine. With a vast freshness of imagery and characterization, there is detailed the unmolested wildness of the country, of the animals which roam its plains and of the wandering cowmen whose quiet strength is personified in the figure of Don Segundo. His story is told by an urchin whom he attracts, befriends and raises to the saddle. They ride through the country from one job to another, - through a bright procession of adventures, through fiestas, brawls, round-ups and dances. The life is hard but eternally free and its fascination is as poignant and as inescapable as that of the sea . . . ‘Strange as it may, DON SEGUNDO SOMBRA occupies in Argentinian letters a place not unrelated to that of HUCKLEBERRY FINN in ours. It, too, is the history of a boy, a waif who ‘on his own' wanders through the country. And that country, in both books, is the frontier - an old America that had already almost vanished when the two books were written. Both tell an exciting story of adventure from the standpoint of a boy, in the boy's own language; and both lads are typical products of their respective worlds. But the books are a great deal more than good adventure stories, being classic pictures of the traditions and ideas, the institutions, and the folk of the two countries.' - From the introduction by Waldo Frank.
Ricardo Güiraldes (13 February 1886 - 8 October 1927) was an Argentine novelist and poet, one of the most significant Argentine writers of his era, particularly known for his 1926 novel Don Segundo Sombra, set amongst the gauchos. Güiraldes was born in Buenos Aires, the second son of a wealthy family of the old landowning aristocracy. His mother was Dolores Goñi, descendant of Ruiz de Arellano, who founded the village of San Antonio de Areco in 1730. Manuel Güiraldes, his father, later intendente (governmentally appointed mayor) of Buenos Aires, was a cultured, educated man, interested in art. Ricardo inherited that predilection; in his youth he sketched rural scenes and painted in oils. When Güiraldes was one year old, he travelled with his family to Europe, living for four years in Paris near the Rue Saint-Claude. By the age of six, he spoke not only Spanish but French and German. Indeed, French was his first language, and French-language literature would leave a strong mark on his literary style and tastes. Güiraldes's childhood and youth were divided between the family ranch, La Porteña in San Antonio de Areco, and Buenos Aires. In San Antonio he came into contact with the world of the gauchos, which would figure prominently in his novels Raucho and Don Segundo Sombra; there, too, he met Segundo Ramírez, upon whom he based the title character of the latter work. He loved the country life, but suffered from asthma that sometimes limited his own physical activity, though he generally presented an image of physical vigor. He was educated by several female teachers and, later, by a Mexican engineer, Lorenzo Ceballos, who recognized and encouraged his literary ambitions. He studied in various institutes and completed his bachillerato at the age of 16. Güiraldes was not a brilliant student; at the Colegio Lacordaire, the Vertiz Institute and the Instituto Libre de Segunda Enseñanza, he studied both architecture and law, but never practiced either one. He did make several attempts at business, all unsuccessful. He traveled to Europe in 1910 in the company of his friend Roberto Leviller, then travelled with another friend, his future brother-in-law Adán Deihl, with whom he visited Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Egypt, Japan, China, Russia, India, Ceylon, and Germany before settling in Paris, where (after his father decided he had had enough of paying the costs of his son's idleness) he stayed with the sculptor Alberto Lagos (to whom he later dedicated Xaimaca), and where he decided to become a writer. Despite that decision, Güiraldes threw himself into the French capital's social whirl, practically abandoning his literary ambitions. But one day he unpacked some draft stories he had written about rural Argentina and set to work; these would eventually become his Cuentos de muerte y de sangre (‘Stories of death and of blood'). He read the stories to friends, who encouraged him to publish them. Even the early drafts already showed a distinct, individual style. Finally truly committed to literature, he returned to Buenos Aires in 1912, becoming part of the circle of Alejandro Bustillo. On October 13, 1913 he married Adelina del Carril, also from one of the city's leading families, whom he had first met in 1905. In 1913–1914, he published several stories in the magazine Caras y Caretas; in 1915, these and others were published as Cuentos de muerte y de sangre; earlier that year he had published a book of poetry, El cencerro de cristal. He was encouraged in his writing by his wife and by Leopoldo Lugones, but when these early works did not meet with a receptive public, Güiraldes withdrew them from circulation, gathered up the unsold copies, and threw them into a well. His wife managed to rescue some; these surviving, water-damaged copies are now prized by book collectors. At the end of 1916, the couple traveled to the Pacific Ocean, to Cuba, and to Jamaica, where he wrote a ‘theatrical caprice' called El reloj (‘The clock', never published). These travels would eventually lead to his 1923 novel Xaimaca, but long before that, in 1917, came his first novel Raucho, followed in 1918 by a short novel Un idilio de estacion (‘A Season's Idyll') in Horacio Quiroga's magazine El cuento ilustrado; this would eventually be revised and published as a well-received book in 1922, with the new title Rosaura. In 1919, with his wife, Güiraldes again traveled to Europe. In Paris he established contact with many French writers and frequented literary salons and bookstores; there, too, he began Don Segundo Sombra. He has been described as particularly influenced by his friend ValEry Larbaud, but Güiraldes's English-language translator Harriet de Onís believes that influence to have been overstated. Güiraldes returned to Argentina, then went back to Europe in 1922, where besides returning to Paris he passed some time in Puerto de Pollensa, Majorca, where he rented a house. In this period he underwent an intellectual and spiritual change. He became interested in theosophy and Eastern philosophy, seeking spiritual peace; this is strongly reflected in his late poetry. At the same time, Güiraldes's writing became more accepted in his native Buenos Aires, where he became a supporter of new avant-garde writers; he was something of an elder and teacher to the Florida group. In 1924, along with Brandán Caraffa, Jorge Luis Borges, and Pablo Rojas Paz he founded the short-lived magazine Proa, which was not particularly successful in its home city but met with a better reception elsewhere in Latin America. Güiraldes also co-founded the Frente Unico, opposed to pompierismo (the use of dry or pompous academic language in writing), and collaborated in the publication of the magazine Martín Fierro. In 1927, intending to head back to India because of his increasing interest in Hinduism, Güiraldes traveled once more to France. He went first to Arcachon, but it developed that he was sick with Hodgkin's disease. He was brought to Paris by ambulance, was met there by his wife, and died in the house of his friend Alfredo González Garaño. Güiraldes's body was brought back to Buenos Aires and finally entombed in San Antonio de Areco.
'[The work of Ricardo Guiraldes] is probably the most original and enduring that Spanish America has produced in this century' writes the noted editor and translator Harriet de Onis in her Afterword to this Signet Classic volume. His most famous novel, Don Segundo Sombra, centers on the adventures of Fabio, a wayward waif. On the surface it is the story oflthe young boy's apprenticeship to Don Segundo, the gaucho who schools him in the skills of broncobusting and cattle - wrangling and in the art of life - life lived according to the 'gaucho canons: patience in the face of adversity, endurance, the vocation and pursuit of freedom, self - discipline, prudence, loyalty.' But more than this, Don Segundo Sombra is the story of a land and its people; in it Guiraldes has 'distilled the essence' of the 'two cornerstones of Argentine mythology' - of the pampa, the vast, treeless plain of Argentina, and of the gaucho, the fabled cowboy of South America. 'Within [the novel's] simple framework,' Harriet de Onis continues, 'is packed all the beauty of the land, of work, of the companionship of men, of freedom, of adventure, told in a language that is a blend of the precise, sober, yet colorful speech of the gaucho, and Guiraldes's sensitive scintillating prose, in which classic and modern influence have been tempered by his genius into an instrument having the beauty and power of a Toledo blade.'
Ricardo Güiraldes (13 February 1886 - 8 October 1927) was an Argentine novelist and poet, one of the most significant Argentine writers of his era, particularly known for his 1926 novel Don Segundo Sombra, set amongst the gauchos. Güiraldes was born in Buenos Aires, the second son of a wealthy family of the old landowning aristocracy. His mother was Dolores Goñi, descendant of Ruiz de Arellano, who founded the village of San Antonio de Areco in 1730. Manuel Güiraldes, his father, later intendente (governmentally appointed mayor) of Buenos Aires, was a cultured, educated man, interested in art. Ricardo inherited that predilection; in his youth he sketched rural scenes and painted in oils. When Güiraldes was one year old, he travelled with his family to Europe, living for four years in Paris near the Rue Saint-Claude. By the age of six, he spoke not only Spanish but French and German. Indeed, French was his first language, and French-language literature would leave a strong mark on his literary style and tastes. Güiraldes's childhood and youth were divided between the family ranch, La Porteña in San Antonio de Areco, and Buenos Aires. In San Antonio he came into contact with the world of the gauchos, which would figure prominently in his novels Raucho and Don Segundo Sombra; there, too, he met Segundo Ramírez, upon whom he based the title character of the latter work. He loved the country life, but suffered from asthma that sometimes limited his own physical activity, though he generally presented an image of physical vigor. He was educated by several female teachers and, later, by a Mexican engineer, Lorenzo Ceballos, who recognized and encouraged his literary ambitions. He studied in various institutes and completed his bachillerato at the age of 16. Güiraldes was not a brilliant student; at the Colegio Lacordaire, the Vertiz Institute and the Instituto Libre de Segunda Enseñanza, he studied both architecture and law, but never practiced either one. He did make several attempts at business, all unsuccessful. He traveled to Europe in 1910 in the company of his friend Roberto Leviller, then travelled with another friend, his future brother-in-law Adán Deihl, with whom he visited Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Egypt, Japan, China, Russia, India, Ceylon, and Germany before settling in Paris, where (after his father decided he had had enough of paying the costs of his son's idleness) he stayed with the sculptor Alberto Lagos (to whom he later dedicated Xaimaca), and where he decided to become a writer. Despite that decision, Güiraldes threw himself into the French capital's social whirl, practically abandoning his literary ambitions. But one day he unpacked some draft stories he had written about rural Argentina and set to work; these would eventually become his Cuentos de muerte y de sangre (‘Stories of death and of blood'). He read the stories to friends, who encouraged him to publish them. Even the early drafts already showed a distinct, individual style. Finally truly committed to literature, he returned to Buenos Aires in 1912, becoming part of the circle of Alejandro Bustillo. On October 13, 1913 he married Adelina del Carril, also from one of the city's leading families, whom he had first met in 1905. In 1913–1914, he published several stories in the magazine Caras y Caretas; in 1915, these and others were published as Cuentos de muerte y de sangre; earlier that year he had published a book of poetry, El cencerro de cristal. He was encouraged in his writing by his wife and by Leopoldo Lugones, but when these early works did not meet with a receptive public, Güiraldes withdrew them from circulation, gathered up the unsold copies, and threw them into a well. His wife managed to rescue some; these surviving, water-damaged copies are now prized by book collectors. At the end of 1916, the couple traveled to the Pacific Ocean, to Cuba, and to Jamaica, where he wrote a ‘theatrical caprice' called El reloj (‘The clock', never published). These travels would eventually lead to his 1923 novel Xaimaca, but long before that, in 1917, came his first novel Raucho, followed in 1918 by a short novel Un idilio de estacion (‘A Season's Idyll') in Horacio Quiroga's magazine El cuento ilustrado; this would eventually be revised and published as a well-received book in 1922, with the new title Rosaura. In 1919, with his wife, Güiraldes again traveled to Europe. In Paris he established contact with many French writers and frequented literary salons and bookstores; there, too, he began Don Segundo Sombra. He has been described as particularly influenced by his friend ValEry Larbaud, but Güiraldes's English-language translator Harriet de Onís believes that influence to have been overstated. Güiraldes returned to Argentina, then went back to Europe in 1922, where besides returning to Paris he passed some time in Puerto de Pollensa, Majorca, where he rented a house. In this period he underwent an intellectual and spiritual change. He became interested in theosophy and Eastern philosophy, seeking spiritual peace; this is strongly reflected in his late poetry. At the same time, Güiraldes's writing became more accepted in his native Buenos Aires, where he became a supporter of new avant-garde writers; he was something of an elder and teacher to the Florida group. In 1924, along with Brandán Caraffa, Jorge Luis Borges, and Pablo Rojas Paz he founded the short-lived magazine Proa, which was not particularly successful in its home city but met with a better reception elsewhere in Latin America. Güiraldes also co-founded the Frente Unico, opposed to pompierismo (the use of dry or pompous academic language in writing), and collaborated in the publication of the magazine Martín Fierro. In 1927, intending to head back to India because of his increasing interest in Hinduism, Güiraldes traveled once more to France. He went first to Arcachon, but it developed that he was sick with Hodgkin's disease. He was brought to Paris by ambulance, was met there by his wife, and died in the house of his friend Alfredo González Garaño. Güiraldes's body was brought back to Buenos Aires and finally entombed in San Antonio de Areco.
Ricardo Güiraldes's great novel of the Argentine pampa, DON SEGUNDO SOMBRA, published in 1926, has been celebrated both as a national epic and as an elegy for the passing of an era. Newly translated by Patricia Owen Steiner, it is a proud addition to the University of Pittsburgh's series of translations from twentieth-century Latin American poetry and fiction. Its coming-of-age story of a young gaucho, Fabio Cáceres, represented for many the essential virtues of a disappearing civilization based on cattle raising and the strength of the gaucho in his struggle with the elements. Don Segundo Sombra makes a cult of solitary courage and the laws of nature. Yet it also documents a change from one way of life to another. Argentina, long before 1926, had moved away from dependence on cattle and the gaucho; life on the wide open spaces had already become part of legend. When it was first published, the book was enthusiastically received and became an instant classic, gaining more critical attention in this century than any other work published in Argentina, except perhaps for the writings of Borges. This critical edition contains a general introduction by the volume coordinator, Gwen Kirkpatrick, a glossary, and six essays of background and criticism about the novel, making it ideal for classroom use. The Pittsburgh Editions of Latin American Literature are based on the Coleccion Archivos, a landmark series of critical editions of twentieth-century Latin American fiction, poetry, and essays. This important collection was created through agreements with the governments of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, with funding provided by ALLCA and UNESCO. The translations in the Pittsburgh series will make this valuable and influential body of literature accessible to North American readers. (original title: Don Segundo Sombra).
Ricardo Güiraldes (13 February 1886 - 8 October 1927) was an Argentine novelist and poet, one of the most significant Argentine writers of his era, particularly known for his 1926 novel Don Segundo Sombra, set amongst the gauchos. Güiraldes was born in Buenos Aires, the second son of a wealthy family of the old landowning aristocracy. His mother was Dolores Goñi, descendant of Ruiz de Arellano, who founded the village of San Antonio de Areco in 1730. Manuel Güiraldes, his father, later intendente (governmentally appointed mayor) of Buenos Aires, was a cultured, educated man, interested in art. Ricardo inherited that predilection; in his youth he sketched rural scenes and painted in oils. When Güiraldes was one year old, he travelled with his family to Europe, living for four years in Paris near the Rue Saint-Claude. By the age of six, he spoke not only Spanish but French and German. Indeed, French was his first language, and French-language literature would leave a strong mark on his literary style and tastes. Güiraldes's childhood and youth were divided between the family ranch, La Porteña in San Antonio de Areco, and Buenos Aires. In San Antonio he came into contact with the world of the gauchos, which would figure prominently in his novels Raucho and Don Segundo Sombra; there, too, he met Segundo Ramírez, upon whom he based the title character of the latter work. He loved the country life, but suffered from asthma that sometimes limited his own physical activity, though he generally presented an image of physical vigor. He was educated by several female teachers and, later, by a Mexican engineer, Lorenzo Ceballos, who recognized and encouraged his literary ambitions. He studied in various institutes and completed his bachillerato at the age of 16. Güiraldes was not a brilliant student; at the Colegio Lacordaire, the Vertiz Institute and the Instituto Libre de Segunda Enseñanza, he studied both architecture and law, but never practiced either one. He did make several attempts at business, all unsuccessful. He traveled to Europe in 1910 in the company of his friend Roberto Leviller, then travelled with another friend, his future brother-in-law Adán Deihl, with whom he visited Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Egypt, Japan, China, Russia, India, Ceylon, and Germany before settling in Paris, where (after his father decided he had had enough of paying the costs of his son's idleness) he stayed with the sculptor Alberto Lagos (to whom he later dedicated Xaimaca), and where he decided to become a writer. Despite that decision, Güiraldes threw himself into the French capital's social whirl, practically abandoning his literary ambitions. But one day he unpacked some draft stories he had written about rural Argentina and set to work; these would eventually become his Cuentos de muerte y de sangre (‘Stories of death and of blood'). He read the stories to friends, who encouraged him to publish them. Even the early drafts already showed a distinct, individual style. Finally truly committed to literature, he returned to Buenos Aires in 1912, becoming part of the circle of Alejandro Bustillo. On October 13, 1913 he married Adelina del Carril, also from one of the city's leading families, whom he had first met in 1905. In 1913–1914, he published several stories in the magazine Caras y Caretas; in 1915, these and others were published as Cuentos de muerte y de sangre; earlier that year he had published a book of poetry, El cencerro de cristal. He was encouraged in his writing by his wife and by Leopoldo Lugones, but when these early works did not meet with a receptive public, Güiraldes withdrew them from circulation, gathered up the unsold copies, and threw them into a well. His wife managed to rescue some; these surviving, water-damaged copies are now prized by book collectors. At the end of 1916, the couple traveled to the Pacific Ocean, to Cuba, and to Jamaica, where he wrote a ‘theatrical caprice' called El reloj (‘The clock', never published). These travels would eventually lead to his 1923 novel Xaimaca, but long before that, in 1917, came his first novel Raucho, followed in 1918 by a short novel Un idilio de estacion (‘A Season's Idyll') in Horacio Quiroga's magazine El cuento ilustrado; this would eventually be revised and published as a well-received book in 1922, with the new title Rosaura. In 1919, with his wife, Güiraldes again traveled to Europe. In Paris he established contact with many French writers and frequented literary salons and bookstores; there, too, he began Don Segundo Sombra. He has been described as particularly influenced by his friend ValEry Larbaud, but Güiraldes's English-language translator Harriet de Onís believes that influence to have been overstated. Güiraldes returned to Argentina, then went back to Europe in 1922, where besides returning to Paris he passed some time in Puerto de Pollensa, Majorca, where he rented a house. In this period he underwent an intellectual and spiritual change. He became interested in theosophy and Eastern philosophy, seeking spiritual peace; this is strongly reflected in his late poetry. At the same time, Güiraldes's writing became more accepted in his native Buenos Aires, where he became a supporter of new avant-garde writers; he was something of an elder and teacher to the Florida group. In 1924, along with Brandán Caraffa, Jorge Luis Borges, and Pablo Rojas Paz he founded the short-lived magazine Proa, which was not particularly successful in its home city but met with a better reception elsewhere in Latin America. Güiraldes also co-founded the Frente Unico, opposed to pompierismo (the use of dry or pompous academic language in writing), and collaborated in the publication of the magazine Martín Fierro. In 1927, intending to head back to India because of his increasing interest in Hinduism, Güiraldes traveled once more to France. He went first to Arcachon, but it developed that he was sick with Hodgkin's disease. He was brought to Paris by ambulance, was met there by his wife, and died in the house of his friend Alfredo González Garaño. Güiraldes's body was brought back to Buenos Aires and finally entombed in San Antonio de Areco.
Much has been written about Continental influences on American and British literature, but Mexican influences have gone relatively unobserved. Yet, as this study shows, Mexican experiences have had a singular influence on the development of literature in English. Drewey Wayne Gunn considers prominent American and British writers who either visited or lived in Mexico during the period 1556-1973 and who, as a result of their experiences, wrote works with a Mexican setting. Gunn finds that, while certain elements reflecting the Mexican experience-colors, landscape, manners of the people, political atmosphere, a sense of the alien-are present in the writings, the authors reveal less about Mexico than would be expected. It is, rather, the expression of the Mexican experience that reveals much about the authors. The Mexican journey often marked the beginning, the end, or the turning point in a literary career. Gunn shows the impact of Mexican culture on each writer, discusses the relationship between the writer's experience and his work, and traces the influences among various writers. He makes available a great deal of biographical and literary material that has not before been available in one source, and he provides new insight into our cultural relationship with Mexico. Among the British writers considered are D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Malcolm Lowry, Graham Greene, and Evelyn Waugh. Among the American writers considered are Stephen Crane, Katherine Anne Porter, John Dos Passos, Hart Crane, Archibald MacLeish, John Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams, Saul Bellow, William Carlos Williams, Wright Morris, and Robert Lowell. Drewey.
Drewey Wayne Gunn is a professor emeritus of English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. He is the author, editor or translator of twelve previous books, including two Lambda Literary Award finalists.
Testifying to the squalor and grit of contemporary Cuba, Pedro Juan Gutierrez's novel in stories chronicles the misadventures of Pedro Juan, a former journalist now living from hand to mouth, half disgusted and half fascinated by the depths to which he has sunk. Like the lives of many of his neighbors in the crumbling, once elegant apartment houses that line Havana's waterfront (and its notorious cruising strip, El Malecon), Pedro Juan's days and nights have been reduced by the so-called special times - the harsh recession that followed the Soviet Union's collapse - to the struggle to feed himself and the escapist pursuit of sex. Collecting garbage, peddling marijuana or black-market produce, clearing undesirables off the streets, whoring himself, begging, sacrificing to the santos, Pedro Juan scrapes by under the shadow of hunger - all the while observing his lovers and friends, and stranger on the street, their suffering and their own lifesaving schemes, with an unsentimental, mocking, yet sympathetic eye. Banned in Cuba but celebrated throughout the Spanish-speaking world, Gutierrez's picaresque novel is a fierce, loving tribute to Havana and the defiant, desperate way of life that flourishes amid its decay.
PEDRO JUAN GUTIERREZ began his working life at the age of eleven, as an ice-cream vendor and newsboy. The author of several published works of poetry, he lives in Havana, where he devotes himself to writing and painting.
A revolutionary novel, inspired by the experiences of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The Eagle and the Serpent (El águila y la serpiente, 1928) depicts the Mexican Revolution and its political aftermath both of which Guzman was familiar with, having contributed both to revolutionary agitation and to the formation of the new revolutionary government.
Martín Luis Guzmán Franco (October 6, 1887 - December 22, 1976) was a Mexican novelist and journalist. Guzmán was born in Chihuahua, Chihuahua. Along with Mariano Azuela, he is considered a pioneer of the revolutionary novel, a genre inspired by the experiences of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. His novels La sombra del caudillo (1929) and El águila y la serpiente (1928) depict the Mexican Revolution and its political aftermath, both of which the author was familiar with, having contributed both to revolutionary agitation and to the formation of the new revolutionary government. For several months in 1914, he was under the direct orders of General Francisco ‘Pancho' Villa. He later wrote a five-volume biography of Villa, Memorias de Pancho Villa (1936-1951). Martin Luis Guzmán died suddenly on December 22, 1976 in Mexico City due an acute myocardial infarction. His widow Ana West, died seven years after him, on October 21st, 1983. She was 95 years old when, after being hospitalized for some days due to an acute bilateral pneumonia, she suffered a cardiac arrest and died.
More and more important books have been coming out of Latin America. Yet we know nothing of these writers or of the milieux from which they come. Some authors, such as Borges and Fuentes, have achieved international renown. Others, like Carpentier, Cortazar, and Guimaräes Rosa, are increasingly prominent; and a few, to appear in translation in the United States in the next year or two, are sure to gain major attention. What all this amounts to is a breakthrough for Latin- American fiction; and this book of interviews is the first critical study to be devoted to the work of these men. Luis Harss and Barbara Dohmann traveled throughout Latin America talking to the authors in their native environments. We get a background of the literature of each writer's Country as well as a view of the social and political situation. But more particularly we are introduced to the fictional world of each of these men and to their very original conceptions of human experience. For these writers are confronted with an exceptional situation. Previously Latin-American writers had no strong traditions behind them. Now, having assimilated all the techniques of European and North American writing, from the realism of Balzac to the stream-of-consciousness technique of Faulkner, the Latin-American writers are attempting to set down for the first time the immense experience of their continent with its long and extraordinary history from the Indian empires and the Spanish Conquest, through waves of immigration and revolution, to the intense social and political upheavals of today. Yet no group of writers could be more diverse. Borges, the very bookish cosmopolitan, seems continents away from Rosa, the chronicler of the Brazilian back country; Carpentier recreates the factual as well as the nightmare history of the Caribbean; while Fuentes describes the very contemporary political and social realities of Mexico. Onetti's claustrophobic Montevideo contrasts sharply with the gaudy Guatemala settings of Asturias. In the works of Julio Cortazar, Juan Rulfo, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, despite their differences of origin and age, the spirit of the avant-garde is still very strong, and one can expect from them many of the new discoveries that will be made in the fiction of the future.
LUIS HARSS writes in English and Spanish. He has published The Blind (1962), Little Men (1964), Into the Mainstream (1966), La Otra Sara (1968), Sor Juana's Dream (1986), La Patria Madre (1987), Momentos de vida (2011). Mystical Dreamers collects two of his best-loved works: Lonesome Twosome (2010) and Messenger Pigeons (2013). BARBARA DOHMANN was born in 1936 in Berlin and was educated at the Universities of Erlangen, Mainz and Paris. She has worked as an interpreter for the Council of Europe, UNESCO, and the Coal and Steel Community for several years, and lived in Paris.
A Companion to Latin American Literature offers a lively and informative introduction to the most significant literary works produced in Latin America from the fifteenth century until the present day. It shows how the press, and its product the printed word, functioned as the common denominator binding together, in different ways over time, the complex and variable relationship between the writer, the reader and the state. The meandering story of the evolution of Latin American literature - from the letters of discovery written by Christopher Columbus and Vaz de Caminha, via the Republican era at the end of the nineteenth century when writers in Rio de Janeiro as much as inBuenos Aires were beginning to live off their pens as journalists and serial novelists, until the 1960s when writers of the quality of Clarice Lispector in Brazil and García Márquez in Colombia suddenly burst onto the world stage is traced chronologically in six chapters which introduce the main writers in the main genres of poetry, prose, the novel, drama, and the essay. A final chapter evaluates the post-boom novel, testimonio, Latino and Brazuca literature, gay, Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Brazilian literature, along with the Novel of the New Millennium. This study also offers suggestions for further reading.
STEPHEN M. HART is Professor of Hispanic Studies, University College London, and Profesor Honorario, Universidad de San Marcos, Lima.
Set in the Brazilian port of Manaus, THE BROTHERS is the gripping story of identical twins, Yaqub and Omar, whose mutual jealousy is offset only by their fierce love for their mother, Zana. Omar has always been the object of Zana's Jocasta-like passion, but his indolence and self- indulgence lead him to a life of crime that his mother refuses to acknowledge. Yaqub is the seemingly more trustworthy of the two, and soon leaves for Sao Paulo and a successful career as an architect, but only after he has exacted a subtle revenge on his brother. Yet in spite of his professed desire to have nothing more to do with his family, he is too firmly entangled in their pernicious relationships - a web complicated by his beautiful sister, Rânia - not to be drawn back to Manaus. Vivid, exotic, and lushly atmospheric, THE BROTHERS is a haunting story of family disintegration and cultural transformation by one of Brazil's most acclaimed contemporary novelists.
MILTON HATOUM is a professor of literature at the Federal University of Amazonas and a visiting professor of Latin American literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of one previous novel, The Tree of the Seventh Heaven. The Brothers was awarded the Jabuti Prize, Brazil's most prestigious award for fiction, in 2000. Milton Hatoum lives in Sâo Paulo. JOHN GLEDSON, the translator, is Professor Emeritus of Brazilian Studies at the University of Liverpool. A literary critic and historian, he has translated the work of several Brazilian authors, including Roberto Schwarz and Machado de Assis.
First published in 1989, THE TREE OF THE SEVENTH HEAVEN was awarded one of the most prestigious prizes in Milton Hatoum's native Brazil (the Jabuti for the best Brazilian novel) and has since established his reputation in Europe. A captivating blend of the outrageous and the poignant, it recounts the lives of a large, unruly, and singular family of Lebanese emigrants to Manaus, a lush city isolated by the water and jungle of the Amazon. When Emilie, the matriarch, dies, the stage is set for each member of the family to step forward, to tell his or her own story, recalling old secrets, bitter feuds, obsessive relationships, the collision of East against West, Christianity against Islam. We learn of Hanna, Emilie's husband, and his unprecedented decision to leave Lebanon for Brazil early in the twentieth century. . . of Emilie's persistent attachment to her homeland (evidenced in the, profusion of mint, lamb, and figs in her kitchen and by her instructing her eldest son in Arabic). . . of Uncle Emir's mysterious and unfathomable suicide . . . of the illegitimate deaf-mute child Soraya Angela . . . of the German photographer and constant friend Dorner, who roamed Manaus clicking his Hasselblad and furiously writing in his notebook. . . of Uncle Hakim, who has tried his best to unravel the families' secrets. . . and the narrator, a woman adopted by Emilie and just recently returned from a long sojourn in Barcelona. As the narrative baton is passed back and forth, the voices of THE TREE OF THE SEVENTH HEAVEN are woven together, lyrically and evocatively, yielding to us the indelible texture of very human lives.
Milton Hatoum was born in 1952. He studied architecture in Brazil and literature in Paris and now teaches at the University of the Amazon in Manaus, Brazil.
THE STOLEN PARTY includes six extraordinary stories from one of the leading writers of Latin America. ‘Liliane Heker is a magician,' wrote Julio Cortázar. ‘She is wise, she is frightening. She must be read, she must be read.' In the 1960s, Argentina enjoyed a brief democratic respite between the dictatorship of Peron (and its aftermath) and the military governments that would rule from 1968 until 1982. During this hiatus, a small press, run by Jorge Alvarez, started publishing a number of brilliant new writers like Rodolfo Walsh and Manuel Puig, who gave Argentinian literature a brash, politically aggressive voice. Among the newcomers was the twenty-three-year-old Liliana Heker, who had just won the international Casa de las Americas Prize for her collection of short stories, Those Who Beheld the Burning Bush. The book was widely read and established Heker as one of the best short-story writers of her generation. Together with the novelist Abelardo Castlllo, she founded the literary magazine The Golden Bug (later re-baptized The Platypus) where she not only published the work of new local writers but also introduced many foreign writers to the Argentinian public. Heker continued to publish the magazine throughout the military dictatorship in spite of treats and financial difficulties. With Julio Cortãzar, who had been living in exile in Paris since the fifties, she established a correspondence (published in the magazine) in which they discussed the duties of a writer in a repressive society. Cortazar argued that a writer must work from a distance, in order to better witness and denounce, Heker maintained that her place was within the strife, taking the risks assumed by all those who were not able to leave, Miraculously, she was not arrested. During those years, she published a second collection of short stories, Aquarius (1972) and a novella, A Radiance Died Out in the World (1977). In 1982, the year the military government fell, Heker published a third collection, The Pears of Evil, and a few years later a longer novel, Fracture Zone, which won her the prestigious Municipal Prize for 1988. The stories in The Stolen Party have been chosen from all three collections to give a sense of the scope of Heker's work. Heker's stories are always intimate they take place in private realms and their protagonists are usually young girls or women who, from that vantage point, re-invent the world. The political horrors, the social injustices no doubt determine the characters' lives but never in an overt or didactic manner. Rather, their tormented triumphs correspond to any number of countries and ages. The reader knows that they take place in Argentina9 in this evil century, but also that the same story. with circumstantial variations, would read equally true in different settings and other times. The dreamlike quality of everyday events, the sense that the impossible affects our lives as sharply as that which we deem possible9 a certain underlying joy and courage, and the fear that these will not suffice, make up Heker's fictional world. - Alberto Manguel, SElestat, March 1994 . .
Liliana Heker (born 1943) is an Argentine writer. She wrote and edited left-wing literary journals during the Dirty War of state-sponsored violence in the 1970s and 1980s, using veiled critiques as a means of protest and engaging in vigorous debate with exiled writers such as Julio Cortázar. She was born in Buenos Aires and her professional writing started at the age of 17 with the support of Abelardo Castillo.
LANDS OF MEMORY presents a half-dozen wonderful works by the greatest Uruguayan writer of the twentieth century, Felisberto Hernández. His extraordinary stories have always been prized by other writers, and Lands of Memory - beautifully translated by Esther Allen - shows why. The two dreamlike novellas ‘Lands of Memory' and ‘Around the Time of Clemente Colling' are carried along like pieces of otherworldly music: unfathomable connections are called up from the past, between people and objects and landscapes. On the mystery of these connections, he turns a searching, hypnotic, and radiant light. And if Felisberto Hernández's rhapsodic writing is almost painfully beautiful, it is at the same time often painfully funny. The four stories also included in Lands of Memory turn upon odd, off-the-wall events - small unpredictable moments which turn upside-down a first recital or a salesman's calling. Hernández's style is absolutely sui generis. As Felisberto wrote in a short essay entitled ‘How Not to Explain My Stories': ‘My stories have no logical structure. Even the consciousness undeviatingly watching over them is unknown to me. Felisberto Hernández possesses, as Francine Prose remarked in Double Take, ‘a gift for smudging the crisp edge of the real, for making the non sequitor seem the logical next step, for restoring the world to that Edenic and sinister childhood state in which flowers, fruit, thc weather, insects, all manner of inanimate objects lead dangerous, hidden, polymorphously erotic lives of their own. . . . And yet one always feels he is writing about a slightly different but parallel universe, in a variant language with its own literature and conventions. It's anyone's guess why his plots start and finish where they do. What's remarkable, then, is how quickly Felisberto's idiosyncratic decisions - not only about literary form, but about logic and reality - begin to strike us as not merely right, but perfect and inevitable.' FELISBERTO HERNANDEZ was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1902. A talented pianist, he was playing in the silent-screen movie theaters when he was twelve years old; in his twenties he toured the small concert halls of Uruguay and Argentina before becoming a government employee. He married four times, spent two years writing in Paris, published seven books, and died, impoverished, in 1964.
Felisberto Hernandez (October 20, 1902-January 13, 1964) was an Uruguayan writer. Hernández was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. His father was from Tenerife (Canary Island). He was a talented self-taught pianist who earned a living playing in the silent-screen theaters and cafEs of Uruguay. What is interesting in Hernández's fiction is the magic by-product of his anonymous first-person tales whose obsessive and deranged narrators have knocked down the wall between their minds and the empirical world and injected their obsessions into everyday life. He often used the events surrounding him as fodder for his fiction. His fiction often attempts to exploit the secret vitality contained in inanimate objects. Some of his most famous stories are: 'The Balcony,' 'My First Concert,' and 'Daisy Dolls.' ESTHER ALLEN has translated works by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Javier Marias, Rosario Castellanos, Blaise Cendrars, and Marie Darrieussecq.
This OUTLINE HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICAN LITERATURE is the work of a committee appointed at the Ann Arbor Conference on Latin American Studies in the summer of 1939 for the purpose of studying the scope and subject matter of courses on Spanish American literature in the colleges and universities of the United States. The committee was chosen to represent different sections of the country - the Northeast, the South, the Midwest, the Southwest, and the Pacific Coast - and its first project was to make a survey of the present status of such courses in representative institutions of these sections. A questionnaire was prepared which inquired in detail into the aims, methods, and materials of the course now being given and asked what changes the instructors in charge thought desirable. The response to the questionnaire was most generous. Not only did those colleagues to whom it was sent give of their time to answer the questions submitted to them. They also sent book lists, chronological tables, syllabi, and other aids which they had devised and prepared in working out their own courses. In all, answers were received from thirty institutions, large and small.
Dr. E. Herman Hespelt (1886-1961) was born September 6, 1886 in Binghamton, New York. He received the following university degrees: A. B, Cornell, 1910; A. NL, Cornell, 1917; and Ph. D., Cornell, 1925. In the meantime, he spent five years in the Philippine Islands (1911-1916) and after finishing the Masters Degree, was instructor of Spanish at Cornell for the school years OF 1918-1919, instructor of Spanish at Pennsylvania State University in 1919-1920, Professor at Elmira College 1921-1926, earning the doctorate at Cornell in the meantime. Dr. Hespelt taught at New York University as Assistant Professor, 1926-1931, Associate Professor, 1931-1941, and as Professor, 1941-1952. He spent two years as visiting professor at Columbia University from 1928 to 1930. Professor Hespelt was an associate editor of Hispania from 1927 to 1938 and from 1948 to 1958, editor of Rerista de Estudios Hisp6nicos, and associate editor of Revista. Professor Hespelt's specialty was 19th century Spanish Literature, but he also made some excellent studies of the novels of Fernån Caballero, and edited a number of readers for use in Spanish classes.
Unlike many Latin American writers whose work has been published in the United States, Francisco Hinojosa does not rely on magical realism, exotic recipes or cultural nostalgia. Rather, his stories convey a mercilessly sardonic view of family and society, and his ingenious array of anti-heroes embodies a conspicuous disdain for convention. Here, in eight masterly stories that are as cruel and pitiless as they are hilarious, he explores the complexities of love and human relationships. These fiercely funny picaresque adventures are peopled with characters who inspire feelings of both solidarity and derision, but let the reader beware: just when you find yourself laughing out loud, you might recognize your reflection in the funhouse mirror.
Francisco Hinojosa was born in Mexico City on February 28, 1954, and is the author of three story collections, two volumes of poetry, and numerous childrens' books. He is the recipient of Mexico's National Prize for the Short Story, among other awards.
1916. The book begins: This history of a house that had been was told in the shade, one summer's day, by Nicandro, that old man to whom we all loved to listen, since he could remember and properly narrate the life of every person he had known in his native place, near to the lake of Chascomus, on the southern pampas of Buenos Ayres. In all this district, though you should go twenty leagues to this way and that, you will not find a tree as big as this ombu, standing solitary, where there is no house; therefore it is known to all as the ombu, as if but one existed; and the name of all this estate, which is now ownerless and ruined is El Ombu. From on of the higher branches, if you can climb, you will see the lake of Chascomus, two thirds of a league away, from shore to shore, and the village on its banks. Even smaller things will you see on a clear day; perhaps a red line moving across the water-a flock of flamingos flying in their usual way.
William Henry Hudson (August 4, 1841, Quilmes, Argentina - August 18, 1922, Worthing, United Kingdom) was an author, naturalist and ornithologist. He was born in the Quilmes Partido in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, where he is considered to belong to the national literature as Guillermo Enrique Hudson, the Spanish version of his name. He spent his youth studying the local flora and fauna and observing both natural and human dramas on what was then a lawless frontier, publishing his ornithological work in Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society, initially in an English mingled with Spanish idioms. He settled in England during 1869. He produced a series of ornithological studies, including Argentine Ornithology (1888-1899) and British Birds (1895), and later achieved fame with his books on the English countryside, including Hampshire Days (1903), Afoot in England (1909) and A Shepherd's Life (1910). His best known novel is Green Mansions (1904), and his best known non-fiction is Far Away and Long Ago (1918). His other works include: The Purple Land (That England Lost) (1885), A Crystal Age (1887), The Naturalist in La Plata (1892), A Little Boy Lost (1905), Birds in Town and Village (1919), Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn (1920), and A Traveller in Little Things (1921).
In January, 1963, the bodies of six young prostitutes were found buried in the backyard of a brothel owned and operated by a middle-aged woman and her sister. These two women were convicted of murder and sent to prison. THE DEAD GIRLS reconstructs the dark comedy of errors that led these sisters to commit murder and to involve nearly everyone in the small Mexican village in which they lived. Set against a rich backdrop of zany local characters and folklore, the story of these two women and the human degradation they practiced with impunity for years is also the story of what can happen to people who come into a world riddled with injustice and have no alternative but to survive the best way they can.
Jorge Ibargüengoitia Antillon (Guanajuato, Mexico, January 22, 1928 - Madrid, November 27, 1983), was a Mexican novelist and playwright who achieved great popular (though not always critical) success with his satires, three of which have appeared in English: Las Muertas (The Dead Girls), Dos Crimenes (Two Crimes), and Los Relámpagos de Agosto (The Lightning of August). His plays include Susana y los Jovenes and Ante varias esfinges, both dating from the 1950s. In 1955, Ibarguengoitia received a Rockefeller grant to study in New York City; five years later he received the Mexico City literary award. Often, in his fiction, he took real-life scandals and subjected them to whimsical, sardonic treatment. Thus, Los Relámpagos de Agosto (1964) uses cartoonish mayhem to debunk the Mexican Revolution's heroic myths; improbably it won for its author the Premio Casa de las AmEricas, despite or because of the consternation which its flippancy caused. For Las Muertas (1977) he turned to the most outrageous criminals of his native state: the brothel-keepers Delfina & María de Jesús González, whose decade-long careers as serial killers emerged in 1964. Ibarguengoitia himself met a tragic end, on what became one of the blackest days in Latin American artistic history: having visited Paris, he perished (along with Peruvian poet Manuel Scorza, Uruguayan critic Angel Rama, Argentinian academic Martha Traba, and 176 others) in the Madrid air disaster of November 1983. La ley de Herodes (1967) is a collection of short stories, most of which are clearly based on details from his own life. He describes, among many other events, the misadventures of getting a mortgage in Mexico and his experiences at Columbia University's International House. Like his novels, these stories combine farce, sexual peccadilloes, and humor. ‘Las Ruinas que Ves' is a farce based on realistic details of academic life that are still visible in early 21st century Guanajuato: the clanging of church bells disconcerting a speaker, cutting the ribbon at museum openings, the set of cultural movers and shakers who have known each other since kindergarten. ‘Maten al Leon' although set on an imaginary island is another novel mirroring Guanajuato (or perhaps Mexican) society; its details are comic but the end is dark. Ibarguengoitia was also known for his weekly columns in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior which have been collected in a half dozen paperback volumes. His novels are also available in paperback. The writer has been quoted as saying he never meant to make anyone laugh, that he thought laughter was useless and a pointless waste of time. He is buried in Antillon Park in Guanajuato where a talavera plaque marks his remains. In translation, it says simply, ‘Here lies Jorge Ibarguengoitia in the park of his great-grandfather who fought against the French.'
‘THE INCIDENTS ARE REAL, THE CHARACTERS ARE IMAGINARY' - Jorge Ibarguengoitia. In January, 1963, the bodies of six young prostitutes were found buried in the backyard of a brothel owned and operated by a middle-aged woman and her sister. These two women were convicted of murder and sent to prison. THE DEAD GIRLS reconstructs the dark comedy of errors that led these sisters to commit murder and to involve nearly everyone in the small Mexican village in which they lived. Set against a rich backdrop of zany local characters and folklore, the story of these two women and the human degradation they practiced with impunity for years is also the story of what can happen to people who come into a world riddled with injustice and have no alternative but to survive the best way they can.
Jorge Ibargüengoitia Antillon (Guanajuato, Mexico, January 22, 1928 - Madrid, November 27, 1983), was a Mexican novelist and playwright who achieved great popular (though not always critical) success with his satires, three of which have appeared in English: Las Muertas (The Dead Girls), Dos Crimenes (Two Crimes), and Los Relámpagos de Agosto (The Lightning of August). His plays include Susana y los Jovenes and Ante varias esfinges, both dating from the 1950s. In 1955, Ibarguengoitia received a Rockefeller grant to study in New York City; five years later he received the Mexico City literary award. Often, in his fiction, he took real-life scandals and subjected them to whimsical, sardonic treatment. Thus, Los Relámpagos de Agosto (1964) uses cartoonish mayhem to debunk the Mexican Revolution's heroic myths; improbably it won for its author the Premio Casa de las AmEricas, despite or because of the consternation which its flippancy caused. For Las Muertas (1977) he turned to the most outrageous criminals of his native state: the brothel-keepers Delfina & María de Jesús González, whose decade-long careers as serial killers emerged in 1964. Ibarguengoitia himself met a tragic end, on what became one of the blackest days in Latin American artistic history: having visited Paris, he perished (along with Peruvian poet Manuel Scorza, Uruguayan critic Angel Rama, Argentinian academic Martha Traba, and 176 others) in the Madrid air disaster of November 1983. La ley de Herodes (1967) is a collection of short stories, most of which are clearly based on details from his own life. He describes, among many other events, the misadventures of getting a mortgage in Mexico and his experiences at Columbia University's International House. Like his novels, these stories combine farce, sexual peccadilloes, and humor. ‘Las Ruinas que Ves' is a farce based on realistic details of academic life that are still visible in early 21st century Guanajuato: the clanging of church bells disconcerting a speaker, cutting the ribbon at museum openings, the set of cultural movers and shakers who have known each other since kindergarten. ‘Maten al Leon' although set on an imaginary island is another novel mirroring Guanajuato (or perhaps Mexican) society; its details are comic but the end is dark. Ibarguengoitia was also known for his weekly columns in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior which have been collected in a half dozen paperback volumes. His novels are also available in paperback. The writer has been quoted as saying he never meant to make anyone laugh, that he thought laughter was useless and a pointless waste of time. He is buried in Antillon Park in Guanajuato where a talavera plaque marks his remains. In translation, it says simply, ‘Here lies Jorge Ibarguengoitia in the park of his great-grandfather who fought against the French.'
THE UNEXPURGATED MEMOIRS OF A TRUTHFUL MAN . . . Major General Lupe Arroyo prided himself on being a man of integrity. Not above stealing or killing or extortion or betrayal. But truthful about it, because all he did was for the glory of the revolution (or, when necessary, to save his own neck). The year is 1928; the country is Mexico; and the revolution about to take place becomes, in the general's account, an uproarious farce of allegiances changing paces as fast as musical chairs, of battles won by bumbling, of power grabbed at any cost. But as his tale begins to reflect an unmistakable reality, our laughter at Jorge Ibarguengoitia's masterful mock epic suddenly catches in the throat-for this is political truth that penetrates our heart with the sureness of a stiletto. TRANSLATED BY IRENE DEL CORRAL.
Jorge Ibargüengoitia Antillon (Guanajuato, Mexico, January 22, 1928 - Madrid, November 27, 1983), was a Mexican novelist and playwright who achieved great popular (though not always critical) success with his satires, three of which have appeared in English: Las Muertas (The Dead Girls), Dos Crimenes (Two Crimes), and Los Relámpagos de Agosto (The Lightning of August). His plays include Susana y los Jovenes and Ante varias esfinges, both dating from the 1950s. In 1955, Ibarguengoitia received a Rockefeller grant to study in New York City; five years later he received the Mexico City literary award. Often, in his fiction, he took real-life scandals and subjected them to whimsical, sardonic treatment. Thus, Los Relámpagos de Agosto (1964) uses cartoonish mayhem to debunk the Mexican Revolution's heroic myths; improbably it won for its author the Premio Casa de las AmEricas, despite or because of the consternation which its flippancy caused. For Las Muertas (1977) he turned to the most outrageous criminals of his native state: the brothel-keepers Delfina & María de Jesús González, whose decade-long careers as serial killers emerged in 1964. Ibarguengoitia himself met a tragic end, on what became one of the blackest days in Latin American artistic history: having visited Paris, he perished (along with Peruvian poet Manuel Scorza, Uruguayan critic Angel Rama, Argentinian academic Martha Traba, and 176 others) in the Madrid air disaster of November 1983. La ley de Herodes (1967) is a collection of short stories, most of which are clearly based on details from his own life. He describes, among many other events, the misadventures of getting a mortgage in Mexico and his experiences at Columbia University's International House. Like his novels, these stories combine farce, sexual peccadilloes, and humor. ‘Las Ruinas que Ves' is a farce based on realistic details of academic life that are still visible in early 21st century Guanajuato: the clanging of church bells disconcerting a speaker, cutting the ribbon at museum openings, the set of cultural movers and shakers who have known each other since kindergarten. ‘Maten al Leon' although set on an imaginary island is another novel mirroring Guanajuato (or perhaps Mexican) society; its details are comic but the end is dark. Ibarguengoitia was also known for his weekly columns in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior which have been collected in a half dozen paperback volumes. His novels are also available in paperback. The writer has been quoted as saying he never meant to make anyone laugh, that he thought laughter was useless and a pointless waste of time. He is buried in Antillon Park in Guanajuato where a talavera plaque marks his remains. In translation, it says simply, ‘Here lies Jorge Ibarguengoitia in the park of his great-grandfather who fought against the French.'
THE UNEXPURGATED MEMOIRS OF A TRUTHFUL MAN . . . Major General Lupe Arroyo prided himself on being a man of integrity. Not above stealing or killing or extortion or betrayal. But truthful about it, because all he did was for the glory of the revolution (or, when necessary, to save his own neck). The year is 1928; the country is Mexico; and the revolution about to take place becomes, in the general's account, an uproarious farce of allegiances changing paces as fast as musical chairs, of battles won by bumbling, of power grabbed at any cost. But as his tale begins to reflect an unmistakable reality, our laughter at Jorge Ibarguengoitia's masterful mock epic suddenly catches in the throat-for this is political truth that penetrates our heart with the sureness of a stiletto. TRANSLATED BY IRENE DEL CORRAL.
Jorge Ibargüengoitia Antillon (Guanajuato, Mexico, January 22, 1928 - Madrid, November 27, 1983), was a Mexican novelist and playwright who achieved great popular (though not always critical) success with his satires, three of which have appeared in English: Las Muertas (The Dead Girls), Dos Crimenes (Two Crimes), and Los Relámpagos de Agosto (The Lightning of August). His plays include Susana y los Jovenes and Ante varias esfinges, both dating from the 1950s. In 1955, Ibarguengoitia received a Rockefeller grant to study in New York City; five years later he received the Mexico City literary award. Often, in his fiction, he took real-life scandals and subjected them to whimsical, sardonic treatment. Thus, Los Relámpagos de Agosto (1964) uses cartoonish mayhem to debunk the Mexican Revolution's heroic myths; improbably it won for its author the Premio Casa de las AmEricas, despite or because of the consternation which its flippancy caused. For Las Muertas (1977) he turned to the most outrageous criminals of his native state: the brothel-keepers Delfina & María de Jesús González, whose decade-long careers as serial killers emerged in 1964. Ibarguengoitia himself met a tragic end, on what became one of the blackest days in Latin American artistic history: having visited Paris, he perished (along with Peruvian poet Manuel Scorza, Uruguayan critic Angel Rama, Argentinian academic Martha Traba, and 176 others) in the Madrid air disaster of November 1983. La ley de Herodes (1967) is a collection of short stories, most of which are clearly based on details from his own life. He describes, among many other events, the misadventures of getting a mortgage in Mexico and his experiences at Columbia University's International House. Like his novels, these stories combine farce, sexual peccadilloes, and humor. ‘Las Ruinas que Ves' is a farce based on realistic details of academic life that are still visible in early 21st century Guanajuato: the clanging of church bells disconcerting a speaker, cutting the ribbon at museum openings, the set of cultural movers and shakers who have known each other since kindergarten. ‘Maten al Leon' although set on an imaginary island is another novel mirroring Guanajuato (or perhaps Mexican) society; its details are comic but the end is dark. Ibarguengoitia was also known for his weekly columns in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior which have been collected in a half dozen paperback volumes. His novels are also available in paperback. The writer has been quoted as saying he never meant to make anyone laugh, that he thought laughter was useless and a pointless waste of time. He is buried in Antillon Park in Guanajuato where a talavera plaque marks his remains. In translation, it says simply, ‘Here lies Jorge Ibarguengoitia in the park of his great-grandfather who fought against the French.'
‘The story I am going to tell begins on a night the police violated the Constitution . . . ‘ From this opening sentence, it is clear we are in Ibarguengoitia country, a world of seduction, repression, deception, and, surprisingly, humor. Marcos, a Mexico City radical, is on the run, escaping the anti-terrorist net. He heads for the provincial town of Muerdago and the home of his rich invalid uncle, Ramon Tarragona. To the intense suspicion of his cousins, all of whom are counting on the riches the old man's death will bring, Marcos is welcomed with open arms by Ramon. And there are other arms in the household even more welcoming. So begins a game of bluff and counter-bluff in which nothing is ever what it seems, a dangerous game in which the two crimes the title leads us to expect become more inevitable with each move. TWO CRIMES is a thriller, and an exciting one, but it is more than that as well: a novel of greed and passion, told with the dark, laconic irony that marks this most original of writers. ‘A writer of genuine, exciting originality. - SALMAN RUSHDIE, author of SHAME and MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN.
Jorge Ibargüengoitia Antillon (Guanajuato, Mexico, January 22, 1928 - Madrid, November 27, 1983), was a Mexican novelist and playwright who achieved great popular (though not always critical) success with his satires, three of which have appeared in English: Las Muertas (The Dead Girls), Dos Crimenes (Two Crimes), and Los Relámpagos de Agosto (The Lightning of August). His plays include Susana y los Jovenes and Ante varias esfinges, both dating from the 1950s. In 1955, Ibarguengoitia received a Rockefeller grant to study in New York City; five years later he received the Mexico City literary award. Often, in his fiction, he took real-life scandals and subjected them to whimsical, sardonic treatment. Thus, Los Relámpagos de Agosto (1964) uses cartoonish mayhem to debunk the Mexican Revolution's heroic myths; improbably it won for its author the Premio Casa de las AmEricas, despite or because of the consternation which its flippancy caused. For Las Muertas (1977) he turned to the most outrageous criminals of his native state: the brothel-keepers Delfina & María de Jesús González, whose decade-long careers as serial killers emerged in 1964. Ibarguengoitia himself met a tragic end, on what became one of the blackest days in Latin American artistic history: having visited Paris, he perished (along with Peruvian poet Manuel Scorza, Uruguayan critic Angel Rama, Argentinian academic Martha Traba, and 176 others) in the Madrid air disaster of November 1983. La ley de Herodes (1967) is a collection of short stories, most of which are clearly based on details from his own life. He describes, among many other events, the misadventures of getting a mortgage in Mexico and his experiences at Columbia University's International House. Like his novels, these stories combine farce, sexual peccadilloes, and humor. ‘Las Ruinas que Ves' is a farce based on realistic details of academic life that are still visible in early 21st century Guanajuato: the clanging of church bells disconcerting a speaker, cutting the ribbon at museum openings, the set of cultural movers and shakers who have known each other since kindergarten. ‘Maten al Leon' although set on an imaginary island is another novel mirroring Guanajuato (or perhaps Mexican) society; its details are comic but the end is dark. Ibarguengoitia was also known for his weekly columns in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior which have been collected in a half dozen paperback volumes. His novels are also available in paperback. The writer has been quoted as saying he never meant to make anyone laugh, that he thought laughter was useless and a pointless waste of time. He is buried in Antillon Park in Guanajuato where a talavera plaque marks his remains. In translation, it says simply, ‘Here lies Jorge Ibarguengoitia in the park of his great-grandfather who fought against the French.'
‘LIFE HAS HANDED ME A SCREWING' - So young radical Marcos Gonzalez, alias El Negro, often lamented. Plus he was fast learning that one thing could get him in deeper trouble than his politics. Women. Politics had made him a fugitive, running for his life from the Mexico City police to the home of a rich uncle in a provincial town. But three women-each with irresistible charms - would trap him in a dangerous game of greed and passion, bluff and counterbluff, where nothing was as it seemed. except murder. ‘A clever, fast-clipped, extraordinarily subtle novel of intrigue and murder. . . and an unsettling account of political repression and revolution, whose mirror image is reflected in the deadly love and power struggles of a single doomed family.' - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. . . ‘As in DEAD GIRLS, Ibarguengoitia has once again managed to transmit the particular flavor of provincial Mexico's brand of sanity.' - SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE.
Jorge Ibargüengoitia Antillon (Guanajuato, Mexico, January 22, 1928 - Madrid, November 27, 1983), was a Mexican novelist and playwright who achieved great popular (though not always critical) success with his satires, three of which have appeared in English: Las Muertas (The Dead Girls), Dos Crimenes (Two Crimes), and Los Relámpagos de Agosto (The Lightning of August). His plays include Susana y los Jovenes and Ante varias esfinges, both dating from the 1950s. In 1955, Ibarguengoitia received a Rockefeller grant to study in New York City; five years later he received the Mexico City literary award. Often, in his fiction, he took real-life scandals and subjected them to whimsical, sardonic treatment. Thus, Los Relámpagos de Agosto (1964) uses cartoonish mayhem to debunk the Mexican Revolution's heroic myths; improbably it won for its author the Premio Casa de las AmEricas, despite or because of the consternation which its flippancy caused. For Las Muertas (1977) he turned to the most outrageous criminals of his native state: the brothel-keepers Delfina & María de Jesús González, whose decade-long careers as serial killers emerged in 1964. Ibarguengoitia himself met a tragic end, on what became one of the blackest days in Latin American artistic history: having visited Paris, he perished (along with Peruvian poet Manuel Scorza, Uruguayan critic Angel Rama, Argentinian academic Martha Traba, and 176 others) in the Madrid air disaster of November 1983. La ley de Herodes (1967) is a collection of short stories, most of which are clearly based on details from his own life. He describes, among many other events, the misadventures of getting a mortgage in Mexico and his experiences at Columbia University's International House. Like his novels, these stories combine farce, sexual peccadilloes, and humor. ‘Las Ruinas que Ves' is a farce based on realistic details of academic life that are still visible in early 21st century Guanajuato: the clanging of church bells disconcerting a speaker, cutting the ribbon at museum openings, the set of cultural movers and shakers who have known each other since kindergarten. ‘Maten al Leon' although set on an imaginary island is another novel mirroring Guanajuato (or perhaps Mexican) society; its details are comic but the end is dark. Ibarguengoitia was also known for his weekly columns in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior which have been collected in a half dozen paperback volumes. His novels are also available in paperback. The writer has been quoted as saying he never meant to make anyone laugh, that he thought laughter was useless and a pointless waste of time. He is buried in Antillon Park in Guanajuato where a talavera plaque marks his remains. In translation, it says simply, ‘Here lies Jorge Ibarguengoitia in the park of his great-grandfather who fought against the French.'
The building of a road through the jungle of Ecuador should have brought prosperity to the native Indians. For them, too, such a plan meant a bridge to civilization. But for Don Alfonso, the undisputed ruler in this wilderness, only selfish interests counted. For him the projected road meant one thing only-to raise the value of his farm and to increase his wealth. His Indians were merely tools. He treated them bestially like cattle. And finally he robbed them of their last possession - their little huts, their huasipungos. The resulting revolt was crushed ruthlessly by the military. The author of this book, Jorge Icaza, is one of the best known of a group of Ecuadorian writers who have portrayed with pitiless realism the treatment and fate of the exploited Indians. His book gives a true and hideous picture of Ecuador in the thirties. HUASIPUNGO has already appeared in Spanish, German, French, Swedish, Polish, Czech, Russian, Chinese, Hungarian and Portuguese.
Jorge Icaza Coronel (June 10, 1906 - May 26, 1978) was a writer from Ecuador, best known for his novel Huasipungo, which brought attention to the exploitation of Ecuador's indigenous people by Ecuadorian whites. He was born in Quito in 1906 and died of cancer in the same city in 1978. Jorge Icaza's literary career began as a playwright. His plays include El Intruso in 1928, La Comedia sin Nombre in 1929, Cuál es in 1931, Sin Sentido in 1932, and Flagelo, which was published in 1936. After his 1933 playscript, El Dictador, was censured, Icaza turned his attention to writing novels about the social conditions in Ecuador, particularly the oppression suffered by its indigenous people. With the publication of Huasipungo in 1934, Jorge Icaza Coronel achieved international fame. The book became a well-known 'Indigenist' novel, a movement in Latin American literature that preceded Magical Realism and emphasized brutal realism. Fragments of the book first appeared in English translation in Russia, where it was welcomed enthusiastically by Russia's peasant socialist class. Jorge Icaza was later appointed Ecuador's ambassador to Russia. The first complete edition of Huasipungo was first translated into the English language in 1962 by Mervyn Savill and published in England by Dennis Dobson Ltd. An 'authorized' translation appeared in 1964 by Bernard H. Dulsey, and was published in 1964 by Southern Illinois University Press in Carbondale, IL as 'The Villagers'. His other books include Sierra in 1933, En las calles in 1936, Cholos in 1938, Media vida deslumbrados in 1942, Huayrapamushcas in 1948, Seis relatos 1952, El chulla Romero y Flores in 1958, and Atrapados, which was published in 1973. Although the latter two books are recognized as Jorge Icaza's greatest literary achievements by experts (such as Theodore Alan Sackett), Huasipungo continues to be Icaza's most popular book and has been translated to over 40 languages. Jorge Icaza and Huasipungo are often compared to John Steinbeck and his Grapes of Wrath from 1939, as both are works of social protest. Besides the first edition of 1934, Huasipungo went through two more editions or complete rewritings in Spanish, 1934, 1953, 1960, the first of which was difficult for even natives of other Hispanic countries to read and the last the definitive version. This makes it difficult for the readers to ascertain which version they are reading. Besides being an 'indigenista' novel, Huasipungo has also been considered a proletarian novel, and that is because Latin America had to substitute the Indians for the European working class as a model or character of proletarian literature. Icaza became internationally popular based upon his publications, and was invited to many colleges in the United States to give lectures on the problems of the indigenous people of Ecuador.
A realistic novel of the ruthless exploitation of villagers in Ecuador, an antiquated feudal system aided and abetted by a grasping clergy, and an indifferent government. As the story opens, Don Alfonso Pereira, in trouble financially, and in family trouble because of his unmarried, pregnant seventeen-year-old daughter, is sent to his country estate by his rich, greedy uncle to build a road to open up the estate to the gringo timber exploiters. In the course of building the road, the villagers are tricked by the village priest, pressed into service by Don Alfonso, starved, beaten, and, finally, dispossessed of their little plots of ground - their huasipungos. Driven to rebellion against the landlord, the villagers are ruthlessly exterminated by government troops. In the final scene, reminiscent of other great scenes in contemporary fiction, the villagers, retreating to the hills, with their huts burning around them, cry ‘Let's die for our huasipungos!' - an ending which must surely strike readers as one of the most telling moments in men s conscience. This first authorized English translation of THE VILLAGERS is the work of BERNARD M. DULSEY, Professor of Spanish in the University of Missouri at Kansas City, who has also provided an Introduction to the novel. Mr. Dulsey who received his doctorate from the University of Illinois is prose fiction editor for Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia for the Handbook of Latin American Studies, the yearly publication of the Library of Congress, and a contributor to various scholarly journals in this country and abroad He has traveled widely and studied in Latin America and Spain, and has made the acquaintance of many out standing writers in these countries. As a good friend of Jorge Icaza, and conversant with the major aspects of his life and work, Mr. Dulsey is abundantly qualified to interpret this work for the English reader.
Jorge Icaza Coronel (June 10, 1906 - May 26, 1978) was a writer from Ecuador, best known for his novel Huasipungo, which brought attention to the exploitation of Ecuador's indigenous people by Ecuadorian whites. He was born in Quito in 1906 and died of cancer in the same city in 1978. Jorge Icaza's literary career began as a playwright. His plays include El Intruso in 1928, La Comedia sin Nombre in 1929, Cuál es in 1931, Sin Sentido in 1932, and Flagelo, which was published in 1936. After his 1933 playscript, El Dictador, was censured, Icaza turned his attention to writing novels about the social conditions in Ecuador, particularly the oppression suffered by its indigenous people. With the publication of Huasipungo in 1934, Jorge Icaza Coronel achieved international fame. The book became a well-known 'Indigenist' novel, a movement in Latin American literature that preceded Magical Realism and emphasized brutal realism. Fragments of the book first appeared in English translation in Russia, where it was welcomed enthusiastically by Russia's peasant socialist class. Jorge Icaza was later appointed Ecuador's ambassador to Russia. The first complete edition of Huasipungo was first translated into the English language in 1962 by Mervyn Savill and published in England by Dennis Dobson Ltd. An 'authorized' translation appeared in 1964 by Bernard H. Dulsey, and was published in 1964 by Southern Illinois University Press in Carbondale, IL as 'The Villagers'. His other books include Sierra in 1933, En las calles in 1936, Cholos in 1938, Media vida deslumbrados in 1942, Huayrapamushcas in 1948, Seis relatos 1952, El chulla Romero y Flores in 1958, and Atrapados, which was published in 1973. Although the latter two books are recognized as Jorge Icaza's greatest literary achievements by experts (such as Theodore Alan Sackett), Huasipungo continues to be Icaza's most popular book and has been translated to over 40 languages. Jorge Icaza and Huasipungo are often compared to John Steinbeck and his Grapes of Wrath from 1939, as both are works of social protest. Besides the first edition of 1934, Huasipungo went through two more editions or complete rewritings in Spanish, 1934, 1953, 1960, the first of which was difficult for even natives of other Hispanic countries to read and the last the definitive version. This makes it difficult for the readers to ascertain which version they are reading. Besides being an 'indigenista' novel, Huasipungo has also been considered a proletarian novel, and that is because Latin America had to substitute the Indians for the European working class as a model or character of proletarian literature. Icaza became internationally popular based upon his publications, and was invited to many colleges in the United States to give lectures on the problems of the indigenous people of Ecuador.
María is a novel written by Colombian writer Jorge Isaacs between 1864 and 1867. It is a costumbrist novel representative of the Spanish romantic movement. It may be considered a precursor of the criollist novel of the 1920s and 1930s in Latin America. Despite being Isaacs' only novel, María is considered one of the most important works of 19th-century Spanish American literature. Alfonso M. Escudero characterized it as the greatest Spanish-language romantic novel. The romantic style of the novel has been compared to the one of Chateaubriand's Atala. Notable are the description of the landscape and the artistic style of the prose. The novel has several autobiographical elements, such as both main characters being natives of Valle del Cauca, or Efraín's departure to Bogotá to pursue his studies. It has been claimed that Maria herself is based, at least in part, upon a cousin of the author. The hacienda "El Paraíso", owned by Isaacs' family, also figures as an important location throughout the novel; it is currently preserved as a museum. The story narrates the idyllic and tragic love between María and her cousin Efraín, both natives of Valle del Cauca. In the middle of a romantic and bucolic landscape, the young characters fall in love with each other but circumstances prevent the full realization of their love. The first hurdle is Efraín's departure for six years to Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, in order to pursue his high school education. After Efraín returns to Valle del Cauca the couple is able to live together, albeit for only three months, before he is forced to travel to London in order to study medicine. Two years later Efraín returns to Colombia to find that María has died of illness. Heart-broken, Efraín decides to leave Cauca definitely, this time without a fixed destination.
Jorge Isaacs Ferrer (April 1, 1837–April 17, 1895) was a Colombian writer, politician and soldier. His only novel, María, became one of the most notable works of the Romantic movement in Spanish-language literature. His father was George Henry Isaacs, an English Jew originally from Jamaica. He first settled in Choco, Colombia, where he made a fortune from gold mining and trade with Jamaica. He then moved to Cali where he converted to Christianity, bought his Colombian citizenship from Simon Bolivar and paid for it in cows. (There is a plaque on a bridge north of Bogota to commemorate this.) He married Manuela Ferrer Scarpetta, daughter of a Spanish Navy officer. He also owned two haciendas near Cali, called 'La Manuelita' (named after his wife) and 'El Paraíso'. The latter would provide the setting for María. 'El Paraiso' has been preserved as a museum, with emphasis upon its relation to the novel. Jorge Isaacs was born in Cali in 1837. Little is known about his childhood, but in some of his poems Isaacs portrays the Valley of the Cauca as an idyllic place where he spent his most of it. He was first educated in Cali, then in Popayán and, finally, in Bogotá between 1848 and 1852. Isaacs returned to Santiago de Cali in 1852 without finishing his baccalaureate studies. In 1854 he fought for seven months in the Cauca Campaign against the dictatorship of General Jose María Melo. In 1856 Isaacs married Felisa González Umaña, who was fourteen years-old at the time and they went on to have many children. During the time of the civil wars his family went through a period of economic hardship. Isaacs tried unsuccessfully to become a merchant as his father. He then turned to literature and wrote his first poems between 1859 and 1860. During that time he also wrote several dramas of historical theme. Isaacs took arms again in 1860, this time against General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, and saw action in the Battle of Manizales during the Colombian Civil War (1860-1862). In 1861 Isaacs' father died; when the war ended Isaacs returned to Cali to take over the administration of his father's businesses, but he found them deeply in debt. This forced him to auction off two of his father's haciendas 'La Rita' and 'La Manuelita', which were bought by the industrialist Santiago Eder. Isaacs' economic hardship took him back to Bogotá, where he found that his literary efforts were being well received. The members of the reader's club 'El Mosaico' offered to publish his poems after Isaacs read them in one of their sessions. This compilation was published under the name Poesías in 1864. That year Isaacs took a job as the supervisor of the construction of a horse-path between Buenaventura and Cali and started to write María. Around that time he also fell ill with malaria. When María was published in 1867 it became an immediate success both in Colombia and in other Latin American countries. As a consequence Isaacs became a well-known personality in Colombia and his newly found fame allowed him to start a career as journalist and politician. As a journalist he directed the newspaper La República, of moderate conservative tendencies, in which he also published some articles. As a politician he first joined the Conservative Party, but later switched to the Radical Party. In 1870 he was sent to Chile as consul general. On his return to Colombia he was actively involved in the politics of Valle del Cauca, which he represented in the Colombian Congress, and in 1876 he fought in yet another civil war. However his political career ended in 1879 after an incident where he proclaimed himself political and military leader of Antioquia in response to a conservative revolt. After his retirement from politics Isaacs published in 1881 the first canto of the poem Saulo, although he was never able to complete it. He also explored the Magdalena Department, in the north of Colombia, where he found important coal and oil deposits. Isaacs spent the last years of his life in the city of Ibague in Tolima where was planning to write a historical novel. He died of malaria on April 17, 1895.
Brazilian poet Lêdo Ivo's SNAKES' NEST is a ‘tale badly told' in a most artful manner. Part political allegory, the novel explores the nature of good and evil in a provincial port in northeastern Brazil during World War TI-all the ills of the repressive dictatorship then in power are reflected in the corrupt and violent society of Maceid. As Ivo says: ‘During a dictatorship, all narratives are poorly told, since a dictatorship is the Kingdom of Lies and cannot tolerate the truth.' But to focus solely on the allegory would deny the richness of the book's many layers, the considerable skill with which the characters emerge from the narrator's false starts, the subtle and pervasive wit that skewers pomposity and pretension, the suspense created by the narrator's very unreliability, and the poetry with which the exotic setting is evoked. The last word in describing such a heady mixture belongs to the author, who calls it, ‘a story of terror and violence that is, surely, a sunny nightmare.' . Although Lêdo Ivo is well known in his own country as a journalist and poetic spokesman of the ‘Generation of 1945,' this edition of Snakes' Nest marks his first book-length appearance in English. Originally published in 1973 under the title Ninho de Cobras, SNAKES' NEST won the prestigious Brazilian Walmap Prize for that year. . The novel has been translated by Kern Krapohl who, for several years, lived in Brazil and worked closely with the author. Jon M. Tolman of the University of New Mexico has contributed an informative introduction which clearly places the story both historically and geographically.
Lêdo Ivo (Maceio, 18 February 1924 -Seville, 23 December 2012) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, essayist and journalist. He was member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, elected in 1986. Lêdo Ivo was born in 1924 in Maceio, capital of Alagoas state in northeastern Brazil. He settled in 1940 in Recife, where he completed his training. In 1943, he moved to Rio de Janeiro to enroll in law school and while working for the literary supplements as a professional journalist. He married Leda Maria Sarmento Ivo de Medeiros (1923-2004), with whom he had three children. His first book was published in 1944, a collection of poems titled As imaginações. The following year he published Ode e Elegia, which was awarded the Olavo Bilac Prize the Brazilian Academy of Letters and is a turning point in the history of Brazilian poetry. The death of Mário de Andrade in 1945 led to a generational change in Brazilian poetry whose rule was 'an invitation to transgression', with the triumph of purely poetical structures. His literary work would be enhanced in the following decades by books of poetry, novels, short stories and essays or reports. Ivo's first novel, As Alianças, which went through several editions and awarded him the Graça Aranha Foundation Prize in 1947. He continued with O Caminho sem Adventura (1948), O sobrinho do General (1964) and Ninho de cobras (published in English as Snake's Nest) (1973), one of his biggest hits, an allegory of totalitarianism of the military dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas. His last novel was A morte do Brasil (1984). In 1949 Ivo spoke at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo in a conference titled The Generation of 1945; in the same year he received a law degree, a profession he never would exercise, preferring to devote himself to journalism. In 1953 he visited several European countries for long periods. In 1963 he spent two months in universities in the USA, by invitation of the Government. In 1986 Ivo was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters. In 2009 he was awarded the Premio Casa de Las AmEricas. Ledo Ivo was also a translator. He translated into Portuguese works of authors like Albrecht Goes. Jane Austen, Maupassant, Rimbaud and Dostoyevsky. He published two memoirs, Confissões de um Poeta (1979), which was awarded the prize of the Cultural Foundation of the Federal District, and O Aluno Relapso (1991).
Brazilian poet Lêdo Ivo's SNAKES' NEST is a ‘tale badly told' in a most artful manner. Part political allegory, the novel explores the nature of good and evil in a provincial port in northeastern Brazil during World War TI-all the ills of the repressive dictatorship then in power are reflected in the corrupt and violent society of Maceid. As Ivo says: ‘During a dictatorship, all narratives are poorly told, since a dictatorship is the Kingdom of Lies and cannot tolerate the truth.' But to focus solely on the allegory would deny the richness of the book's many layers, the considerable skill with which the characters emerge from the narrator's false starts, the subtle and pervasive wit that skewers pomposity and pretension, the suspense created by the narrator's very unreliability, and the poetry with which the exotic setting is evoked. The last word in describing such a heady mixture belongs to the author, who calls it, ‘a story of terror and violence that is, surely, a sunny nightmare.' . Although Lêdo Ivo is well known in his own country as a journalist and poetic spokesman of the ‘Generation of 1945,' this edition of Snakes' Nest marks his first book-length appearance in English. Originally published in 1973 under the title Ninho de Cobras, SNAKES' NEST won the prestigious Brazilian Walmap Prize for that year. . The novel has been translated by Kern Krapohl who, for several years, lived in Brazil and worked closely with the author. Jon M. Tolman of the University of New Mexico has contributed an informative introduction which clearly places the story both historically and geographically. . Originally published in 1973 under the title Ninho de Cobras.
Lêdo Ivo (Maceio, 18 February 1924 -Seville, 23 December 2012) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, essayist and journalist. He was member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, elected in 1986. Lêdo Ivo was born in 1924 in Maceio, capital of Alagoas state in northeastern Brazil. He settled in 1940 in Recife, where he completed his training. In 1943, he moved to Rio de Janeiro to enroll in law school and while working for the literary supplements as a professional journalist. He married Leda Maria Sarmento Ivo de Medeiros (1923-2004), with whom he had three children. His first book was published in 1944, a collection of poems titled As imaginações. The following year he published Ode e Elegia, which was awarded the Olavo Bilac Prize the Brazilian Academy of Letters and is a turning point in the history of Brazilian poetry. The death of Mário de Andrade in 1945 led to a generational change in Brazilian poetry whose rule was 'an invitation to transgression', with the triumph of purely poetical structures. His literary work would be enhanced in the following decades by books of poetry, novels, short stories and essays or reports. Ivo's first novel, As Alianças, which went through several editions and awarded him the Graça Aranha Foundation Prize in 1947. He continued with O Caminho sem Adventura (1948), O sobrinho do General (1964) and Ninho de cobras (published in English as Snake's Nest) (1973), one of his biggest hits, an allegory of totalitarianism of the military dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas. His last novel was A morte do Brasil (1984). In 1949 Ivo spoke at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo in a conference titled The Generation of 1945; in the same year he received a law degree, a profession he never would exercise, preferring to devote himself to journalism. In 1953 he visited several European countries for long periods. In 1963 he spent two months in universities in the USA, by invitation of the Government. In 1986 Ivo was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters. In 2009 he was awarded the Premio Casa de Las AmEricas. Ledo Ivo was also a translator. He translated into Portuguese works of authors like Albrecht Goes. Jane Austen, Maupassant, Rimbaud and Dostoyevsky. He published two memoirs, Confissões de um Poeta (1979), which was awarded the prize of the Cultural Foundation of the Federal District, and O Aluno Relapso (1991).
The successful overthrow of European political imperialism in Latin America was followed by an equally passionate struggle to end a cultural colonialism of many centuries. To a number of authors writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, the search for a Latin American specificity-la especificidad latino-americana-demanded writing that would reflect the social tragedy of their continent. Increasingly, they found themselves looking for literary subjects in marginalized African and indigenous cultures, discovering in the lives and literature of the severely oppressed an authentic Latin American voice. In BLACK LITERATURE AND HUMANISM IN LATIN AMERICA, Richard Jackson explores literary Americanism through writings of black Hispanic authors such as Carlos Guillermo Wilson, Quince Duncan, and Nelson Estupiñán Bass that in many ways provide a microcosm for the larger literature. Jackson traces the roots of Afro-Hispanic literature from the early twentieth-century Afrocriollo movement-the Harlem Renaissance of Latin America-to the fiction and criticism of black Latin Americans today. Black humanism arose from Afro-Hispanics' self-discovery of their own humanity and the realization that over the years they had become not only defenders of threatened cultures but also symbolic guardians of humanity. This humanist tradition has enabled writers such as Manuel Zapata Olivella to write of a Latin America ‘from below' the slave-ship deck and ‘from inside' the mind of Africa. An exemplary work of black literature and humanism, Zapata Olivella's Chango, el gran putas is an epic novel of the black experience in the New World which draws its inspiration from African mythology to express ‘the souls of black folk from an African world view.' Though many writers have adopted black literary models in their quest for a ‘poetry of sources, of fundamental human values,' Jackson demonstrates that literature about blacks by blacks themselves is clearly separate from, yet instrumental to, these other works. Relating the vision of Latin American blacks not only to other Latin American writers but also to North American literary critics such as Eugene Goodheart and John Gardner, Jackson stresses the universal power of resisting oppression and injustice through the language of humanism.
Richard L. Jackson is a professor of Spanish at Carleton University in Ottawa. He is the author of The Black Image in Latin American Literature, Black Writers in Latin America, and The Afro-Spanish American Author.
The interplay of influences among African-American men and women of letters and people of the Afro-Hispanic world reveals the international dimension of their literatures. Affinities among these writers have their source in Africa and in the common new world experiences of slavery, racism, and colonialism. In this study, the author begins by examining the influence of Africa and Spain upon the literatures of African Americans and Latin Americans. He explores the reciprocal exchange of influences among artists of African descent in the United States and in Latin America - from established writers to a new generation of writers, including women. Among those writers are Richard Wright, Robert Hayden, Gayle Jones, Nicolás Guillen, Nelson Estupinan Bass, and Nancy Morejon. Notable are the literary influences and side travels of Langston Hughes in the 1920s. The breadth of the cross-cultural comparisons provided in this volume makes it the most comprehensive source available on African-ancestored literature in the Americas. This treatise is excellent reading for those interested in diaspora studies.
RICHARD JACKSON is professor emeritus, Department of Spanish, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Jackson received a Research Achievement Award from Carleton that allowed him to complete his work on this volume. He is one of the founders of the Afro-Hispanic Review and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1994.
At the heart of this poetic, biographical novel is a poignant, often hilarious recollection of an unusual father, a literate, reflective, gentle man with quixotic devotion to political principle. In Jacob's rich and lyrical novel, memory affirms the redemptive values of his lonely sacrifices and idealism as they surface in a daughter's memory and reflection.
Bárbara Jacobs (born 19 October 1947) is a Mexican writer, poet, essayist and translator. Born in Mexico City in 1947, Jacobs grew up in a home where five languages were spoken. Her grandparents were Lebanese Jewish Maronites. After attending school in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, she returned to Mexico and received a degree in psychology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. From 1974 to 1977, Jacobs taught and conducted research at the College of Mexico. Beginning in 1970, Jacobs has published stories and essays in literary magazines and supplements. Her novel, Las hojas muertas (Dead leaves; 1987), received the Xavier Villaurrutia Award, and has been translated into English, Italian and Portuguese. It was also a selection of the Secretariat of Public Education. Some of Jacobs' works have been published in collective anthologies in Castilian, English, French, Italian and German. Her books have been published in Mexico, US, Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Italy. Jacobs was married to the writer Augusto Monterroso (died, 2003), who was the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature laureate in 2000. She donated his work to the University of Oviedo.
The peleja (struggle), or desafio (challenge), is a popular entertainment which has been performed before large crowds in the jungles of northeastern Brazil for over a century. The performance involves two repentistas (improvisors), who, accompanying themselves on the guitar, insult each other by turns in extemporaneous verse. The best of these repentistas are capable of a virtuosity in their invective that is truly impressive. THE WARRIORS, a desafio from the province of Ceara, is such a musical duel between the performers Joaquim Jaqueira and Manoel Barra Mansa, folk performers about whom nothing is known except what they tell us about themselves (and about each other). Their language is vivid and earthy, local to the point that much of their dialect is not even captured by such specialized works as a Northeastern Brazilian Portuguese Dictionary. Nevertheless, the translators have met the challenge that such a text presents with a strong colloquial, yet not obtrusively parochial, American idiom, which successfully brings the vigor of the original into English. The Portuguese text is included in facing pages.
Retelling of a folktale about a down-on-his luck armadillo. For children.
Luís Inácio de Miranda Jardim was born in Garanhuns, on December 8, 1901. Son of Manuel Antônio de Azevedo Jardim and Angélica Aurora de Miranda, he was a sickly child and due to his health problems he only attended school until he was 13 years old. At just 17 years of age, Luís Jardim had to leave his hometown. In 1917, the deputy Júlio Brasileiro, representative of the municipality in the State Legislative Assembly, was shot dead in Recife by Captain Sales Vila Nova. This crime gave rise to the so-called Hecatombe de Garanhuns , a sad and remarkable episode in the land of the Seven Hills. The deputy's widow, Ana Duperron, ordered the murder of all members of the Miranda and Jardim families. Due to an isolated act by Captain Sales Vila Nova, many lost their lives, including the father of the boy who would later become one of the greatest Brazilian cartoonists and writers. Luís Jardim went to live in the capital of Pernambuco and worked there in the house of a man named Elpídio Godim, doing general chores. There he met a teacher who encouraged him to go back to school, learn grammar and learn English. The Garanhuns native developed a taste for reading and also developed his talent as a draftsman, which had already been awakened in the municipality where he was born. As an illustrator, he published his first works in Revista do Norte and in the newspaper A Província . From then on, he illustrated many books, most notably Guia Prático Histórico e Sentimental do Recife, by sociologist Gilberto Freire. The author of Casa Grande e Senzala, Osório Borba and Joaquim Cardoso were intellectuals with whom Jardim would become friends in Recife. Encouraged by Freire, Luís decided to move to Rio de Janeiro. In the then capital of the Republic, he exhibited his drawings and paintings, and in 1937, he participated in a competition organized by the Ministry of Education and won the first two places with stories from Brazilian folklore collected in the books O Boi Aruá and O Tatu e o Macaco . It is the most beautiful book of its kind written in Brazil, the writer Monteiro Lobato would write, to define the fiction of O Boi Aruá . In 1938, one of the most talked about episodes in Brazilian literature to date occurred. Luís Jardim won the Humberto de Campos prize in the short story competition, having beaten Guimarães Rosa from Minas Gerais, who submitted his first version of the book Sagarana . The jury was divided, but the final vote confirmed the victory of Maria Perigosa and its author. In the future, Guimarães would gain greater national and international recognition, and some of the jurors were self-critical, admitting that they had made mistakes. The writer of Grandes Sertões Veredas would be considered a genius and one of the greatest names in world literature. Logically, even if the Minas Gerais native produced a higher quality work, this in no way takes away from the merits of the writer from Garanhuns, Pernambuco. Luís Jardim was a great writer and Maria Perigosa is still a book of short stories that can be read with pleasure.In the stories in this book, the writer portrays the city of his childhood and adolescence, as well as the region. The Borrego de Capoeiras (at the time almost a farm belonging to São Bento do Uma), for example, appear in one of the stories in this book that, at least in the year it was released, was considered better than Sagarana . In the story Os Cegos, the description, right at the beginning, of Serra do Tará, which is in the municipality of Caetés, is beautiful and also appeared prominently, many years later, in the film Lula, o Filho do Brasil, by Fábio Barreto. Self-taught, Luís Jardim established his name in Brazilian culture as a writer, illustrator, painter and translator. Death of a Salesman , by Arthur Muller, was one of the foreign works that received a Portuguese version thanks to the intellectual from Garanhuns. Many of Jardim's books are autobiographical in nature, such as Maria Perigosa , The Confessions of My Uncle Luís Gonzaga and especially My Little World . Luís Jardim was also a prominent figure in children's literature. He wrote two memorable books for young people: As Proezas do Menino Jesus and Aventuras do Menino Chico de Assis . The first of these received the Monteiro Lobato award in 1968 and was hailed in verse by Brazil's greatest poet to date, Carlos Drummond de Andrade. Luís Jardim passed away in Rio de Janeiro, on the first day of 1987.
BEHIND SPANISH AMERICAN FOOTLIGHTS is the pioneer attempt to survey in English the whole Latin American theatrical scene over a period of nearly five centuries. It makes use of notes accumulated during forty years, in visits to almost all of the countries, the latest in 1958. Too frequently a historian of the theatre, looking for a play known to have been written, comes upon the blank wall of ‘inedita.' And almost as frequently, none of the few printed copies has survived.
Willis Knapp Jones was born on November 26, 1895 in Beacon, New York, the son of Plato Tydvil and Louise (Knapp) Jones. He received his AB from Hamilton College in 1917. He received his MA from Pennsylvania State University in 1922. In 1927 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He taught at Penn State, instructor in Spanish (1920-23), University of Miami, Oxford, Ohio, associate professor (1923-28), professor of Romance languages (1928-63). During his school year and life span he travelled and taught in Santiago, Chile (1917-1919), in Montevideo, Uruguay (1919-1920), American University of Shrivenham, England (1945) and at the University of Guayaquil, Ecuador, a Lecturer on Latin American drama and culture (1946-1947). Upon his retirement in 1963 he sold his library of Latin American theatrical works to the University of Houston. He died in March 1982, in Oxford, Ohio. Dr. Jones was a true pioneer in the study of Latin American literature bringing Spanish texts and translation to American readers by the way of his research and publications of books, journals and newspapers.
This important book should be read by anyone interested in understanding some of the most influential and talented writers of our time. ON MODERN LATIN AMERICAN FICTION includes a bibliography of Latin American fiction (and recent criticism) available in English. CONTENTS: Acknowledgements; Introduction by John King; Editor's Note; Latin America: Fiction and Reality by Mario Vargas Llosa; Brazilian Fiction: Machado de Assis to the Present by John Gledson; Tupy or not Tupy: Cannibalism and Nationalism in Contemporary Brazilian Literature and Culture by Randal Johnson; The Latin American Novel and its Indigenous Sources by Gordon Brotherston; Coming to Terms with Modernity: Magical Realism and the Historical Process in the Novels of Alejo Carpentier by Edwin Williamson; Jorge Luis Borges: A View from the Periphery by John King; João Guimarães Rosa: An Endless Passage by Charles A. Perrone; Carlos Fuentes: An Interview with John King Carlos Fuentes by Steven Boldy; Julio Cortázar and the Drama of Reading by Jason Wilson; Gabriel Garcia Marquez by William Rowe; Mario Vargas Llosa: Errant Knight of the Liberal Imagination by Gerald Martin; Jose Donoso: Where the Wolf Howls by Michael Wood; Coming out of the Labyrinth: Women Writers in Contemporary Latin America by Susan Bassnett; Bridging the Gap: Freud and Film in Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Three Trapped Tigers and Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman by Stephanie Merrim; Cinema and the Novel by Manuel Puig; Augusto Roa Bastos: An Introduction by John King; Writing: A Metaphor of Exile by Augusto Roa Bastos; Guillermo Cabrera Infante: An Interview in a summer manner with Jason Wilson; Bibliography; List of Contributors.
JOHN KING teaches Latin American cultural history at the University of Warwick in England. He has written two books on Argentine cultural history, as well as articles on Latin American literature.
THE LAST DAYS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE is a novel set in the capital of an unnamed South American country during the so-called Campaign of Cultural Reconstruction. A foreign journalist, writing an article on the acclaimed National Theater, finds that although the authorities stress the magnificence of the building and the quality of the plays, no one knows where the theater is. He eventually discovers it in a decaying basement in a vegetable market; a peeling notice on the wall reads: HAMLET-LAST FEW DAYS-BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. The article he writes has dramatic consequences, for the government pledges to restore the lost glory of the nation and its culture. What begins as a farcical struggle for power backstage takes over the streets, the city, and, finally and tragically, in an explosion of violence, the country itself. Vlady Kociancich is at the forefront of Argentina's new generation of writers. Powerful, funny, and fiercely ironic, The Last Days of William Shakespeare explores with exceptional wit and imagination the peculiar madness of South American politics.
VLADY KOCIANCICH was born in Argentina in 1941. At age seventeen, she became the first member of her family to attend the university, where she was taught and befriended by the renowned Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. She has been a journalist and a literary critic and has published three novels, all of which have been well received in Spain and Argentina. This is the first of her works to be published in English. Her collection of short stories, Todos los Caminos, recently won the Gonzalo Torrent Ballester Prize, a literary award in Spain. She lives in Buenos Aires.
"Navidad & Matanza could be the hallucinogenic amalgamation of a Cesar Aira plot with setting and characters conceived by Bolaño - if written using Oulipo-style constraints. . . . With ample imagination and commanding style, Navidad & Matanza certainly marks Labbe as a young author from whom we ought to anticipate great, fascinating things to come." - Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books. Loquela, Carlos Labbe's fourth novel and second to be translated into English, is a narrative chameleon, a shape-shifting exploration of fiction's possibilities. At a basic level, this is a distorted detective novel mixed with a love story and a radical statement about narrative art. Beyond the silence that unites and separates Carlos and Elisa, beyond the game that estranges the albino girls, Alicia and Violeta, from pleasant summer evenings, beyond the destiny of Neutria - a city that disappears with childhood - and beyond a Chilean literary movement that could be the last vanguard, while at the same time the greatest falsification, questions arise concerning who truly writes for whom in a novel - the author or the reader. Through an array of voices, overlapping storylines, a kaleidoscope of literary references, and a delirious, precise prose, Labbe carves out a space for himself among such great form-defying Latin American writers as Juan Carlos Onetti and Jorge Luis Borges.
Carlos Labbe (born January 28, 1977) is a Chilean fiction writer born at Santiago de Chile. He graduated in Latin American and Spanish Literature, his dissertation was about Juan Carlos Onetti. Later he obtained a Master's degree in Latin American and Spanish Literature with a dissertation on Roberto Bolaño. He has published a hypertext novel, Pentagonal: incluidos tú y yo (2001), the novels Libro de plumas (2004), Navidad y Matanza (2007), Locuela (2009), and Piezas secretas contra el mundo (2014), plus the collection of short stories Caracteres blancos (2010), as well as the pop music records Doce canciones para Eleodora (2007), Monicacofonía (2008) and Mi nuevo organo (2011), as well as the ambient music collection Repeticiones para romper el cerco (2013). He co-wrote the screenplays for the films Malta con huevo (2007) and El nombre (2015). In the past he was a member of the bands Ex Fiesta and Tornasolidos, and is now a literary critic and editor. He is married to the Chilean author es:Monica Ríos. Carlos Labbe is one of Granta's "Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists, and is the author of a collection of short stories and six novels, one of which, Navidad & Matanza, is available in English from Open Letter. In addition to his writings, he is a musician, and has released three albums. Will Vanderhyden received an MA in literary translation from the University of Rochester.
ENRIQUE LAFOURCADE is one of the leaders of a group of young writers who increasingly dominate Chilean literature. KING AHAB'S FEAST, his third novel and the first to be translated into English, typifies a new kind of writing emerging from South America today. Fast, sardonic, and unflinchingly honest, it is a devastating portrait of the archetypal strongman and of the society and forces, both internal and foreign, on which such a man is nutured and sustained. Cesar Alejandro Carrillo Acab had ruled his tropical island kingdom ruthlessly for thirty years. But, once a year, out of his bountiful generosity, he shared his birthday with the People. Parades, luncheons, fireworks, banquets, dances, receptions, and executions - these were the highlights of his 24-hour feast. From the reviewing stand, at the start of this day of glory, El Dispensador smiled urbanely on the crowds, but, when again in the privacy of his own rooms, he trembled. With good reason he feared one particular birthday present: the assassin's bullet. Hour by hour, tension mounts. The young revolutionaries feverishly review their plans for an overthrow. Ranged around the vulnerable Carrillo are his loving family and loyal friends, all inwardly lusting for personal power: his foreign wife, Jessie, beautiful and bloodthirsty; his seductive sixteen-year-old daughter, Delfina; Andre a fat and fabulously wealthy ambassador and woman chaser; von Kelsen, the renegade Austrian police chief; Cecil T. Raven, the rapacious but cautious U.S. Chief of Mission; and General Josefat who had first known Carrillo when he was a fainthearted schoolboy called ‘Chicky.' Caught in a trap of his own making, the tired, frightened dictator runs to the only person he can trust: his eight-year-old son, Carlitos. From this welter of depravity, cynicism, and cruelty the modern tyrant par excellence is drawn in bold outline. Always allowing his characters and their actions to speak for themselves, Enrique Lafourcade has given his readers a vivid dramatization of the truth that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely.'
Enrique Lafourcade Valdenegro is a Chilean writer, critic and journalist who was born in Santiago, Chile, on October 14, 1927. Representative of the so-called ‘Generation of the 50s', a term suggested by Lafourcade himself in 1954 to describe authors born between 1920 and 1934 who began to flourish in the 1950s and broke apart in content and style from the previous regional style known as ‘Criollismo‘; and more widely within the ‘boom generation' in Latin America, also known as Latin American Boom, a generation of writers who produced an explosion of works in the mid 20th century and decades that followed, which included four Nobel Prize winners Miguel Ángel Asturias (Guatemala) in 1967, Pablo Neruda (Chile) in 1971, Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia) in 1982, and Octavio Paz (Mexico) in 1990, and several other influential intellectual authors such as Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar in Argentina and Mario Vargas Llosa in Peru. As a writer, Lafourcade has published at least 24 novels (over 30 by some accounts) and over a dozen anthologies and collections of short stories and essays. His novel Palomita Blanca (1971) sold over a million copies, making it one of the all time best sellers in Chile. This novel was translated to several languages and brought to the screen by Chilean-French director Raúl Ruiz. Lafourcade's latest novel, El Inesperado (2004), imagines the life of French poet Arthur Rimbaud in Africa, and though a work of fiction, it is inspired by the letters of the poet and three years of additional research. The novel was launched on October 20, 2004, matching the 150th anniversary of the birth the poet. Other titles include (not an exhaustive list): Pena de Muerte (1952), Para Subir al Cielo (1959), la Fiesta del Rey Acab (1959), El principe y las Ovejas (1961), Invencion a Dos Voces (1963), Novela de Navidad (1965), Pronombres Personales (1967), Frecuencia Modulada (1968), En el Fondo (1973), Salvador Allende (1973), Variaciones sobre el tema de Nastasia Filippovna y el Principe Mishkin (1974), Tres Terroristas (1977), Buddha y los Chocolates Envenenados (1977), Adios al Führer (1982), El Gran Taimado (1984), Los Hijos del Arco Iris (1985), Las Senales van Hacia el Sur (1988), Pepita de Oro (1989), Hoy Esta Solo mi Corazon (1990), Mano Bendita (1993), Cristianas Viejas y Limpias (1997). Lafourcade has been the recipient of various literary awards in his country, such as the prestigious Municipal Prize, the Gabriela Mistral Prize and the Maria Luisa Bombal Prize, awarded to the best novel of the year. Self-described as ‘a sentimental anarchist and catholic in a state of wilderness', it is as a journalist and critic that Lafourcade is best known. For years he has written an editorial for the newspaper El Mercurio (the largest in the country), focusing on literature but with incursions into politics, cultural issues and subjects of impact upon the nation. Some of his most critical articles, written in an often mordant style, have produced the ire of dictators and politicians in Chile and other Latin American countries and occasionally generated diplomatic apologies. He has appeared in numerous television programs, both as guest and as part of recurring panels of cultural critics. His ironic and often sarcastic style as well as his impudent way of offering opinions on just about everything and everybody has more than once produced a commotion in the country, making ‘Lafourcade' a household name in Chile. Numerous anecdotes surround his name, including engaging in a fist fight with another journalist during a live television program. For some time he wrote a gastronomic review under the name of ‘Conde de Lafourchette' (‘fourchette' meaning ‘fork' in French) in the journal El Mercurio, where he gave his uncensored opinion about restaurants and their food, reason for which he is feared by restaurant owners across the country. Allegedly, waiters are instructed to call upon the owner or general manager as soon as they see Lafourcade walking in. In 1997 he published the book ‘La cocina erotica del conde Lafourchette (The Erotic Cuisine of Count Lafourchette)'. He has publicly declared himself an ‘unrelenting enemy of ignorance and incompetence.' He is believed to have just as many enemies as he has friends, to the point that for years rumors circulated of a group of people gathering signatures to ‘expel Lafourcade from Chile'. According to public records, Enrique Lafourcade was married three times: with Chilean-born Canadian artist Maria Luisa Segnoret; with Chilean writer and journalist Marcela Godoy Divin; and recently with Chilean painter Rossana Pizarro Garcia, with whom allegedly has lived for nearly 20 years now. He also had a long relationship with Chilean writer and journalist Marta Blanco, with whom he lived together for seven years and were assumed to be married. He is the father of three children, Dominique, Octavio and Nicole.
In any discussion of the present cultural renaissance in Puerto Rico the name of Enrique Laguerre is certain to come up. For as today's leading novelist of Puerto Rico Laguerre has come to fill the place left vacant by the death of Zeno Gandia. With the dedication of the professional writer he has applied his talent to many phases of Puerto Rican life. His novels include La Llamarada, Solar Monto pa, El 30 de febrero, La resaca, Los dedos de la mano, La ceiba en el tiesto, El laberinto. Laguerre is also the author of a play, Le resentida, which was recently produced in San Juan with great success, and of a volume of critical essays entitled Pulso de Puerto Rico. Laguerre is mainly preoccupied with social problems, and especially those most directly related to the life of his fellow countrymen. Each of his novels deals with a different phase of the Puerto Rican drama: the sugar plantation, the coffee plantation, the university, the petty world of political factions. His latest novel, THE LABYRINTH, which Las Americas has already published in Spanish, is now presented in English. This work is of great value to those wishing to understand recent events in Latin America. The action, rich in psychological complexities, unfolds against the background of New York City amid its huge Spanish-speaking population and then shifts to the Dominican Republic. The Labyrinth is a book which comes to grips with one of the burning questions of our time, and includes a penetrating look at life in New York City for one of its newest and largest ethnic groups.
Enrique Arturo Laguerre Velez (May 3, 1906 - June 16, 2005) was a teacher, novelist, playwright, critic, and newspaper columnist (for El Vocero) from Moca, Puerto Rico. Laguerre studied at various universities, obtaining degrees in arts from the University of Puerto Rico and Columbia University. In 1924, he took courses on teaching in rural areas in the town of Aguadilla. The courses where taught by Carmen Gomez Tejera. After this he taught from 1925 to 1988, both at the elementary school and university levels. Laguerre was known to use the pen-names of Tristán Ronda, Luis Urayoán, Motial and Alberto Prado, among others. Married for many years to the well-respected writer Luz V. Romero García, he also worked in many Puerto Rican publications before joining the staff of El Vocero. In 1998, his peers as well as former governors Rafael Hernández Colon and Luis A. Ferre, advocated for Laguerre to be considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Despite their efforts, Laguerre was not awarded the prestigious award. Laguerre was an emeritus member of the Center for Advanced Studies on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Enrique Laguerre died on June 16, 2005, at the age of 99. His body was buried on the grounds of the Palacete Los Moreau, an old hacienda restored as a museum, in his native town of Moca. Laguerre was one of the most prolific novelists of Puerto Rico. Following in the steps of Manuel Zeno Gandía, Laguerre's most influential work focused on the problems of the colonized society. His novel La Llamarada offers a compressive view of rural Puerto Rico during the Great Depression. Most of his novels are essential readings in Puerto Rican literature courses.
Ivonne Lamazares's distinguished debut novel is ‘at once a deeply personal and worldly tale . . . a wonderful amalgamation of culture, politics, and love' (Philadelphia Weekly). With economical prose and a clear-eyed vision, Lamazares evokes lives full of hope but fraught with obstacles in this story of a mother and daughter in 1960s Cuba. The story is told in the brave, tough voice of Tanya, a girl at odds with her mother and with the rapidly changing world around her. In the wake of Castro's revolution, Tanya's mother - passionate and unreliable - is determined to leave Cuba at all costs and to take her reluctant daughter with her. THE SUGAR ISLAND presents their embattled relationship against the backdrop of a country in conflict with itself, where the old world chafes against the new and where a parent's desperate grab for freedom has dire consequences for her child.
Ivonne Lamazares was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1962. At the age of 13 she left the island and settled in Miami. Her short fiction has appeared in the Blue Mesa Review and the anthologies Having a Wonderful Time, and A Century of Cuban Writers in Florida. Her novel, The Sugar Island, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2000. The paperback edition appeared in 2001, followed by translations to French, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and two Spanish translations. In 1994, she received a Florida Arts Council Grant. She lives in Winter Park, Florida, with her husband and their daughter.
On the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1907, a doctor becomes involved in a misguided experiment that investigates the threshold between life and death. One hundred years later, a celebrated artist goes to extremes in search of aesthetic transformation, turning himself into an art object. How far are we willing to go, Larraquy asks, in pursuit of transcendence? The world of Comemadre is full of vulgarity, excess, and discomfort: strange ants that form almost perfect circles, missing body parts, obsessive love affairs, and man-eating plants. Darkly funny, smart, and engrossing, here the monstrous is not alien, but the consquence of our relentless pursuit of collective and personal progress.
Roque Larraquy is an Argentinian writer, screenwriter, professor of narrative and audiovisual design, and the author of two books, La comemadre and Informe sobre ectoplasma animal. Comemadre will be his first book published in English.
On July 23, 1802, the Duchess of Alba, one of Spain's most beautiful and notorious ladies, died in her bed at the age of forty. To this day, her death remains a mystery. Was she poisoned by Manuel Godoy, first minister to the royal family and her sometime lover? Or did she die by the hand of Francisco Goya, court painter of humble origins, whose affair with the Duchess shocked Spanish society? Perhaps it was suicide, prompted by her fading beauty and her addiction to the ‘powder of the Andes.' Did the Queen, whose jealous venom knew no bounds, have a hand in the Duchess's end? Or did Prince Fernando, whose bid for the throne became the ruin of Spain, take part in the crime? Written in the form of a personal memoir by Godoy, the official who was charged with investigating the affair, this daring historical novel brings to life the drama and intrigue of eighteenth-century Madrid while it focuses on the mysterious death of one of the city's great femmes fatales. Confidante and lover to several aristocrats, including Godoy, the Duchess had scandalous affairs with men beneath her rank, the most famous of which was a long-term Liaison with Goya, who immortalized her in his best-known works. We hear the fictional voices both of Godoy, now enduring a lonely political exile in Italy, and of Goya, living out his remaining years in Bordeaux, as they narrate their differing versions of the events surrounding Alba's death. With the fine observation of a great artist, Goya describes the noblewoman who tormented him in his passion-seductive, impulsive, manipulative, ravishing. And Godoy, glancing back on his days of glory shapes the facts to fit his preferred version of history. Each has his own, equally believable, notion of what occurred that night. But who knows what really happened in this crime with no witnesses? Only a letter, received decades after the event, provides the answer.
Gualberto Jose Antonio Rodríguez Larreta Ferreira (14 December 1922 - 19 August 2015), better known as Antonio Larreta or Taco Larreta, was a Uruguayan writer, critic and actor. Born in Montevideo, he was active in Uruguay and Spain.
La Gloria de Don Ramiro is more than a history; it is first and foremost a novel of distinction: whatever his theme, one feels that Larreta would use the scrupulous care of a scholar and an artist. In an age of advertisement and commercialized art, La Gloria de Don Ramiro has the rare virtue of classical dignity and restraint, Unhappily the limpid beauty of the Castilian can be appreciated only in the original, and in the case of a novel of this type, which owes much of its appeal to qualities of style, the task of the translator is one of extreme difficulty. Explanatory footnotes have been inserted only where absolutely necessary. In cases where a literal translation of the Spanish has been incompatible with tolerable English, the translator has endeavored, while following the original as closely as possible, to recognize the claims of style.
Enrique Rodríguez Larreta (March 4, 1875 - July 6, 1961) was an Argentine writer, academic, diplomat and art collector. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature ten times. Larreta was born in Buenos Aires to Adela Maza and Carlos Rodríguez Larreta. A member of a traditionally upper-class family from Uruguay, he was married to Josefina Anchorena Castellanos, a daughter of one of the most aristocratic, landowning families of Argentina, the Anchorenas. They had five children; Mercedes, Enrique (b. 1902), Josefina (b. 1905), Agustin (b. 1909) and Fernando (b. 1911). He studied law, and graduated at the University of Buenos Aires in 1897. He later taught medieval history at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, and worked as history teacher. Larreta earned renown as a writer with La gloria de don Ramiro, one of the representative Argentine works of Hispanic modernism, in 1908. Don Ramiro, a soldier during the time of Philip II of Spain, embodies the Christian conflict between temporal needs and a more spiritual life. He then served as Ambassador to France from 1910 to 1919, and lived during 1915 and 1916 in Biarritz, France and in Ávila, Spain, where he met Miguel de Unamuno and a street now bears his name. As a playwright, his first piece, La lampe dargile, written in French, opened in Paris in 1917. This was followed by La luciernaga (1923; Firefly), El linyera (1932; The Bum), Santa Maria del Buen Ayre (1935), considered his best, and Tenia que suceder (1943; It had to Happen). He participated in the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, in Seville, was a member of the National Academy of History of Argentina, and of the Royal Spanish Academy, spending a large part of his later years in Madrid. The cities of Alcalá de Henares, Madrid and Segovia also have streets named after him. Larreta died in 1961, and was interred at La Recoleta Cemetery. His home in Buenos Aires became the Museo de Arte Español Enrique Larreta in 1962. Built by architect Ernesto Bunge in 1886, this Spanish colonial-styled house is graced with an Andalusian palace garden; an unusual oasis in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires. When Larreta came back from Europe and settled in the Belgrano neighborhood he brought a vast collection of Spanish art and furniture from France. The Renaissance and Baroque collection gives the house the feel of a Spanish museum, and is mostly from the same period as his historical novel, Don Ramiro .
Novelist, scholar, journalist, statesman, and leading member of Chile's "Generation of 1842"--an intellectual movement so named for the founding of the National University--Jose Victorino Lastarria (1811-1888) lived his life at the forefront of nineteenth-century Chilean and Spanish American culture, literature, and politics. Recuerdos Literarios (or Literary Memoirs) is his masterpiece, encompassing the candid memories of a tireless activist, both the creative and critical sensibilities of an influential Latin American early modernist, and an eyewitness account of the development of Chilean literature and historiography. An ardent, eloquent participant in every defining artistic and ideological debate in Chile during the formative mid-1800s, Lastarria recorded his epoch as closely as he did his own origins, education, ambitions, and career. Sometimes reminiscent of Montaigne's essays, Eça de Quieroz's journalism, or Barbusse's didactic convictions, Literary Memoirs is an engrossing account of Chile's newly ordained nationhood. This addition to Oxford's prestigious Library of Latin America series is more than a retelling of things past; it is an informed yet informal testament to the idea of chilenidad (or "Chileanness") and a detailed portrait of one of Chile's cultural architects. For this new edition of Literary Memoirs, Frederick M. Nunn's introduction presents an informative historical background and R. Kelly Washbourne's translation carefully preserves Lastarria's form and content.
Jose Victorino Lastarria (23 March 1817 - 14 June 1888) was a Chilean writer, legislative deputy, senator, diplomat, and finance minister. Jose Victorino Lastarria was the son of Francisco Lastarria y CortEs and Carmen Santander Bozo. He studied in his hometown of Rancagua, and then moved to Santiago when he was granted a scholarship by the government of Francisco Antonio Pinto to the Liceo de Chile, a school then run by Jose Joaquín de Mora [es]. While there, the Chilean Civil War of 1829–30 occurred, in which the Pipiolos (Liberals) were defeated by the Pelucones (Conservatives). Mora was expelled from the country, which motivated Lastarria to become a revolutionary against what he saw as a dictatorship being installed. Lastarria married Julia Jesús Villarreal on 8 June 1839, with whom he had 12 children. One was engineer Victorino Aurelio Lastarria [es]. Lastarria was a disciple of AndrEs Bello in 1834. After graduating from the National Institute, he studied for various careers, earning the titles of geographer and attorney from the University of San Felipe and the Institute of Law and Sacred Canons in 1839. With a group of students from the National Institute, he formed the Literary Society of 1842, an entity for the dissemination of liberal ideas then prohibited by the government of Manuel Bulnes. In 1843, Lastarria joined the ranks of the founding professors of the University of Chile. In 1848, with the escalation of repression by the country's Conservative government, Lastarria joined the Society of Equality [es], a revolutionary group which sought to overthrow Bulnes and the Constitution of 1833. In 1850 he was arrested by the government and sent to Lima. He returned to participate in the Revolution of 1851, seeking to annul the election of Manuel Montt. This was defeated by aggressive government action, and Lastarria escaped back to Peru, labeled one of the "ten most wanted men in Chile". His brother Manuel was arrested by the government. Lastarria joined other exiles seeking international support to oust the Conservative government. On the advice of Francisco Bilbao, he returned to Chile in 1853, settling in Valparaíso, where he supported mobilizations against the government and joined the Freemasons, a then-unrecognized institution in Chile. In 1859, after the popular uprising that forced Antonio Varas to abandon his candidacy, Lastarria became one of the main faces of the transition to Liberal government that took place between 1861 and 1871 under the administration of Jose Joaquín PErez. At this time, in addition to being dean of philosophy at the University of Chile, he was appointed Minister of Finance, where he tried to impose social market economic concepts, without much success. In 1860 he published a notable fantasy novel with a political tone, Don Guillermo. It denounced the lack of social freedom under conservative governments through an allegory with Mapuche myths and legends. It was a brief but intense work which earned him both success and animosity in the years of Conservative-Liberal transition. In 1862 Lastarria returned to Lima, this time as an ambassador. He was present in 1864 during the Chincha Islands War, which motivated Chile to declare war against Spain. In early 1865 he traveled to Argentina, leading a diplomatic mission with the objective of forming an alliance against the Spanish, as well as negotiating the possession of Patagonia. Lastarria proposed an agreement which would grant Argentina almost the entire territory in question, with the exception of Tierra del Fuego and some surrounding areas. However, when he returned to Chile, the government rejected the deal. This was later used by Argentine authorities to justify their subsequent domination of the vast majority of Patagonia. In fact, Lastarria did not think Chile had a valid claim to those territories, and given his Americanist convictions, did not want a war to break out over them. In 1876 he was appointed Interior Minister by President Aníbal Pinto. In this period he created the Diario Oficial, which became Chile's official government gazette. In 1879, during the War of the Pacific, Lastarria was sent to Brazil in order to prevent that country from supporting any of Chile's enemies. He completed this task successfully. Lastarria also served as minister of the Court of Appeals [es] (1875) and the Supreme Court (1883), a deputy in several legislatures (for Caldera and Copiapo in 1855, Valparaíso in 1858, and La Serena in 1867), and a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy (1870). Frederick M. Nunn is Professor of History and International Studies at Portland State University. He is the author of The Time of the Generals: Latin American Professional Militarism in World Perspective. R. Kelly Washbourne is completing his doctorate in Latin American literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is assistant editor of the Amazonian Literary Review.
Havana casino photograph by Francis Miller/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images. Havana logo courtesy of Vicki Gold Levi from Cuba Style. Author photograph by Mauricio-Jose Schwarz. . Keywords: Literature Cuba Caribbean Latin America Mystery. ISBN: 0802117546. February-04. It is the fall of 1958 in Havana, Cuba. Mickey Mantle's New York Yankees are playing the Milwaukee Braves, and from the greasy-spoon cafeterias to the luxurious casinos, bets are coming in fast and furious. Everyone is riveted to the series-and no one more so than criminal mastermind Mariano ‘Ox' Contreras. He has been handpicked by the Joe Bonanno crime family to pull off one of the biggest, most daring heists in Cuba's history-the one that will finally bring rival mob boss Meyer Lansky's hotel and gambling empire to its knees. With the guidance of Lebanese hustler- turned-tycoon Elias Naguib, Contreras organizes a dream team of Cuba's most intrepid and ingenious ex-cons. His right-hand man is Fermin Rodriguez, a short, bald Spanish-Cuban whose career as a pimp ended when he stabbed a boxer in the liver. The law-school dropout Arturo ‘Abo' HeiIer is the decoy, posing as the high-roiling son of a tobacco farmer. Former gigolo turned Casino de Capri dealer Wilberto ‘Willy Pi' Pires is the inside man. Valentin ‘Meringue' Rancano, a backwater boy who came to the Cuban capital with twenty-five stolen pesos in his pocket before cutting his teeth as a dice shark, is the scout. And Melchor ‘Wheel' Loredo, the island's most intrepid car thief, is the getaway driver. As the series goes down to the wire, Contreras and his ragtag team await the final out, when the overflowing coffers of Lansky's casino are ripe for the picking. if all goes off without a hitch, their futures will finally be made. But in a country where unrest and uncertainty are the order of the day, is it possible that all will not go according to plan? HAVANA WORLD SERIES is a brilliant history- steeped anatomy of a casino heist and its aftermath. An internationally acclaimed master of suspense, Jose Latour brings to life his native Cuba with vibrant, cinematic intensity, offering a dark, thrilling novel of violence and intrigue and an enthralling homage to a country on the brink.
JOSE LATOUR is the author of eight previous books. Havana World Series is his third novel written in English. The translation of his novel Outcast into Spanish won the 2002 Hammett Prize for Best Crime Novel in that language. Latour is Cuban by birth and was the vice president for Latin America of the International Association of Crime Writers between 1998 and 2002. He moved to Spain in 2002.
The first Cuban crime novel to be written in English and published in the United States, OUTCAST is a smart, multi-voiced, savagely unsentimental tale that blends cultural critique, personal discovery, and explosive violence to reveal the callous, impersonal dysfunction of both contemporary Cuban socialism and its self-congratulatory free-market alternative In Miami. The son of a Cuban mother and a U.S. laborer stationed on the island before the revolution, the novel's protagonist, Elliot Steil, is a down-and-out school teacher in Havana. Quietly resigned to the tedium and simplicity of his life, Elliot has, like many of his fellow Havanans, systematically distanced himself from all aspirations for a better future. His hopes suddenly resurface when he is offered a ‘once-in-a-lifetime' chance to escape his current situation by a mysterious visitor to the island who claims to be a friend of Elliot's late father. When the stranger quickly turns from savior to would-be assassin, Elliot finds himself perilously immersed in the waters of the Florida Straits and in the images of a past that he had spent most of his adult life trying to forget. He survives the ordeal, but his journey to find the man who betrayed him and to discover the mystery of his bicultural past lure him into a tangle of deceit and corruption in the underworld of Miami. ‘OUTCAST is a tense, suspense-filled tale that will keep readers guessing until the final page. It is also an important and courageous book, a look at daily life in Cuba as few Americans have seen it, by a writer who still lives under the ever-watchful eye of the revolution.' - Edgar Award-winning author William Heffernan . . . ‘Jose Latour is a master of Cuban Noir, a combination of ‘50s unsentimentality and the harsh realities of life in a socialist paradise. Better, he brings his tough survivor to the States to give us a picture of ourselves through Cuban eyes. Welcome to America, Sr. Latour.' - Martin Cruz Smith, author of HAVANA BAY and GORKY PARK.
Jose Latour (born April 24, 1940 in Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban crime fiction writer. His first three novels (Preludio a la Noche, Medianoche Enemiga and Fauna Noctura), set in pre-revolutionary Havana, were published in 1982, 1986 and 1989. The fourth (Choque de Leyendas), was released in 1998. In 1994 Latour submitted his new book The Fool to his Cuban publisher. Based on a real-life case of corruption in the ministries of the Interior and the Armed Forces, the book was considered counterrevolutionary and its author labeled an enemy of the people. Certain that he would never be published in Cuba again as long as all publishing houses were state-owned, Latour took a shot at writing in English. His first novel in that language, Outcast, was published in the U.S., Japan, five Western European countries and Brazil. It got flattering reviews and was nominated for an Edgar. Since then, he has penned Havana Best Friends (2002), Havana World Series (2003), Comrades in Miami (2005) and The Young Englishman (2006, still unpublished). His sole non-fiction book is Postcommunist CUBA Poscomunista, a bilingual essay.
A gaucho play. The protagonist redeems himself through hard work.
Martiniano P. Leguizamon (1858-1935) was a poet, storyteller, playwright, essayist, journalist, historian and Argentine literary critic, born in between Ríos province in 1858, and died in their place of origin in 1935. Contrary to perfect innovations that marked much of his contemporary literary work (and, especially, to modernist excesses), left an interesting essay, critical and creative legacy characterized by his defence of folk literature, its designated nationalist accent and his praise and idealization of the Argentine rural society, embodied in the paradigmatic figure of the gaucho. On the basis of a clear literary models imposed by some of the most representative works of the Argentine Gaucho tradition (such as the captive of Esteban Echeverría; Facundo by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento; or the lyrical compositions of poet Bartolome Hidalgo), Martiniano P. Leguizamon focused only in the rural areas of their nation to review deeply (through the wide range of genres that your passionate pen cultivated) the figure of the gaucho, in an attempt to create a mythical dimension of this archetype that freed him from different versions and interpretations that had reduced both the popular tradition and the cultured literature at the same time. As hidden background to all of this, beats the fervent desire of Leguizamon restore a series of customs and native values which, in his view, serve to characterize authentic Argentine national identity, against the ideas of progress and the massive European immigration which, in those years, penetrated the southern country. And although it was true that, in Argentine real society, they were already disappearing those antanones values and the Gaucho figures that embody them, it is interesting to check Leguizamon was not only facing the process of modernisation experienced by his country, taking into account that other authors as prominent as Joaquín Víctor González, Ricardo Rojas, Roberto j. Payro, Alberto Gerchunoff and the footballer Leopoldo Lugones undertookat different stages of their respective works, a task similar to the illustrious polygraph between Ríos, they commended which not infrequently. Among the most famous works of Martiniano P. Leguizamon, excels the theatrical eclogue entitled Calandria (1898), put in scene by the brothers Podesta in the midst of a resounding success of critics and the public, with more or less ups and downs, was maintained throughout the 20th century. In addition, Leguizamon triumphed also with the historical novel entitled Montaraz (1900), followed by other publications of his native soul (1906), Creole strain (1908), pages Argentine (1911), the birthplace of San Martín (1915), Red Ribbon (1916), the gaucho (1917), features of the life of general Urquiza, the decline of the dictator and the posthumous work entitled the cradle of the gaucho (1935).
The generation of 1922 represents a unique transitional moment in Argentine literary history. Reared in a world still dominated by nineteenth-century ideas, but influenced by major national and international events, these young writers represent Latin America's first ‘modern' generation. Christopher Leland begins by examining Argentine history and literature from the turn of the century, then turns to the new writers of the twenties and the formation of the literary groups Boedo' and ‘Florida'. His discussion provides numerous insights into the cultural and intellectual life of Argentina during this important period and reveals how social, political, and cultural influences came together to shape the Generation of 1922. Leland briefly considers works by six authors - among them Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza, Alvaro Yunque, and Leonidas Barletta - that illustrate both the diversity and some thematic similarities in the production of Boedo and Florida. Leland finishes with close readings of three key works of the period: Roberto Mariani's Cuentos de la oficina, Roberto Arlt's El juguete rabioso, and Ricardo Guiraldes' Dom Segundo Sombra. Combining both psychological and historical approaches, Leland elucidates various motifs in the works - alienation, anti-Liberalism, homoeroticism, family relationships, sadomasochism - and realtes them to the then contemporary social and cultural reality.
CHRISTOPHER TOWNE LELAND (October 17, 1951 - July 23, 2012) taught fiction in the Department of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University, where he was Briggs-Copeland Assistant Professor. He is the author of the novels, MEAN TIME (1982) and MRS. RANDALL. He received his doctorate in comparative literature from the University of California, San Diego.
THE SHADOW: THIRTEEN STORIES IN OPPOSITION contains stories that deal with individuals whose lives are entangled in a confrontation of realities, sometimes political, sometimes erotic, sometimes existential, and often within the world of fantasy. The originality of the works stems from Enrique Jaramillo Levi's unique perspectives that offer the reader a remarkable pilgrimage within these realities. CONTENTS: The Reference Point; The Fountain; The Thief; I Have Now Become Him; The Same Thing Again; Water; Silence; The Photograph; Mother Will Be Back Before Long; The Suspicions of an Executive; Those Girls Know; The Shadow; Honeymoon.
ENRIQUE JARAMILLO LEVI (Colon, Panama, 1944) is a short story writer, poet, essayist, university professor and founding editor of Maga, revista panamefla de cultura. Best known internationally for his short stories, Levi has published eight anthologies including: DUPLICATIONS AND OTHER STORIES (Latin American Literary Review Press, 1994), Fisuras (1 996) and Tocar Fonda (1996). Levi has also edited two anthologies, one in conjunction with Leland H. Chambers entitled CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORIES FROM CENTRAL AMERICA (University of Texas Press, 1994) and WHEN NEW FLOWERS BLOOMED: SHORT STORIES BY WOMEN WRITERS FROM COSTA RICA AND PANAMA (Latin American Literary Review Press, 1991). Levi is currently the Coordinator of Social Sciences and Languages at the Universidad Tecnologica de Panama. DR. SAMUEL A: ZIMMERMAN is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of Latin American Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. An active member of the American Literary Translators' Association, he has translated works of Nela Rio (Argentina), Antonio Porpetta (Spain), David Ojeda (Mexico), and Luis Arturo Ramos (Mexico). . .
In The Subversive Scribe, one of our most versatile and creative translators of Latin American fiction offers an intimate glimpse into the remarkably complex relationships that lie behind the act of literary translation. In this highly accessible book-- hardly a how-to manual!-- Suzanne Jill Levine writes of intersections of language, life, and cultures, while she reveals to us the crucial part the translator of linguistically complex fiction plays in making such work available to readers of another language and culture.
SUZANNE JILL LEVINE is a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a noted translator of contemporary Latin American literature. She is the author of three books, including THE SUBVERSIVE SCRIBE.
Replete with herbal lore and tales of heroines whose work and words have sustained generations, Remedios offers the curative history of the many women - and cultures - who have met at the crossroads of the island of Puerto Rico. Beginning with the First Mother in sub-Saharan Africa more than 200,000 years ago, Aurora Levins Morales takes us on a journey through time and around the globe. Yet the nature of the healing narrative is not limited to the lives of others. Bearing witness to a much larger history of abuse and resistance by women and men, Levins Morales weaves in her own story of pain and healing, the horror of abuse, ameliorated through the restorative power of memory. Enriched with explanations of the medicinal properties of herbs and foods such as rosemary, ginkgo, and banana, Remedios revives our connection to the forgotten lore of our grandmothers.
Aurora Levins Morales (born February 24, 1954) is author of Getting Home Alive (Firebrand, 1986) and Medicine Stories: History, Culture, and the Politics of Integrity (South End Press, 1998). A Jewish "red diaper baby" from the mountains of Puerto Rico, Morales writes lucidly about the complexities of social identity. She teaches at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Passions of feminine desire and hatred rage under the Argentine jungle sun in ‘The Cove' - a taste of Luisa Mercedes Levinson's powerful prose in THE TWO SIBLINGS AND OTHER STORIES. Expertly rendered in English by award-winning translator Sylvia Ehrlich Lipp, this collection takes readers on a journey through the spectra of inter-human emotion. A prologue by the author's daughter internationally-renown writer Luisa Valenzuela, adds unique insight into the mind of Levinson who worked among Latin America's greatest literary minds during her illustrious career.
LUISA MERCEDES LEVINSON (January 5, 1904, Buenos Aires, Argentina - March 4, 1988, Buenos Aires, Argentina) was born in Buenos Aires to a Spanish mother and Australian father. Undoubtedly, family influences account for her cosmopolitan outlook and freedom of spirit which contributed in no small measure to the formation of a picturesque personality. Yet her sensitivity to the cultural values of her native land pulsates and is reflected in her many works. Many of her books have been translated into various languages. Levinson was the recipient of prestigious literary awards not only in her native Argentina, but abroad as well, winning the admiration of the literary world. Her daughter, Luisa Valenzuela, is currently an award-winning writer of international renown.
First published in Cuba in 1966, PARADISO was hailed as a masterpiece of contemporary literature by such eminent writers as Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Emir Rodriguez Monegal. In the last few years, PARADISO has gained the international reputation of a modern classic, received with unqualified enthusiasm when it was published in France and Italy. Lezama, who is Cuba's most important poet, wanted to portray ‘as closely as possible the daily life of a Cuban man and his family.' As a result, PARADISO is both an archetype and a cosmos of American society; it is as perceptive and psychologically intricate as Proust's view of France, as vigorous and sometimes as corroded as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Jose Cemi, the hero of PARADISO, begins life at the turn of the century in Cuba. His family is of moderate size: his father, Colonel Jose Eugenio Cemi, a military genius, dies at the age of thirty-three; his mother, the power behind her son's creativity, is a sweet and delicate woman; her mother, Doña Augusta, a matriarch of the most elaborate pronunciamentos; his aunt and uncle, irritating satellites orbiting around the family nucleus; and his two sisters, the gentle playmates of childhood. As an adolescent, Cemi discovers his soul mates, the intellectuals Fronesis and Focion, and it is the triangle of their relationship which provides the impetus for the second half of the novel. The intricacies of this novel cannot be reduced to a simple summary. Lezama the poet wished to re-create love and lust in the guise of intense, complex poetry. The exhilarations and defeats of love are woven into verbal tapestries extraordinarily erotic in character, in which words become the threads of pure sensation. At the same time, Lezama the novelist narrates Cemi's driven search for his dead father and for the understanding of love and the powers of the mind. Each of Cemi's experiences has a tropical intensity that gives it long life in the reader's memory. Lezama is a humane, wise, and vastly erudite poet, and in Jose Cemi he has established his fictional counterpart. His penetrating scrutiny and transformation of autobiographical detail have resulted in a work of art comparable to Joyce's ULYSSES and Proust's REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST.
Jose Lezama Lima (December 19, 1910 - August 9, 1976) was a Cuban writer and poet who is considered one of the most influential figures in Latin American literature. Born in the Columbia Military Encampment close to Havana in the city of Marianao where his father was a colonel, Lezama lived through some of the most turbulent times of Cuba's history, fighting against the Machado dictatorship. His literary output includes the semi-autobiographical, baroque novel Paradiso (1966), the story of a young man and his struggles with his mysterious illness, the death of his father, and his developing sensuality and poetic sensibilities. Lezama Lima also edited several anthologies of Cuban poetry and the magazines Verbum and Orígenes, presiding as the patriarch of Cuban letters for most of his later years. Although he only left Cuba twice (trips to Mexico in 1949 and 1950), Lezama's poetry, essays and two novels draw images and ideas from nearly all of the world's cultures and from all historical time periods. The baroque style that he forged relied equally upon his Gongora-influenced syntax and stunning constellations of unlikely images. Lezama Lima's first published work, a long poem called 'Muerte de Narciso,' released when he was only twenty-seven, brought him national acclaim and established his well-wrought style and classical subject matter. In addition to his poems and novels, Lezama wrote many essays on figures of world literature such as StEphane MallarmE, ValEry, Gongora and Rimbaud as well as on Latin American baroque aesthetics. Most notably the essays published as La Expresion Americana lay out his vision of the European baroque, its relation to the classical, and the American baroque. Lezama Lima died in 1976 at age 65 and was buried in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. He was influential for Cuban and Puerto Rican writers of his generation and the next, such as Virgilio Piñera, Reinaldo Arenas, Fernando Velázquez Medina, RenE MarquEs, and Giannina Braschi, who depict his life and works in their writing. Twenty-three years after pinning him up the pillory for his 'anti-revolutionary activities', the Cuban people pay homage to Lezama Lima through the release of a film, Strawberry and Chocolate (1994): Lezama is a model for Diego, a gay intellectual; and David, a member of the local Communist youths, discovers the author of Paradiso, and becomes a man after a grand supper 'a la Lezama.'
First published in Cuba in 1966, PARADISO was hailed as a masterpiece of contemporary literature by such eminent writers as Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Emir Rodriguez Monegal. In the last few years, PARADISO has gained the international reputation of a modern classic, received with unqualified enthusiasm when it was published in France and Italy. Lezama, who is Cuba's most important poet, wanted to portray ‘as closely as possible the daily life of a Cuban man and his family.' As a result, PARADISO is both an archetype and a cosmos of American society; it is as perceptive and psychologically intricate as Proust's view of France, as vigorous and sometimes as corroded as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Jose Cemi, the hero of PARADISO, begins life at the turn of the century in Cuba. His family is of moderate size: his father, Colonel Jose Eugenio Cemi, a military genius, dies at the age of thirty-three; his mother, the power behind her son's creativity, is a sweet and delicate woman; her mother, Doña Augusta, a matriarch of the most elaborate pronunciamentos; his aunt and uncle, irritating satellites orbiting around the family nucleus; and his two sisters, the gentle playmates of childhood. As an adolescent, Cemi discovers his soul mates, the intellectuals Fronesis and Focion, and it is the triangle of their relationship which provides the impetus for the second half of the novel. The intricacies of this novel cannot be reduced to a simple summary. Lezama the poet wished to re-create love and lust in the guise of intense, complex poetry. The exhilarations and defeats of love are woven into verbal tapestries extraordinarily erotic in character, in which words become the threads of pure sensation. At the same time, Lezama the novelist narrates Cemi's driven search for his dead father and for the understanding of love and the powers of the mind. Each of Cemi's experiences has a tropical intensity that gives it long life in the reader's memory. Lezama is a humane, wise, and vastly erudite poet, and in Jose Cemi he has established his fictional counterpart. His penetrating scrutiny and transformation of autobiographical detail have resulted in a work of art comparable to Joyce's ULYSSES and Proust's REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST. . Jose Lezama Lima was born December 19, 1910. After the Castro revolution, he was appointed director of the Department of Literature and Publications of the National Cultural Council, and vice president of the Cuban Artists and Writers Union. As PARADISO contains no political implications, no mention of the revolution, and frank discussion of homosexuality (a taboo topic in Cuba), Lezama has not been favored by the regime since the time of its publication. . (original title: Paradiso, 1968 - Ediciones Era, S.A.).
Jose Lezama Lima (December 19, 1910 - August 9, 1976) was a Cuban writer and poet who is considered one of the most influential figures in Latin American literature. Born in the Columbia Military Encampment close to Havana in the city of Marianao where his father was a colonel, Lezama lived through some of the most turbulent times of Cuba's history, fighting against the Machado dictatorship. His literary output includes the semi-autobiographical, baroque novel Paradiso (1966), the story of a young man and his struggles with his mysterious illness, the death of his father, and his developing sensuality and poetic sensibilities. Lezama Lima also edited several anthologies of Cuban poetry and the magazines Verbum and Orígenes, presiding as the patriarch of Cuban letters for most of his later years. Although he only left Cuba twice (trips to Mexico in 1949 and 1950), Lezama's poetry, essays and two novels draw images and ideas from nearly all of the world's cultures and from all historical time periods. The baroque style that he forged relied equally upon his Gongora-influenced syntax and stunning constellations of unlikely images. Lezama Lima's first published work, a long poem called 'Muerte de Narciso,' released when he was only twenty-seven, brought him national acclaim and established his well-wrought style and classical subject matter. In addition to his poems and novels, Lezama wrote many essays on figures of world literature such as StEphane MallarmE, ValEry, Gongora and Rimbaud as well as on Latin American baroque aesthetics. Most notably the essays published as La Expresion Americana lay out his vision of the European baroque, its relation to the classical, and the American baroque. Lezama Lima died in 1976 at age 65 and was buried in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. He was influential for Cuban and Puerto Rican writers of his generation and the next, such as Virgilio Piñera, Reinaldo Arenas, Fernando Velázquez Medina, RenE MarquEs, and Giannina Braschi, who depict his life and works in their writing. Twenty-three years after pinning him up the pillory for his 'anti-revolutionary activities', the Cuban people pay homage to Lezama Lima through the release of a film, Strawberry and Chocolate (1994): Lezama is a model for Diego, a gay intellectual; and David, a member of the local Communist youths, discovers the author of Paradiso, and becomes a man after a grand supper 'a la Lezama.'
In 'The Devil's Tunnel' the miners are seemingly trapped by their destiny to live out their squalid and exploited lives, which are dominated by the need for raw materials and the machinery of the Europeans. At the story's end there is a strong contrast between the clean, pure and benevolent sky, and the underground monster that devours the humans who dare to penetrate its dark lair. Part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works of Latin American Literature.
Baldomero Lillo (6 January 1867, Lota, Chile - 10 September 1923, San Bernardo, Chile) was a Chilean Naturalist author, whose works had social protest as their main theme. Lillo's father traveled to California to participate in the 1848 Gold Rush, but returned with no fortune. He did learn much about mining, and he moved to southern Chile, Lota, to work the coal mines. Baldomero Lillo grew up in these mining communities and worked the mines himself. He was exposed to the writings of the French author Emile Zola, who used the philosophy of Positivism and the literary current of Naturalism to try to change the terrible conditions of French coal miners. Lillo was able to observe similar conditions in the Chilean mines and set out to improve the conditions of the workers by dramatizing their plight. Lillo wrote many short stories (collected in two major books, Sub Sole and Sub Terra) which sparked the interest of social activists who were appalled by the conditions in the mines.
This original story introduces a new author to readers in this country, an author of rare gifts for whom we believe there is a great future. The book is a sensitive study of a young neurotic suffering from consumption and living under the fear that he may die of the disease as his mother and sister did. He settles in Pureza, a village in a remote district of Brazil, where there is nothing whatever to do. There he is attracted by the two daughters of the Stationmaster. He falls in love with both of them and establishes a new and stronger outlook on life. He becomes more of a man again and less of a neurotic. In a style of distinction and with great skill and insight, the author portrays a strange character and brings him to life.
Jose Lins do Rego Cavalcanti (July 3, 1901 in Pilar Paraíba - September 12, 1957 in Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist most known for his semi-autobiographical 'sugarcane cycle.' These novels were the basis of films that had distribution in the English speaking world. Along with Graciliano Ramos and Jorge Amado he stands as one of the greatest regionalist writers of Brazil. According to Otto Maria Carpeaux, Jose Lins was 'the last of the story tellers'. His first novel, Menino de Engenho ('Boy from the plantation'), was published with difficulty, but soon it got praised by the critics.
The three autobiographical novels (or, alternatively, fictionalized memoirs) here translated as Plantation Boy are wholly characteristic works of Jose Lins do Rêgo (1901-57), a key figure in modern Brazilian literature. They tell the story of Carlos de Melo and his growing up on his grandfather's sugar-cane plantation in northeastern Brazil early in the present century; his experiences at a boarding school; and his final, futile effort to adjust himself-after being graduated from law school-to adult life back on the plantation. The three consecutive novels (Men mo de Engenho, Doidinho, and Ban güê) are, as a Brazilian critic said, ‘about all Brazil and, a little, about the whole world.' They present not only the education and evolution of a neurotic young man, but also a wonderfully immediate and believable picture of the sugar-cane culture and economy of the 1900-30 era in Brazil's always problematical Northeast Heartland. In Menino de Engenho (Plantation Boy), Carlos de Melo tells the story of his own life on the plantation from the day when his father murdered his mother until his grandfather is ready to send him to boarding school after his twelfth birthday. Doidinho (roughly Little Fool) takes Carlos through his school years and his pathetic, often amusingly sharp, efforts to achieve self-respect in a sometimes severely hostile environment in which, naturally, several varieties of sex burgeon. Ban güê (Little Sugar Plantation) shows Carlos as an educated man who loves his land but is lured by the city, who is nervously and sexually afflicted, and who finally is unable to carry on either the plantation or his own life in the patriarchal tradition of his grandfather. (Lins do Rêgo referred to these three books and two other novels tangentially related to them-O Moleque Ricardo and Usina-as The Sugar Cane Cycle.) Regarded by many Brazilians as a national classic, the present trilogy provides an intimate, authentic account of the sort of growing up and environment which produced many of Brazil's leading writers and other intellectuals. It is full of colorful, sharply portrayed boys, girls, men, women, animals, and events. Intensely readable in its own right, Plantation Boy may also be read either symbolically or as casting genuinely revealing light on Brazil itself and its complex problems.
Jose Lins do Rego Cavalcanti (July 3, 1901 in Pilar Paraíba - September 12, 1957 in Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist most known for his semi-autobiographical 'sugarcane cycle.' These novels were the basis of films that had distribution in the English speaking world. Along with Graciliano Ramos and Jorge Amado he stands as one of the greatest regionalist writers of Brazil. According to Otto Maria Carpeaux, Jose Lins was 'the last of the story tellers'. His first novel, Menino de Engenho ('Boy from the plantation'), was published with difficulty, but soon it got praised by the critics.
The first appearance in English of the critically acclaimed Brazilian writer Osman Lins, AVALOVARA is a modem epic on a grand scale, a rich and lyrical novel of quest that considers the difficulties of love and celebrates its pleasures. Abel, a Brazilian, a man of our time, seeks Paradise through his courtship of three women: Roos, sophisticated, inaccessible, and remote, whom he pursues across Europe; Cecilia, who is carnal, compassionate-and hermaphroditic; and finally, a woman known only by an ideogram, ‘0', whose tender and erotic alliance with Abel precipitates the apocalyptic fulfillment of his quest. An extraordinary novel, in an elegant translation by Gregory Rabassa, AVALOVARA has a prophetic, puzzle-like architecture whose unraveling has its own satisfactions beyond the wonders of the tale itself. . OSMAN LINS was born in Brazil in 1924. After graduating with a degree in economics and finance from the University of Recife in 1946, he entered the banking profession. His first novel, 0 Visitante (The Visitor), was published in 1955, but it was his collection of stories, Nove, Novena (Nine, Ninth), in 1966, that brought him international attention. He was the recipient of three major Brazilian literary prizes, including the Coe]ho Neto Prize of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He died in 1978. His last published novel was A Rainha dos Cárceres da GrEcia (The Queen of the Jails of Greece), which appeared in 1976. . (original title: Avalovara, 1973).
Osman Lins (July 5, 1924, Vitoria de Santo Antão, Pernambuco, Brazil - July 8, 1978, São Paulo, Brazil) was a Brazilian novelist and short story writer. He is considered to be one of the leading innovators of Brazilian literature in the mid 20th century. He graduated from the University of Recife in 1946 with a degree in economics and finance, and held a position as bank clerk from 1943 until 1970. From 1970 to 1976 he taught literature. His first novel, 0 Visitante ('The Visitor'), was published in 1955. His later publications would bring him international recognition and establish his reputation - Nove, Novena (1966; 'Nine, Ninth'), a collection of short stories, Avalovara (1973), a novel, and A Rainha dos Cárceres da Grecia (1976; 'The Queen of the Grecian Jails'), a novel/essay. Lins was the recipient of three major Brazilian literary awards, which included the Coelho Neto Prize of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
Born in 1924 in Pernambuco state in northeastern Brazil, Osman Lins is one of the most innovative writers of contemporary Brazilian fiction. His work has received considerable critical attention both in Brazil and abroad and has been translated into several languages. Although his writing began in a more traditional, realistic vein, his later works, NINE, NOVENA (Nove, Novena, 1966), AVALOVARA (1973), and THE QUEEN OF THE PRISONS OF GREECE (A Rainha dos Carceres da Grecia, 1976), are characterized by formal innovations that reflect the evolution of his poetics and put him in a league with masters of contemporary Latin American fiction. He also produced several theater pieces and essays. NINE, NOVENA is a collection of nine stories, work that represents the turning point in Lins's career. The recurring themes of these stories - entrapment and search for the self, art versus life, and the mythic aspects of existence - are presented against the background of rural and urban life in northeast Brazil. The stylistic devices of the accessible tales (frequent shifts of tense, long sentences full of parenthetical clauses, heavy punctuation and inversions, and use of graphic symbols to suggest shifts in narrative perspective) all contribute to the multiplicity of meaning and significance of these very human stories.
Osman Lins (July 5, 1924, Vitoria de Santo Antão, Pernambuco, Brazil - July 8, 1978, São Paulo, Brazil) was a Brazilian novelist and short story writer. He is considered to be one of the leading innovators of Brazilian literature in the mid 20th century. He graduated from the University of Recife in 1946 with a degree in economics and finance, and held a position as bank clerk from 1943 until 1970. From 1970 to 1976 he taught literature. His first novel, 0 Visitante ('The Visitor'), was published in 1955. His later publications would bring him international recognition and establish his reputation - Nove, Novena (1966; 'Nine, Ninth'), a collection of short stories, Avalovara (1973), a novel, and A Rainha dos Cárceres da Grecia (1976; 'The Queen of the Grecian Jails'), a novel/essay. Lins was the recipient of three major Brazilian literary awards, which included the Coelho Neto Prize of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
This is the final novel of one of the most innovative, comic Brazilian writers of this century. It takes the form of an anonymous high school science teacher's journal about an unpublished novel written by his deceased lover, a young woman named Julia Marquezim Enone. Her novel's central character, Maria da franca, is a destitute and mentally unstable woman at odds with the Brazilian social welfare system, from which she is trying to claim benefits for time spent in a psychiatric hospital. The journal represents the science teacher's attempt to understand Julia's novel and, in the process, Julia herself and the relationship they once shared. Rather than providing him with comfort and a better understanding of his beloved, the teacher's explorations create an ever-widening circle of questions and fears about himself, her, and finally any attempt to understand anything about anyone. But the narrator's failures become the reader's comic delights. Reminiscent of Flann O'Brien, Manuel Puig, and Laurence Stern, with this novel Osman Lins takes his rightful place among the major figures of twentieth0century fiction. OSMAN LINS earned international acclaim with his previous novel, AVALOVARA (Knopf, 1980).
Osman Lins (July 5, 1924, Vitoria de Santo Antão, Pernambuco, Brazil - July 8, 1978, São Paulo, Brazil) was a Brazilian novelist and short story writer. He is considered to be one of the leading innovators of Brazilian literature in the mid 20th century. He graduated from the University of Recife in 1946 with a degree in economics and finance, and held a position as bank clerk from 1943 until 1970. From 1970 to 1976 he taught literature. His first novel, 0 Visitante ('The Visitor'), was published in 1955. His later publications would bring him international recognition and establish his reputation - Nove, Novena (1966; 'Nine, Ninth'), a collection of short stories, Avalovara (1973), a novel, and A Rainha dos Cárceres da Grecia (1976; 'The Queen of the Grecian Jails'), a novel/essay. Lins was the recipient of three major Brazilian literary awards, which included the Coelho Neto Prize of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
In a station of the metro in Rio de Janeiro, where both live, illustrator Haruki and artisan Celina meet by chance - and soon decide, however improbably, to travel together to Japan. Their shared destination: the famous Rakushisha, or Hut of Fallen Persimmons, where seventeenth-century haiku master Matsuo Basho once stayed. Their trip to Kyoto provides a context for each to meditate on the past, their feelings for each other, and questions of cultural difference. Through a counterpoint of narration and text, the pair's losses and struggles gradually unfold. Basho's haiku brilliantly mold the novel's structure. Basho's translator in Brazil, readers learn, is Haruki's great unrequited love, and Celina's sad eyes conceal a tragedy in her own life. In this exquisitely woven novel, meant to be cradled in both hands as the Japanese might hold a precious object, the characters' every gesture, reflection, and self-revelation are manifest.
Adriana Lisboa (born April 25, 1970 in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian writer. She is the author of six novels, and has also published poetry, short stories and books for children. Originally written in Brazilian Portuguese, her books have been published in fourteen countries and translated into English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Arabic, Swedish, Serbian and Romanian, with forthcoming translations into Polish and Turkish. Crow Blue is Lisboa's most recent novel translated into English (Bloomsbury, UK, 2013) and an Independent book of the year. Her stories have appeared in Granta, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Brooklyn Rail, Litro Magazine and others. Adriana Lisboa is considered a distinguished figure among Brazilian contemporary writers. Hew work has been the recipient of, among others, the following honors: Jose Saramago Prize of Literature for Symphony in White (novel), Japan Foundation Fellowship, Brazilian National Library Fellowship, the Newcomer of the Year Award from the Brazilian section of International Board on Books for Young People for Língua de trapos (A Tongue Made of Scraps). In 2007, Hay Festival/Bogota World Book Capital selected her as one of the 39 most important Latin American writers under the age of 39.
SA mystical dialogue between a male author (a thinly disguised Clarice Lispector) and his/her creation, a woman named Angela, this posthumous work has never before been translated. Lispector did not even live to see it published. At her death, a mountain of fragments remained to be ‘structured' by a friend, Olga Borelli. These fragments form a dialogue between a god-like author who infuses the breath of life into his creation: the speaking, breathing, dying creation herself, Angela Pralini. The work's almost occult appeal arises from the perception that if Angela dies, Clarice will have to die as well.
CLARICE LISPECTOR (1925-1977) was one of the most significant twentieth-century Brazilian writers. Her works range from essays to novelistic fiction, short stories, and children's literature. Lispector is best known in Latin America and Europe; only recently have some of her works been translated from Portuguese into English. Other English translations include THE PASSION ACCORDING TO C. H., FAMILY TIES, AN APPRENTICESHIP OR THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS, THE APPLE IN THE DARK, and THE HOUR OF THE STAR.
A Breath of Life is Clarice Lispector's last published novel, 'written in agony'. Sensual and mysterious, it is a mystical dialogue between a god-like author and the creation he breathes life into: the speaking, shifting, indefinable Angela Pralini. As he has created Angela, so, eventually, he must let her die, for life is merely 'a kind of madness that death makes.' This is a unique, elegiac meditation on the creation of life, and of art.
CLARICE LISPECTOR (1925-1977) was one of the most significant twentieth-century Brazilian writers. Her works range from essays to novelistic fiction, short stories, and children's literature. Lispector is best known in Latin America and Europe; only recently have some of her works been translated from Portuguese into English. Other English translations include THE PASSION ACCORDING TO C. H., FAMILY TIES, AN APPRENTICESHIP OR THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS, THE APPLE IN THE DARK, and THE HOUR OF THE STAR.
New translation by Stefan Tobler. Introduction by Benjamin Moser. In the forty years since its publication toward the end of its author's life, Agua Viva, an unordered meditation on the nature of life and time, has exercised a powerful influence on Brazil's greatest artists: one musician read it one hundred and eleven times. This new translation shows why, in a body of work as emotionally powerful, formally innovative, and philosophically radical as Clarice Lispector's, this strange and hypnotic work stands out as a particularly magnificent triumph. ‘Glamorous, cultured, moody, Lispector is an emblematic twentieth-century artist who belongs in the same pantheon as Kafka and Joyce.' - Edmund White. ‘A penetrating genius.' - Donna Seaman, Booklist. ‘A truly remarkable writer.' - Jonathan Franzen.
CLARICE LISPECTOR (1925-1977) was one of the most significant twentieth-century Brazilian writers. Her works range from essays to novelistic fiction, short stories, and children's literature. Lispector is best known in Latin America and Europe; only recently have some of her works been translated from Portuguese into English. Other English translations include THE PASSION ACCORDING TO C. H., FAMILY TIES, AN APPRENTICESHIP OR THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS, THE APPLE IN THE DARK, and THE HOUR OF THE STAR. STEFAN TOBLER is a translator from Portuguese and German. He won the English PEN Writers in Translation prize. BENJAMIN MOSER's Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector was acclaimed as ‘a fascinating and welcome introduction to a writer whose best work should be better known in this country' (Dwight Garner, The New York Times).
‘Then from the very pit of her stomach, like a distant tremor that might be the sign of an earthquake for all she knew . . . from her womb, from her constricted heart came the colossal tremor of a strong pain that jolted her whole body . . . leaving her shaken. Shaken Lori is, by this first wracking physical evidence of the spiritual nausea that grips her. She is a teacher, devoted to the children she instructs, but in her life outside the schoolroom almost willfully unformed, passive, deliberately isolated from people and the pain they might bring. ‘My mystery is a simple one,' admits Lori. ‘I don't know what being alive is. Into this empty life steps Ulysses, the intense young professor of philosophy whom Lori will love and who will guide her toward fulfillment of the ‘most urgent necessity' of a human being-becoming a human being. Hers is an apprenticeship. to existence. This brief, vivid novel is one of the most important metaphysical works by the noted Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1925-1977). Lispector's world view-a blend of existential and mystic philosophies-is expressed through a stunningly individualistic style that combines epiphanic imagery and symbolism with an artful indifference to stylistic and grammatical norms. Plot is nearly nonexistent. The inner life Is all. But the richness of that inner life as depicted by Lispector, among the first major writers of Latin America to use fiction for the purpose of metaphysical inquiry, is dazzling. . CLARICE LISPECTOR is a superb writer, an artist of vivid imagination and sensitivity, with a glorious feeling for language and its uses. She employs words playfully, meaningfully, deceptively, and of course seriously . . . [She] is original and authentic.' - Saturday Review.
Born in the Ukraine in 1925, CLARICE LISPECTOR was brought up in Recife, Brazil, and then in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married, and published NEAR TO THE WILD HEART. Lispector's gifts as a novelist were early recognized, and she became one of the half-dozen irreplaceable Portuguese-language writers of this century. She died of cancer in 1977. Richard A. Mazzara is professor of modern languages and literatures at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. Lorri A. Parris recently received her M.A. in Latin American studies and is presently pursuing postgraduate work in journalism.
Clarice Lispector's Complete Stories, 85 in all, are an epiphany, among the important books of this?or any?year. The recent publication by New Directions of five Lispector novels revealed to legions of new readers her darkness and dazzle. Now, for the first time in English, are all the stories that made her a Brazilian legend: from teenagers coming into awareness of their sexual and artistic powers to humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies to old people who don't know what to do with themselves. Clarice's stories take us through their lives?and ours. From one of the greatest modern writers, these stories, gathered from the nine collections published during her lifetime, follow an unbroken time line of success as a writer, from her adolescence to her death bed.
Clarice Lispector was born in 1920 to a Jewish family in western Ukraine. As a result of the anti-Semitic violence they endured, the family fled to Brazil in 1922, and Clarice Lispector grew up in Recife. Following the death of her mother when Clarice was nine, she moved to Rio de Janeiro with her father and two sisters, and she went on to study law. With her husband, who worked for the foreign service, she lived in Italy, Switzerland, England, and the United States, until they separated and she returned to Rio in 1959; she died there in 1977. Since her death, Clarice Lispector has earned universal recognition as Brazil's greatest modern writer. Benjamin Moser is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award, and is also the editor of a new translation of ?Clarice ?Lispector's work?, of which this is the sixth volume?. A former books columnist at Harper's Magazine, Moser is now a columnist at The New York Times Book Review, and is currently at work on ?the? authorized biography of Susan Sontag. He lives in the Netherlands. Katrina Dodson's work has appeared in Granta, McSweeney's, and Two Lines. She is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Clarice Lispector's Saturday column in the Jornal do Brasil was, even by the Brazilian standards of this ‘chronicle' genre, extraordinarily free and intimate - astonishingly so to European readers. Varying from stories to aphorisms, from introspective revelation to conversations with taxi-drivers, this flexible medium was brilliantly handled by Brazil's most innovative woman writer. Her conversations with writers and poets, musicians and actors, painters and architects, reveal her endless curiosity about all forms of human expression. Her travel notes and reminiscences of places as far apart as Berne and Brasilia, Liberia and London, reveal an incomparable feeling for atmosphere. Her encounters with children, and with the dispossessed of Brazil, show an empathy that is unsparing both to adults and to the fortunate - that is, herself and her readers. Lispector is marvelously unpredictable, and always disarmingly frank.
Born in the Ukraine in 1925, CLARICE LISPECTOR was brought up in Recife, Brazil, and then in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married, and published NEAR TO THE WILD HEART. Lispector's gifts as a novelist were early recognized, and she became one of the half-dozen irreplaceable Portuguese-language writers of this century. She died of cancer in 1977. GIOVANNI PONTIERO is Reader in Latin American Literature at the University of Manchester, and the translator of novels and stories by Lispector, Jose Saramago, and others.
Since the publication of her first novel in 1944, Clarice Lispector has been recognized as a Brazilian writer of great talent and originality. It is generally agreed among her critics, however that her best writing is in shorter fiction, where her personal style, with its brilliant flashes of insight, works more coherently. The stories in FAMILY TIES, originally published in 1960, are among her most important contribution to Brazilian fiction, They show her preoccupation with human suffering and failure, and critics have detected in them, as in all of her work, echoes of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the French existentialist writers Camus and Sartre. But if her stories are concerned with the metaphysical anguish that results from the sudden recognition of the human condition, which Camus called Absurdity, the reader will find that anguish treated in an original way that reveals the complexity of the experience. The characters created by Clarice Lispector cannot be described as ‘types', even in a psychological context. They are more appropriately seen as images of different states of mind, and this applies also to her settings, the gardens and parks in ‘Love' and ‘The Buffalo', the urban scenes in ‘Preciousness' and ‘The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman', and the jungle setting of ‘The smallest Woman in the World'; all exist outside of time and space. Lispector is a writer who is not interested primarily in the individuals and their individual contexts but in the passions that dominate and usually defeat them. Like Sartre and Camus, she subscribes to the acts that acts alone are important - and isolation and violence become the two salient features of human experience. CONTENTS: Acknowledgements; Introduction; Daydreams of a Drunken Woman; Love; The Chicken; The Imitation of the Rose; Happy Birthday; The Smallest Woman in the World; The Dinner; Preciousness; Family Ties; The Beginnings of a Fortune; Mystery in Sao Cristovao; The Crime of the Mathematics Professor; The Buffalo.
Born in the Ukraine in 1925, CLARICE LISPECTOR was brought up in Recife, Brazil, and then in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married, and published NEAR TO THE WILD HEART. Lispector's gifts as a novelist were early recognized, and she became one of the half-dozen irreplaceable Portuguese-language writers of this century. She died of cancer in 1977.
Clarice Lispector's first novel, NEAR TO THE WILD HEART (Perto do coraçao selvagem), was published in 1944, when its author was only nineteen years old. An immediate success, it became an acknowledged water- shed in Brazilian literature, catapulting it into the literary arena of European modernism. Narrative epiphanies and interior monologue consciously echo James Joyce as Lispector recalls first the childhood and then the adult years of the middle-class Joana, her unhappy marriage and its dissolution. NEAR TO THE WILD HEART - which won Brazil's Prêmio do Fundaçao Graca Aranha - is a brilliant psychological and stylistic tour de force that anticipates the complex themes of one of Latin America's foremost woman writers.
Born in the Ukraine while her emigrating parents were en route to the Americas, Clarice Lispector (1925-77) published in her lifetime twenty volumes of fiction, nonfiction, and literature for children. Two of her short-story collections were issued by New Directions as SOULSTORM in 1988. Giovanni Pontiero is Reader in Spanish and Portuguese Literature at the University of Manchester, England. ‘The intriguing quality of a Lispector story, aside from its stylistic brilliance, is the magic weave of humor and pathos.' - Booklist. ‘Translated from the Portuguese into a chilling economy of English, these tales by the late Lispector are bracing reminders of the costs, and treasures, of the unromantic mind.' - Publishers Weekly.
Near to the Wild Heart, published in Rio de Janeiro in 1943, introduced Brazil to what one writer called ‘Hurricane Clarice': a twenty-three-year-old girl who wrote her first book in a tiny rented room and then baptized it with a title taken from Joyce: ‘He was alone, unheeded, near to the wild heart of life.' The book was an unprecedented sensation - the discovery of genius. Narrative epiphanies and interior monologue frame the life of Joana, from her middle-class childhood through her unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence, when she proclaims: ‘I shall arise as strong and comely as a young colt.'
Born in the Ukraine while her emigrating parents were en route to the Americas, Clarice Lispector (1925-77) published in her lifetime twenty volumes of fiction, nonfiction, and literature for children. Two of her short-story collections were issued by New Directions as SOULSTORM in 1988. Giovanni Pontiero is Reader in Spanish and Portuguese Literature at the University of Manchester, England. ‘The intriguing quality of a Lispector story, aside from its stylistic brilliance, is the magic weave of humor and pathos.' - Booklist. ‘Translated from the Portuguese into a chilling economy of English, these tales by the late Lispector are bracing reminders of the costs, and treasures, of the unromantic mind.' - Publishers Weekly.
Clarice Lispector's Saturday column in the Jornal do Brasil was, even by the Brazilian standards of this 'chronicle' genre, extraordinarily free and intimate - astonishingly so to European readers. Varying from stories to aphorisms, from introspective revelation to conversations with taxi-drivers, this flexible medium was brilliantly handled by Brazil's most innovative woman writer. Her conversations with writers and poets, musicians and actors, painters and architects, reveal her endless curiosity about all forms of human expression. Her travel notes and reminiscences of places as far apart as Berne and Brasilia, Liberia and London, reveal an incomparable feeling for atmosphere. Her encounters with children, and with the dispossessed of Brazil, show an empathy that is unsparing both to adults and to the fortunate - that is, herself and her readers. Lispector is marvelously unpredictable, and always disarmingly frank.
Born in the Ukraine in 1925, CLARICE LISPECTOR was brought up in Recife, Brazil, and then in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married, and published NEAR TO THE WILD HEART. Lispector's gifts as a novelist were early recognized, and she became one of the half-dozen irreplaceable Portuguese-language writers of this century. She died of cancer in 1977.
Clarice Lispector (1925-1977) has come to be considered the most important woman writer in contemporary Brazilian letters. She is the author of seven novels and short-story collections as well' as children's books, and her translated work-into Czech, Spanish, French, German, and English-has gained her a strong international reputation. The twenty-nine stories in SOULSTORM were originally published in two separate volumes in 1974- A Via Crucis do Corpo (‘The Stations of the Body') and Onde Estivestes de Noite (‘Where You Were at Night') - and are now combined for the first time and sensitively translated into English by Alexis Levitin. The realm of Lispector's fiction is the inner life; self-knowledge is her main concern. Like James Joyce's Dubliners, her protagonists live small, stifled lives, often unaware of their own suffering, but her lucid and richly textured narratives allow us, the readers, the epiphanies that they themselves are denied. ‘I have a deep affection,' she once wrote, ‘for things that are incomplete or badly finished, for things that awkwardly try to take flight only to end up clumsily on the ground.' However limited or pitiable Lispector's characters seem, they are redeemed through her clear-sighted, compassionate vision. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION BY Grace Paley; from - THE STATIONS OF THE BODY: Explanation; Miss Algrave; The Body; The Way of the Cross; The Man Who Appeared; He Soaked Me Up; For the Time Being; Day by Day; Footsteps; A Complicated Case; Plaza Mauá; Pig Latin; Better Than to Burn; But It's Going to Rain; from WHERE YOU WERE AT NIGHT - In Search of Dignity; The Departure of the Train; Dry Point of Horses; Where You Were at Night; A Report on a Thing; A Manifesto of the City; The Conjurations of Dona Frozina; That's Where I'm Going; The Dead Man in the Sea at Urea; Silence; An Emptying; A Full Afternoon; Such Gentleness; Waters of the Sea; Soulstorm; Life au Naturel; AFTERWORD BY Alexis Levitin. . The stories in this volume were originally published in Brazilian Portuguese and included in two collections by Clarice Lispector, A Via Crucis do Corpo and Onde Estivestes de Noite, both brought out in 1974 by Editora Nova Fronteira, S. A., Rio de Janeiro. .
Born in the Ukraine in 1925, CLARICE LISPECTOR was brought up in Recife, Brazil, and then in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married, and published NEAR TO THE WILD HEART. Lispector's gifts as a novelist were early recognized, and she became one of the half-dozen irreplaceable Portuguese-language writers of this century. She died of cancer in 1977. Alexis Levitin is a professor of English at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh. His translations of Clarice Lispector's stories won the 1984 Van de Bovenkamp-Armand C. Erpf International Award, given by The Translation Center, Columbia University.
THE APPLE IN THE DARK is the first novel by Clarice Lispector to be translated into English. Miss Lispector is almost universally looked upon as one of the most important experimental prose artists of Latin America. Here she tells a story of punishment and retribution, forming it so that what the reader finally finds most important in it is her style, her insight, her poetic vision, and her unique use of evocative language. Martim, the central character of THE APPLE IN THE DARK, is an anti-hero, at once simple and complex, who runs away in the mistaken belief that he has murdered his wife. He becomes part of the vague, confused life on a remote fazenda, almost falls victim to the strong personality of his formidable lady employer there, is half-willingly seduced by her daft widowed cousin, and at last maneuvers himself into being apprehended by the law. In its creation of a whole ambiance and atmosphere, in its immediacy in conveying instant reactions and emotions, THE APPLE IN THE DARK introduces a remarkable talent to English-speaking readers.
Born in the Ukraine in 1925, CLARICE LISPECTOR was brought up in Recife, Brazil, and then in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married, and published NEAR TO THE WILD HEART. Lispector's gifts as a novelist were early recognized, and she became one of the half-dozen irreplaceable Portuguese-language writers of this century. She died of cancer in 1977.
THE FOREIGN LEGION ( A Legiao Estrangeira, 1964) is in two parts: stories and chronicles. Clarice Lispector says she retrieved the chronicles from a bottom drawer. She now offers them as shards, suggestions. They are in fact essays on Brazilian art and society, conversations, aphorisms and evocations of her world - a daybook rich in the intimate thoughts of a major writer. The stories in THE FOREIGN LEGION tell of the trials of childhood and adolescence, of motherhood, of friendship. Most of them are about power - emotional, political and spiritual power - perceived in its effects on those who possess it and those who are its subjects. They are also about love and its unexpected rewards. For Clarice Lispector a story ‘exists like an animal or plant and should be allowed to grow naturally without interference.' The scars of living as a woman in a society without political stability or adequate social structures lie exposed in her book.
Born in the Ukraine in 1925, CLARICE LISPECTOR was brought up in Recife, Brazil, and then in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married, and published NEAR TO THE WILD HEART. Lispector's gifts as a novelist were early recognized, and she became one of the half-dozen irreplaceable Portuguese-language writers of this century. She died of cancer in 1977.
Clarice Lispector said that THE HOUR OF THE STAR was made without Words. a mute photograph. a silence. a question. ' Macabea comes to Rio from the backwoods of Brazil, poor in all but illusion. The story of her brief life is told by Rodriqo S. M. , a cosmopolitan character, remote from her except in one respect: he is looking for an identity. In telling her story he recoils time after time: the hypnotic tension of THE HOUR OF THE STAR, Clarice Lispector's masterpiece, is in his pained relationship with Macabea. Macabea finds a room in the slums. A bad typist, a virgin, her favourite drink is Coca-Cola. Incompetent and inexperienced, she loves Hollywood films and looks hungrily in the mirror for proof that she, too. has a future. She is a foil for her bullying employer, her philandering boy-friend, and her workmate Gloria, who has all the attributes of body and spirit which Macabea lacks. Macabea doesn't go to pieces: she is simply emptied by her experience, ignorance and isolation. Yet she believes that glamour and a square meal await her somewhere: she is credulous, too, so that a fortune-teller, mistelling her future, provides her with a brief, ecstatic moment of transformation. The narrator peels back the prejudices of one class, one sex, about another, until in the end he stands naked before the mortality of the character he has created.
Born in the Ukraine in 1925, CLARICE LISPECTOR was brought up in Recife, Brazil, and then in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married, and published NEAR TO THE WILD HEART. Lispector's gifts as a novelist were early recognized, and she became one of the half-dozen irreplaceable Portuguese-language writers of this century. She died of cancer in 1977.
The Passion According to G.H. (A paixão segundo G.H.) is a mystical novel by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, published in 1964. The work takes the form of a monologue by a woman, identified only as G.H., telling of the crisis that ensued the previous day after she crushed a cockroach in the door of a wardrobe. Its canonical status was recognized in 1988 by its inclusion in the Arquivos Collection, the UNESCO series of critical editions of the greatest works of Latin American literature. It has been translated into English twice, the first time in 1988 by Ronald W. Sousa, and then by Idra Novey in 2012. The novel was written in a quick burst at the end of 1963, following a period of difficulty in Lispector's life. "It's strange," she remembered, "because I was in the worst of situations, sentimentally as well as in my family, everything complicated, and I wrote The Passion, which has nothing to do with that." The novel was published in the following year by Editora do Author, which was run by Lispector's friends Rubem Braga and Fernando Sabino.
Born in the Ukraine in 1925, CLARICE LISPECTOR was brought up in Recife, Brazil, and then in Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married, and published NEAR TO THE WILD HEART. Lispector's gifts as a novelist were early recognized, and she became one of the half-dozen irreplaceable Portuguese-language writers of this century. She died of cancer in 1977.
STREAM OF LIFE (Agua viva) is not calculated in mathematical fashion. It is, as Clarice constantly reminds us, a text that follows itself which lets itself be led, which takes risks with the acacias and which is not afraid to let itself go. When Clarice writes: ‘What I write you is a this,' to whom does she address herself? To the reader, to you to whom she spoke in permanence, to whom she did write this letter. The ‘this' orders, orders the reader, shows a direction, ‘Do not stop, continue'; do not stop; it is no longer she but a you, transparent, that continues; it may be the text, Then, this extraordinary sentence: ‘Look at me and love me. No: look at yourself and love yourself,' What does one hear? ‘Look at me and love me' is an imperative, an order given, an injunction spoken. One has in return: ‘No: look at yourself and love yourself.' It inscribes something that the grammar would perhaps negate, but the order has been executed, In other words: you look at me and love me, no: interruption, substitution, while you look at me and love me, in fact in the act of writing, the truth let us say, of the first sentence is in the second: ‘look at yourself and love yourself' That is to say you think you read me, hut what you do is look at yourself and love yourself Once again, there is a relay of you. It is caught in a general problematic of the not I-and there is no more humble way of saying I. But in the meantime, there has been all the work on effacing the subject I, as in The Passion According to G.H. and given the fact that there are only objects, now ‘I' is an object among objects.
CLARICE LISPECTOR (1925-1977) was one of the most significant twentieth-century Brazilian writers. Her works range from essays to novelistic fiction, short stories, and children's literature. Lispector is best known in Latin America and Europe; only recently have some of her works been translated from Portuguese into English. Other English translations include THE PASSION ACCORDING TO C. H., FAMILY TIES, AN APPRENTICESHIP OR THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS, THE APPLE IN THE DARK, and THE HOUR OF THE STAR. EARL FITZ is a professor of Portuguese, Spanish, and comparative literature at the Pennsylvania State University. He received an MA. in Spanish from the University of Iowa, an MA. in Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian literature from Queens College, and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the City University of New York, Fitz has taught at the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan, and Dickinson College. He is author of Clarice Lispector (1985) and Machado de Assis (1989) and contributes to The Luso-Brazilian Review, Hispania, World Literature Today and Comparative Literature Studies. . ELIZABETH LOWE teaches in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Florida and is currently the executive director of the Florida-Brazil Institute. She received her Ph.D. in comparative literature and Portuguese from the City University of New York and was a professor of comparative literature at Pontificia Universidad Javeniana in Bogota, Colombia, managing editor of Caribbean Review, and an assistant professor of Portuguese at Miami-Dade Community College. She is author of The City in Brazilian Literatt re (1982) and translator of Antonio Lobo Antunes's South of Nowhere (1984) and Love Stories: A Brazilian Collection (1979). Her articles and translations have appeared in Hispania, Mundus Artium, Fiction, Translation, World Literature Today, Luso-Brazilian Review, and Caribbean Review. HELENE CIXOUS, born in Algeria in 1937, is head of the Center of Research in Feminine Studies at the University of Paris VIII. Since the publication of Lajeune nEe in France in 1975, Cixous has become one of the major writers and theoreticians to come out of the French feminist intellectual movement. She received the Prix Medicis in 1969 for her first novel, Dedans. Her latest novel, Manne (about the Mandelas and Mandelstams), appeared in 1988. Many of her books have been translated into Danish, German, and English, including The Newly Born Woman (Minnesota, 1986). She has also written several plays; her two latest-one about Cambodia, the other (The Indiad) about the partition of India-were perfomed by the ThEatre du Soleil. . Originally published in Portuguese as Agua viva.
Repeatedly imprisoned for his printed attacks on the Spanish administration, Mexican journalist and publisher Jose Joaquin Fernández de Lizardi attempted, in 1816, to make an end-run around government censors by disguising his invective as serial fiction. Lizardi's experiment in subterfuge quickly failed: Spanish officials shut down publication of the novel - the first to be published in Latin America - after the third installment, and within four years Lizardi was back in jail. The whole of The Mangy Parrot (El Periquillo Sarniento) went unpublished until after Lizardi's death - and a decade after Mexico had won its independence from Spain. Though never before published in its entirety in English, The Mangy Parrot has become a Mexican classic beloved by generations of Latin American readers. Now, in vibrant American idiom, translator David Frye captures the exuberance of Lizardi's tale-telling as the author follows his narrator and alter ego, Periquillo Sarniento, through a series of misadventures that exposes the ignorance and corruption plaguing Mexican society on the eve of the wars for independence. Raw descriptions of colonial street life, candid portraits of race and ethnicity, and barely camouflaged attacks on colonial authority fill this comic masterpiece of world literature - the Don Quixote of Latin America. ‘Finally, an engaging, full-fledged rendition of the first Latin American novel ever - and still one of the savviest. Jose Joaquin Fernández de Lizardi invented Mexico . . . and David Frye shows us how.' - Ilan Stavans. ‘This new rendering into English . . . is the only complete English translation. Frye performs a delicate balancing act by fashioning language that is fresh and engaging while preserving historical flavor. The result is outstanding. Summing up: Highly recommended.' - M. S. Arrington, Jr., CHOICE. ‘With David Frye's exquisitely clear and elegant translation, the English-speaking world now can fully enjoy El Periquillo Sarniento, the 19th-century novel that rendered the swirling and messy city of Mexico into a comic work of art.' - Richard Rodriguez, author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America (Viking, 2002). ‘El Periquillo Sarniento is a classic of Mexican popular literature, well known to literary scholars as the first Latin American novel. But it has long resisted full translation into English, in part because its earthy, colloquial style and cultural allusions are sometimes difficult to understand and render into readable and vigorous English. It is the language and culture of a particular time and place. An accurate, fluent translation that preserves the literal meaning and spirit of the original without becoming obscure and tedious requires a fine way with the English language and considerable knowledge of late colonial Mexico and Mexico City. That is a tall order, and I think David Frye has performed a minor miracle in this translation. The voice of the picaresque protagonist, the juicy stories and ironies, the author's moral outrage at personal pretense, arrogance, greed, and social injustice come to life in English in ways that are remarkably faithful to the author's style, pace, and mordant wit. Here in full is Fernández de Lizardi's Mexico City of the last years of Spanish rule, rich in social types, sights, sounds, smells, and feelings. The translator's notes are . . . numerous and valuable.' - William Taylor, Professor of History, University of California at Berkeley. ‘[This translation] has . . . a vital and compelling energy to it which genuinely and flowingly reflects the tone, fluidity, mood and effects of the original. Its English prose, stylistic sense, linguistic-cultural sensitivity and vocabulary effectively transmit, without any sacrifice in readability, the shrewd combination of vernacular intimacy, chatty loquacity, moralizing solemnity, picaresque cynicism and satiric humor of Lizardi's original Spanish. The ‘translator's notes' and annotations . . . also demonstrate that this translator is. . . well-informed as to the larger cultural and historical context and era which informs this text. This translation fares well to become the authoritative English version of Lizardi's classic text.' - Roberto Marquez, Kenan Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Mt. Holyoke College. ‘This translation [is] really very good indeed. The tone is right, and Mr. Frye skillfully manages to give it the air of an early 19th-century text whilst keeping it eminently readable and light. He is obviously a gifted translator. . . . ‘The Introduction is intelligent and very helpful to an audience who needs to be led into the field, and not too cumbersome to prove heavy.' - Diana Sorensen, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, and of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
David Frye is Program Associate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and adjunct professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan. He is the translator of, among other works, Distant Palaces by Abilio EstEvez (Arcade, 2004) and the author of Indians Into Mexicans: History and Identity in a Mexican Town (University of Texas, 1996). Nancy Vogeley is Professor Emerita of Modern Languages, University of San Francisco. She is the author of Lizardi and the Birth of the Novel in Spanish America (University Press of Florida, 2001) and editor of Un manuscrito inEdito de poesías de Jose Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de MExico and University of California, Berkeley, 2003).
Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi was born in Mexico City in 1771 of poor middle class parents and educated at the college of San Ildefonso and the University of Mexico, where he studied philosophy and theology. Never distinguished as a scholar, he became one of the most important men of his age, albeit he spent a thoroughly misguided and miserable life, in perpetual rebellion against the society of his own time and the social evils of all time. Imbued with the spirit of the French Encyclopedists, he was a constantly thwarted but undefeated fighter for Mexican Independence, social reform, and the freedom of all mankind. His life and character are marked by the most human frailty, and by a moral courage unsurpassed by any man who ever lived. His writings were systematically suppressed by church and state; the politicians he supported betrayed him; he had to publish his greatest work, El Periquillo Sarniento, surreptitiously, in pamphlet form under the pseudonym of The Mexican Thinker. After a life of persecution, of struggle against censorship, excommunication, imprisonment, of futile battles against poverty and disease; of the worse strategic b1unders, the most ill-advised attacks and retreats, he lived to be cheered by own people and damned by their rulers, and to die in neglect. His memory passed for a time from men's minds; there is no trace of his grave, no monument to mark his greatness; but his book has become the most beloved classic of Latin America, and he is remembered as a great hero in the American struggle for freedom and - in the words of his translator - ‘the singular glory of Mexican literature.' Katherine Anne Porter's introduction to THE ITCHING PARROT gives a magnificent account of his unique and admirable life, and a superb estimate of his greatest work. KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, author of THE FLOWERING JUDAS and PALE HORSE, PALE RIDER, ranks as a great modern stylist and a master of the short story. A great-great-great granddaughter of Daniel Boone, she was born at Indian Creek. Texas, on May 15, 1894, and educated in Texas and Louisiana. As soon as she had learned to write, at the age of three, she began to put down stories on paper and has been doing so ever since. She has spent a great part of her life travelling and has lived in New Orleans, Chicago, Denver, Mexico City, New York, Bermuda, Berlin, Basel and Paris. This translation of THE ITCHING PARROT was begun in Mexico and finished in Basel. During the time she lived in Mexico, Miss Porter acquired a profound knowledge of the colonial history of Mexico and of the life of Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi, and her translation of his greatest work is not only a literary achievement of the highest merit but a work of impeccable scholarship. In addition to having written some of the finest short stories in the English language, she is a student of the life of Joan of Arc and medieval France, of the theocratic state in Massachusetts, and the life of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Her stories have been translated into several languages and her reputation as a writer is international. Miss Porter at present makes her home near Saratoga Springs. New York, where she devotes her time to writing and to her farm, situated near the historic battlefield of Saratoga where one of her ancestors helped to defeat ‘Gentleman Johnny' Burgoyne during the American Revolution.
Jose Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (November 15, 1776 - June 21, 1827), Mexican writer and political journalist, best known as the author of El Periquillo Sarniento (1816), translated as The Mangy Parrot in English, reputed to be the first novel written in Latin America. Lizardi, as he is generally known, was born in Mexico City when it was still the capital of the colonial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. His father was a physician employed in and around Mexico City, who for a time supplemented the family income by writing. Likewise, his mother came from a family of modest but "decent" means; her own father had been a bookseller in the nearby city of Puebla. The death of Lizardi's father after a short illness in 1798 forced the young man to leave his studies in the Colegio de San Ildefonso and enter the civil service as a minor magistrate in the Taxco-Acapulco region. He married in Taxco in 1805. The necessity of providing for a growing family led Lizardi to supplement his meager income as his father had, by writing. He began his literary career in 1808 by publishing a poem in honor of Ferdinand VII of Spain. Though Ferdinand VII later became a target of nationalist rage among pro-independence Mexicans because of his tendency toward despotism, his politics were still unknown in 1808, the year of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. With Napoleon's brother-in-law usurping the Spanish throne and the legitimate king in exile, raising a public voice in his favor was a patriotic stance for a Mexican intellectual, and in line with Lizardi's later proto-nationalist views. At the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence in November 1810, Morelos's insurgent forces fought their way into Taxco where Lizardi was heading the local government as acting Subdelegado (the highest provincial government position in the colonial system). After an initial insurgent victory, Lizardi tried to play both sides: he turned over the city's armory to the insurgents, but he also informed the vice-royalty of rebel movements. Judged in the context of his later writings, these actions do not appear hypocritical. Lizardi was always supportive of the intellectual aims and reformist politics of the insurgents, but was equally opposed to war and bloodshed. By peacefully capitulating Taxco to the insurgents, he aimed to avoid loss of life in the city then under his command. Following the royalist recapture of Taxco in January 1811, Lizardi was taken prisoner as a rebel sympathizer and sent with the other prisoners of war to Mexico City. There he appealed successfully to the viceroy, arguing that he had acted only to protect Taxco and its citizens from harm. Lizardi was now free and living in Mexico City, but he had lost his job and his possessions. He turned now to full-time writing and publishing to support his family, publishing more than twenty lightly satirical poems in broadsheets and pamphlets in the course of the year. After a limited freedom of the press was declared in Mexico on October 5, 1812 (see Spanish Constitution of 1812), Lizardi quickly organized one of the first non-governmental newspapers in the country. The first issue of his El Pensador Mexicano ("The Mexican Thinker," a title he adopted as his own pseudonym) came out on October 9, just four days after press freedom was allowed. In his journalism, Lizardi turned from the light social criticism of his earlier broadsheets to direct commentary on the political problems of the day, attacking the autocratic tendencies of the viceregal government and supporting the liberal aspirations represented by the Cortes in Spain. His articles show the influence of Enlightenment ideas derived from clandestine readings of forbidden books by Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, a hazardous route to take in those hopeful but uncertain times. In the ninth issue of El Pensador Mexicano (December 1812), Lizardi attacked viceroy Francisco Javier Venegas directly, resulting in his arrest. He continued to issue the paper from his jail cell, but he dismayed pro-independence readers by suppressing his sympathies for the insurgents and muting critiques of the system that had imprisoned him. When a new viceroy, FElix María Calleja, was named in March 1813, Lizardi lavished praise on him; the viceroy responded by freeing Lizardi after seven months of jail. Lizardi continued to write and publish his periodicals after his release, but increased attention from royalist censors and the Inquisition muted his critical tone. When victory over Napoleon in Europe led to the reestablishment of an authoritarian monarchy, the overthrow of the Spanish Cádiz Cortes, and the abrogation of freedom of the press in 1814, Lizardi turned from journalism to literature as a means of expressing his social criticism. This social and political conjuncture led to Lizardi's writing and publication of El Periquillo Sarniento, which is commonly recognized as the first novel by a Mexican and the first Latin American novel. Though it is a novel in form and scope, El Periquillo Sarniento resembled Lizardi's periodicals in several ways: he printed and sold it in weekly chapter installments throughout 1816; he wove extensive commentary on the political and moral climate of Mexico into the narration; and, like his periodicals, the novel was eventually halted by censorship. The first three volumes slipped past the censor, as Lizardi had hoped they would in their fictionalized guise, but Lizardi's direct attack on the institution of slavery (in the form called Asiento) in the fourth volume was enough to have the publication stopped. The final sixteen chapters of El Periquillo were only published in 1830 - 1831, after Lizardi's death and a decade following Mexican independence. Lizardi's other works of fiction also appeared by installments during the years of renewed royalist repression that lasted until 1820: Fábulas (collection of fables, 1817), Noches tristes (novel, 1818), La Quijotita y su prima (novel, 1818–1819) and Don Catrín de la Fachenda (completed 1820, published 1832). With the re-establishment of the liberal Spanish constitution in 1820, Lizardi returned to journalism, only to be attacked, imprisoned, and censored again by a changing roster of political enemies. Royalists repressed him until the independence of Mexico in 1821; centralists opposed to his federalist leanings attacked him after independence; throughout, he suffered attacks by the Catholic hierarchy, opposed to his Masonic leanings. Lizardi died of tuberculosis in 1827 at the age of 50. Because of his family's extreme poverty he was buried in an anonymous grave, without the epitaph he had hoped would be engraved on his tombstone: "Here lie the ashes of the Mexican Thinker, who did the best he could for his country." It is unfortunate that today Lizardi is remembered primarily by educators, teachers, university students, and government officials in Latin America, reflecting a possible deterioration of quality education in the region.
A lyrical, powerful debut novel about a family of Afro - Puerto Rican women spanning five generations, detailing their physical and spiritual journey from the Old World to the New. It is the mid-1800s. Fela, taken from Africa, is working at her second sugar plantation in colonial Puerto Rico, where her mistress is only too happy to benefit from her impressive embroidery skills. But Fela has a secret. Before she and her husband were separated and sold into slavery, they performed a tribal ceremony in which they poured the essence of their unborn child into a very special stone. Fela keeps the stone with her, waiting for the chance to finish what she started. When the plantation owner approaches her, Fela sees a better opportunity for her child, and allows the man to act out his desire. Such is the beginning of a line of daughters connected by their intense love for one another, and the stories of a lost land. Mati, a powerful healer and noted craftswoman, is grounded in a life that is disappearing in a quickly changing world. Concha, unsure of her place, doesn't realize the price she will pay for rejecting her past. Elena, modern and educated, tries to navigate between two cultures, moving to the United States, where she struggles to keep her family together. Carisa turns to the past for wisdom and strength when her life in New York falls apart. The stone becomes meaningful to each of the women, pulling them through times of crisis. Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa shows great skill and warmth in the telling of this heartbreaking, inspirational story about mothers and daughters, and the ways in which they hurt and save one another.
Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City. She taught in the New York City school system before becoming a young-adult librarian. Dahlma has won the Bronx Council on the Arts ACE and BRIO awards, as well as a Literary Arts Fellowship. This is her first novel. She lives in the Bronx.
From the Introduction by ISAAC GOLDBERG - Monteiro Lobato is not so much a teller of stories as he is a critic of men. The three tales by which he is represented in this booklet come from his "UrupEs" ; they exhibit him at his favorite pursuit of caricaturing his fellow men, of deriding their political foibles, their personal weakness, their social shortcomings. "Modern Torture" would not have shamed Mark Twain. It is not so intimately Brazilian that it cannot apply, with little alteration, to wardheelers in the United States. "The Penitent Wag" is an experiment in the macabre that also serves as a piece of social criticism. "The Plantation Buyer" is just as comical in the United States of America as in the United States of Brazil… It is not the least of Lobato's virtues, that his intellectual revolt seeks practical outlet. He means his blue-prints to be, some day, inspiring temples. And he is one of the finest social architects of contemporary Brazil."
Jose Bento Monteiro Lobato, (born April 18, 1882, Taubate, Brazil - died July 4, 1948, São Paulo), writer and publisher, forerunner of the Modernist movement in Brazilian literature. Originally a lawyer and coffee planter in the interior of São Paulo state, Monteiro Lobato wrote an unpretentious letter to a São Paulo newspaper, describing the droughts and brushfires in the interior. The editor asked for more articles and Lobato replied with the sketches and short stories, later collected in his book Urupês (1918; Mushrooms). In these he introduced the character Jeca Tatu (Joe Armadillo), who became the symbol of the Brazilian backlander. Poor Jeca Tatu, Lobato comments. You are so handsome in novels and so ugly in real life! You don't talk; you don't sing; you don't love. A man of action, Monteiro Lobato moved to São Paulo, founded the literary review Revista do Brasil and a publishing house, and gathered around him a circle of new literary talents. Critical and rebellious, he was in and out of prison and exile many times. He also wrote children's books enjoyed equally well by adults.
Sr. Lopez Portillo has written two richly mythic, imaginative works- Don Q and Quetzalcoatl. DON Q is a fictional ‘memoir' narrated by a young lawyer named Pepe Seco of things told to him by the mysterious philosopher Don Q. But the reader soon discovers that Don 0's memoirs are actually a series of meditations on the human condition and the fate of man. Don Q is variously identified as the cousin of Antoine de Saint-ExupEry, later as a nephew of either Antonio Machado or Miguel de Unamuno. It is also possible that he is Don Quixote, or the god-man Quetzalcoatl. Lopez Portillo's work blends such varied moods as those reminiscent of authors as diverse as Cervantes, Montaigne, or Borges. Of Quetzalcoatl, Octavio Paz has written that no one will ever understand the Spanish conquest of Mexico without first understanding the legend of this ‘white god-man.' This re-telling of the Ouetzalcoatl legend synthesizes not only the teaching of this most benevolent of Mexican deities but also the legends and teachings of all great religious leaders, from Gautama to Christ. And from Lopez Portillo's account we come to a realization of how the Spanish Conquistadores were able to brutally enslave an entire nation while the Indians, who thought the invasion to be the promised Second Coming of their white god-king, made no attempt to defend themselves until it was too late. . Jose Lopez Portillo, president-elect of Mexico, stands in the great tradition of AndrE Malraux, Benjamin Disraeli, and ‘Winston Churchill: a great political leader who is also a man of letters.
Jose Guillermo Abel Lopez Portillo y Pacheco (June 16, 1920 - February 17, 2004) was a Mexican lawyer and, politician affiliated with Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who served as the 51st President of Mexico from 1976 to 1982.
Sr. Lopez Portillo has written two richly mythic, imaginative works-QUETZALCOATL and DON Q (also published by the Seabury Press). Of QUETZALCOATL, Octavio Paz has written that no one will ever understand the Spanish conquest of Mexico without first understanding the legend of this ‘white god-man.' When the Indians discover Quetzalcoatl washed up upon the beach, they believe him to be a Plumed Serpent (a symbolism central also to D. H. Lawrence's great novel). Quetzalcoatl is proclaimed god of the Anahuac nation and takes as his symbol the cross. He teaches the Indians how to develop their rich natural resources; he teaches them also about sin and redemption, but secretly they continue to worship their serpent idol. Finally, when the nation is irretrievably divided over the marriage of his daughter to an Indian from a savage tribe, Quetzalcoatl realizes there is nothing more he can do for his people, and that he-must return to the sea. In a powerful passage, he foretells the arrival of the Spanish and the subsequent conquest of Mexico, and sails off with his cross promising some day to return. This re-telling of the Quetzalcoatl legend synthesizes not only the teaching of this most benevolent of Mexican deities but also the legends and teachings of all great religious leaders, from Gautama to Christ. And from Lopez Portillo's account we come to a realization of how the Spanish Conquistadores were able to brutally enslave an entire nation while the Indians, who thought the invasion to be the promised Second Coming of their white god-king, made no attempt to defend themselves until it was too late. . Jose Lopez Portillo, president-elect of Mexico, stands in the great tradition of AndrE Malraux, Benjamin Disraeli, and Winston Churchill: a great political leader who is also a man of letters.
Jose Guillermo Abel Lopez Portillo y Pacheco (June 16, 1920 - February 17, 2004) was a Mexican lawyer and, politician affiliated with Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who served as the 51st President of Mexico from 1976 to 1982.
Writing from Mexico in The New York Times Book Review, Verna Carleton Millan says, ‘Few events in recent years have caused quite so much excitement here as award of the first National Prize of Literature to Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes for his rich and sensitive novel EL INDIO . . . His every word is impregnated with the rich, warm color of the tropics and, indeed, he is at his best when, as in EL INDIO, he seems to relive the scenes and impressions so deeply engraved upon his childhood imagination. The result is a firm, substantial novel of the soil, one that might be compared to Knut Hamsun, so closely allied is peasant life and its problems throughout the world.' EL INDIO is considered one of the most important books to have come from Mexico in recent years, and the publishers were fortunate in obtaining Anita Brenner as the translator, whose name gives ample guarantee that the English version is worthy of the original. She is recognized as one of this country's foremost authorities on Mexico. Of EL INDIO Miss Brenner writes: ‘This is an extraordinary book. I was prepared for an exciting, picturesque, colorful story, of a piece with the other work by the same author that I had read. It turns out to be head and shoulders above that, a good story but much more, a very real, truthful and moving one. I had the sense of the most complete and utter reality. The atmosphere is a combination of strangeness, primitive beauty, poverty, helplessness, and a great stoic dignity. What enchanted me was the speed and simplicity with which the story moves. I can't think of any book about Mexico or any other country to compare it to.'
Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes (November 17, 1897 - December 10, 1966) was a Mexican novelist, poet, and journalist. He was one of the leading chroniclers of the Mexican Revolution. Lopez y Fuentes was born in a ranch called "El Mommy" in the Huasteca region of Veracruz in 1895. He started writing at the age of 15, when the Mexican Revolution began. Many of his books are related to the civil conflict. Later on he became a teacher of literature at a school in Mexico City. In 1921 he began writing for the El Universal often under the Tulio F. Peseenz pseudonym. His stories were seen as exciting, humorous, and symbolic of Mexico. A realist, many of his works concerned the oppression of Native Americans. He was a contemporary of Mariano Azuela and Martín Luis Guzmán. He has written many books including La siringa de cristal (1914), Claros de selva (1921), El vagabundo (1922), El alma del poblacho (1924), Campamento (1931), Tierra (1932), ¡Mi general! (1934), El Indio (1935), Arrieros (1937), Huasteca (1939), Una Carta a Dios (1940) and many more. He was awarded the National Prize of Arts and Sciences in 1935.
The body of the dead boy lies in a coffin at the center of the living room. The air in the room is heavy with the reek of death, candles, flowers, and suffering bodies. The mother, a former concert pianist, absently caresses an imaginary keyboards shrinks from the embraces of the mourners. The father paces the room angrily. Upstairs the dead boy's twin sister lies naked, grieving, folded upon herself like a penknife or an oyster. And in the closed room at the end of the upstairs hallway lies Ella, once a beautiful girl but for many years a shapeless mound of tormented flesh, half alive and half dead. The first work by the Brazilian novelist, poet, and critic Lya Luft to be translated into English, THE ISLAND OF THE DEAD is the story of a household cloistered from the outside world, of a family racked by longing for love and fear of their own perverse passions, by a desire for death, for the afterlife, and terror at the thought of bodily decay. As they contemplate the beautiful corpse in the living room and the repulsive accretion of flesh in the closed room upstairs, the members of the family consider their own pasts and dreams, and their ultimate fates. The grandmother and her sister think of daily duties and of happier times, the twin weeps at the loss of her stronger half, the father sees his life at an end, and the mother thinks of the painting at the stairs' landing. The painting is a reproduction of Bocklin's ‘The Island of the Dead.' It shows a shrouded figure piloting a small boat toward an island, watching over the coffin that is her cargo. The island, still and darkly lustrous, suggests an alluring death, an alluring existence free from the vulgarity of daily life and from the en- slaving demands of the flesh. Sensual and mysterious, the painting seems to promise a life of eternal beauty, an escape from the horror that lies, festering, in the closed room.
LYA LUFT (born September 15, 1938) has published three volumes of poetry, a collection of essays, and four novels. THE ISLAND OF THE DEAD was originally published in Brazil in 1984 as 0 Quarto Fechado (The Closed Room), and it went on to become a bestseller in that country. As a translator, Luft has rendered into Portuguese works by authors including Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Günter Grass, and Norman Mailer. Carmen Chaves McClendon is an associate professor of romance languages at the University of Georgia and the author of critical studies of Lya Luft, Autran Dorado, and other contemporary Brazilian authors. Betty Jean Craige is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Georgia, the author of studies of Federico Garcia Lorca and literary relativity, and the translator of poetry by Antonio Machado and Gabriel Celaya.
The work of Leopoldo Lugones, Argentina's best-known writer during his lifetime, spans many literary styles and ideological positions. He was influential as a modernist poet, as a precursor of the avant-garde, and also as the poet of Argentine nature. His short stories (Las fuerzas extranas [Strange Forces], 1906) were early examples of the fantastic in Latin American fiction and influenced Borges, Quiroga, and others. His characters, often scientists and doctors experimenting in the transmutation of thought, reflect his interest in the uncanny and inspired contemporary interest in animism and occultism. His prose works include La guerra gaucha (1905) and the essay El payador (1916) in which he idealized the gaucho as a heroic figure, popular poet, and symbol of Argentine identity. Lugones altered his political views many times, adopting radical anarchism and, later in life, fascism. He was therefore a controversial figure, both acclaimed and scorned by his contemporaries. His adherence to the importance of literary form drew criticism from the new generation of writers, such as Borges, but Borges later stated in 1955 that ‘Lugones was and continues to be the greatest Argentine writer.'
Leopoldo Lugones Argüello (13 June 1874 - 18 February 1938) was an Argentine writer and journalist. Born in Villa de María del Río Seco, a city in Cordoba Province, in Argentina's Catholic heartland, Lugones belonged to a family of landed gentry. He was the firstborn son of Santiago M. Lugones and Custodia Argüello. His father, son of Pedro Nolasco Lugones, was returning from the city of Buenos Aires to Santiago del Estero when he met Custodia Argüello while stopping in Villa de María, a locality that was at that time disputed territory between the provinces of Santiago del Estero and Cordoba. It was his mother who gave young Leopoldo his first lessons and was responsible for his strict Catholic upbringing. When Lugones was six years old and following the birth of a second child, the family moved to the city of Santiago del Estero and later to Ojo de Agua, a small town situated in the south of the province of Santiago del Estero close to the border with Cordoba, where the poet's two younger brothers were born: Ramon Miguel Lugones (1880, Santiago del Estero), and the youngest of the four children, Carlos Florencio Lugones (1885, Ojo de Agua). Later his parents sent him to study at the Colegio Nacional de Monserrat, in Cordoba, where his maternal grandmother lived. In 1892 the family would move to that city, at the time when Lugones was beginning his forays into the fields of journalism and literature. He first worked for La Montaña, a newspaper, and was in favour with the aristocratic Manuel Quintana, a candidate to become a president of Argentina. This brought him first to Buenos Aires in 1896, where his literary talent developed quickly. That year, he married Juana Agudelo, from whom he had a son, Leopoldo Polo Lugones, who would become the notorious chief of the Federal Police during the dictatorship of Jose FElix Uriburu. In 1899, he became an active Freemason. Lugones was the leading Argentine exponent of the Latin American literary current known as Modernismo. This was a form of Parnassianism influenced by Symbolism. He was also the author of the incredibly dense and rich historical novel La Guerra Gaucha (1905). He was an impassioned journalist, polemicist and public speaker who at first was a Socialist, later a conservative/traditionalist and finally a supporter of Fascism and as such an inspiration for a group of rightist intellectuals such as Juan Carulla and Rodolfo Irazusta. Leopoldo Lugones went to Europe in 1906, 1911, 1913 and in 1930, in which latter year he supported the coup d'Etat against the aging Radical party president, Hipolito Yrigoyen. On February 18, 1938, the despairing and disillusioned Lugones committed suicide by taking a mixture of whisky and cyanide while staying at the river resort of El Tigre in Buenos Aires. Political frustration has been the most widely cited cause of his suicide. Nevertheless, recent publications in Argentina have shed light on another possible motivation: Lugones was very enamored of a girl he met at one of his lectures in the university. He maintained a passionate and emotional relationship with her until, discovered and pressured by his son, he was forced to leave her, causing in him a depressive decline that would end his life. His descendants have had similarly tragic fates. It is believed that his son Polo, the chief of police during Uriburu's dictatorship, was the creator of the picana and the one who introduced it as a method of torture. Polo Lugones committed suicide in 1971. Polo's younger daughter, Susana Pirí Lugones, was detained and disappeared in December 1978 as a victim of the Dirty War. His older daughter, Carmen, whom he called Babú, is still alive. One of Pirí's sons, Alejandro, committed suicide, like his great-grandfather, in Tigre. This comprises Lugones' tragic familial fate, curiously similar to that of Horacio Quiroga's, himself a friend and admirer of Leopoldo Lugones. Editor and translator Gwen Kirkpatrick is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Literature at Georgetown University. Sergio Waisman is Associate Professor of Spanish at The George Washington University.
Originally published in 1906, the fantastic tales of Strange Forces make a significant contribution to Gaslight Era science fiction. Considered one of the major Latin American writers of this century, Leopoldo Lugones was an influential cultural and literary figure in Argentina who published more than thirty-five volumes ranging from novels to political commentary. "This collection of short stories . . . still captivates readers nearly 100 years later. Lugones, regarded by many critics as a worthy heir to Wells and Poe, shows his mastery of the macabre and grotesque by relating tales of terror in his distinctively florid style. . . . Wonderfully literate and just plain creepy, this collection will make a worthy addition to any library." -Booklist. "A tantalizing collection of 12 brief stories by [an] Argentinean fiction writer and poet (1874-1938) whose baroque style and fixation on 'paranormal' experiences and phenomena link him with such distinctive kindred spirits as Poe, Avram Davidson, Uruguayan surrealist Horacio Quiroga, and H.P. Lovecraft. As in the latter's horror tales, Lugones's . . . scientists and visionaries. . . pay a steep price for dabbling in arcane mysteries better left unsolved. . . . Translator Alter-Gilbert's affectionate foreword assures us that many more of Lugones 's stories remain to be translated- Readers of this highly entertaining volume will await them eagerly." - Kirkus Reviews.\
Leopoldo Lugones Argüello (13 June 1874 - 18 February 1938) was an Argentine writer and journalist. Born in Villa de María del Río Seco, a city in Cordoba Province, in Argentina's Catholic heartland, Lugones belonged to a family of landed gentry. He was the firstborn son of Santiago M. Lugones and Custodia Argüello. His father, son of Pedro Nolasco Lugones, was returning from the city of Buenos Aires to Santiago del Estero when he met Custodia Argüello while stopping in Villa de María, a locality that was at that time disputed territory between the provinces of Santiago del Estero and Cordoba. It was his mother who gave young Leopoldo his first lessons and was responsible for his strict Catholic upbringing. When Lugones was six years old and following the birth of a second child, the family moved to the city of Santiago del Estero and later to Ojo de Agua, a small town situated in the south of the province of Santiago del Estero close to the border with Cordoba, where the poet's two younger brothers were born: Ramon Miguel Lugones (1880, Santiago del Estero), and the youngest of the four children, Carlos Florencio Lugones (1885, Ojo de Agua). Later his parents sent him to study at the Colegio Nacional de Monserrat, in Cordoba, where his maternal grandmother lived. In 1892 the family would move to that city, at the time when Lugones was beginning his forays into the fields of journalism and literature. He first worked for La Montaña, a newspaper, and was in favour with the aristocratic Manuel Quintana, a candidate to become a president of Argentina. This brought him first to Buenos Aires in 1896, where his literary talent developed quickly. That year, he married Juana Agudelo, from whom he had a son, Leopoldo Polo Lugones, who would become the notorious chief of the Federal Police during the dictatorship of Jose FElix Uriburu. In 1899, he became an active Freemason. Lugones was the leading Argentine exponent of the Latin American literary current known as Modernismo. This was a form of Parnassianism influenced by Symbolism. He was also the author of the incredibly dense and rich historical novel La Guerra Gaucha (1905). He was an impassioned journalist, polemicist and public speaker who at first was a Socialist, later a conservative/traditionalist and finally a supporter of Fascism and as such an inspiration for a group of rightist intellectuals such as Juan Carulla and Rodolfo Irazusta. Leopoldo Lugones went to Europe in 1906, 1911, 1913 and in 1930, in which latter year he supported the coup d'Etat against the aging Radical party president, Hipolito Yrigoyen. On February 18, 1938, the despairing and disillusioned Lugones committed suicide by taking a mixture of whisky and cyanide while staying at the river resort of El Tigre in Buenos Aires. Political frustration has been the most widely cited cause of his suicide. Nevertheless, recent publications in Argentina have shed light on another possible motivation: Lugones was very enamored of a girl he met at one of his lectures in the university. He maintained a passionate and emotional relationship with her until, discovered and pressured by his son, he was forced to leave her, causing in him a depressive decline that would end his life. His descendants have had similarly tragic fates. It is believed that his son Polo, the chief of police during Uriburu's dictatorship, was the creator of the picana and the one who introduced it as a method of torture. Polo Lugones committed suicide in 1971. Polo's younger daughter, Susana Pirí Lugones, was detained and disappeared in December 1978 as a victim of the Dirty War. His older daughter, Carmen, whom he called Babú, is still alive. One of Pirí's sons, Alejandro, committed suicide, like his great-grandfather, in Tigre. This comprises Lugones' tragic familial fate, curiously similar to that of Horacio Quiroga's, himself a friend and admirer of Leopoldo Lugones. Gilbert Alter-Gilbert is a critic, translator, and literary historian whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals. He is the editor of such anthologies as Life and Limb: Selected Tales of Peril, Predicament, and Dire Distress and the translator of Miguel Angel Asturias ' The Mirror of Lida Sal (Latin Literary Review Press, 1997). Among his other endeavors is a continuing stream of visual arts commentary for various publications around the country.
While it is commonly acknowledged that the literature of Latin America, and in particular its narrative, is among the most important new literatures of the second half of the twentieth century, little has been done to ascertain its basic identity. Now, in a series of concise and eloquent essays on the narratives of twelve Latin American writers, Alfred J. Mac Adam attempts to identify common elements unifying this literature beyond its mere geography. Focusing on writings by Machado de Assis, Adolfo Bioy Cesares, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and Jose Donoso, among others, Mac Adam persuasively develops the controversial thesis that satire, not the novel, is the dominant form of the Latin American narrative. ‘Mac Adam's study has absorbed my attention and stimulated my thinking. It is a brilliant exposition of narrative theory and an illuminating interpretation of these novels.' - Peter G. Earle, University of Pennsylvania . . . ‘Mac Adam's study, or essay as he calls it, has a sharp edge. Into what he himself implies is a welter of unthinking commentary on Latin-American literature, it brings a welcome rigour, a striking independence of mind.' - Gordon Brotherston, Times Higher Education Supplement . . . ‘Mac Adam's work will undoubtedly produce if not a new criticism at least a revitalization of our approach to the anatomy of fiction.' John Walker, Queen's Quarterly.
Alfred MacAdam, Professor of Spanish, joined the faculty of Barnard in 1983. In addition to his teaching duties for and being co-chair of Barnard's Department of Spanish and Latin American Cultures, he is affiliated with the programs in Comparative Literature and Human Rights Studies. He previously taught at the University of Virginia, Yale University, and Princeton University. Professor MacAdam's area of specialization is twentieth-century Latin-American narrative, a subject on which he has published three books and numerous articles. He is also a translator of Latin-American fiction and has translated novels by Reinaldo Arenas, Alejo Carpentier, Jose Donoso, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Osvaldo Soriano. From 1984 to 2004, MacAdam was the editor of Review: Latin American Literature and Arts, a publication of the Americas Society. This biannual magazine presents work by Latin-American writers not yet known to English-speaking audiences as well as unknown texts by already established writers.
A man with the luck to be born at the right moment and the temerity to make promises he has little likelihood -and no intention-of carrying out, may rise to dazzling heights in a surprisingly short time. Sunburst is the story of such a one who pursued this dizzy path to fame and power in revolutionary Mexico, and of the strange events and violent deeds that punctuated his journey. Saturnino Herrera is his name; but the country people called him ‘Little Coyote,' and the reader will detect in him echoes of other notorious figures known in real life. Nothing like this book has been published before in English. The atmosphere of the small Mexican village, sleepy on the surface and beneath tense to the point of explosion, will be strange and fascinating to most readers. In it, for the first time, the silent, anonymous men of Mexico, the Indians, appear as understandable human beings. Sunburst is realistic-indeed, the author calls it ‘brutally honest'-but there is a natural poetry in the story that gives it solemnity and stature. Critics will doubtless compare Sunburst to Silone's FONTAMARA; others, because it deals with uprooted country people, will discover it as the Mexican GRAPES OF WRATH. It has much in common with these books, but it is the work of a fresh and original writer, who draws his material from the land of his roots and his story from his own vigorous imagination. Diego Rivera has called Sunburst ‘the best Mexican novel,' and many influential critics in Mexico rank it similarly as the leader in Mexico's contemporary literature. It will introduce to readers of English a sturdy and lasting new literary talent.
Mauricio Magdaleno (13 May 1906 Zacatecas, Mexico - 30 June 1986 Mexico City, Mexico) was born in a small Mexican town, and as a child lived through the years of revolution and civil war, when guerrilla bands and warring troops swept through the land. He studied at the University of Mexico, leaving Law School to wander through the country as a newspaper reporter. As a creative writer, he became interested first in the theater, and wrote three plays that were produced in Mexico City. He then traveled in Europe, spending two years in Spain, and receiving while there the Teatro Espanol's Latin American prize for two of his plays. On his return to Mexico, Magdaleno turned to the writing of novels, publishing five; he also tried his hand at biography and produced several volumes of essays and opinions. Throughout all this time, he was a working journalist for several large Mexican and Spanish dailies, and he was also a writer-producer for the movies. He put out the first Mexican picture to star Dolores del Rio. Among his countrymen, SUNBURST is considered his best and most interesting novel.
In the crowded slum-quarter of Paula Mattos hill, high above The city of Rio de Janeiro - a quarter once fashionable, now in Full decay - lived the household of Seu (Senhor) Chico Marianni. a hard-working tailor. There were Chico himself and his wife, Doña Josefa, and his four daughters and his four sons, and his eight apprentices, and Luiza the mulatto maid, and Sa.(Senhora) Virginia, the tiny old negro woman on whom Josefa had taken pity. The huge, semi-ruinous mansion which housed this considerable company, was a microcosm of the swarming life of the Paula Mattos quarter. Senhor Magno's long novel is on the one hand a loving and sympathetic picture of the struggles, ideals and sorrows of the valiant little Chico, of his wife, of his so varied offspring and dependents, on the other a brilliant and impressive portrait of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The Mariannis, as they grow older, range Rio from the ant-heap of Paula Mattos, where is their home, to the glittering m~ meets, the opera house and theatres, cafEs of every grade, the red-light district and the docks. Never before in English fiction has so authentic and vivid a description of Rio and its people been presented. The power and stately ceremonial of the Church; the schools with their examinations and sudden feuds and eager, adolescent friendships; passionate interest, even of poor folk, in music and drama, and poetry; the blinding sunshine, the sudden velvet darkness, the fabulous flowers and foliage - every aspect of the great city, whose traditions of feudal dignity are overridden but not smothered by a dynamic modernity, has its place in this colourful panorama. .
PASCHOAL CARLOS MAGNO, a Brazilian now attached to the Embassy in London, wrote this novel in English. He is already well known in his native land as a poet and a playwright but this is his first fiction, and it appears suitably at the moment when an Anglo-Brazilian alliance has drawn our two countries together, and when we are beginning to realize how vital to the future peace and prosperity of the world will be the vast energies and possibilities of the greatest of the South American nations.
‘One day you're going to ask me, ‘Mama, do you remember that trip to Salto?' and I don't want such questions to go unanswered . . . ‘What happens on that trip to Salto opens this narrative by Uruguayan writer and poet Circe Maia. It begins with a mother and her young daughter desperately trying to catch an overnight train to Salto that they hope carries their husband and father, a physician and a political prisoner who is traveling to the Salto prison, accompanied by military guards after being interrogated in Montevideo. Their ensuing trip reveals the effect of a totalitarian regime on families and social relationships.' ‘The tale of their journey is followed by a series of diary entries written by the mother between 1972 and 1974. The diary complements the opening account as each entry chronicles the family's struggle to cope with daily life under prolonged separation, fear, and uncertainty. The diarist questions how one's sense of community and love for country change when basic human rights can no longer be taken for granted.' A TRIP TO SALTO ultimately provides an intimate glimpse into Uruguayan history while it explores the deeper truths about an individual's capacity to resist, adapt, and hope. Presented for the first time in English translation with the original Spanish on facing pages in this bilingual edition.
Circe Maia is a Uruguayan poet, essayist, translator, and teacher of philosophy. She is the author of eleven poetry collections including Superficies, Breve Sol and Dualidades. She has received the Medalla Delmira Agustini, 2013; the Premio BartolomE Hidalgo, 2010; and the Premio Nacional de Poesía de Uruguay, 2007. Jesse Lee Kercheval is a poet, novelist, and translator. She is the author of 13 books including the poetry collections Extranjera and Dog Angel and editor of AmErica invertida: an anthology of younger Uruguayan poets. She is the Zona Gale Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This volume contains three novels and four shorter pieces of fiction by the distinguished Argentine writer Eduardo Mallea. The novels are FIESTA IN NOVEMBER, ALL GREEN SHALL PERISH, and CHAVES; the novellas and stories are ‘Anguish,' ‘The Lost Cause of Jacob Uber,' ‘The Heart's Reason,' and ‘The Shoes.' Each is of surpassing interest in itself; together, the seven stories present a panoramic view of Mallea's writing over a period of more than three decades. In his Introduction to this book, John B. Hughes says: ‘Mallea's fundamental concern as a writer and the core of his art are based upon man's conflict with himself, his inner drama'; what he has called in a recent essay ‘the inner war.' This is extended from within the individual to man's conflict with nature and society, the battle of the sexes, and the writer's struggle for meaning and expression. Baldly stated, the effort to communicate, to go beyond oneself, to love, is committed to a ‘losing' battle with spiritual isolation and stagnation, man's capacity for self-destruction and the destruction of others in an ‘alien' and corrosive world. ‘Like their creator, the central characters of Mallea's fiction struggle with all the means at their disposal to transcend their ‘fate': themselves. In each, hope is pitted against despair, life against death, ‘immanent charity' against ‘betrayal.' The final outcome is never really in doubt. Sooner or later, ‘they,' and by implication ‘we,' are all ‘losers.' Individual ‘losses' along the way may be large or small but they are nonetheless ‘losses.' ‘Victories' are won at great cost, are in some obscure way defeats. Mallea's characters are alive to the extent that they are aware of their plight and struggle against it. Above all, they are alive to the extent that they are capable of suffering. The capacity to suffer as men and women is equated with authenticity and, as such, emerges as the supreme human value in Mallea's art. ‘This is a grim ‘truth' for a writer to confront honestly, hopefully, and with compassion-in the best sense, naïvely-over a period of forty years. But this is precisely what Mallea has done since the publication of his first book of stories in 1926 through the more than thirty volumes-novels, essays, plays, stories, and novellas-which go to make up his published works thus far. It is this specific moral-esthetic commitment which makes him unique in Argentina and in contemporary Latin American literature.' . FIESTA IN NOVEMBER was first published in Spanish, under the title Fiesta en Noviembre, by Club del Libra A.L.A., Buenos Aires, in 1938. It was later published in Spanish by Losada, Buenos Aires, in 1944 and again in 1949. It first appeared in English in an anthology entitled Fiesta in November, published by Houghton Muffin Company in 1942. It was later included in the anthology The World's Best, published by The Dial Press in 1950. ALL GREEN SHALL PERISH was first published in Spanish, under the title Todo Verdor Perecera, by Espasa-Calpe, Buenos Aires, in 1941, and reissued by them in 1945 and 1951. It was published by Agullar, Madrid, in 1952. A Brazilian edition was published in Portuguese by Editôra O Globo, Pôrto Alegre, in 1949; an Italian edition, by Bompiani, Milan, in 1956; and a German edition, by Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich, in 1964. CHAVES was first published in Spanish by Losada, Buenos Aires, in 1953. A French edition was published by Librairie Gallimard in 1964. ANGUISH was first published in Spanish as La angustia, in the magazine La Revista de Occidente, numbers CXXX and CXXXI. It then appeared in La ciudad junta al rio inmovil, a collection of short stories by Mallea published by Sur, Bucnos Aires, in 1936. This volume was published again by Anaconda, Buenos Aires, in 1934, and by Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, in 1954. THE LOST CAUSE OF JACOB UBER was first published in Spanish as La causa perdida de Jacobe Uber in La ciudad junto al rio inmovil. It also appeared in the volume Todo Verdor Perecera. It was first published in English in the Kenyon Review Vol. 6, No. 4, Autumn 1944. THE HEART'S REASON was first published in Spanish as La razön humana in the magazine Realidad. It was included in the volume Todo Verdor Perecera and then appeared in a collection of stories by Mallea entitled La razon humana, published by Losada, Buenos Aires, in 1959. It was included in the anthology Veintidos Cuentistas, published by Centurion, Buenos Aires, in 1963. The English version was included IN SPANISH STORIES AND TALES, edited by Harriet de Onis and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 5954, by Pocket Books, Inc., in 1956, and in a Spanish version of this anthology published by Washington Square Press in 1961. THE SHOES was first published in Spanish as Los Zapatos, in a collection of stories entitled Pasesion, published by Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, in 1958.
Eduardo Mallea (14 August 1903, Bahía Blanca - 12 November 1982, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine essayist, cultural critic, writer and diplomat. In 1931 he became editor of the literary magazine of La Nacion.
Eduardo Mallea has for many years held a commanding position in South American literature. He was born in 1903 and published his first book at the age of twenty-three. Since then he has written a large number of distinguished novels and novellas and has won several prizes. His reputation is spreading rapidly and he is now published in Spain, France, Italy, Germany and the United States, as well as in many editions in his native Argentina. Lawrence Durrell writes: ‘Mallea is one of the two great Argentine writers of our time, and it has always been a mystery to me that he had not found the public he deserved in Europe and America. He has been a great figure in Latin American literature for more than two decades. Now his star is rising to its zenith and the British reader will be able to recognize him for the master he is.' ALL GREEN SHALL PERISH, first published in Buenos Aires in 1941, is in fact the first of his books to be published in Great Britain. It is the dark chronicle of Agata Cruz, whose tragic life leads her inexorably to an awareness of futility and a deep knowledge of suffering. She says of herself: ‘I thought the world was an enormous flight of birds, and that I had only to stretch out my hand to stop the one I wanted. Then one sees that the bird is oneself, and that the world is the hand that claims one.' Mallea's recurrent theme is the hostility of the circumstances and surroundings of man's brief life, and man's inability to progress in anything but suffering. ALL GREEN SHALL PERISH, in which the starkness and isolation of the Argentinian landscape seem to mock man's very existence, is his most perfect expression of that theme.
Eduardo Mallea (14 August 1903, Bahía Blanca - 12 November 1982, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine essayist, cultural critic, writer and diplomat. In 1931 he became editor of the literary magazine of La Nacion.
This collection of stories spans Mallea's creative achievement from the early Lost Cause of Jacob Uber to the recent novella The Shoes, and shows the development of the authentic Mallean hero. Mallea's prose communicates ‘the rhythm of unfulfilled aspirations', and he is concerned, like Leopardi, with a mystique of fertile solitude which isolates men from each other as it creates their profoundest links. Chaves is Mallea's nearest creation to a mute and, refusing to speak with his fellow workers, he watches and listens and can only be reached through ‘the passageways of his solitude'. He meets Pura, a silent withdrawn girl and the circumstances of his life are changed: ‘in each man a songless Homer lies dormant - or perhaps with song merely awaiting rebirth and liberation.' Chaves begins to speak, dazzling her with images and sounds, and Pura is herself transformed by the aura of masculine success she has evoked. Mallea explores the tragic sense of life inherent in men's isolation from each other. Chaves is saved by making his life a myth, and achieving the simplicity that is a prerequisite of death. Ana Borel the heroine of Anguish is driven to madness, while Jacob Uber commits suicide: they are the victims of inwardness and solitude. Mallea's lyrical cumulative style is an acceptance of this tragic dichotomy.
Eduardo Mallea (14 August 1903, Bahía Blanca - 12 November 1982, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine essayist, cultural critic, writer and diplomat. In 1931 he became editor of the literary magazine of La Nacion.
At a party for the rich and privileged of Buenos Aires two strangers meet - strangers not only to each other but to their surroundings, drawn together by their mutual rejection of the vacuous and vicious guests that chatter and scheme around them. Marta Rague and the young painter, Lintas, begin a dialogue of immediate and passionate intensity as they try to communicate to each other their loneliness, their awareness of the evil that dominates the world, and their longing for creative, authentic life. Interleaved with their story is a short, stark narrative - a poet is taken out by a group of soldiers to be shot-which reflects and highlights the desperate urgency of their struggle for a genuine commitment. FIESTA IN NOVEMBER is the second of Eduardo Mallea's novels to be published in Great Britain, where recognition of his work is long overdue. He has written many novels, political books and short stories, and having concluded a most successful diplomatic career he now lives in Buenos Aires and devotes all his time to writing.
Eduardo Mallea (14 August 1903, Bahía Blanca - 12 November 1982, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine essayist, cultural critic, writer and diplomat. In 1931 he became editor of the literary magazine of La Nacion.
In Eduardo Mallea (b. 1903), Argentina found the spokesman for its deepest and most genuine values and beliefs. HISTORY OF AN ARGENTINE PASSION, the best of his many volumes of essays, was published in 1937 and predates all of his novels. The work is especially important because Mallea treated many of its existential themes in subsequent works of fiction. It is both the author's spiritual autobiography and Argentina's national biography. Mallea's stance is that of a liberal thinker who sees the Argentina of the 193 Os dominated by repressive forces that have betrayed the fundamental ideals on which the nation was built. Myron I. Lichtblau is professor of Hispanic American Literature at Syracuse University and associate chairman of Spanish. Dr. Lichtblau has an M.A. from the Universidad Nacional de Mexico, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has been book review editor of Symposium since 1966 and of Hispania since 1974. His principal area of research is Argentine prose fiction. Among his publications are The Argentine Novel in the Nineteenth Century, El Arte estilistico de Eduardo Mallea, Manuel Galvez, and A Practical Reference Guide to Reading Spanish.
Eduardo Mallea (14 August 1903, Bahía Blanca - 12 November 1982, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine essayist, cultural critic, writer and diplomat. In 1931 he became editor of the literary magazine of La Nacion.
The scene of THE BAY OF SILENCE is Buenos Aires, in the second quarter of the century. The characters are people named Tregua, Acevedo, Gloria Bambil, Anselmi; one of them, the woman whose fortitude and nobility of spirit give meaning to Tregua's days and direction to his story, has no name at all. For this is Tregua's story - the story of an eager young student feeling his way through the uncertainties and questionings of youth to the profound. illusionless wisdom of a cultured maturity. It is also the story of his friends and his opponents, of the women who loved him, and the one woman to whom he could not aspire. Simply as a story it is a moving and satisfying experience. But beyond that it presents a remarkably full and human picture of the life of the Argentine metropolis: its talkative, arguing students; its conservative governing class clinging tight to the reins 0f power; its new-rich seeking to climb the social ladder; its self-absorbed middle groups; its inarticulate workers; its o1d Creole families. Yet, in a sense, Argentina is only by chance its setting, for Mallea is concerned with the fundamental problems of our century - problems 0f individual freedom, of man's responsibility to man, of political power and its sources and limits, of nationalism and internationalism. EDUARD0 MALLEA is generally recognized as the out- standing novelist of Argentina today. Many South American critics, indeed, have called him the finest creative writer that continent has ever produced. He has received high honors in his own country, the Buenos Aires Municipal Prize for Prose in 1935 and the National Prize for Literature in 1937. His reputation is based not only on his books - he is the author of four novels and several volumes of essays and short stories - but on his critical writings for the great Buenos Aires newspaper La Nacion, of whose literary supplement he is editor, and for the magazine Sur, of whose editorial board he is a member. . Señor Mallea was born in 1903 in the city of Bahia Blanca, where his father was a leading surgeon. He was educated at the Colegio Nacional in Buenos Aires, and studied law for two years at the University. But he began writing very early, publishing his first book at the age of 23. Thereafter his contributions to magazines, both at home and in Europe, became frequent; but he published no other book for eight years. During much of that interval he was abroad, traveling in England and in most of the Continental countries and living in France for an extended period. Since his return to Argentina in the early 1930's, however, he has steadily built up that body of creative and critical work on which his reputation rests. Señor Mallea was first introduced to North American readers with the publication of his novelette, FIESTA IN NOVEMBER, in the collection of that title issued in 1942 by Houghton Mifflin Company. But THE BAY OF SILENCE, which he considers his broadest and most ambitious novel, is his first major work to be issued here. . .
Eduardo Mallea (14 August 1903, Bahía Blanca - 12 November 1982, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine essayist, cultural critic, writer and diplomat. In 1931 he became editor of the literary magazine of La Nacion.
The play is set in Haiti at the time of the first Negro revolt in 1804. Three nuns are hiding away in an abandoned warehouse, where they are waiting for the arrival of a wealthy noblewoman, whom they have promised to hide and help escape from the island. The first shock for the audience is the realization that the nuns are all played by men. But in addition, their behavior seems more suitable to a thieves' kitchen than to the cloister, and as the action unrolls, we are treated to a ceremony of surprise and horror, where the voodoo drums beating in the distance have a subtle influence on the unrolling of this macabre play. This is a theatre that is often reminiscent of Artaud and Genet, poetical, expressionistic and highly dramatic, bringing philosophical and symbolic meaning into a dramatic situation of great intensity. EDUARDO MANET is a young Cuban writer, now living in Paris and writing in French, who has achieved international fame with this play, the most successful drama of its type during the Paris 1969 season, where it enjoyed an exceptionally long run. The British premiere was given at the Sussex Arts Centre with Patrick Wymark and Dudley Foster in the leading roles, produced by Walter Eysselinck. ROBERT BALDICK is a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, joint editor of the Penguin Classics and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His published works include several biographies, a history of duelling and a study of the siege of Paris; and he has translated the books of a wide range of authors from Flaubert to Simenon, and Chateaubriand to Sartre. Among notable plays he has translated are Montherlant's Queen in Death, Schehade's Vasco and Barrault's Rabelais. First published in France 1969 by Editions Gallimard. Playscript 43.
EDUARDO MANET was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1930, and studied philosophy, literature, drama and cinema at the University of Havana. In 1950 he came to Europe, where he studied drama in Paris with Etienne Decroux, Pierre Valde, Tania Balachova and Jacques Lecoq, and attended courses m Italian literature and Etruscology at Perugia, Florence and Rome. After writing a number of scripts for French television, he returned to Cuba in 1960. There he became Director General of the Cuban National Theatre Company, and a script-writer and director at the Cinema Institute, where he assisted Chris Marker in the filming of ‘Cuba, si'. He directed four full-length films and six shorts, one of which, ‘El Negro', was chosen in London as one of the ten best films of its year. He also wrote two novels in French, ‘Les Etrangers dane la yule' and ‘Un Cri sur le Rivage'. He is at present living in Paris and working on a new play, provisionally entitled ‘Them'. . ROBERT BALDICK was born in Huddersfield of a French mother and an English father, and educated at Oxford. He is a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, joint editor of the Penguin Classics, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His published works include several biographies, a history of duelling, and a study of the siege of Paris; and he has translated the books of a wide range of authors from Flaubert to Simenon, and Chateaubriand to Sartre. Among notable plays he has translated are Montherlant's Queen in Death, Schehade's Vasco, and Barrault's Rabelais. He is married to the American translator Jacqueline Baldick. . First published in France in 1969.
A brilliant and disturbing novel, NEWS FROM A FOREIGN COUNTRY CAME explores the personal and collective evil that exists in ‘decent' men, an evil that sustains cruel and politically oppressive governments throughout the world today. Telling the story of Antoine Berence, a respected French ex-army officer living in Quebec with his wife and young daughter, this novel takes us on a journey across four decades and as many continents-from colonial Algeria during its fierce struggle for independence, to Paris in the 60s, to Argentina at the time of the desaparecidos, and finally to Canada-toward the chilling and devastating truth that will tear apart forever this ‘ordinary' family. NEWS FROM A FOREIGN COUNTRY CAME is a journey into darkness but it is also a love story, delicately probing what is known, unknown, and unknowable between a man and a woman, a father and a daughter. With his first novel, Alberto Manguel has established himself as a writer of stature and importance. . ALBERTO MANGUEL is an award-winning writer, translator, and editor whose publications include THE DICTIONARY OF IMAGINARY PLACES, THE OXFORD BOOK OF CANADIAN GHOST STORIES, and the short story anthologies BLACK WATER, BLACK WATER 2, DARK ARROWS, EVENING GAMES, and OTHER FIRES. He is a frequent contributor to periodicals in the U.S., Canada, and abroad, reviewing fiction and theater for both print and broadcast media. Born in Argentina and educated in England, Alberto Manguel now lives in Toronto.
Alberto Manguel (born 1948 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine Canadian anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist and editor. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (co-written with Gianni Guadalupi in 1980), A History of Reading (1996), The Library at Night (2007) and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (2008); and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came (1991). Though almost all of Manguel's books were written in English, two of his novels (El regreso and Todos los hombres son mentirosos) were written in Spanish, and El regreso has not yet been published in English. Manguel has also written film criticism such as Bride of Frankenstein (1997) and collections of essays such as Into the Looking Glass Wood (1998). In 2007, Manguel was selected to be that year's annual lecturer for the prestigious Massey Lectures. For over twenty years, Manguel has edited a number of literary anthologies on a variety of themes or genres ranging from erotica and gay stories to fantastic literature and mysteries.
Adaptation of novel of the same title.
Santiago Villalba, the illegitimate son of a wealthy landowner, suffers the extremes of contemporary malaise. He is ambivalent, disaffected, apolitical, bisexual, addicted to cocaine. As the story opens, Santiago and his wife return to the place of his birth, Barranquilla, and to the bedside of his ailing father, who has inspired a driving hatred in his son. This rage extends to his stepfather, who is grooming him to take over the family business (once bananas, now marijuana) and urging him to prepare himself for political office and ‘assume the responsibilities of his class.' When his father dies, Santiago believes he is finally free, only to find himself at the hub of a nightmarish world in which each of the principals in his life (Beatrice, his wife who lives in a semidarkened room; Mario, the cynical childhood friend who says ‘It's them or it's us'; Caridad, his sensuous and cruel lover whose ‘job' is director of the secret police) leads him into further confusion, corruption, and disaster. Finally, despised and endangered by both his ‘friends' and enemies, he is forced to take action. In his first novel, Jaime Manrique demonstrates a vigorous and startling talent. Kindred spirit to Nathanael West, Manrique takes dazzling leaps and creates powerful imagery that lingers in the mind. With his eye for the bizarre, the ironic, the humorous, he has given us a drama about South America in the 1980s that is spare, vivid, and arresting. ‘Colombian Gold is like reading a movie . . . a film noir running wild.' - PAULINE KAEL. ‘An excellent action novel that is at the same time a terse literary object.' - MANUEL PUIG. ‘Jaime Manrique has created a world akin to the Elizabethan Revenger's Tragedy as the setting for a tale of violence and corruption in present-day Colombia that is horrifying and ultimately exalting.' - JOHN ASHBERY. ‘Colombian Gold is studded with unforgettable characterizations, in a portrait of a rotten society with the bare bones of corruption poking through.' - WILLIAM BURROUGHS.
JAIME MANRIQUE was born in Barranquilla, Colombia, and moved to New York when he was seventeen. His first book of poems received his country's National Poetry Award. In Spanish, he has published a novella and a collection of short stories, a volume of film criticism, and the novel Colombian Gold, which was translated into many languages. Forthcoming is Christopher Columbus on His Deathbed, an epic poem (Vehicle Editions). Manrique teaches creative writing and Latin American literature and cinema at the Eugene Lang College of The New School for Social Research. He lives in Manhattan.
Exuberant and colorful, LATIN MOON IN MANHATTAN paints a stunning portrait of New York City as the land of El Dorado for today's Latino immigrants. From Little Colombia in Queens to 42nd Street in Manhattan, the vibrant life of Latino New York offers an extraordinary cast of characters: Hot Sauce, a midget hooker; Simon Bolivar, a parrot who croons Julio Iglesias songs; Ben Ami Burztyn, a rich Venezuelan gourmand and would-be biographer of Edgar Allen Poe; Rebecca Allavant, a librarian from Alabama in love with a South American hairdresser who doesn't speak English, and the Urrutias, a family rich from cocaine smuggling. And, of course, our protagonist, Santiago Martinez, loner and would- be poet, who thinks he will spend the summer months watching his ancient cat, Mr. O'Donnell, die of an enlarged heart. Instead, his life explodes with a profusion of plots and subplots involving cocaine smuggling, romance, literary politics among the middle-class ladies in Queens, the death of his best boyhood friend from AIDS, and the efforts of his own family and the Urrutias to marry him off to their youngest daughter, a beautiful, well-educated motorcycle fanatic who happens to be a lesbian. LATIN MOON IN MANHATTAN presents a pulsing portrait of Latin life in the urban heart of America, a lyrical homage to city living in the capital of the present.
JAIME MANRIQUE was born in Barranquilla, Colombia, and moved to New York when he was seventeen. His first book of poems received his country's National Poetry Award. In Spanish, he has published a novella and a collection of short stories, a volume of film criticism, and the novel Colombian Gold, which was translated into many languages. Forthcoming is Christopher Columbus on His Deathbed, an epic poem (Vehicle Editions). Manrique teaches creative writing and Latin American literature and cinema at the Eugene Lang College of The New School for Social Research. He lives in Manhattan.
Jose Carlos Mariategui was one of the leading South American social philosophers of the early twentieth century. He identified the future of Peru with the welfare of the Indian at a time when similar ideas were beginning to develop in Middle America and the Andean region. A whole generation and now a second of Peruvian and other Latin American social thinkers have been profoundly influenced by his writings. SEVEN INTERPRETIVE ESSAYS ON PERUVIAN REALITY (Siete ensayos de interpretacion de la realidad), first published in 1928, is Mariategui's major statement of his position and has gone into many editions, not only in Peru but also in other Latin American countries. The topics discussed in the essays - economic, evolution, the problem of the Indian, the land problem, public education, the religious factor, regionalism and centralism, and the literary process - are in many respects as relevant today as when the book was written. Mariategui's thinking was strongly tinged with Marxism. Because contemporary sociology, anthropology, and economics have been influenced by Marxism much more in Latin America than in North America, it is important that North Americans become more aware of Mariategui's position and accord it its proper historical significance. . JOSE CARLOS MARIATEGUI was born in Moquegua, Peru, in 1894, but lived most of his brief life in Lima, where he died in 1930. Although he was active ini political and educational circle, his working career was as a journalist and editor. . Originally published in Spanish as Siete ensayos de interpretacion de la realidad, in 1928.
Jose Carlos Mariátegui La Chira (14 June 1894 - 16 April 1930) was a Peruvian journalist, political philosopher, and activist. A prolific writer before his early death at age 35, he is considered one of the most influential Latin American socialists of the 20th century. Mariátegui's most famous work, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928), is still widely read in South America. An avowed, self-taught Marxist, he insisted that a socialist revolution should evolve organically in Latin America on the basis of local conditions and practices, not the result of mechanically applying a European formula.
Juvenile/young adult title. 'For centuries men had sought it, now in the the blinding light of the lightning flash, they saw a mountain of blue ricks. The Martirios at last! Gold!' Illustrated.
Francisco Marins, (November 23, 1922 - April 10, 2016) was a Brazilian writer. He was the author of a series of books for children, about the Taquara-Poca farm. Marins also writes historic novels set in the colonial Brazilian hinterland. He was born in Pratânia, Estado de São Paulo, which was at the time part of Botucatu. Marins has sold more than 5,000,000 books, which have been translated into fifteen languages, and is the only Brazilian writer in the European collection Delphin, that features classics of children's literature around the world.Francisco Marins is a member of the Academia Paulista de Letras.
From the Preface & the Introduction - In reducing the two volumes of Marmol's AMALIA to the narrow limits of a school text, it has been necessary to make numerous omissions, the most extensive of which are historical sketches intended by the author to serve as a background for his narrative. By way of compensation the essential details of these chapters have been incorporated into the Introduction and Notes. Certain other sections have also been omitted, but the most important and the most interesting parts have been retained. Practically no change has been made in the main plot and every effort has been made to keep the spirit of the original intact. The Notes have been made serviceable and the Vocabulary adequate. In the latter several categories of words have been omitted, as students taking up this text will be certain to be acquainted with them. Brief exercises have been prepared on each of the twenty-two chapters of the book. They contain questions on the text, lists of and drill on idioms, and themes, and are not so exhaustive that teachers using such material with their classes cannot add further exercises of their own choice and making. . . In the history of Argentina no single man has attracted so much attention as Juan Manuel de Rosas, the great dictator who held that country in his grip for a score of years; every phase of his iron rule has been discussed, the personality of the man has been analyzed, and the motives for his conduct explained by historian after historian. It must be remembered, however, that these accounts deal with a man whose acts of violence aroused a hatred so intense that it distorted all, reference to him by his contemporaries and very likely this animosity has colored a great deal that has been written about him in recent years. The merit of impartiality, therefore, can hardly be claimed for a novel dealing with this picturesque figure and written by one who suffered at his hands. Nevertheless, the picture of Rosas and his machinations as presented in AMALIA is valuable from a historical standpoint. It acquaints us with the atmosphere of terror which must have surrounded all liberal-minded men and women in Argentina during his dictatorship. Many of the scenes described were undoubtedly based upon actual occurrences, and the book gives us the opinion of Rosas held by those who opposed the tyrant. .
Jose Mármol (December 2, 1817, Buenos Aires, Argentina - August 9, 1871, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine journalist, politician, librarian, and writer of the Romantic school. Born in Buenos Aires, he initially studied law, but abandoned his studies in favor of politics. In 1839, no sooner had he begun to make a name for himself than he was arrested for his opposition to Argentina's conservative caudillo, Juan Manuel de Rosas. He was held in irons for six days. A year and a half later, the political climate spurred him, as it had many other Argentine dissenters, to flee the country. He found passage to Montevideo on a French schooner. He was welcomed by other exiles, among them Juan Bautista Alberdi, Florencio Varela, Esteban Echeverría, Juan María Gutierrez, and Miguel Cane. Three years later, the siege of Montevideo by Rosas's ally Manuel Oribe led Mármol to flee yet again, this time to Rio de Janeiro. Here he remained until February 1843, at which point he boarded a ship for Chile. The ship encountered fierce storms and was eventually forced to return to Rio de Janeiro. He remained in the city another two years before returning to Montevideo, where he spent the next seven years. The fall of Rosas after his defeat at the Battle of Caseros (1852) allowed Mármol to return to Argentina. After an exile that had lasted thirteen years, he was elected a senator and later a national deputy from the province of Buenos Aires. The secession of Buenos Aires from the Argentine Confederation prevented him from serving as plenipotentiary to Chile, a post to which he had been appointed. However, he later served as plenipotentiary to Brazil. In 1858 he became director of the Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina, until blindness forced him to retire. He died in Buenos Aires in 1871. By coincidence, his two most notable successors in the office of chief librarian, Paul Groussac and Jorge Luis Borges, also suffered from blindness in their old age.
Written by Jose Marmol while in exile, AMALIA was conceived to protest the cut-throat dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas during the tumultuous years of post-independence Argentina and to provide a picture of the political events during his regime. A year after its publication in 1851, Rosa fell from power, and AMALIA became Argentina's national novel. Though its classic and obligatory status as required reading in Argentina's schools has clouded its sparkle, it is above all a brilliant and passionate book whose popularity stemmed from the love story that fuels its plot. Mármol recounts the story of Eduardo and Amalia, who fall in love while Eduardo convalesces from a death-squad attack in Amalia's home. At once a detailed picture of life under a dictatorship and a tragic love story between a provincial girl and a young man from Buenos Aires, AMALIA displays Mármol's patience with historical detail and his flair for dialogue and description and remains an enduring work of literature in Latin America and the world.
Jose Mármol (December 2, 1817, Buenos Aires, Argentina - August 9, 1871, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine journalist, politician, librarian, and writer of the Romantic school. Born in Buenos Aires, he initially studied law, but abandoned his studies in favor of politics. In 1839, no sooner had he begun to make a name for himself than he was arrested for his opposition to Argentina's conservative caudillo, Juan Manuel de Rosas. He was held in irons for six days. A year and a half later, the political climate spurred him, as it had many other Argentine dissenters, to flee the country. He found passage to Montevideo on a French schooner. He was welcomed by other exiles, among them Juan Bautista Alberdi, Florencio Varela, Esteban Echeverría, Juan María Gutierrez, and Miguel Cane. Three years later, the siege of Montevideo by Rosas's ally Manuel Oribe led Mármol to flee yet again, this time to Rio de Janeiro. Here he remained until February 1843, at which point he boarded a ship for Chile. The ship encountered fierce storms and was eventually forced to return to Rio de Janeiro. He remained in the city another two years before returning to Montevideo, where he spent the next seven years. The fall of Rosas after his defeat at the Battle of Caseros (1852) allowed Mármol to return to Argentina. After an exile that had lasted thirteen years, he was elected a senator and later a national deputy from the province of Buenos Aires. The secession of Buenos Aires from the Argentine Confederation prevented him from serving as plenipotentiary to Chile, a post to which he had been appointed. However, he later served as plenipotentiary to Brazil. In 1858 he became director of the Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina, until blindness forced him to retire. He died in Buenos Aires in 1871. By coincidence, his two most notable successors in the office of chief librarian, Paul Groussac and Jorge Luis Borges, also suffered from blindness in their old age.
Written by Jose Marmol while in exile, AMALIA was conceived to protest the cut-throat dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas during the tumultuous years of post-independence Argentina and to provide a picture of the political events during his regime. A year after its publication in 1851, Rosa fell from power, and AMALIA became Argentina's national novel. Though its classic and obligatory status as required reading in Argentina's schools has clouded its sparkle, it is above all a brilliant and passionate book whose popularity stemmed from the love story that fuels its plot. Mármol recounts the story of Eduardo and Amalia, who fall in love while Eduardo convalesces from a death-squad attack in Amalia's home. At once a detailed picture of life under a dictatorship and a tragic love story between a provincial girl and a young man from Buenos Aires, AMALIA displays Mármol's patience with historical detail and his flair for dialogue and description and remains an enduring work of literature in Latin America and the world.
Jose Mármol (December 2, 1817, Buenos Aires, Argentina - August 9, 1871, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine journalist, politician, librarian, and writer of the Romantic school. Born in Buenos Aires, he initially studied law, but abandoned his studies in favor of politics. In 1839, no sooner had he begun to make a name for himself than he was arrested for his opposition to Argentina's conservative caudillo, Juan Manuel de Rosas. He was held in irons for six days. A year and a half later, the political climate spurred him, as it had many other Argentine dissenters, to flee the country. He found passage to Montevideo on a French schooner. He was welcomed by other exiles, among them Juan Bautista Alberdi, Florencio Varela, Esteban Echeverría, Juan María Gutierrez, and Miguel Cane. Three years later, the siege of Montevideo by Rosas's ally Manuel Oribe led Mármol to flee yet again, this time to Rio de Janeiro. Here he remained until February 1843, at which point he boarded a ship for Chile. The ship encountered fierce storms and was eventually forced to return to Rio de Janeiro. He remained in the city another two years before returning to Montevideo, where he spent the next seven years. The fall of Rosas after his defeat at the Battle of Caseros (1852) allowed Mármol to return to Argentina. After an exile that had lasted thirteen years, he was elected a senator and later a national deputy from the province of Buenos Aires. The secession of Buenos Aires from the Argentine Confederation prevented him from serving as plenipotentiary to Chile, a post to which he had been appointed. However, he later served as plenipotentiary to Brazil. In 1858 he became director of the Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina, until blindness forced him to retire. He died in Buenos Aires in 1871. By coincidence, his two most notable successors in the office of chief librarian, Paul Groussac and Jorge Luis Borges, also suffered from blindness in their old age.
The magnitude of the identity crisis faced by Puerto Ricans today and the prospects for survival of the Puerto Rican nationality-these are the critical issues examined in this timely collection of essays. RenE Marques, the island's leading contemporary writer, presents the viewpoint of those who are rallying to defend their indigenous culture in the shadow of U.S. political, economic, and cultural influence. Why cultural and political aims are perceived as one and the same by Puerto Rican intellectuals is clearly demonstrated in eight essays rich in insights drawn from literature, education, psychology, sociology, and other areas of inquiry. The best known of the essays, and the most polemical, is the title work, ‘The Docile Puerto Rican: Literature and Psychological Reality.' Marques uses examples from fiction. history. family life, business, and government to support his thesis that docility is a permanent facet of the Puerto Rican character. He even uses this argument to account for the particular quality of the violence of the ‘independentista.' In another essay addressing the language problem. Marques shows how the attempt to promote bilingualism in the schools serves only further to erode the island's culture. He presents the pessimistic tone of much Puerto Rican writing as symptomatic of the country's colonial status. The role of the United States in Puerto Rico comes under attack throughout all of the essays. The view RenE Marques presents of the island country is neither that of a showcase for democracy nor of a bridge between two cultures; it is that of a model of colonialism in action.
Rene Marques (October 4, 1919, Arecibo, Puerto Rico - March 22, 1979, San Juan, Puerto Rico) is perhaps best known as a dramatist and short story writer. His plays have been produced in Puerto Rico, New York, Mexico, and Spain. and he has been instrumental in the formation of a national theater in Puerto Rico, both as playwright and director. His short stories appear in numerous anthologies and several have been translated into English. His novel. La Vispea del Hombre, received the Faulkner Foundation Prize in 1962. The Docile Puerto Rican places Rene Marques in a long tradition of Puerto Rican essayists concerned with national aspirations. . Barbara Bockus Aponte, the translator, chairs the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Temple University. Her publications include Alfonso Re yes and Spain and La Obra Crltica de Ricardo Gullon.
Traces the move of a Puerto Rican family from the country to San Juan, then to New York. Social commentary. Ilustrations.
Rene Marques (October 4, 1919, Arecibo, Puerto Rico - March 22, 1979, San Juan, Puerto Rico) is perhaps best known as a dramatist and short story writer. His plays have been produced in Puerto Rico, New York, Mexico, and Spain. and he has been instrumental in the formation of a national theater in Puerto Rico, both as playwright and director. His short stories appear in numerous anthologies and several have been translated into English. His novel. La Vispea del Hombre, received the Faulkner Foundation Prize in 1962. The Docile Puerto Rican places Rene Marques in a long tradition of Puerto Rican essayists concerned with national aspirations.
A popular novel of scant literary merit.
Alfredo Márquez Campos has combined his profession as a doctor with his literary and journalistic work. His novel Far Away The Town tells the story of popular characters, such as a bricklayer and a rural teacher in the town of Tlacuitapa. Dalia presents the conflict of a couple struggling against a series of obstacles in a world full of hostility and selfishness that prevents them from being united. Scale in time novel the history of the Red Cross. How time passes narrates the author's travels to France, Spain, Turkey and Greece. Very dear don juanit combines history, autobiography, the novel and the epistolary genre; Historical elements revolve around the main character, who tells his story through a series of letters. Eyewitness is a testimony on the situation in the countries of Central Europe prior to the fall of the Berlin wall; In this historical account, the author makes a tour of the two Germanys, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and the United States; It describes historical places and sites of cultural interest through a simple and direct narration. The MExico collection (which runs from 1968 to 1975) brings together a series of daily chronicles about important events and characters in Mexico. He has taken over the weekly column of News on political, cultural, economic and social events.
The first translation into English of this Latin American novel, about political and social strife in Columbia, and the first offering in the publisher's ‘Hispano-American Series.' In 1907 Lorenzo Marroquín and Jose María Rivas Groot of Colombia published their scandalous novel, PAX. In it appears a character, the poet ‘S. C. Mata' (pronounced ese se mata - 'that one kills himself'), some of whose poems are unflattering, veiled satires of the nocturnes of another Colombian writer who has committed suicide, allegedly revenge for a slight that Jose Asuncion Silva had made of Marroquín in a newspaper cronica. FROM THE INTRODUCTION - The name of the much-wracked republic of Colombia is indissolubly linked with that of the most popular novel that has thus far come out of Spanish America, - the tender, idyllic romance entitled MARIA, by Jorge Isaacs (l837 - 1875). The nationalistic strain in Isaacs was carried forward by later novelists, few of whom have been found worthy of serious consideration by lovers of belles lettres. Among these the outstanding exception is Lorenzo Marroquin (died 1918), whose PAX created a furore at the time of its appearance. For this there were, of course, non-literary reasons. The caustic satire of the book, its spirited caricatures of loathsome national types, imparted to it all the political zest of an old roman a clef, and more than one public figure believed that he had been held up to scorn in the pages of this colorful, moving novel of love, intrigue, religion, politics and revolution. Yet this is but a superficial aspect of the book, which as a whole should possess for us Americans of the North the attraction exercised by a work that is written in hot sincerity, portraying the evils that consume an author's beloved country. This, perhaps, is the prime impulse in PAX; it was born of a high religious faith in the service of an ardent patriotism. The author is thoroughly imbued with his milieu; he knows the people and their customs, the landscape and its secrets, the vanishing nobility and their foundering ideals. If he has not caught the ideals of the rising lower classes, that is because his novel is, in a sense, the defiant swan-song of a departing era.
Lorenzo Marroquín Osorio (March 8, 1856, Bogotá , Colombia - September 3, 1918, London) was a Colombian writer, diplomat and academic. He was the son of President Jose Manuel Marroquín Ricaurte and brother of Monsignor Jose Manuel Marroquín Osorio . He devoted himself to the diplomatic career. On behalf of his country he traveled to Germany , Rome , Mexico and Guatemala. His greatest literary success was achieved with the novel Pax. He was a member of the Colombian Academy of Language . In 1898, he was appointed corresponding and honorary member of the Mexican Academy of the Language. He died in London in 1918.
This is the fourth and final volume of a comprehensive collection of the writings of Cuba's great man of letters, Jose Marti. The first volume concentrated on the United States, the second on Latin America, and the third on education and pedagogy. But Marti is increasingly recognized as a brilliant critic and literary commentator, and this volume brings together his essays on literature, the plastic arts, theater, and music, few of which have previously been available in English. Jose Marti, the prime organizer and ideologist of Cuba's Second War for Independence, which began in 1895, was that rare individual who combined great literary talent and a keen understanding of social and political issues with a genius for revolutionary organization. Marti took a keen interest in American life, and was especially involved in understanding and evaluating the nation's literature. Included here are his essays on Emerson, Whitman, and Longfellow, as well as other literary figures, along with reviews of art exhibitions, theater, and his final literary testament. In these writings, Marti's literary talent and revolutionary commitment once more come together. The writings of Jose Marti, collected and edited by Gonzalo de Quesado y Miranda, fill seventy volumes. Those volumes offer abundant evidence that Jose Marti was one of the greatest figures in Latin American history, a man of broad culture and of remarkable talent as a political thinker and organizer. It is Indeed unfortunate that the bulk of these writings are still not available in English. To partially remedy this situation Monthly Review Press is publishing, under the editorship of Philip S. Foner, the first comprehensive collection of Marti's writings in English, of which this is the fourth and final volume. The first on the United States and American Imperialism, the second on Latin America and the Cuban Revolution, and the third is on education and pedagogy. . Philip S. Foner, the editor of the volumes in this series of Marti's writings, is the author of a multivolume history of Cuba, as well as many other important historical works. He was for many years professor of history at Lincoln University. Elinor Randall has translated Latin American poetry forthe Mexican literary magazine Corno Empluma do. Her translations have appeared in Latin American Revolutionary Poetry, also published by Monthly Review Press. . .
Jose Julián Martí Perez (January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895) is a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life, he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol for Cuba's bid for independence against Spain in the 19th century, and is referred to as the 'Apostle of Cuban Independence.' He also wrote about the threat of Spanish and US expansionism into Cuba. From adolescence, he dedicated his life to the promotion of liberty, political independence for Cuba, and intellectual independence for all Spanish Americans; his death was used as a cry for Cuban independence from Spain by both the Cuban revolutionaries and those Cubans previously reluctant to start a revolt. Born in Havana, Martí began his political activism at an early age. He would travel extensively in Spain, Latin America, and the United States, raising awareness and support for the cause of Cuban independence. His unification of the Cuban Emigre community, particularly in Florida, was crucial to the success of the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. He was a key figure in the planning and execution of this war, as well as the designer of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and its ideology. He died in military action during the Battle of Dos Ríos on May 19, 1895. Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works consist of a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and even a children's magazine. He wrote for numerous Latin American and American newspapers; he also founded a number of newspapers himself. His newspaper Patria was a key instrument in his campaign for Cuban independence. After his death, one of his poems from the book, 'Versos Sencillos' (Simple Verses) was adapted to the song 'Guantanamera', which has become the definitive patriotic song of Cuba. The concepts of freedom, liberty, and democracy are prominent themes in all of his works, which were influential on the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Darío and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral.
Moskof . Keywords: Cuba Translated Latin America Caribbean Politics Literature. ISBN: 0853454833. In the eyes of Jose Marti, the foundation of liberty was universal education. Nothing demonstrated the interest of a government in serving its people as much as the priority it gave to education. It is not surprising therefore that Marti devoted considerable attention to the subject in his writings, earning in his Cuban homeland a reputation as the ‘Maestro.' In this volume, the third of a four-volume English translation of the writings of Cuba's great man of letters and of action, Professor Foner has selected Marti's key pieces on education, educational theory, pedagogy, and a selection of writings for children from the monthly magazine La Edad de Oro (The Age of Gold). All the selections in this volume are made available for the first time in English. Included is Marti's criticism of the scholasticism and narrow formalism that characterized Latin American education from primary school through the universities. In place of what prevailed, he urged the teaching of physics, mechanical and practical arts, and the study of scientific agriculture. Marti's writings on education in the United States show his deep interest in the North American educational system at all levels. He was particularly critical of educational practices in the public schools of New York City, with their emphasis on memorization and their failure to prepare the pupil for life. Marti believed that education should be compulsory, free, and universal, assuring the progress, and the intellectual and material improvement, of the nation. Scientific and technical education should be taught at the elementary school level. Many of Marti's principles are being applied in Cuba today, and the high priority he placed on education was applied there immediately after the revolution in the fight against illiteracy. The selections from The Age of Gold make available for the first time writings that Latin American critics consider among the best written works for young people in the Spanish language. . Philip S. Foner, the editor of this and the other volumes in this series of Marti's writings, is the author of a multi-volume history of Cuba, as well as many other important historical works. He is professor of history at Lincoln University. . Elinor Randall has translated Latin American poetry for the Mexican literary magazine Corno Emplumado. Her translations have appeared in Latin American Revolutionary Poetry, also published by Monthly Review Press. . .
Jose Julián Martí Perez (January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895) is a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life, he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol for Cuba's bid for independence against Spain in the 19th century, and is referred to as the 'Apostle of Cuban Independence.' He also wrote about the threat of Spanish and US expansionism into Cuba. From adolescence, he dedicated his life to the promotion of liberty, political independence for Cuba, and intellectual independence for all Spanish Americans; his death was used as a cry for Cuban independence from Spain by both the Cuban revolutionaries and those Cubans previously reluctant to start a revolt. Born in Havana, Martí began his political activism at an early age. He would travel extensively in Spain, Latin America, and the United States, raising awareness and support for the cause of Cuban independence. His unification of the Cuban Emigre community, particularly in Florida, was crucial to the success of the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. He was a key figure in the planning and execution of this war, as well as the designer of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and its ideology. He died in military action during the Battle of Dos Ríos on May 19, 1895. Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works consist of a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and even a children's magazine. He wrote for numerous Latin American and American newspapers; he also founded a number of newspapers himself. His newspaper Patria was a key instrument in his campaign for Cuban independence. After his death, one of his poems from the book, 'Versos Sencillos' (Simple Verses) was adapted to the song 'Guantanamera', which has become the definitive patriotic song of Cuba. The concepts of freedom, liberty, and democracy are prominent themes in all of his works, which were influential on the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Darío and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral.
The collection includes "Our America" ("Nuestra AmErica"), one of Marti's most famous essays. Eight essays deal with Latin America, and forty with the question of Cuban independence. Our America is the second of a three-volume anthology of Marti's essays in English translation. Index. Extensive and detailed introduction.
Jose Julián Martí Perez (January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895) is a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life, he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol for Cuba's bid for independence against Spain in the 19th century, and is referred to as the 'Apostle of Cuban Independence.' He also wrote about the threat of Spanish and US expansionism into Cuba. From adolescence, he dedicated his life to the promotion of liberty, political independence for Cuba, and intellectual independence for all Spanish Americans; his death was used as a cry for Cuban independence from Spain by both the Cuban revolutionaries and those Cubans previously reluctant to start a revolt. Born in Havana, Martí began his political activism at an early age. He would travel extensively in Spain, Latin America, and the United States, raising awareness and support for the cause of Cuban independence. His unification of the Cuban Emigre community, particularly in Florida, was crucial to the success of the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. He was a key figure in the planning and execution of this war, as well as the designer of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and its ideology. He died in military action during the Battle of Dos Ríos on May 19, 1895. Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works consist of a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and even a children's magazine. He wrote for numerous Latin American and American newspapers; he also founded a number of newspapers himself. His newspaper Patria was a key instrument in his campaign for Cuban independence. After his death, one of his poems from the book, 'Versos Sencillos' (Simple Verses) was adapted to the song 'Guantanamera', which has become the definitive patriotic song of Cuba. The concepts of freedom, liberty, and democracy are prominent themes in all of his works, which were influential on the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Darío and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral.
During his exile to the United States in the 1880's, Cuban writer and patriot Jose Marti (1853-1895) published numerous articles on U.S. politics in the Latin American press. His ‘Escenas norteamericanos' (North American scenes) were syndicated throughout Central and South America and made him the most widely read Spanish-language journalist of his time. The ten articles in this volume chronicle Marti's observations and analysis of US, elections and political parties. They disclose his keen awareness of the emergence of monopoly capitalism and the alliances forged between politicians and big business during this decade. Marti's reports reveal how, all too frequently, elections in this country were vehicles for the rich and powerful to advance their own interests. His writings also graphically describe how, through the practice of vote-buying, Congress was in the pocket of the affluent upper class. ‘Most Congressmen,' Marti wrote, were ‘serh made to obey by a golden whip.' This first American edition of Jose Marti's ‘Escenas' includes an introduction and explanatory notes by Philip Foner. In an election year, consider Marti's description: ‘A United States Presidential campaign is rough and nauseating. Once the candidates are nominated in the conventions, the mire rises . . . Pails of mud are dumped upon heads. lies and exaggerations are knowingly spread, Bellies and backs are polished. All manner of infamy is considered legitimate. All kinds of blows are good as long as they stun the enemy. whoever invents an effective villainous act struts about like a peacock. Even prominent men believe themselves excused from the more trivial duties of honor' (La Nacion). . Philip S. Foner is Professor Emeritus of History at Lincoln University. Elinor Randall is a noted translator of Spanish literature. Together they have published five volumes of Jose Marti's writings in English between 1975 and 1986: INSIDE THE MONSTER; OUR AMERICA; ON EDUCATION; ART AND LITERATURE; MAJOR POEMS. .
Jose Julián Martí Perez (January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895) is a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life, he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol for Cuba's bid for independence against Spain in the 19th century, and is referred to as the 'Apostle of Cuban Independence.' He also wrote about the threat of Spanish and US expansionism into Cuba. From adolescence, he dedicated his life to the promotion of liberty, political independence for Cuba, and intellectual independence for all Spanish Americans; his death was used as a cry for Cuban independence from Spain by both the Cuban revolutionaries and those Cubans previously reluctant to start a revolt. Born in Havana, Martí began his political activism at an early age. He would travel extensively in Spain, Latin America, and the United States, raising awareness and support for the cause of Cuban independence. His unification of the Cuban Emigre community, particularly in Florida, was crucial to the success of the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. He was a key figure in the planning and execution of this war, as well as the designer of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and its ideology. He died in military action during the Battle of Dos Ríos on May 19, 1895. Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works consist of a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and even a children's magazine. He wrote for numerous Latin American and American newspapers; he also founded a number of newspapers himself. His newspaper Patria was a key instrument in his campaign for Cuban independence. After his death, one of his poems from the book, 'Versos Sencillos' (Simple Verses) was adapted to the song 'Guantanamera', which has become the definitive patriotic song of Cuba. The concepts of freedom, liberty, and democracy are prominent themes in all of his works, which were influential on the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Darío and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral.
For the first time in English, a superbly translated, comprehensive survey of the work of the founding father of Cuban independence. Jose Marti (1853-1895) is the most renowned political and literary figure in the history of Cuba. A poet, essayist, orator, statesman, and the martyred revolutionary leader of Cuba's fight for independence from Spain, Marti lived in exile in New York for most of his adult life, earning his living as a foreign correspondent. Throughout the 1880s and early 1890s, Marti's were the eyes through which much of Latin America saw the United States. His impassioned, kaleidoscopic evocations of that period in U.S. history - the assassination of James Garfield, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, the execution of the Chicago anarchists, the lynching of the Italians in New Orleans, and much more - bring the time rushing back to life. Organized chronologically, this collection begins with Marti's early writings, including a thundering account of his political imprisonment in Cuba at the age of sixteen. The middle section focuses on his journalism, which offers an image of the United States in the nineteenth century, its way of life, and its system of government, to rival anything written by Tocqueville, Dickens, Trollope, or any other European commentator. Including generous selections of his poetry and private notebooks, the book concludes with his astonishing, hallucinatory final masterpiece, the War Diaries, never before translated into English.
Jose Julián Martí Perez (January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895) is a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life, he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol for Cuba's bid for independence against Spain in the 19th century, and is referred to as the 'Apostle of Cuban Independence.' He also wrote about the threat of Spanish and US expansionism into Cuba. From adolescence, he dedicated his life to the promotion of liberty, political independence for Cuba, and intellectual independence for all Spanish Americans; his death was used as a cry for Cuban independence from Spain by both the Cuban revolutionaries and those Cubans previously reluctant to start a revolt. Born in Havana, Martí began his political activism at an early age. He would travel extensively in Spain, Latin America, and the United States, raising awareness and support for the cause of Cuban independence. His unification of the Cuban Emigre community, particularly in Florida, was crucial to the success of the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. He was a key figure in the planning and execution of this war, as well as the designer of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and its ideology. He died in military action during the Battle of Dos Ríos on May 19, 1895. Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works consist of a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and even a children's magazine. He wrote for numerous Latin American and American newspapers; he also founded a number of newspapers himself. His newspaper Patria was a key instrument in his campaign for Cuban independence. After his death, one of his poems from the book, 'Versos Sencillos' (Simple Verses) was adapted to the song 'Guantanamera', which has become the definitive patriotic song of Cuba. The concepts of freedom, liberty, and democracy are prominent themes in all of his works, which were influential on the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Darío and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral.
In the very heart of Havana stands the statue of Jose Marti, a tribute to the man who gave his life in the cause of Cuban independence. In 1905, ten years after the outbreak of the War of Independence, the people of the Republic of Cuba, by public subscription, commissioned a monument to be raised in honor of their national hero, A man of great conviction and spirit, Jose Marti was also a fine writer, Exiled from Cuba at the age of 17, except for a short visit in 1878, he was never allowed to return. Marti traveled throughout the hemisphere, working as a newspaper correspondent, recording the things he saw and felt. In 1880, he came to New York, and for 15 years he traveled around the United States, serving as general columnist for many South American newspapers and writing art criticism for The New York Sun. He was a keen and perceptive observer, and, in this volume of selected writings, he presents a most vivid and authentic picture of the United States during the 1880's, THE AMERICA OF JOSE MARTI is the United States of Buffalo Bill and Jesse James, the Oklahoma land rush and the Brooklyn Bridge. It is also the America of Bolivar and San Martin, the gaucho and the Andes. Marti stands between the two Americas. He interprets each to the other in what is most enduring in both. As a writer, Marti was an innovator, and his unique style has had a profound impact upon the course of modern Hispanic literature, Miguel de Unamuno, the Spanish critic, wrote of Marti's writing, ‘He writes,,, in a stenographic and telegraphic style, of tortured and dark expression, yet charged with intimate poetry.' JOSE JULIEN MARTI was born in Havana in 1853. At the age of 16, he came under suspicion for having written a poem which seemed ‘seditious' to the Spanish authorities. He was exiled and except for a short visit in 1878 was never allowed to return to his native Cuba. From exile, Marti worked ceaselessly in the cause of a free and independent Cuba. In 1880, he landed in New York. For 15 years in the United States, Mart! kept alive, almost single-handed, hope of Cuban liberation, cajoling funds from wealthy New York merchants and hard-working Tampa cigar makers, He kept up a correspondence with• Mhximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo, the insurgent generals, telling them of his work, and stimulating their enthusiasm for the common cause. During this time he served as correspondent for several Latin American newspapers in addition to writing for The New York Sun, at that time edited by Charles Dana. More than any other thinker he interpreted the United States to Latin America, He held out to both the promise and the peril of the ‘Colossus of the North,' He was. the first to conceive of the ‘Good Neighbor Policy.' On May 19, 1895, a few weeks after the Cuban insurrection, Marti was killed in a skirmish outside of Dos Rios. . Juan de Onis is at present on the Latin American desk of the United Press at the United Nations. A graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism, he has traveled widely in South America. Federico de Onis is head of the Hispanic department at Columbia University, V . .
Jose Julián Martí Perez (January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895) is a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life, he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol for Cuba's bid for independence against Spain in the 19th century, and is referred to as the 'Apostle of Cuban Independence.' He also wrote about the threat of Spanish and US expansionism into Cuba. From adolescence, he dedicated his life to the promotion of liberty, political independence for Cuba, and intellectual independence for all Spanish Americans; his death was used as a cry for Cuban independence from Spain by both the Cuban revolutionaries and those Cubans previously reluctant to start a revolt. Born in Havana, Martí began his political activism at an early age. He would travel extensively in Spain, Latin America, and the United States, raising awareness and support for the cause of Cuban independence. His unification of the Cuban Emigre community, particularly in Florida, was crucial to the success of the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. He was a key figure in the planning and execution of this war, as well as the designer of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and its ideology. He died in military action during the Battle of Dos Ríos on May 19, 1895. Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works consist of a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and even a children's magazine. He wrote for numerous Latin American and American newspapers; he also founded a number of newspapers himself. His newspaper Patria was a key instrument in his campaign for Cuban independence. After his death, one of his poems from the book, 'Versos Sencillos' (Simple Verses) was adapted to the song 'Guantanamera', which has become the definitive patriotic song of Cuba. The concepts of freedom, liberty, and democracy are prominent themes in all of his works, which were influential on the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Darío and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral.
Peasants are organized into unions and rebel against landowners. Representative of the politically motivated protest literature of scant (if any) literary value.
The Chilean writer Oscar Martinez Bilbao (1912 - July 13, 1994) was born in the agrarian lands of Yungay, and rose to become the Director General of Primary Education of Chile. In 1936 Oscar Martínez published the collection of poems "Cancion del niho chileno", following this with a number of poetry collections and novels.
A translation of the 11 short stories of In memoriam (2nd edition 1967), originally published in 1960.
Arturo Martinez Caceres was born in Jalapa, Veracruz, in 1927. He was a Doctor of Law and was treasurer of the Senate of the Republic. He published stories in Casa de las AmEricas, El Cuento, Letra, Cultural Supplement of News and Ovations. His extraordinary "novella" Babel , is number 6 of the Unicorn Books, published by Juan Jose Arreola in 1959. His stories have been collected in In Memoriam, published in the Fiction collection of the Veracruzana University in 1960. The New York Vantage Press translated this book into English in 1962, and one of their stories appeared in German in the Mexiko anthology., published by Horts Erdmann Verlag also in 1962.
MARTINEZ ESTRADA'S narrative prose appears with a tone so appropriate to his purposes that no detail, no name, no description is accidental. Every digression is only apparent, every detour necessary, and yet his prose never on that account becomes inflexible for the reader. The originality of Martinez Estrada's stories is multiple: his themes as well as their elaboration derive from a complete ideological system tested in his essays. That unity which circulates through his fiction gives it a unique character in today's Hispanic American literature'. - Roberto Yahni, Cuentos completes . . . ‘Little attention has been given to his stories because of his very justifiable fame as an essayist . . . . However, it is in the stories that Martinez best combines his sensitivity to the world around him with the cosmic, pessimistic philosophy he began to elucidate in his poetry from 1918 to 1929'. - Peter G. Earle, Prophet in the Wilderness.
Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (September 14, 1895 - November 4, 1964) was an Argentine writer, poet, essayist, and literary critic. An admired biographer and critic, he was often political in his writings, and was a confirmed anti-Peronist. While in his middle years he was identified with the ideas of Nietzsche or Kafka, in his last years he was closely identified with the Cuban revolution and Fidel Castro. LELAND H. CHAMBERS, the translator of these stories by Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, has also translated fiction by Juan Benet, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Maria Luisa Puga, Julieta Campos, Enrique Jaramillo Levi, Francisco Umbral, and others from both sides of the Atlantic. He has published scholarly and critical articles on Cervantes's Don Quixote, the 17th century theorist of wit Baltasar Gracian, the English Metaphysical poets George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, Andre Gide, and Miguel Angel Asturias. He currently is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Denver, where he was formerly editor of the literary magazine Denver Quarterly.
As an X-ray strikes through all human substance, so this great book, X-RAY OF THE PAMPA, penetrates the experience of the people of Argentina and, through its piercing analysis of their history, also reveals much about man's condition in the Western world during the twentieth century. Ezequiel Martinez Estrada's book resembles Argentina's vast plains, the pampa: extended, repetitious, and, therefore, at times monotonous, but unforgettable. First published in 1933, when its author was approaching forty years of age, X-RAY OF THE PAMPA is multidimensional: part history, part essay in social psychology, part prophecy. Seen from the 1970's, this work by the Argentine essayist, poet, novelist, and playwright is the self-fulfilled testimony to a first-class analytical talent dissecting national and universal problems. From the author's deep perspectives on national and Western culture, Martinez Estrada's criticism of Argentina as a dysfunctional and anomic society has been largely proven true by the events of the last forty years. Neither the civilians nor the generals of that rich but disturbed land know how to rule. Martinez Estrada had a hard life, He worked for thirty years (1916-1946) as a subordinate postal employee to earn his bread and butter, although during part of that time, and in the last decades of his life, his income came from teaching. writing, and lecturing, The fact that this cadaverous-appearing man was an autodidact in a land that lusts after professional degrees. that he was a disheartened collaborator in a stifling bureaucracy, and that for five years in the 1956's he was bedridden by a repulsive and undiagnosable skin disease-these experiences may help to account for his personal pessimism and pervasive sense of social isolation. Late in life he left Argentina: in 1959 he went to live in Mexico, and in 1961 and 1962 he lived in Fidel Castro's Cuba. He praised the Cuban revolution passionately and wrote much about it and about Cuban history. But after a time, not having made any great impact on his new compatriots, he returned to Argentina. There he died of cancer in 1964. Martinez Estrada was a man of profound humanitarianism and radicalism, a poet and social critic and teacher who loved his nation, and all the people of earth, but sadly. He framed his message in this book within Argentine history and geography, and he traces the growth of this backwater of the Spanish empire in America through its independence from Spain after 1816, and its modernization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, until it became, by material standards, a leading nation of the Atlantic world. But to Martinez Estrada civilization and modernization as exemplified in the megalopolis of Buenos Aires with its seven million inhabitants were misnomers for the barbarism that he saw inherent in the condition of Argentine men and women, and modern men and women everywhere. He speaks for disinherited Western man: for the individual, against the machine, He drew upon his acute observations, and upon his deep knowledge of Western thought, in which he was widely read, from Socrates through Nietszche and Thoreau to Sartre and Weil. He will read beautifully, especially, perhaps, to younger people who do not yet know him. A pessimist, a spiritual anarchist in the sense that he rejected the state as an alien body, a man possessed by deepest moral indignation, Martinez Estrada could yet validly claim at the end of his life that he was, in ultimate analysis, an optimist. Only an optimist who believed in the perfect ability of man could struggle so hard against evil. Vitriolic, anti-bourgeosie but also anti-totalitarian, whether of the right or the left, this poet-prophet fights with fierce anguish for the underdog trapped in a closed society. Here then we have this existentialistic, puritan skeptic, who is at the same time a true believer because he believes in what is impossible to believe: the secular redemption of the human condition. Dogmatic, bitterly biased, Martinez Estrada is nonetheless one of the three or four important authors of twentieth-century Argentina; more, he is a leader in Western social criticism, Few paid heed to him in 1933; many do today, in Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America, Now, the English-speaking world has a chance to judge him, in this excellent translation by Main Swietlicki. The reader who is unfamiliar with Argentine history will of course find in these pages many references to persons and places unknown to him, Perhaps this fact, which will not impair appreciation of Martinez Estrada's themes, may lead the reader to search into the history of Argentina, to find out about Sarmiento and Mansilla and Pellegrini and the other Argentine people and places to whom the author refers. Thus the history of Argentina, a nation even yet curiously remote from much of the rest of the world, in time and space, may come closer to us-at least be as close and meaningful as places in Africa and Asia. Poets who write history and social criticism are dangerous- They see more deeply, especially if they are both powerfully rational and powerfully emotional about the fate of mankind, Admittedly, Martinez Estrada's style is difficult, It is dense, epigrammatic, laden with inverted constructions and overly complex syntax and neologisms-a difficult, irritating, powerful style. But it conveys a most modern message, out of an alien, isolated environment. His is a deeply ecological message, concerned with the conservation of men and women on a corroded planet. The people, Martinez Estrada wrote in 1957, are hungry, but not for bread. They are hungry for honor, for love, for cordial treatment, for human consideration, Liberation is the message and goal of this book. . .
Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (September 14, 1895 - November 4, 1964) was an Argentine writer, poet, essayist, and literary critic. An admired biographer and critic, he was often political in his writings, and was a confirmed anti-Peronist. While in his middle years he was identified with the ideas of Nietzsche or Kafka, in his last years he was closely identified with the Cuban revolution and Fidel Castro.
EL INFIERNO, the author's tenth and last work of fiction was published originally in Mexico in 1981, with this edition being the first of his novels to appear in English. When this was published earlier in Uruguay it won the Ministry of Culture prize from the democratic government. The story, or novel, EL INFIERNO chronicles the rise and fall of Uruguay's Tupamaro urban guerrillas, and as democracy re-established a hold on the southern cone of Latin America, the guerrillas and the decade of state terror that followed were just being fully assessed, with this controversial novel being considered an important document in this debate. Set in a 1970s Uruguay that evokes Dante's Hades, EL INFIERNO is a collage of stories about people caught up in political turmoil. Martinez Moreno, both the Virgil and Dante of this living Inferno, tells the stories he learned working as a lawyer defending political prisoners: stories of bankers and military advisers, their kidnappers, the desparecidos and their families, army officers, and innocent bystanders.
Carlos Martinez Moreno (September 1, 1917, Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay - February 21, 1986, Mexico City, Mexico) was a writer, journalist and Uruguayan lawyer. His childhood was spent in Cologne, then in Melo, and finally in Montevideo. At age 19 he entered the Law School of the University of the Republic and graduated in 1948. In 1949, he was appointed Public Defender for civil and criminal matters. Although Carlos Martinez Moreno was a renowned criminal defense attorney, he also developed a reputation as an important writer. At the age of 20, he was a theatrical critic, first for El País and El Diario, and then in 1942 for the weekly Marcha. His first stories were published in a variety of student magazines, and later in Mundo Uruguayo. Most of the stories were published under the pseudonym of Alejandro Tour. In 1944 Carlos Martinez Moreno won a literary contest with the story The Other Half. In 1960 he published his first book, Los días por vivir, and in 1951 he participated as a guest at the Latin American Encounter of Writers, in Concepcion, Chile. In 1959, he was invited to participate in Operation Truth and traveled to Cuba as a journalist. This resulted in a novel, El paredon, which is a finalist in the Brief Library Contest of the Seix Barral publishing house. In 1968 , together with Carlos Real de Azúa and Carlos Maggi, he served as director to the Center Editor of Latin America. In 1971 he joined the newly founded political movement, Frente Amplio, and the following year published a series of critical articles on the Uruguayan institutional news. In reprisal for his articles an explosive device, placed at dawn, destroyed part of his home. In 1977 he was forced into exile in Barcelona, where he earned his living as a proofreader and translator. He left for Mexico In 1978, where he had been offered a position in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He lived there until his death, in February 1986, which occurred while he was waiting in the queue of the Directorate of Migration to prepare the return to Uruguay.
MARIANO AZUELA (1873-1952), a prolific writer of novels, essays, autobiography and literary criticism, is best known as the creator of the Novel of the Mexican Revolution and as the author of Los de abajo (The Underdogs). Hardly known at all are three experimental novels which Azuela wrote in the 1920s: La malhora, El desquite, and La luciernaga. In this book, The Art of Mariano Azue]a, attention is given to other aspects of the Mexican novelist's craft in these experimental works. The author of the present volume identifies Mariano Azuela as the first modern Mexican novelist of the twentieth century, and therefore as the precursor of Jose Revueltas, Agustin Yañez, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, and of la nueva novela hispanoamericana (the Spanish American new novel).
ELIUD MARTINEZ is Associate Professor of Chicano Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Riverside. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas, Austin, and a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature, from Ohio University, Athens. At UC Riverside he teaches courses in Chicano Studies, Comparative Literature, Latin American Studies and Spanish. His main research and teaching areas are: Modernism in literature and the arts, Chicano literature, modern novel and film, minority literature and literary criticism, and Latin American and Mexican cultural history. Professor Martinez is a practicing artist (drawing and painting), and he is working on a novel.
One of the best books, maybe the best, of the last ten years in Argentina' - La Nacion . . . RODERER is consumed by a lust for the unutterable. Rapaciously pursuing knowledge from a radical perspective in a race against time's ravages, he enters a private world of his own creation. While an also-brilliant classmate successfully forges a place in society, Roderer sacrifices all-friends, the girl who loves him, his family, and, ultimately, even himself-in his increasingly implosive search for the one answer that could be his salvation. Regarding Roderer is a precise, harrowing novel of youth. An exemplary work of literature from Argentina, it shares many of the concerns of such Continental masters as Hesse, Fornier, and Mann, as well as such North and South American writers as Borges, Salinger, and Knowles, whose young heroes also sought the remarkable.
GULLLERMO MARTINEZ was born in 1962 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he earned a doctorate in mathematics. At the age of twenty, he won the first National Short Story Award for his collection, La Jungla sin Bestias. In 1988, his book Inferno Grande won Argentina's National Foundation of Arts award. Recently, he pursued graduate work in mathematics at Oxford University. . The translation from the Spanish is by LAURA C. DAIL, whose most recent translation is Paco Ignacio Taibo's FOUR HANDS.
Math and murder mingle in this intriguingly cerebral mystery. When an Argentine math student at Oxford discovers the smothered body of his landlady, conventional wisdom points to a family member with the most prosaic of motives. But then renowned logician Arthur Seldom, author of a book on the mathematics of serial killers, tells of a strange note left in his mailbox indicating the murder is the first of a series linked by a mysterious pattern. More bodies pile up, apparently of natural causes, but each paired with a message bearing a new arcane symbol. Arthur and his student ponder whether the deaths are innocent or the subtle, ‘imperceptible' homicides of a madman seeking to match wits with the great logician, and they rack their brains to decipher a pattern behind the signs before another corpse turns up. Martinez, a novelist and math Ph.D., writes with a restrained, elegant style sprinkled with brief disquisitions on Gadel's theorem, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Wittgenstein's paradox, which demonstrates ‘the impossibility of establishing an unambiguous rule.' None of that helps very much in solving the crimes, but it makes an intriguing context for the author's exploration of a fundamental mystery theme-how we impose meaningful patterns on the confusing evidence of reality and are in turn misled and blinded by those patterns. The result is a stylish, intellectually meaty whodunit. - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.
Guillermo Martínez (born 29 July 1962) is an Argentine novelist and short story writer. Martínez was born in Bahía Blanca, Argentina. He gained a PhD in mathematical logic at the University of Buenos Aires. After his degree in Argentina, he worked for two years in a postdoctoral position at the Mathematical Institute, Oxford. His most successful novel has been Crímenes Imperceptibles (Imperceptible Crimes) known as The Oxford Murders, written in 2003. In the same year, he was awarded the Planeta Prize for this novel, which has been translated into a number of languages. The book has appeared as a film in 2008, directed by Alex de la Iglesia, and starring John Hurt, Elijah Wood, Leonor Watling and Julie Cox.
From the original 2 volume collection entitled El ensayo mexicano moderno published in 1958. The essays in this book, presented in roughly chronological order, are of a high literary quality, addressing issues spiritual, psychological, economic seeking to demonstrate what distinctive in Mexicanism and the Mexican national outlook.
Jose Luis Martínez Rodríguez (Atoyac, Jalisco, January 19, 1918 - City of Mexico , 20 of March of 2007 ) was a scholar , diplomat , essayist , historian , writer , bibliographer , publisher and humanist Mexican . He was director of the Economic Culture Fund from 1977 to 1982. He studied Spanish letters at the Faculty of Philosophy of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and isolated courses in philosophy and art history from 1938 to 1943. He married Amalia Hernández , who was founder and director of the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico , with the one that had his eldest son, Jose Luis Martínez Hernández, who was the holder of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts between 1994 and 2000. His second wife was Lydia Baracs, originally from Hungary , with whom he had Guadalupe Andrea and Rodrigo. Together with Alí Chumacero, Leopoldo Zea and Jorge González Durán , he founded the magazine Tierra Nueva. He was professor of literature at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and guest teacher at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of El Salvador in 1951. He was the maximum exponent of Mexican humanism of the 20th century: his sympathy for nineteenth-century liberalism did not fight with his sympathy for the Catholic culture (qv Gabriel Zaid) that was that of his ancestors. He was a full member of the Mexican Academy of Language, where he took possession of chair III on April 22, 1960; He directed that institution from 1980 to 2002 and from 2003 was perpetual honorary director. Since 1990, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Economic Culture Fund and the committees of History and Literature. He was a full member of the Mexican Academy of History , where he has held chair 24 since 1993. He was also a corresponding member of the Peruvian Academy of Language and the Dominican Academy of Language . He received an honorary doctorate from the Pedro Henríquez Ureña National University in Santo Domingo , Dominican Republic in 1984, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1996 and from the University of the Americas in 1997. He maintained friendships with writers of the stature of Octavio Paz and Juan Jose Arreola , who was his classmate in primary school, and with many others. Among the decorations and prizes he received are the Officier d'Academie of the French Republic in 1947, the Jose María Vigil insignia as distinguished from Jalisco in 1956, Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 1967, the Elías Award Sourasky (1978), the National Prize for Sciences and Arts in the area of ??Literature and Linguistics and the Alfonso Reyes International Prize in 1982. He received the Ramon Lopez Velarde medal from the Zacatecas government , in 1988; the Medal of Honor of the MenEndez Pelayo International University ofSantander , Spain , in 1993; the Cross of the Order of Alfonso X , in 1998, and the Miguel Othon de Mendizábal medal (gold medal), from the INAH , for its contribution to the conservation, protection and dissemination of Mexican cultural heritage, on November 30, 2000. He was a book lover and his was perhaps the most important private library in the country. The collection is now in the Library of Mexico , in the Citadel.
From one of Latin America's finest writers, a mesmerizing, blackly comic novel about the amazing real-life afterlife of the legendary Eva Peron. In life, Eva Peron was already bigger than fiction-the B-movie starlet from a poor-trash family who reinvented herself as a great beauty, snared Argentina's great dictator Juan Peron, married him, reinvented herself again as his passionately adoring wife, and became the uncrowned queen of the masses. But that was a mere prelude to what happened next. Suddenly struck down by cancer, she was given no hope to live. As thousands of the poor filled the park around her palace, chanting and praying for their ‘Saint Evita,' she died. Some days before the end, she begged her husband that she not be forgotten. Grief-crazed (but politically crazy like a fox), he seized upon this idea quite literally Sending for Europe's finest embalmer, he had the man waiting at her deathbed, and within minutes of her last breath, this Michelangelo of the mortuary was hard at work making her body physically immortal. Put on display on a pure glass slab suspended in a single beam of light from the ceiling of a darkened chamber, Evita entered everlasting life as the sacred object of national pilgrimage. Peron did less well: hated, rebelled against, and deposed, he had to flee. But his mere mortal-and equally ugly-successors realized to their acute discomfort that Evita's body was much more powerful than they were. Whoever controlled it controlled Argentina. And here begins Evita's fantastical true-life (if postmortem) odyssey Hidden away stolen, replicated (three perfect copies of her body were made and used in a mad shell game by various factions), smuggled abroad, buried, dug up, and hijacked again, she traveled two continents exerting strange, unshakable power over everyone in her path. Colonel Moon Koenig of the Argentine Intelligence Service, who was put in charge of the corpse, became so obsessed with her that he spent the rest of his life trying to keep her for himself, his great rival, Major Arancibia, murdered his wife when she discovered he was spending hours alone in his attic with the dead Evita; soldiers moving her from here to there kept ending up dead in the most outlandish accidents. How Evita was finally resurrected and repatriated in triumph when Perôn came home to rule again is the climax of this dazzling, original, page-turning novel. . TOMAS ELOY MARTINEZ was born in Argentina in 1934. After starting his career as a journalist and editor, Martinez was forced by Isabel Peron's government to leave Argentina in 1975, and for the next eight years he lived in exile in Venezuela. In 1983 he received a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., where he wrote THE PERoN NOVEL. Since then he has taught and lectured at many universities around the world. He is currently Director of the Latin American Program at Rutgers University and lives in Highland Park, New Jersey.
Tomás Eloy Martínez (July 16, 1934 - January 31, 2010) was an Argentine journalist and writer. Born in San Miguel de Tucumán, Martínez obtained a degree in Spanish and Latin American literature from the University of Tucumán, and an MA at the University of Paris. From 1957 to 1961 he was a film critic in Buenos Aires for the La Nacion newspaper, and he then was editor in chief (1962-69) of the magazine Primera Plana. From 1969 to 1970 he worked as a reporter in Paris. In 1969 Martínez interviewed former Argentine President Juan Domingo Peron, who was exiled in Madrid. These interviews were the basis for two of his more celebrated novels: La Novela de Peron (1985) and Santa Evita (1995). In 1970 he and many former writers of Primera Plana worked at the magazine Panorama, where Martínez was the director. On 15 August 1972 he learned of the uprising of political prisoners in the jail at Rawson, Chubut Province. Panorama was the only publication in Buenos Aires that reported the correct story of the affair in Rawson, which differed significantly from the official version of the de facto Argentine government. On 22 August he was fired at the behest of the government, whereupon he went to Rawson and the neighboring city of Trelew where he reported the Massacre of Trelew in his book The Passion According to Trelew. The book was banned by the Argentine dictatorship. For three years (1972-75) Martínez was in charge of the cultural supplement of La Nacion, after which he lived in exile (1975-83) in Caracas, Venezuela, where he remained active as a journalist, co-founding the newspaper El Diario de Caracas. In his book The Memoirs of the General he recounts that he was threatened by the 'Triple A', the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, and on one occasion, gunmen held a pistol to the head of his three-year-old son because they were witnesses to a crime Martínez believed to be an operation led by the far-right paramilitary group. He subsequently started the newspaper Siglo 21 in Guadalajara, Mexico, and created the literary supplement Primer Plano for the newspaper Página/12 in Buenos Aires. Martínez has also been a teacher and lecturer. He taught (1984-87) at the University of Maryland. In 1995, he took a position as distinguished professor of Spanish literature and director of the Latin American Studies program at Rutgers University, New Jersey. He wrote columns for La Nacion and the New York Times syndicate, and his articles have appeared in many newspapers and journals in Latin America. He has published a number of books, one of which, Santa Evita, has been translated into 32 languages and published in 50 countries. He was awarded the Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson fellowships, and won the 2002 Premio Alfaguara de Novela for the novel Flight of the Queen. His works deal primarily (but not exclusively) with Argentina during and after the rule of Juan Domingo Peron and his wife, Eva Duarte de Peron (Evita). Martínez died in Buenos Aires on 31 January 2010 after a long battle against a brain tumor.
A highly literate and complex work, THE PERoN NOVEL was an immediate best-seller in Latin America and has been compared to Garcia Márquez's AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH and Roa Bastos's I THE SUPREME - indeed, Roa Bastos himself has praised Martinez in the highest terms. A gripping account of political power, THE PERoN NOVEL tells the story of the return home from exile of Argentina's most charismatic and enigmatic leader. Peron dominated Arqentinian political and public life for over thirty years. But by June 20, 1973, the day of his flight home to resume power, the general is biologically and mentally in decline, ‘an old vegetarian lion.' Tomás Eloy Martinez makes us witness to the macabre situation of a tyrant losing control over his own life and mind in the same way that he is losing control over the forces in his own camp, becoming the prey of his own henchmen. Somewhere between fact and fiction, THE PERON NOVEL is ‘a novel where everything is true.' The book makes use of real names and events (Mario Vargas Llosa told Martinez that if he didn't use real names, no one would believe him), masterfully juxtaposed with newspaper articles, memoirs, interviews, and purely fanciful writing. The cast of characters includes Evita's body lying in state in the attic, Peron's third wife (an ex-go-qo dancer dressed up to look like [vita), a witch doctor who also happens to be Peron's closest advisor, communists, anarchists, Peronists, and the Virgin Mary. The end result is a revealing portrait of an intriguing personality, a suspenseful political thriller, and a wonderfully readable work of fiction from a major new voice of Latin America. . A journalist and author of novels, short stories, and two collections of essays, Tomás Eloy Martinez left Argentina in 1975 after a bomb was found in his office. He lived in Venezuela from 1915 through 1983, and in 1983-84 was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. He now divides his time between Argentina and the United States, where he is a professor of Latin American literature at the University of Maryland.
Tomás Eloy Martínez (July 16, 1934 - January 31, 2010) was an Argentine journalist and writer. Born in San Miguel de Tucumán, Martínez obtained a degree in Spanish and Latin American literature from the University of Tucumán, and an MA at the University of Paris. From 1957 to 1961 he was a film critic in Buenos Aires for the La Nacion newspaper, and he then was editor in chief (1962-69) of the magazine Primera Plana. From 1969 to 1970 he worked as a reporter in Paris. In 1969 Martínez interviewed former Argentine President Juan Domingo Peron, who was exiled in Madrid. These interviews were the basis for two of his more celebrated novels: La Novela de Peron (1985) and Santa Evita (1995). In 1970 he and many former writers of Primera Plana worked at the magazine Panorama, where Martínez was the director. On 15 August 1972 he learned of the uprising of political prisoners in the jail at Rawson, Chubut Province. Panorama was the only publication in Buenos Aires that reported the correct story of the affair in Rawson, which differed significantly from the official version of the de facto Argentine government. On 22 August he was fired at the behest of the government, whereupon he went to Rawson and the neighboring city of Trelew where he reported the Massacre of Trelew in his book The Passion According to Trelew. The book was banned by the Argentine dictatorship. For three years (1972-75) Martínez was in charge of the cultural supplement of La Nacion, after which he lived in exile (1975-83) in Caracas, Venezuela, where he remained active as a journalist, co-founding the newspaper El Diario de Caracas. In his book The Memoirs of the General he recounts that he was threatened by the 'Triple A', the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, and on one occasion, gunmen held a pistol to the head of his three-year-old son because they were witnesses to a crime Martínez believed to be an operation led by the far-right paramilitary group. He subsequently started the newspaper Siglo 21 in Guadalajara, Mexico, and created the literary supplement Primer Plano for the newspaper Página/12 in Buenos Aires. Martínez has also been a teacher and lecturer. He taught (1984-87) at the University of Maryland. In 1995, he took a position as distinguished professor of Spanish literature and director of the Latin American Studies program at Rutgers University, New Jersey. He wrote columns for La Nacion and the New York Times syndicate, and his articles have appeared in many newspapers and journals in Latin America. He has published a number of books, one of which, Santa Evita, has been translated into 32 languages and published in 50 countries. He was awarded the Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson fellowships, and won the 2002 Premio Alfaguara de Novela for the novel Flight of the Queen. His works deal primarily (but not exclusively) with Argentina during and after the rule of Juan Domingo Peron and his wife, Eva Duarte de Peron (Evita). Martínez died in Buenos Aires on 31 January 2010 after a long battle against a brain tumor.
A hypnotic novel in which an American student's quest to find the greatest living tango singer leads him deep into the labyrinth of Argentina's past. It is 2001, and inflation is spiraling out of control in Argentina as Bruno Cadogan, an American graduate student specializing in Borges, arrives in Buenos Aires. Cadogan is on the trail of Julio Martel, an elusive tango singer rumored to be even better than Carlos Gardel, the greatest singer of the 1920s and ‘30s. Martel has never recorded and his strange, powerful performances, at seemingly arbitrary sites around the city, are always unannounced. Cadogan finds lodging in a boarding house rumored to be the setting of the famous Borges story ‘The Aleph,' and soon finds himself drawn into the tangle of legends surrounding the singer's life. As the economic tension grows and the city hovers on the verge of riots, Bruno begins to believe that Martel's increasingly rare performances are in fact far from random - that they instead form a map of the darkest moments in the city's past.
Tomás Eloy Martínez (July 16, 1934 - January 31, 2010) was an Argentine journalist and writer. Born in San Miguel de Tucumán, Martínez obtained a degree in Spanish and Latin American literature from the University of Tucumán, and an MA at the University of Paris. From 1957 to 1961 he was a film critic in Buenos Aires for the La Nacion newspaper, and he then was editor in chief (1962-69) of the magazine Primera Plana. From 1969 to 1970 he worked as a reporter in Paris. In 1969 Martínez interviewed former Argentine President Juan Domingo Peron, who was exiled in Madrid. These interviews were the basis for two of his more celebrated novels: La Novela de Peron (1985) and Santa Evita (1995). In 1970 he and many former writers of Primera Plana worked at the magazine Panorama, where Martínez was the director. On 15 August 1972 he learned of the uprising of political prisoners in the jail at Rawson, Chubut Province. Panorama was the only publication in Buenos Aires that reported the correct story of the affair in Rawson, which differed significantly from the official version of the de facto Argentine government. On 22 August he was fired at the behest of the government, whereupon he went to Rawson and the neighboring city of Trelew where he reported the Massacre of Trelew in his book The Passion According to Trelew. The book was banned by the Argentine dictatorship. For three years (1972-75) Martínez was in charge of the cultural supplement of La Nacion, after which he lived in exile (1975-83) in Caracas, Venezuela, where he remained active as a journalist, co-founding the newspaper El Diario de Caracas. In his book The Memoirs of the General he recounts that he was threatened by the 'Triple A', the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, and on one occasion, gunmen held a pistol to the head of his three-year-old son because they were witnesses to a crime Martínez believed to be an operation led by the far-right paramilitary group. He subsequently started the newspaper Siglo 21 in Guadalajara, Mexico, and created the literary supplement Primer Plano for the newspaper Página/12 in Buenos Aires. Martínez has also been a teacher and lecturer. He taught (1984-87) at the University of Maryland. In 1995, he took a position as distinguished professor of Spanish literature and director of the Latin American Studies program at Rutgers University, New Jersey. He wrote columns for La Nacion and the New York Times syndicate, and his articles have appeared in many newspapers and journals in Latin America. He has published a number of books, one of which, Santa Evita, has been translated into 32 languages and published in 50 countries. He was awarded the Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson fellowships, and won the 2002 Premio Alfaguara de Novela for the novel Flight of the Queen. His works deal primarily (but not exclusively) with Argentina during and after the rule of Juan Domingo Peron and his wife, Eva Duarte de Peron (Evita). Martínez died in Buenos Aires on 31 January 2010 after a long battle against a brain tumor.
Scholarly and popular attention tends to focus heavily on Cuba's recent history: its notoriety as the world's largest exporter of sugar and the Western hemisphere's first socialist nation. Key to the New World is the first comprehensive history of early colonial Cuba written in English and fills the gap in our knowledge of the island before 1700. Luis Martínez-Fernández presents a holistic portrait of the island nation that interrelates geography, economy, society, politics, and culture and weaves these threads into a narrative that begins with the first arrival of indigenous people around 7,000 years ago. He chronicles the conquest and establishment of colonial rule and how the island's geographic uniqueness made it an ideal launching pad for Spanish conquests into Central America, Mexico, and Florida. While considering the role of Cuba and the Caribbean as a theater for European power struggles, he focuses intimately on the people who both influenced and were influenced by these larger, impersonal forces. Developing the theme of "Two Cubas," Martínez-Fernández explores the differences between the urban, official, and mercantilist Havana and the eastern frontier, which is rural, remote, relaxed, and rebellious. As colonial society emerges on the island, he highlights the asymmetrical interactions among whites, blacks, mulattos, Amerindians, and mestizos; the people who challenged the conflicting and overlapping social structures and hierarchies; and the cultural by-products of multiethnicity. He brings to life the different characters in the story of Cuba that are emblematic of creolization and transculturation in religion, food and diet, and music. He also discusses the rise of the sugar plantation as a socioeconomic engine and its reliance on the expansion of African slavery, as well as slave and free black resistance to the system. In these often-overlooked centuries, Martínez-Fernández finds the roots of many of Cuba's enduring economic, political, social, and cultural complexities. The result is a sweeping history, a seminal text that makes clear that to fully grasp revolutionary or contemporary Cuba we must first understand what came before.
Luis Martínez-Fernández lives in Orlando, FL, is professor of history at the University of Central Florida, and is the author of Revolutionary Cuba: A History.
‘One of the first books in nearly three decades that dares to explore the Cuban Revolution from its origins through Raul Castro's government.' - NBC Miami. ‘Helpful to anyone trying to understand present-day Cuba.' - CubaNews ‘Provides a strong narrative and, as the reconciliation and economic integration of Cuba and the Cuban diaspora accelerates following the post-December 2014 normalization of US–Cuban relations, an increasingly significant perspective.' - Social History. ‘A remarkable achievement. The most comprehensive, synthetic, and systematic appraisal of the Cuban Revolution to date.' - Jorge Duany, author of Blurred Borders. ‘Passionate and balanced, Luis Martínez-Fernández guides the reader expertly through the seemingly endless twists, turns, and detours of the Cuban Revolution.' - Gustavo PErez Firmat, author of Life on the Hyphen. Beginning with Batista's coup in 1952, which catalyzed the rebels, and concluding with present-day transformations initiated under Raúl Castro, Revolutionary Cuba provides a balanced analytical synthesis of all the major topics of contemporary Cuban history. Luis Martínez-Fernández examines the circumstances that allowed the revolution to consolidate in the early 1960s, the Soviet influence throughout the latter part of the Cold War, and the struggle to survive the catastrophic Special Period of the 1990s after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. This book offers a comprehensive survey of the socialist movement that forever changed Cuba and the world.
LUIS MARTÍNEZ-FERNÁNDEZ, professor of history at the University of Central Florida, served as senior editor of the two-volume Encyclopedia of Cuba: People, History, Culture and is the author of numerous books including Frontiers, Plantations, and Walled Cities: Essays on Society, Culture and Politics in the Hispanic Caribbean.
A charmed young woman with the good fortune to have been born into a privileged, freethinking class of fin-de-siecle Puebla society, Emilia Sauri is the product of a family of progressive eccentrics: Diego, her father, is a Mayan curandero equally fluent in his knowledge of folk remedies and European medicine, and possessed of an incurable addiction to armchair politics; Josefa, her mother, is Diego's perfect counterpart - a devoted wife with a passion for the novels of Zola, an aversion to politics, and a soup to cure every form of emotional distress; and her aunt, Milagros, is a beautiful, fiery radical who leaves a string of heartbroken lovers in her wake rather than relinquish an ounce of her prized independence. It is Milagros, most of all, who schools Emilia in the way of the world, the art of politics, and the wars of the heart. Emilia's heart is captured early on by her childhood playmate Daniel Cuenca - Milagros's godson and the son of a gentlemanly doctor whose weekly salons provide genteel covers for Puebla's activists and intellectuals. As his country is drawn into a civil war, Daniel heeds the call of his party and takes off after whomever he believes the most promising leader of the moment, beginning a series of brutal partings and passionate reunions that leave Emilia feeling abandoned, angry, and in spite of herself, ever more ardent. Emilia discovers her own gift for healing and pursues the study of medicine, learning the mysterious science of herbs in her father's apothecary, apprenticing with Dr. Cuenca, and later, traveling north to Chicago to receive her formal training. It is during one of Daniel's prolonged absences that Emilia meets Antonio Zavalza, a physician who returns to Puebla to open a small hospital with his inherited wealth. Working side by side, Emilia and Dr. Zavalza fall in love, to no one's surprise, as Zavalza has been smitten with Emilia since he first heard the sound of her voice and has been a patient and steadfast suitor.
Ángeles Mastretta (born October 9, 1949, in Puebla) is a Mexican author and journalist. She is well known for creating inspirational female characters and fictional pieces that reflect the social and political realities of Mexico in her life. Mastretta began writing as a journalist for a Mexican magazine, Siete and an afternoon newspaper, Ovaciones. She claims that her father - a journalist in her youth - inspired her to be a writer. In 1974, she received a scholarship from the Mexican Writers' Center. She attended the center and was able to work on her writing abilities along with other authors such as Juan Rulfo, Salvador Elizondo, and Francisco Monterde. After a year of working at the Mexican Writers' Center, a collection of Mastretta's poetry entitled La pájara pinta (The Colorful Bird) was published. Mastretta really wanted to focus on a novel that she had been thinking about for years. She finally got her chance to work on this novel when an editor offered to sponsor Mastretta on a six-month leave of absence, allowing her to focus solely on writing. She took the offer and ended up embarking on a sabbatical to complete Arráncame la vida (Tear This Heart Out). The novel (published in 1985) was an immediate success, and earned her the Mazatlán Prize for Literature for Best Book of the Year. Arráncame la vida was a critical and popular success in Mexico and abroad. As a result, Mastretta was able to focus more on her fiction-writing passion. The film of the same name and based upon the novel was released in September 2008. Mastretta won the Romulo Gallegos Prize for her 1996 novel, Mal de Amores (Lovesick). When her infant daughter unexpectedly fell ill, Mastretta sat next to her child in the hospital and began to tell stories of interesting and different women in her family who were important to her in critical moments of her life. These stories of women who 'decided their own destinies' became the inspiration for Mujeres de ojos grandes (Women with Big Eyes). The publication - autobiographical narratives based on each of the women - was intended to preserve the stories for posterity.
Fifteen-year-old Catalina Guzman is beautiful, astute and intensely desirable. Her innocence and immaturity also make her an easy victim for the ruthless General Andres Ascencio, twenty years her senior, and who is determined to secure political power at any cost. Their marriage marks the beginning of a relationship in which, as she becomes aware of the political, emotional and sexual double standards of her spouse, Catalina gradually learns how to distil her suffering into small, but steadily more effective, acts of defiance. Mother, lover, society hostess, her qualities make her an asset that her husband abuses at his peril. Catalina's long apprenticeship in affairs of state And of the heart is recounted by Angeles Mastretta in a style that is full of warmth, energy and affection. Set against a vivid background of intrigue, passion, violence and power, Mexican Bolero establishes a completely new tone for Latin Amnerican fiction. . Angeles Mastretta was born in Puebla, Mexico, in October 1949. She studied journalism in the Politics and Social Science Faculty of the autonomous University of Mexico and did her doctorate in solidarity with lost causes, She also a professional worrier. For the past twenty years she has devoted herself to journalism and literature in the foolish belief that what happens in Mexico is her business. She is obsessed with her children, pines for her father and now and again fight with her husband, although he isn't one as such. She is indecisive, unpunctual and feels the cold. She sleeps badly and it shows. In the mornings she is absentminded, and in the afternoons she is prone to bouts of melancholy, which are cured by a siesta. She sometimes confuses hunger with existential anguish. She is incapable of giving orders and saying no, but finds asking favors easy. She has several bosom friends, and her mother thinks she wastes too much time talking to them on the phone. Like all mothers, she is right, of course. But how else can you love your friends in Mexico City? She is inquisitive and so talkative that when there is no one around to listen, she tells stories, writes down her fantasies and memories, and invents characters that get under her skin and absorb other people on lazy afternoons. This book wanted to be a political novel but it turned into a love story. The author says she will never be good at anything. . Ann Wright is a professional translator of books, films and television programs. . First published in Mexico as Arrancame la vida by Ediciones OcEano, 1986 .
Ángeles Mastretta (born October 9, 1949, in Puebla) is a Mexican author and journalist. She is well known for creating inspirational female characters and fictional pieces that reflect the social and political realities of Mexico in her life. Mastretta began writing as a journalist for a Mexican magazine, Siete and an afternoon newspaper, Ovaciones. She claims that her father - a journalist in her youth - inspired her to be a writer. In 1974, she received a scholarship from the Mexican Writers' Center. She attended the center and was able to work on her writing abilities along with other authors such as Juan Rulfo, Salvador Elizondo, and Francisco Monterde. After a year of working at the Mexican Writers' Center, a collection of Mastretta's poetry entitled La pájara pinta (The Colorful Bird) was published. Mastretta really wanted to focus on a novel that she had been thinking about for years. She finally got her chance to work on this novel when an editor offered to sponsor Mastretta on a six-month leave of absence, allowing her to focus solely on writing. She took the offer and ended up embarking on a sabbatical to complete Arráncame la vida (Tear This Heart Out). The novel (published in 1985) was an immediate success, and earned her the Mazatlán Prize for Literature for Best Book of the Year. Arráncame la vida was a critical and popular success in Mexico and abroad. As a result, Mastretta was able to focus more on her fiction-writing passion. The film of the same name and based upon the novel was released in September 2008. Mastretta won the Romulo Gallegos Prize for her 1996 novel, Mal de Amores (Lovesick). When her infant daughter unexpectedly fell ill, Mastretta sat next to her child in the hospital and began to tell stories of interesting and different women in her family who were important to her in critical moments of her life. These stories of women who 'decided their own destinies' became the inspiration for Mujeres de ojos grandes (Women with Big Eyes). The publication - autobiographical narratives based on each of the women - was intended to preserve the stories for posterity.
A number-one international bestseller, WOMEN WITH BIG EYES is Mexican novelist Angeles Mastretta's most widely read work, now available for the first time in an English translation. Each of the stories in this volume reveals a different woman, yet they are all linked by a single thread: the revelation that women share an unnamed force, whether it comes in the form of iron resolve, flaming passion, or simply the knowing and mystical ways to nurture a soul. Meet the outrageous Aunt Leonor, who denies herself the forbidden fruit of love until almost too late: mysterious Aunt Cristina, whose famed marriage is rumored to be nothing more than fable: radiant Aunt Valeria, whose secret happiness is to close your eyes and make of your husband whoever most appeals to you': and sage Aunt Ofelia, a woman who never cries. Run off to the sea with stubborn Aunt Natalia, smuggle wine with scheming Aunt Elena, or escape a kidnapping with cheeky Aunt Elvira. Mastretta's women are vibrant, sly, wise, earthy. and full of life, with stories that mesmerize. From these pages. they look back at you. into you, each representing an aspect of what it means to be a woman with big eyes. able to see the world for what it is, and wink at it, and to make an uncompromising life within it.
Ángeles Mastretta (born October 9, 1949, in Puebla) is a Mexican author and journalist. She is well known for creating inspirational female characters and fictional pieces that reflect the social and political realities of Mexico in her life. Mastretta began writing as a journalist for a Mexican magazine, Siete and an afternoon newspaper, Ovaciones. She claims that her father - a journalist in her youth - inspired her to be a writer. In 1974, she received a scholarship from the Mexican Writers' Center. She attended the center and was able to work on her writing abilities along with other authors such as Juan Rulfo, Salvador Elizondo, and Francisco Monterde. After a year of working at the Mexican Writers' Center, a collection of Mastretta's poetry entitled La pájara pinta (The Colorful Bird) was published. Mastretta really wanted to focus on a novel that she had been thinking about for years. She finally got her chance to work on this novel when an editor offered to sponsor Mastretta on a six-month leave of absence, allowing her to focus solely on writing. She took the offer and ended up embarking on a sabbatical to complete Arráncame la vida (Tear This Heart Out). The novel (published in 1985) was an immediate success, and earned her the Mazatlán Prize for Literature for Best Book of the Year. Arráncame la vida was a critical and popular success in Mexico and abroad. As a result, Mastretta was able to focus more on her fiction-writing passion. The film of the same name and based upon the novel was released in September 2008. Mastretta won the Romulo Gallegos Prize for her 1996 novel, Mal de Amores (Lovesick). When her infant daughter unexpectedly fell ill, Mastretta sat next to her child in the hospital and began to tell stories of interesting and different women in her family who were important to her in critical moments of her life. These stories of women who 'decided their own destinies' became the inspiration for Mujeres de ojos grandes (Women with Big Eyes). The publication - autobiographical narratives based on each of the women - was intended to preserve the stories for posterity.
Combines Romantic plot and Realist detail in the first indigenista novel of contemporary life.In this tragic tale, Clorinda Matto de Turner explores the relationship between the landed gentry and the indigenous peoples of the Andean mountain communities.
Clorinda Matto de Turner (11 September 1852 in Cusco - 25 October 1909) was a Peruvian writer who lived during the early years of Latin American independence. Her own independence inspired women throughout the region as her writings sparked controversy in her own culture. She was born and raised in Cuzco, Peru. Matto de Turner's father was Ramon Torres Mato and her mother was Grimanesa Concepcion Usandivares. When her mother died, she became known as Azucena de los Andes ("Lily of the Andes") throughout the region. Matto de Turner was baptized Grimanesa Martina Mato, but was called Clorinda among her friends and family. She originally had one "T" in her last name, but after studying the Inca culture she added the extra "T" to give the name an Inca flavor. Growing up in Cuzco, the former Inca capital, Matto spent most of her days on her family's estate, Paullo Chico, which is near the village of Coya. As a teenager, Matto attended the school that is now known as the Escuela Nacional de Educandas (National Women's Secondary School). There she took some very unconventional courses that were viewed as unfeminine in the culture. She majored in independent studies, which included Philosophy, Natural History, and Physics. Matto left school at the age of sixteen to spend more time taking care of her brother and father. In 1871, at the age of 19, Matto married an Englishman, Dr. Turner, a wealthy landowner. Shortly after their marriage they moved to Tinta, where they lived for 10 years. In Tinta, Matto de Turner became more aware of Peru's two histories: the colonial and the Inca. She became very familiar with indigenous culture, and the more she learned, the more she embraced it. Much of her writing is inspired by what she learned from her acquaintance with this culture. She found work as a journalist, with local and foreign papers. In 1878, Matto de Turner founded El Recreo de Casco, a magazine offering literature, science, art and education. She became known for literary works that portrayed indigenous people in a positive light, in contrast to the mainstream views of her society. Even though she was of white ancestry, she did not agree with the oppressive treatment of Peru's indigenous peoples, and she used her writings to speak out on their behalf. Matto de Turner also used her writings to campaign for better education for women. In 1881, her husband died, leaving the estate bankrupt. Unable to improve her financial situation in Tinta, Matto de Turner moved to Arequipa where she worked as editor in chief at the newspaper La Bolsa Americana. While there she published two volumes of "tradiciones cuzqueñas," one in 1884 and another in 1886. She also wrote the drama Himacc-Suacc (1884) and translated the four Gospels into Quechua, a language spoken by the indigenous people in Peru. Besides her literary works she also got involved in politics, and raised money for the development of the battleship Almirante Grau. Matto de Turner eventually moved from Tinta to live in Lima, although with her political and controversial writings she often thought it would be safer to live outside of Peru. In Lima she joined many different literary organizations and publications. In 1887, Matto de Turner became director of El Peru Ilustrado, where she published many of her novels. She published three novels between 1889 and 1895: Aves Sin Nido (Birds Without a Nest), Indole (Character), and Herencia (Heredity). These novels talk about the indigenous people getting stripped of all their civil rights as well as getting persecuted by the community and the self-indulgent priests. Matto de Turner's most famous novel was Aves Sin Nido (1889). This novel was controversial because it was about a love affair between a white man and an indigenous woman, which was considered a disgrace among Latin American society during this time, and because it spoke of the immorality of the priests during that period. The reason the characters in the novel couldn't marry was because they eventually learned that they were both fathered by the same philandering priest. Aves Sin Nido was not Matto de Turner's only controversial work. She also published a controversial story written by a Brazilian writer by the name of Henrique Coelho Neto in her newspaper, El Perú Illustrado. Her controversial writings led to her excommunication by the Archbishop. In 1895, she moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she continued her literary activities. In 1900, she wrote Boreales, Miniaturas y Porcelanas (Northerners, Miniatures, and Porcelain) a collection of essays which includes "Narraciones historicas," and important histroriographical contribution that shows her deep sorrow at being exiled from Peru and her longing to return. In Buenos Aires Matto de Turner founded Búcaro Americano; she also gave numerous public lectures and wrote many articles for the press. Matto de Turner spent most of her time teaching at a local university as a Professor. In 1908, she visited Europe for the first time in her life, she made sure to carefully document this in the book Viaje de Recreo (Trip of Amusement). The book was released in newspapers upon her death in 1909.
In this tragic tale, Clorinda Matto de Turner explores the relationship between the landed gentry and the indigenous peoples of the Andean mountain communities. While unfolding as a love story rife with secrets and dashed hopes, Torn from the Nest in fact reveals a deep and destructive class disparity, and criticizes the Catholic clergy for blatant corruption. When Lucia and Don Fernando Mann settle in the small hamlet of Killac, the young couple become advocates for the local Indians who are being exploited and oppressed by their priest and governor and by the gentry allied with these two. Considered meddling outsiders, the couple meet violent resistance from the village leaders, who orchestrate an assault on their house and pursue devious and unfair schemes to keep the Indians subjugated. After a romance blossoms between a member of the gentry and the peasant girl that Lucia and Don Fernando have adopted, a dreadful secret prevents their marriage and brings to a climax the novel's exposure of degradation. TORN FROM THE NEST was first published in Peru in 1889 amidst much enthusiasm and outrage. This fresh translation-the first since 1904-preserves one of Peru's most distinctive and compelling voices. Clorinda Matto de Turner was a major literary figure in nineteenth-century Peru. She was a crucial figure in the shift from Romanticism to Naturalism in Peru.
Clorinda Matto de Turner (11 September 1852 in Cusco - 25 October 1909) was a Peruvian writer who lived during the early years of Latin American independence. Her own independence inspired women throughout the region as her writings sparked controversy in her own culture. She was born and raised in Cuzco, Peru. Matto de Turner's father was Ramon Torres Mato and her mother was Grimanesa Concepcion Usandivares. When her mother died, she became known as Azucena de los Andes ("Lily of the Andes") throughout the region. Matto de Turner was baptized Grimanesa Martina Mato, but was called Clorinda among her friends and family. She originally had one "T" in her last name, but after studying the Inca culture she added the extra "T" to give the name an Inca flavor. Growing up in Cuzco, the former Inca capital, Matto spent most of her days on her family's estate, Paullo Chico, which is near the village of Coya. As a teenager, Matto attended the school that is now known as the Escuela Nacional de Educandas (National Women's Secondary School). There she took some very unconventional courses that were viewed as unfeminine in the culture. She majored in independent studies, which included Philosophy, Natural History, and Physics. Matto left school at the age of sixteen to spend more time taking care of her brother and father. In 1871, at the age of 19, Matto married an Englishman, Dr. Turner, a wealthy landowner. Shortly after their marriage they moved to Tinta, where they lived for 10 years. In Tinta, Matto de Turner became more aware of Peru's two histories: the colonial and the Inca. She became very familiar with indigenous culture, and the more she learned, the more she embraced it. Much of her writing is inspired by what she learned from her acquaintance with this culture. She found work as a journalist, with local and foreign papers. In 1878, Matto de Turner founded El Recreo de Casco, a magazine offering literature, science, art and education. She became known for literary works that portrayed indigenous people in a positive light, in contrast to the mainstream views of her society. Even though she was of white ancestry, she did not agree with the oppressive treatment of Peru's indigenous peoples, and she used her writings to speak out on their behalf. Matto de Turner also used her writings to campaign for better education for women. In 1881, her husband died, leaving the estate bankrupt. Unable to improve her financial situation in Tinta, Matto de Turner moved to Arequipa where she worked as editor in chief at the newspaper La Bolsa Americana. While there she published two volumes of "tradiciones cuzqueñas," one in 1884 and another in 1886. She also wrote the drama Himacc-Suacc (1884) and translated the four Gospels into Quechua, a language spoken by the indigenous people in Peru. Besides her literary works she also got involved in politics, and raised money for the development of the battleship Almirante Grau. Matto de Turner eventually moved from Tinta to live in Lima, although with her political and controversial writings she often thought it would be safer to live outside of Peru. In Lima she joined many different literary organizations and publications. In 1887, Matto de Turner became director of El Peru Ilustrado, where she published many of her novels. She published three novels between 1889 and 1895: Aves Sin Nido (Birds Without a Nest), Indole (Character), and Herencia (Heredity). These novels talk about the indigenous people getting stripped of all their civil rights as well as getting persecuted by the community and the self-indulgent priests. Matto de Turner's most famous novel was Aves Sin Nido (1889). This novel was controversial because it was about a love affair between a white man and an indigenous woman, which was considered a disgrace among Latin American society during this time, and because it spoke of the immorality of the priests during that period. The reason the characters in the novel couldn't marry was because they eventually learned that they were both fathered by the same philandering priest. Aves Sin Nido was not Matto de Turner's only controversial work. She also published a controversial story written by a Brazilian writer by the name of Henrique Coelho Neto in her newspaper, El Perú Illustrado. Her controversial writings led to her excommunication by the Archbishop. In 1895, she moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she continued her literary activities. In 1900, she wrote Boreales, Miniaturas y Porcelanas (Northerners, Miniatures, and Porcelain) a collection of essays which includes "Narraciones historicas," and important histroriographical contribution that shows her deep sorrow at being exiled from Peru and her longing to return. In Buenos Aires Matto de Turner founded Búcaro Americano; she also gave numerous public lectures and wrote many articles for the press. Matto de Turner spent most of her time teaching at a local university as a Professor. In 1908, she visited Europe for the first time in her life, she made sure to carefully document this in the book Viaje de Recreo (Trip of Amusement). The book was released in newspapers upon her death in 1909. The late Antonio Cornejo-Polar was Professor of Spanish at the University of California, Berkeley. John Polt, Professor Emeritus of Spanish at the University of California, Berkeley, has translated several Spanish and Spanish-American authors. first published in Peru in 1889.
Jose Guber was in love with a deadly woman. He met Melissa at the Serological Institute in Sao Paulo where she showed him her beloved snakes. This was a woman who could stuff a rabbit down a boa's throat without turning a hair. Melissa was an expert on poisonous species and venom which is what Jose wanted to work into his latest crime pot-boiler. Jose unashamedly plagiarized his plots from the classics - Chesterton, Poe, Dostoevsky - and his editor was none the wiser, but he liked to flavour the cribs with a bit of modern science. Melissa became rather too interested in Jose's dastardly plots - especially the ones where diabolical women seduced and corrupted weak men. She made it clear that she would like to adapt one of the plots to dispose of her present husband. After all, she had set her amorous sights on Jose and if they were cunning, they could be together. But the course of true love and homicide does not always run smoothly. Especially when the rattlesnake gets depressed and other unforeseen obstacles lurk beyond the next twist in the relentlessly twisting tale. With sharp wit and impressive agility, Patricia Melo leads the reader into a teasing, looking-glass world of great deviousness. Literary puzzles and hilarious swipes at book publishing trends are added pleasures in what is above all a glorious page-turner.
Patricia Melo is a young screenwriter, playwright as well as a novelist. Her last novel, THE KILLER, won the French Pris Deux Oceans in 1996 and the German Deutscher Krimi Preis in 1998. She lives in Sao Paulo.
A gritty, shocking, psychoerotic thriller by an internationally acclaimed young writer from Brazil. Maiquel is a young used car salesman from the mean streets of São Paulo with a bad toothache and a bleak outlook: ‘The essence of man, the material he's made of, is something black and stinking.' When a petty barroom tiff turns sour, Maiquel gets his first taste of the kill. The whole town knows who did it, and Maiquel fears the worst. But instead of being arrested, he is lauded as a hero. Yet something in the undertow continues to trouble him. Deeply. Maiquel swings from sweetness to madness and ennui. He visits a dentist with gleaming canines and a peculiar interest in violence. The man offers him a deal: free dental work in exchange for the death of the man who raped his daughter. Soon the dentist's wealthy friends are making deals with Maiquel, too. Maiquel has become The Killer. But Maiquel longs for a normal life with a wife, a house, a nice pair of shoes. He marries a salesgirl he's deflowered and impregnated, and interviews for a job at a pet store. There, his future boss lectures him on the joys of the finer sex: ‘(Women] don't get pleasure out of any goddamn thing . . . . My work, they say, modern life, they say, the mother's role, they say, lovers, frozen food, personal satisfaction, it's difficult to reconcile, they say. Basically, women need to destroy the life of at least one man. The job's yours, married man.' Thus bombarded from without and within, Maiquel's life in crime escalates to stunning heights. Brutal infidelities are committed, Mafia-style dealings are conducted, and civic honors are bestowed. From there, the fall is devastating.
Patrícia Melo (born 1962 in São Paulo) is a Brazilian author. She has written The Killer and In Praise of Lies, among others. Her works have dealt with sex and violence in a heavily urbanized setting.
NAYAR, one of the winners of the Latin American Prize Novel Contest, is written by a Mexican about a part of Mexico and a kind of Mexican life that is unknown to Americans north of the Rio Grande. Nayarit is a province on the western coast of Mexico, smaller than most of the others and covered largely by dense jungle. This novel is the story of the flight of two men through the jungles of Nayarit, a flight that has as its goal rest and retribution. In the village of San Blas where Ramon Cordoba lived there was a tyrant who ground down and oppressed the hard-working men who drew their livelihood from the soil. This man was a corrupt judge. Ramon, one day, found him making love to his wife and he killed him with one swift blow of a machete. Thereupon Ramon was an outcast and a hunted man. With the only friend he had, Enrique Salerit, a small government official, Ramon took flight. Their journey took them through swamps and across rivers, plains, and hills and always the thick, heavy, jungles. Here is a book about Mexico, its people, its plain things, and its country, written as W. H. Hudson might have written it had he been a Mexican. Seen from the inside, this is the story of two men's wanderings and of the powerful and simple mysteries the forests reveal to those who live in them. Every Latin American republic, with the exception of Uruguay whose entry arrived too late, was represented in the contest.
Miguel Angel MenEndez (January 11, 1904, Izamal, Mexico - June 24, 1982, Mexico City, Mexico) was born in the province of Yucatan, but as a very young man he went to Mexico City to become a newspaper reporter. He was also active in both the political and financial worlds of Mexico and held several important governmental offices. Miguel Angel MenEndez wrote several very well-received volumes of poetry, NAYAR was his first novel.
Recipient of the Hubert Herring Memorial Award from the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies for the best unpublished manuscript of 1973, PROSE FICTION OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTION is an in-depth study of works by Cubans, Cuban exiles, and other Latin American writers. Combining historical and critical approaches, Seymour Menton classifies and analyzes over two hundred novels and volumes of short stories, revealing the extent to which Cuban literature reflects the reality of the Revolution. Menton establishes four periods-1959- 1960, 1961-1965, 1966-1970, and 1971-1973-that reflect the changing policies of the revolutionary government toward the arts. Using these periods as a chronological guideline, he defines four distinct literary generations, records the facts about their works establishes coordinates, and formulates a system of literary and historical classification. He then makes an aesthetic analysis of the best of Cuban fiction, emphasizing the novels of major writers, including Alejo Carpentier's El siglo de las luces, and Jose Lezama Lima's Paradiso. He also discusses the works of a large number of lesser-known writers, which must be considered in arriving at an accurate historical tableau. Menton's exploration of the short story combines a thematic and stylistic analysis of nineteen anthologies with a close study of six authors: Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Calvert Casey, Humberto Arenal, Antonio Benitez, Jesus Diaz Rodriguez, and Norberto Fuentes. Several chapters are devoted to the increasing number of novels and short stories written by Cuban exiles as well as to the eighteen novels and one short story written about the Revolution by non-Cubans, such as Julio Cortázar, Carlos Martinez Moreno, Luisa Josefina Hernández, and Pedro Juan Soto. In studying literary works to reveal the intrinsic consciousness of a historical period, Menton presents not only his own views but also those of Cuban literary critics. In addition, he clarifies the various changes in the official attitude toward literature and the arts in Cuba, using the revolutionary processes of several other countries as comparative examples. Latin American Monographs, No.37. Seymour Menton is a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California at Irvine. As a reviewer of Central American and Caribbean prose fiction for the Handbook of Latin American Studies of the Library of Congress from 1959 through 1973, he had access to Cuban materials that enabled him to gather material for PROSE FICTION OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTION. . .
Seymour Menton (March 6, 1927 - March 8, 2014) was Chairman of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Irvine, and a recipient of the UCI Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for 1980. He has been widely published with over seventy-five articles and reviews on the Latin American novel and short story.
Latin American intellectual history is largely founded on essayistic writing. Women's essays have always formed a part of this rich tradition, yet they have seldom received the respect they merit and are often omitted entirely from anthologies. This volume and its earlier companion, Reinterpreting the Spanish American Essay: Women Writers of the 19th and 20th Centuries, seek to remedy that neglect. This book collects thirty-six notable essays by twenty-two women writers, including Flora Tristan, Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, Clorinda Matto de Turner, Victoria Ocampo, Alfonsina Storni, Rosario FerrE, Christina Peri Rossi, and Elena Poniatowska. All of the essays are here translated into English for the first time, many by the same scholars who wrote critical studies of the authors in the first volume. Each author's work is also prefaced by a brief biographical sketch. .
Doris Meyer was Professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College. She is the author of Victoria Ocampo: Against the Wind and Tide, and numerous articles on Hispanic literature. She is also the co-editor of the two-volume Contemporary Women Authors of Latin America: Introductory Essays and New Translations.
On December 12, 1794, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier preached a sermon in Mexico City that led to his arrest by the Inquisition. He was exiled to Spain--only to escape and spend ten years traveling throughout Europe, as none other than a French priest. So began the grand adventure of Fray Servando's life, and of this gripping memoir. Here is an invitation hard for any reader to resist: a glimpse of the European "Age of Enlightenment" through the eyes of a fugitive Mexican friar. In this memoir, one sees a portrait of manners and morals that is a far cry from the "civilized" spirit that the Empire wanted to impose on its Colonies. This book takes a look at history from an upside down perspective, asking this question: who were the real savages, the colonizers themselves, or the supposed "savages" they were struggling to convert? After ten years, Fray Servando finally returned home to an independent Mexico, where he served the new government before his death. Heretic and rebel, fugitive and visionary, character in a novel and father of his country--Fray Servando Teresa de Mier was all of these things. Translated into English for the first time, this memoir truly captures the passionate spirit of a fantastic man.
Fray Servando Teresa de Mier (in full, Jose Servando Teresa de Mier Noriega y Guerra) (October 18, 1765 in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, New Spain - December 3, 1827 in Mexico City) was a Roman Catholic priest, preacher, and politician in New Spain. He was a descendant of the Dukes of Granada and conquistadors of Nuevo Leon. Susana Rotker is a Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Rutgers University and an internationally awarded specialist on 19th Century Spanish-American Literature. Helen Lane's many award winning translations include Tomas Eloy Martinez's bestseller Santa Evita, Mario Vargas Llosa's memoirs, and several volumes of Octavio Paz's essays.
A controversial political figure is assassinated. An investigation is ordered, questions asked, suspects taken into custody, and factions gradually emerge, dividing and undermining an already fragile government. The story is not an unfamiliar one - it is as old as history itself. And yet the scenario continues to fascinate us. In Ana Miranda's compelling and bewitching novel of seventeenth-century colonial Brazil the story of murder, rebellion, and revenge unwinds with all the intrigue and mastery of the best contemporary thriller. But added to this story are the indelible sights, sounds, and smells of a time and place where worlds collide: new and old, rich and poor, religious and secular, powerful and weak. Fact blends seamlessly with fiction to bring to life the fetid back alley where Portuguese Captain General Teles de Menezes is brutally murdered; the luxurious antechamber where the province's corrupt governor plots his revenge; a remote Jesuit monastery that harbors the conspirators; and the gaudy brothels which hold no distinction between treachery and loyalty. Finding himself in the center of the chaos, the ecclesiastical poet Gregorio de Matos offers his own brand of social commentary. Witty, cunning, and biting, his writings deplore the rampant corruption and hypocrisy he witnesses as well as the romance and sensuality of the world he inhabits. His accounts of his own insatiable lust and painful love of one elusive woman provide a tantalizing counterpoint to the mystery and danger in which he becomes hopelessly entangled. As we follow Gregorio's pursuit of truth and honesty in a tainted world we learn more about the complex reality of Portugal's conquest of the Americas than any history book could ever tell us. ‘BAY OF ALL SAINTS AND EVERY CONCEIVABLE SIN does for Brazilian literature what such works as Eco's THE NAME OF THE ROSE have done for European literature: it revives the past.' - Jornal do Brasil.
An accomplished Brazilian artist, ANA MIRANDA (born August 19, 1951) has also written for radio and published two books of poetry. BAY OF ALL SAINTS AND EVERY CONCEIVABLE SIN is her first novel.
Illustrated.
Certificate of Absence is the first novel of the Argentinian scholar-critic Sylvia Molloy. Innovative in its treatment of women's relationships and in its assertion of woman's right to author her own text, the novel has won wide approval in Latin America and the United States. The novel centers around a woman writing in a small room. As she writes, remembering a past relationship and anticipating a future one, the room becomes a repository for nostalgia, violence, and desire, a space in which writing and remembering become life-sustaining ceremonies. The narrator reflects on the power of love to both shelter and destroy. She meditates on the act of writing, specifically on writing as a woman, in a voice that goes against the grain of established, canonical voices. Latin American male writers are prone to self-portrayal in their texts. CERTIFICATE OF ABSENCE is one of the few novels by Latin American women that successfully use this technique to open new windows on women's experiences. . . ‘CERTIFICATE OF ABSENCE is significant not only because it is masterfully constructed as a work of fiction, but also because it seems to go against the grain of a more recognizable, and more established, Latin American literary tradition. In that sense, the novel is in the tradition of Onetti and Felisberto Hernández, whose works are widely read and recognized for their craft, but whose fictional strategies resist the acceptable patterns for inclusion in a literary canon.' - OSCAR MONTERO,LEHMAN COLLEGE, CUNY.
Sylvia Molloy is an Argentine writer and critic who has taught at Princeton, Yale and NYU, from where she retired in 2010. At NYU she held the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities. She is the author of two novels: En común olvido (2002). She has also written two short prose pieces, Varia imaginacion (2003) and Desarticulaciones (2010). Her critical work includes La Diffusion de la littErature hispano-amEricaine en France au XXe siècle (1972), Las letras de Borges (1979), At Face Value: Autobiographical Writing in Spanish America (1991), Poses de fin de siglo. Desbordes del gEnero en la modernidad (2013), and edited volumes such as Hispanisms and Homosexualities (1998) and PoEticas de la distancia. Adentro y afuera de la literatura argentina (2006). She has been a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She has served as President of the Modern Language Association of America and of the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana and holds an honorary degree in humane letters from Tulane University. In 2007 she created the MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish, with the collaboration of Lila Zemborain and Mariela Dreyfus. The MFA is the first program of its kind in the United States. It is modeled along the lines of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing in English, taking advantage as well of a similar, bilingual Program, at University of Texas at El Paso. Classes and workshops are taught in Spanish and students are mostly Spanish, Latin American or Latino. Daniel Balderston is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Tulane University.
A realist novel of slum life in Mexico City by well-known journalist Mondragon. Expresses the author's protest of social conditions.
Magdalena Mondragon (Torreon, Coahuila, July 14 1913 - City of Mexico, July 5, 1989 ) was a Mexican journalist and novelist, and the first woman to run a newspaper in her country. In her honor, the National Association of Mexican Journalists created the Magdalena Mondragon Medal, which awards journalists with an outstanding uninterrupted trajectory as well as cultural figures.
THE WITCHES' POKER GAME (published in Spanish as Poker de Brujas) was the first major fiction of Carlos Alberto Montaner. The first two stories in the collection were awarded the Antilles Prize for Fiction when the book appeared in 1987. It is a volume of short narratives, mercilessly black in humor, about a series of creatures who are deformed physically and morally. Its nearest literary relatives are the works of Poe, LautrEamont, Kafka and Horacio Ouiroga. The Edge of the Abyss (published in Spanish as Instantáneas al borde del abismoj was his second work of fiction. It marked a clear advance in style power - although it still bears witness to his preference for scabrous themes and pathological states of mind. The book consists of brief, hallucinatory monologues by ten souls at the edge of madness, plus a final story - a kind of macabre ballet - on the subject of suicide. One of the episodes, ‘The Gospels According to St. Judas Iscariot' may well pass into contemporary Latin-American literature as a perverse masterpiece. If THE WITCHES' POKER GAME stems from a great literary tradition, The Edge of the Abyss has its roots in the major discoveries of Freud and his disciples. . CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER (Cuba, 1943) is author of a novel (Perromundo, Ediciones 29, Barcelona, 1972) as well as the two volumes of short stories translated here. He has also authored several books of essays and taught Spanish literature at universities in the U. S. and Puerto Rico. He has worked as a journalist in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East and still reaches a vast newspaper audience through a bi-weekly syndicated column. Since 1970, he has made his home in Madrid, where he is editor of a publishing house. Although highly original in subject and style, he must be considered part of that recent flowering of imaginative writing that has moved Hispanic literature onto the stage of world literature. . Originally published in Spanishas Poker de brujas and instantaneas al borde del abismo, 1970.
Carlos Alberto Montaner (born 1943) is an exiled Cuban author known for his more than 25 books and thousands of articles, including several novels, the last of which is La mujer del coronel, The colonel's wife. Some of his books are devoted to explain the true nature of the Cuban dictatorship, for example: JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF CUBA. PODER magazine has estimated that more than six million readers have access to his weekly columns. He has been published widely in Latin American newspapers, and published fiction and non-fiction books on Latin America. Since 1968 he has had a syndicated weekly column in many newspapers around the world '. Montaner is a political analyst for CNN in Spanish and a collaborator of the book The Cuban Exile, along with well-known Cuban writers Mirta Ojito, award winning poet and writer Carlos Pintado and Carlos Eire, a book coordinated by Cuban musician and producer Emilio Estefan. In October 2012 Foreign Policy magazine select Montaner as one of the fifty more influential intellectuals in the Iberoamerican world.
Among the illustrious dead who lie in Westminster Abbey rests Thomas, tenth Earl of Dundonald, better known as Admiral Lord Cochrane (1775-1860), British naval hero who bore also, as his tomb attests, the title of Marquis of Maranhão in the Empire of Brazil. A Northern State, bordering the region of the Amazon, Maranhão, both politically and strategically, was one of the most important States during Colonial times. Cochrane was one of the leaders who helped the country to achieve its independence in 1823, for which he was rewarded by a Marquisate by the grateful Emperor, Dom Pedro I. This is a story about Maranhäo and its coastal seas that Cochrane knew so well, and its capital, São Luis, which he visited several times. It is not concerned with the Maranhão of the Marquis' day; it is about a Maranhäo caught half-way between progress and a deep-rooted medieval mentality, whose physical aspect is sloWly changing, and where can still be found, in the villages and small towns, men and women whose primitive emotions have been moulded by over four hundred years of tradition and prejudice. It is essential that non-Brazilian readers should understand that the action of this story takes place between two poles: São Luis, the sixteenth-century city rapidly being modernized, Capital of the State, and a little coastal town where life has gone on with very little change since its foundation, lying a day and a half sail from São Luis, where the paramount moral authority is the parish priest, unhesitatingly accepted by the population as the interpreter of the will of God. CORONATION QUAY was awarded the National Prize for Fiction by the Cultural Foundation in Brasilia and also won the Pen Club Prize. Three other of his novels won prizes from the Brazilian Academy of Letters, from the Brazilian Writers Association of Rio de Janeiro and from its counterpart in Sâo Paulo.
Joshua de Souza Montello (born August 21, 1917 - Rio de Janeiro, March 15, 2006) was a journalist, teacher, playwright and writer from Brazil. Among his works are the drums of São Luís, in 1965, the trilogy made up of the novels lost twice, in 1966, and Gloria, of 1977, and by romance around midnight, in 1985. Montello worked as Director of the National Library and the National Theater, wrote for the magazine Headline and the Jornal do Brazil, in addition to working in the Government of President Juscelino Kubitschek. Josue Montello's works were translated into English, French, Spanish, German and Swedish. Some of his novels were scripted for the cinema; in 1976, one afternoon, another afternoon received the title of love to 40; and, in 1978, the monster, was filmed as the monster of Santa Teresa. Died in March 2006, victim of heart failure. Montello was interned in Casa de Saúde São Jose, Rio de Janeiro, more than a year for treatment of respiratory problems. The body was hidden in the Academia Brasileira de Letras and buried in the late afternoon in São João Batista Cemetery. The translator, Miss Myriam Henderson, has been living in Brazil for some years and is thoroughly acquainted with contemporary Brazilian literature.
BLOOD RELATIONS is the story of Refugio, whose family has worked in the mines of Northern Mexico for generations. His grandfather dies of silicosis, while his father is reduced to part-time work, but Refugio plans to follow in their footsteps. He takes it as rejection when his brother, Antonio, refuses to let him enter the mines. Then Antonio, too, begins spitting blood, and once more the pageantry of flowers and a black casket repeats itself. Refugio has been saved, but only to know the agony of watching helplessly as the one who sacrificed himself slowly wastes away. To read BLOOD RELATIONS is to know the daily round of the miners, which runs to such trivia as cigarettes, sex, sleep, food, money, and a sort of divine communion which occurs in the silence before a blast. A native of the mining region of which he writes, Montemayor comments indirectly through parodies of the sacrament of extreme unction, in which forgiveness is asked for things no ordinary human could have possibly avoided doing: preferring the smell of the rain, the grass, the river to the acrid odor of God. ‘May God forgive you for living,' he says at one point. ‘Had you repented of the life God gave you, He would have given you silence and repose sooner.' Implicit in Blood Relations is a view of the human condition as predetermined, tragic, and above all self-contradictory. It is a story of social injustice raised to the level of poetry.
Carlos Montemayor (Parral, Chihuahua, June 13, 1947 - Mexico City, February 28, 2010) was a Mexican novelist, poet, essayist, literary critic, tenor, political analyst, and promoter of contemporary literature written in indigenous languages. He was a Member of the Mexican Academy of the Language. Montemayor died of stomach cancer on February 28, 2010.
GAMBUSINO by Carlos Montemayor is an intense and poignant story of a Mexican miner who becomes a prospector or ‘gambusino', a man in the ‘gamble business', when the North American mining interests pull out of Chiuahua, leaving the shafts flooded and unworkable. Alfredo Montenegro is driven by his pride and obsessed by dreams of a big strike, dreams which lead to that strike and to his own high noon in a Mexican bar.
Carlos Montemayor (Parral, Chihuahua, June 13, 1947 - Mexico City, February 28, 2010) was a Mexican novelist, poet, essayist, literary critic, tenor, political analyst, and promoter of contemporary literature written in indigenous languages. He was a Member of the Mexican Academy of the Language. Montemayor died of stomach cancer on February 28, 2010.
Havana, 1957. On the same day that the Mafia capo Umberto Anastasia is assassinated in a barber's chair in New York, a hippopotamus escapes from the Havana zoo and is shot and killed by its pursuers. Assigned to cover the zoo story, Joaquín Porrata, a young Cuban journalist, instead finds himself embroiled in the mysterious connections between the hippo's death and the mobster's when a secretive zookeeper whispers to him that he ‘knows too much.' In exchange for a promise to introduce the keeper to his idol, the film star George Raft, now the host of the Capri Casino, Joaquín gets information that ensnares him in an ever-thickening plot of murder, mobsters, and, finally, love. The love story is, of course, another mystery. Told by Yolanda, a beautiful ex-circus performer now working for the famed cabaret San Souci, it interleaves through Joaquín's underworld investigations, eventually revealing a family secret deeper even than Havana's brilliantly evoked enigmas. In Dancing to ‘Almendra,' Mayra Montero has created an ardent and thrilling tale of innocence lost, of Havana's secret world that is ‘the basis for the clamor of the city,' and of the end of a violent era of fantastic characters and extravagant crimes. Based on the true history of a bewitching city and its denizens, Almendra is the latest ‘triumph' (Library Journal) from one of Latin America's most impassioned and intoxicating voices. .
Mayra Montero (born 1952) is a well-known Cuban-Puerto Rican writer. Montero was born in Havana, Cuba in 1952. She is the daughter of Manuel Montero, a very successful Cuban comedic writer and actor who made his career in both Cuba and Puerto Rico, where he and his family relocated when Mayra was a young girl. Manuel, whose pen name was 'Membrillo', earned his greatest success playing 'Ñico Fernández', a comedic character in Puerto Rican television. This character was a Cuban immigrant with a habit of using hyperbole to describe his homeland and all things Cuban. Mayra has lived in Puerto Rico since the mid-1960s. She studied journalism in Mexico and Puerto Rico and worked for many years as a correspondent in Central America and the Caribbean. In the 1980s she was an editorial page editor for the now defunct El Mundo daily newspaper, at the time Puerto Rico's newspaper of record. She is presently a highly acclaimed journalist in Puerto Rico and writes a weekly column 'Antes que llegue el lunes' (Before Monday arrives) in El Nuevo Dia newspaper. She is currently fighting cancer but continues an active professional life. All of her books are written originally in Spanish and have been broadly translated to English and other languages. Montero's first book was a collection of short stories, Twenty-Three and a Turtle. Her second book, a novel titled The Braid of the Beautiful Moon, was a finalist for the Herralde awards, one of Europe's most prestigious literary awards. Each of her subsequent books - The Last Night I Spent With You, The Red of His Shadow, In the Palm of Darkness, and The Messenger - has been published in the United States in translations by Edith Grossman, as well as in several European countries. The slim novel or novella, The Last Night I Spent With You is perhaps the most sexually explicit. Her other nonfiction work appears frequently in scholarly and literary publications throughout the world. Her most recent novel Son de Almendra is the product of an extensive research about the murder of the mafia leader Albert Anastasia at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York in the year 1957. In 2006, signed a petition in support of the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States of America.
DEEP PURPLE is a provocative, mischievously humorous new novel from Cuban writer Maya Montero, author of the highly acclaimed THE RED OF HIS SHADOW, among other novels, all translated by Edith Grossman. Distinguished music critic Agustin Cabán has written for a San Juan newspaper all his life, Forced to retire, he continues to haunt its offices, encouraged by his former editor. Agustin is writing his memoirs, and his editor can't wait to read each passionate and titillating installment. For Agustin, music is indispensable to sexual emotion, In the course of a long career, he seduced the women and men who were among the most brilliant classical musicians in the world, These erotic encounters were shaped by the musical instrument as well as by the performer who had mastered it, The Australian pianist Clint Verret, with whom Agustin spent three days in the Brown Palace in Denver, offered a passionate and tender interlude. Clarissa Berdsley, the French horn player, was submissive and playful. The flamboyant violinist Manuela Suggia turned out to he a vengeful and demonic lover. Through the adventures of her unusual protagonist, Mayra Montero explores the relationship between sexual desire and music. Agustin Cabán ultimately finds in that deep and mysterious place that is the core of human sexuality nothing less than the meaning of life.
Mayra Montero (born 1952) is a well-known Cuban-Puerto Rican writer. Montero was born in Havana, Cuba in 1952. She is the daughter of Manuel Montero, a very successful Cuban comedic writer and actor who made his career in both Cuba and Puerto Rico, where he and his family relocated when Mayra was a young girl. Manuel, whose pen name was 'Membrillo', earned his greatest success playing 'Ñico Fernández', a comedic character in Puerto Rican television. This character was a Cuban immigrant with a habit of using hyperbole to describe his homeland and all things Cuban. Mayra has lived in Puerto Rico since the mid-1960s. She studied journalism in Mexico and Puerto Rico and worked for many years as a correspondent in Central America and the Caribbean. In the 1980s she was an editorial page editor for the now defunct El Mundo daily newspaper, at the time Puerto Rico's newspaper of record. She is presently a highly acclaimed journalist in Puerto Rico and writes a weekly column 'Antes que llegue el lunes' (Before Monday arrives) in El Nuevo Dia newspaper. She is currently fighting cancer but continues an active professional life. All of her books are written originally in Spanish and have been broadly translated to English and other languages. Montero's first book was a collection of short stories, Twenty-Three and a Turtle. Her second book, a novel titled The Braid of the Beautiful Moon, was a finalist for the Herralde awards, one of Europe's most prestigious literary awards. Each of her subsequent books - The Last Night I Spent With You, The Red of His Shadow, In the Palm of Darkness, and The Messenger - has been published in the United States in translations by Edith Grossman, as well as in several European countries. The slim novel or novella, The Last Night I Spent With You is perhaps the most sexually explicit. Her other nonfiction work appears frequently in scholarly and literary publications throughout the world. Her most recent novel Son de Almendra is the product of an extensive research about the murder of the mafia leader Albert Anastasia at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York in the year 1957. In 2006, signed a petition in support of the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States of America. Edith Grossman, who has translated the poetry and prose of major contemporary Latin American writers, including Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Alvaro Mutis, is the author of The Antipoetry of Nicanor Parra.
The quest for an elusive amphibian in the mountains of violence-torn Haiti brings together an unlikely pair of hunters-American herpetologist Victor Grigg and his Haitian guide Thierry Adrien-whose individual stories unfold and intertwine in a mesmerizing tale of love, sex, and fraternal rivalry; of the propagation and extinction of species in the natural world; and of the mysterious forces of nature that govern the fate of all living creatures. No one can explain the catastrophic disappearance of various species of amphibians all over the world, including the ‘blood frog' (grenouille du sang) pursued with heartbreaking single-mindedness by Victor and Thierry from the bloody Mont des Enfan Perdus-littered with corpses, the work of Haitian niacoutes (thugs)-to the remote Casetouches. Significantly, Thierry's father was also a hunter, but his quarry was another species of fauna, wandering packs of the living dead (zombies). The rich and tragic tale of Thierry's family, his life and loves, and his curious destiny, informs the obsessive search of the two men from different cultures. Thierry's story opens a window onto another way of understanding the world, an Afro-Caribbean perspective at odds with the reason and logic of Western science represented by Victor. Cuban-born Mayra Montero weaves a darkly suggestive tapestry of Haitian lore and character in a novel of the Caribbean that will intrigue and unsettle. For Thierry Frou-Frou, Julien, Papa Crapaud, Ganesha, Yoyotte, Cameroon, Emile Boukaka, and the others belong to the mythical, magical world of Haitian spirituality where the living and the dead intermingle and where murder, cruelty and terror inform the natural as well as the human order. IN THE PALM OF DARKNESS is a compelling tale that reads something like a murder mystery But it also reveals a highly sophisticated and refined literary voice One of the Caribbean's most exciting writers, Mayra Montero has been compared to Alejo Carpentier, Graham Greene, and Julio Cortazar.
Mayra Montero (born 1952) is a well-known Cuban-Puerto Rican writer. Montero was born in Havana, Cuba in 1952. She is the daughter of Manuel Montero, a very successful Cuban comedic writer and actor who made his career in both Cuba and Puerto Rico, where he and his family relocated when Mayra was a young girl. Manuel, whose pen name was 'Membrillo', earned his greatest success playing 'Ñico Fernández', a comedic character in Puerto Rican television. This character was a Cuban immigrant with a habit of using hyperbole to describe his homeland and all things Cuban. Mayra has lived in Puerto Rico since the mid-1960s. She studied journalism in Mexico and Puerto Rico and worked for many years as a correspondent in Central America and the Caribbean. In the 1980s she was an editorial page editor for the now defunct El Mundo daily newspaper, at the time Puerto Rico's newspaper of record. She is presently a highly acclaimed journalist in Puerto Rico and writes a weekly column 'Antes que llegue el lunes' (Before Monday arrives) in El Nuevo Dia newspaper. She is currently fighting cancer but continues an active professional life. All of her books are written originally in Spanish and have been broadly translated to English and other languages. Montero's first book was a collection of short stories, Twenty-Three and a Turtle. Her second book, a novel titled The Braid of the Beautiful Moon, was a finalist for the Herralde awards, one of Europe's most prestigious literary awards. Each of her subsequent books - The Last Night I Spent With You, The Red of His Shadow, In the Palm of Darkness, and The Messenger - has been published in the United States in translations by Edith Grossman, as well as in several European countries. The slim novel or novella, The Last Night I Spent With You is perhaps the most sexually explicit. Her other nonfiction work appears frequently in scholarly and literary publications throughout the world. Her most recent novel Son de Almendra is the product of an extensive research about the murder of the mafia leader Albert Anastasia at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York in the year 1957. In 2006, signed a petition in support of the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States of America. EDITH GROSSMAN, who has translated the poetry at prose of major contemporary Latin American write including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Alvaro Mutis, is the author of The Antipoetry of Nicanor Parra.
One of the most original and provocative writers from the Caribbean, Mayra Montero is the author of the highly praised novels In the Palm a! Darkness and The Messenger, set in Haiti and Cuba respectively In THE LAST NIGHT I SPENT WITH YOU, she explores the mysterious and myriad pathways that desire can fray through the realms of memory and imagination. Celia and Fernando, a long-married couple suddenly alone after their only daughter marries, embark on a cruise to the Caribbean islands to revitalize their sagging marriage. With the complicity of another passenger, the mysterious Julieta, Celia and Fernando lose themselves and their inhibitions as they turn to others to fulfill their fantasies of passion and destruction. Through a series of adventures on board the ship and on different islands, Celia and Fernando bring themselves to the brink of ecstasy and self annihilation, As visitors on exotic soils, made delirious by the heat and their own heady lusts, the aging lovers mix fantasy and reality until their wild adventure burns itself out, nearly taking them with it. Juxtaposed with the animal passions conjured by the married couple is a series of lyrical love letters to ‘Angela' from ‘Abel,' two lovers with a secret of their own, explored but not explained until the very end, when their fate mirrors that of Celia and Fernando. In elegant prose, THE LAST NIGHT I SPENT WITH YOU confronts the mysteries of death and desire with dark humor and remarkable subtlety. Mayra Montero was born in Havana in 1952 and currently lives in Puerto Rico. She has published four novels and a short-story collection in Spanish. Her first two novels to be translated into English were IN THE PALM OF DARKNESS and THE MESSENGER.
Mayra Montero (born 1952) is a well-known Cuban-Puerto Rican writer. Montero was born in Havana, Cuba in 1952. She is the daughter of Manuel Montero, a very successful Cuban comedic writer and actor who made his career in both Cuba and Puerto Rico, where he and his family relocated when Mayra was a young girl. Manuel, whose pen name was 'Membrillo', earned his greatest success playing 'Ñico Fernández', a comedic character in Puerto Rican television. This character was a Cuban immigrant with a habit of using hyperbole to describe his homeland and all things Cuban. Mayra has lived in Puerto Rico since the mid-1960s. She studied journalism in Mexico and Puerto Rico and worked for many years as a correspondent in Central America and the Caribbean. In the 1980s she was an editorial page editor for the now defunct El Mundo daily newspaper, at the time Puerto Rico's newspaper of record. She is presently a highly acclaimed journalist in Puerto Rico and writes a weekly column 'Antes que llegue el lunes' (Before Monday arrives) in El Nuevo Dia newspaper. She is currently fighting cancer but continues an active professional life. All of her books are written originally in Spanish and have been broadly translated to English and other languages. Montero's first book was a collection of short stories, Twenty-Three and a Turtle. Her second book, a novel titled The Braid of the Beautiful Moon, was a finalist for the Herralde awards, one of Europe's most prestigious literary awards. Each of her subsequent books - The Last Night I Spent With You, The Red of His Shadow, In the Palm of Darkness, and The Messenger - has been published in the United States in translations by Edith Grossman, as well as in several European countries. The slim novel or novella, The Last Night I Spent With You is perhaps the most sexually explicit. Her other nonfiction work appears frequently in scholarly and literary publications throughout the world. Her most recent novel Son de Almendra is the product of an extensive research about the murder of the mafia leader Albert Anastasia at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York in the year 1957. In 2006, signed a petition in support of the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States of America. Edith Grossman, who has translated the poetry and prose of major contemporary Latin American writers, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Alvaro Mutis, is the author of THE ANTIPOETRY OF NICANOR PARRA.
From one of today's most gifted young Latin American writers, THE RED OF HIS SHADOW is a breathtaking novel, a contemporary love story with the power of Greek tragedy that takes the reader deep into the mysterious world of Haitian Voudon. It is Holy Week, and the Haitian sugar cane harvesters can temporarily forget their misery and lose themselves in the fervor of Voudon. But amidst the colorful festival, a struggle for power, as well as a devastating passion, develops between Mistress Zule, a Voudon priestess and spiritual leader, and the infamous, bloodthirsty Simila Bolosse, a rival Voudon priest backed by the tontons macoutes. Based on true events, THE RED OF HIS SHADOW evokes ferocious love, intense hatred, and the specter of death looming within life. Written in a prose remarkable for its clarity and musicality, the novel manages to be both richly symbolic and intensely physical. Behind a case that Dominican police closed as a simple ‘crime of passion' pulses the spell of a war that remains unfinished today. MAYRA MONTERO was born in Havana in 1952 and currently lives in Puerto Rico. She has published five novels and a short story collection in Spanish. Four of her novels have appeared in English translation by Edith Grossman: IN THE PALM OF DARKNESS, THE MESSENGER, THE LAST NIGHT I SPENT WITH YOU, and THE RED OF HIS SHADOW.
Mayra Montero (born 1952) is a well-known Cuban-Puerto Rican writer. Montero was born in Havana, Cuba in 1952. She is the daughter of Manuel Montero, a very successful Cuban comedic writer and actor who made his career in both Cuba and Puerto Rico, where he and his family relocated when Mayra was a young girl. Manuel, whose pen name was 'Membrillo', earned his greatest success playing 'Ñico Fernández', a comedic character in Puerto Rican television. This character was a Cuban immigrant with a habit of using hyperbole to describe his homeland and all things Cuban. Mayra has lived in Puerto Rico since the mid-1960s. She studied journalism in Mexico and Puerto Rico and worked for many years as a correspondent in Central America and the Caribbean. In the 1980s she was an editorial page editor for the now defunct El Mundo daily newspaper, at the time Puerto Rico's newspaper of record. She is presently a highly acclaimed journalist in Puerto Rico and writes a weekly column 'Antes que llegue el lunes' (Before Monday arrives) in El Nuevo Dia newspaper. She is currently fighting cancer but continues an active professional life. All of her books are written originally in Spanish and have been broadly translated to English and other languages. Montero's first book was a collection of short stories, Twenty-Three and a Turtle. Her second book, a novel titled The Braid of the Beautiful Moon, was a finalist for the Herralde awards, one of Europe's most prestigious literary awards. Each of her subsequent books - The Last Night I Spent With You, The Red of His Shadow, In the Palm of Darkness, and The Messenger - has been published in the United States in translations by Edith Grossman, as well as in several European countries. The slim novel or novella, The Last Night I Spent With You is perhaps the most sexually explicit. Her other nonfiction work appears frequently in scholarly and literary publications throughout the world. Her most recent novel Son de Almendra is the product of an extensive research about the murder of the mafia leader Albert Anastasia at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York in the year 1957. In 2006, signed a petition in support of the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States of America. EDITH GROSSMAN, who has translated the poetry and prose of major contemporary Latin American writers, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Alvaro Mutis, is the author of THE ANTIPOETRY OF NICANDOR PARRA.
Augusto Monterroso is one of the very few Latin American authors whose works are truly tailor-made for a comparative perspective on world literature. Rather than comparing Monterroso to other authors of the Western tradition, as seems to be the case for Latin American authors who are world renowned, one normally ends up perusing that tradition in terms of someone like Monterroso, Within the historical-but not aesthetic-relativity of such an assertion, the truth is that Monterroso is a precursor in many ways, serving as an enhancing presence for what is generally understood by ‘Latin American' literature. Interestingly enough, other than a passing reference in interviews, the only time Monterroso has spoken about his personal life is in English, in some comments included in Angel Flores's Spanish American Authors: The Twentieth Century (1992). He states there that he comes from the Central American upper middle class, yet has had a life of economic hardship. Born in Honduras in 1920s to a Guatemalan father and Honduran mother, he is still a Guatemalan citizen. He does add that while working at odd jobs and as an accounting assistant at a butcher shop he managed to study foreign languages (among his translations of books and essays are Swift's ‘A Modest Proposal') and to attend night classes at the Guatemalan National Library, where he ‘eagerly read the Spanish classics which are the foundation of my literary formation.' What Monterroso neglects to mention in typically modest fashion, although he refers to it in interviews, is his thorough knowledge, fondness for, and dialog with Greek and Roman classics (Catullus, Aesop, Juvenal, Vergil), Cervantes (for many years he taught a seminar on Don Quixote at the National University of Mexico), Gongora, Shakespeare, Johnson, Byron, Dante, Rilke, and, among his contemporaries, Borges. He is also quite reticent about his more contemporary influences, readings, and literary likes and dislikes, Monterroso is an outsider whose strength derives less from his experiments with those influences than from his vitality in producing from them an even more daring literary effect. But above all, his statement is not a euphemistic appraisal of his political commitment to progressive causes and the consequences he assumes as a result of his stance. Wisely, instead of contributing to biographical fallacies, Monterroso lets his literature speak for if not about him. Suffice it to say that at this point his work has been translated into all the major languages of the world, including recent translations of the short stories collected here into Swedish, and of his fables into Latin and Chinese. Monterroso's literature always was and will continue to be major. Clean and sharp, rarely harsh or lyrical, his prose is leavened with a dry, ever puckish and conceptual humor. Yet he has never conceded to being any kind of ‘humorist,' nor has he fallen into the trap of admitting that serious things are said in jest. In the collections that follow the two included here, and in those that preceded them (two plaquettes from 1952 and 1953), we see the strict precision of a prose uncanny in its ability to suggest compassion for the human condition. It is a prose that offers vivid sights and personal insights, discordant sounds, and extremely rich sensations of body and mind. Monterroso's prose is supple, analytical, full of irony and intricate nuances. What also emerges in his work, especially in the dual collection presented here, is writing that peels away the social veneers that conceal the beast within human beings and reveals all that they have accomplished or undone throughout history. This elegantly accurate translation by Edith Grossman contains the first two collections published by Monterroso. Texas Pan American series. CONTENTS: from COMPLETE WORKS (AND OTHER STORIES - Mister Taylor; One Out of Three; Finished Symphony; First Lady; The Eclipse; Diogenes Too; The Dinosaur; Leopoldo (His Labors); The Concert; The Centennial; I Don't Want to Deceive You; Cow; Complete Works; from PERPETUAL MOTION - Flies; Perpetual Motion; It's All the Same; Regarding Attributions; Homage to Masoch; The World; The Brain Drain; The Endymion Report; I Know You, Mask; The Advantages and Disadvantages of Jorge Luis Borges; Fecundity; You Tell Sarabia That I Said He Should Hire Her and Place Her Here or Wherever, That I'll Explain Later; Homo Scriptor; Under Other Wreckage; How to Stop Being a Monkey; How I Got Rid of Five Hundred Books; The Maids; Solemnity and Eccentricity; Winning the Street; Humor; Paradise; It May Be True; Living Together; Height and Poetry; Christmas, New Year's, Whatever; Choose One; Ever-Present Danger; The Outdoor Poet; Tender Rose; Brevity; Errata and Final Notice.
Augusto Monterroso Bonilla (December 21, 1921 - February 7, 2003) was a Honduran writer, known for the ironical and humorous style of his short stories. He is considered an important figure in the Latin American 'Boom' generation, and received several awards, including the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature (2000), Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature (1997), and Juan Rulfo Award (1996). Monterroso was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras to a Honduran mother and Guatemalan father. In 1936 his family settled definitively in Guatemala City, where he would remain until early adulthood. Here he published his first short stories and began his clandestine work against the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. To this end he founded the newspaper El Espectador with a group of other writers. He was detained and exiled to Mexico City in 1944 for his opposition to the dictatorial regime. Shortly after his arrival in Mexico, the revolutionary government of Jacobo Arbenz triumphed in Guatemala, and Monterroso was assigned to a minor post in the Guatemalan embassy in Mexico. In 1953 he moved briefly to Bolivia upon being named Guatemalan consul in La Paz. He relocated to Santiago de Chile in 1954, when Arbenz's government was toppled with help from an American intervention. In 1956 he returned definitively to Mexico City, where he would occupy various academic and editorial posts and continue his work as a writer for the rest of his life. In 1988, Augusto Monterroso received the highest honour the Mexican government can bestow on foreign dignitaries, the Águila Azteca. He was also awarded the Spanish Prince of Asturias Award, in 2000. In 1997, Monterroso was awarded the Guatemala National Prize in Literature for his body of work. He died due to heart failure at the age of 81, in Mexico City.Although Monterroso limited himself almost exclusively to the short story form, he is widely considered a central figure in the Latin American 'Boom' generation, which was best known for its novelists. As such he is recognized alongside such canonical authors as Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo and Gabriel García Márquez. Save for Lo demás es silencio ('The Rest is Silence'), his foray into the form of the novel, Monterroso only published short pieces. He worked throughout his career to perfect the short story form, often delving into analogous genres (most famously the fable) for stylistic and thematic inspiration. Even Lo demás es silencio, however, largely eschews the traditional novelistic form, opting instead for the loose aggregation of various apocryphal short texts (newspaper clippings, testimonials, diary entries, poems) to sketch the 'biography' of its fictional main character. Monterroso is often credited with writing one of the world's shortest stories, 'El Dinosaurio' ('The Dinosaur'), published in Obras completas (Y otros cuentos). The story reads, in its entirety: Cuando desperto, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí. ('Upon awakening, the dinosaur was still there.'). Carlos Fuentes wrote of Monterroso (referring specifically to The Black Sheep and Other Fables): 'Imagine Borges' fantastical bestiary having tea with Alice. Imagine Jonathan Swift and James Thurber exchanging notes. Imagine a frog from Calaveras County who has seriously read Mark Twain. Meet Monterroso.
Imagine Borges' fantastic bestiary having tea with Alice. Imagine Dean Swift and James Thurber trading notes. Imagine a frog from Calaveras County who had actually read Mark Twain. Meet Augusto Monterroso. The foregoing invitation by novelist Carlos Fuentes is both gracious and apt, for in this delightful volume Augusto Monterroso resumes in modem form a tradition older than Aesop-the fable. Here are presented wondrous creatures like the Monkey who wanted to be a satirical writer, the Fly who dreamed he was an Eagle, the Giraffe who learned the hard way about relativity; intriguing revelations like the true point of Penelope's weaving, the dilemma of the Lightning Bolt that did strike twice in the same place, or the case of Ulysses and the non-conformist Siren-and many other delectable and edifying tales. As Monterroso's admirers point out the antics of his fabulous Beasts and Beings are minors to the foibles of mankind (not me and thee, of course-others). On the other hand, it could be limply that your occasional Monkey does want to be a satirical writer, In any case, the author disclaims a strictly moral intention, Asked in an interview if he was against moralists, he responded that he was only against overly-explicit moralists. ‘To say that a grasshopper should work like an ant,' he continued, ‘is a piece of foolishness perpetuated through centuries. The grasshopper won't change. In any case it is the ant who should change.' If this suggests that subtlety is the key, let the reader be forewarned. From the Acknowledgements through the Index, be alert for the tongue in the cheek, the hook below the surface. For starters, you're allowed one hint: look up K'nyo Mobutu, the author of the epigraph, in the Index.
Augusto Monterroso Bonilla (December 21, 1921 - February 7, 2003) was a Honduran writer, known for the ironical and humorous style of his short stories. He is considered an important figure in the Latin American 'Boom' generation, and received several awards, including the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature (2000), Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature (1997), and Juan Rulfo Award (1996). Monterroso was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras to a Honduran mother and Guatemalan father. In 1936 his family settled definitively in Guatemala City, where he would remain until early adulthood. Here he published his first short stories and began his clandestine work against the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. To this end he founded the newspaper El Espectador with a group of other writers. He was detained and exiled to Mexico City in 1944 for his opposition to the dictatorial regime. Shortly after his arrival in Mexico, the revolutionary government of Jacobo Arbenz triumphed in Guatemala, and Monterroso was assigned to a minor post in the Guatemalan embassy in Mexico. In 1953 he moved briefly to Bolivia upon being named Guatemalan consul in La Paz. He relocated to Santiago de Chile in 1954, when Arbenz's government was toppled with help from an American intervention. In 1956 he returned definitively to Mexico City, where he would occupy various academic and editorial posts and continue his work as a writer for the rest of his life. In 1988, Augusto Monterroso received the highest honour the Mexican government can bestow on foreign dignitaries, the Águila Azteca. He was also awarded the Spanish Prince of Asturias Award, in 2000. In 1997, Monterroso was awarded the Guatemala National Prize in Literature for his body of work. He died due to heart failure at the age of 81, in Mexico City.Although Monterroso limited himself almost exclusively to the short story form, he is widely considered a central figure in the Latin American 'Boom' generation, which was best known for its novelists. As such he is recognized alongside such canonical authors as Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo and Gabriel García Márquez. Save for Lo demás es silencio ('The Rest is Silence'), his foray into the form of the novel, Monterroso only published short pieces. He worked throughout his career to perfect the short story form, often delving into analogous genres (most famously the fable) for stylistic and thematic inspiration. Even Lo demás es silencio, however, largely eschews the traditional novelistic form, opting instead for the loose aggregation of various apocryphal short texts (newspaper clippings, testimonials, diary entries, poems) to sketch the 'biography' of its fictional main character. Monterroso is often credited with writing one of the world's shortest stories, 'El Dinosaurio' ('The Dinosaur'), published in Obras completas (Y otros cuentos). The story reads, in its entirety: Cuando desperto, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí. ('Upon awakening, the dinosaur was still there.'). Carlos Fuentes wrote of Monterroso (referring specifically to The Black Sheep and Other Fables): 'Imagine Borges' fantastical bestiary having tea with Alice. Imagine Jonathan Swift and James Thurber exchanging notes. Imagine a frog from Calaveras County who has seriously read Mark Twain. Meet Monterroso.
Every morning Amanda disappears into the darkness of the New York subway system while her husband watches, not to see her again until she returns home from work, and sometimes not even then, for guilt has caused this unemployed Cuban refugee to pretend he's asleep. Actually the narrator is anything but unconscious, for it is the detailed account of his downward slide from promising novelist to vagabond, ending finally in temporary insanity, that makes up the bulk of this prize-winning novel. The hero records each step of his self-destruction in minute detail, with a relish for the macabre unsurpassed since Poe, and yet he never loses our sympathy. He is a man whose redemption depends on a woman's love. In 1974 QWERT AND THE WEDDING GOWN was one of two entries selected for publication in Mexico's ‘Primera Novela' contest and has been variously hailed as the ‘American NausEe' (Mireya Jaimes Freyre, Latin American Review) and a ‘turning point' in Latin- American fiction (Noel M. Valis, University of Georgia). More than a simple study of displaced persons, Montes Huidobro's novel is an account of modern man as exile. Not the least fascinating aspect is that of the Salvation Army overcoats which take possession of the lives of the central characters as if each were a prisoner in an iron mask.
Matias Montes Huidobro is currently a Professor of Spanish at the University of Hawaii, where his prolific pen encompasses all the genres, his latest publication being a play anthologized in Cuban American Theater by Arte Publico Press.
German Vargas, a Colombian writer and critic who served on the jury of the 1987 ‘Casa de las Amencas' Prize along with Arrufat, Daniel Chavarnia, Fernando Lopez, and Enmanuel Carballo, said in reference to the most important Latin American contest in recent times: ‘The task was arduous, difficult, and almost endless (one hundred and sixteen novels were presented from all the Spanish-speaking Latin American countries). But a unanimous decision from the five-member jury made our efforts seem worthwhile. The single candidate was JONAH AND THE PINK WHALE, an excellent, humorous novel by the Bolivian writer Jose Wolfango Montes Vannuci.' The Colombian critic continued, ‘The humor in JONAH AND THE PINK WHALE is grotesque, surprising, and unceasing. To avoid naturalism, the repugnance is introduced sparingly into the text. Montes Vannuci succeeded in writing a novel that truly is a novel, with abundant imagination and humor that make the sordid world described less painful. As we the jury noted during the proceedings, the author is especially skilled at synthesis: he handles description and narration masterfully, a rare ability in a young writer.' Montes does not resort to linguistic sleights of hand or the fastidiously artful expression. Symbol and allegory are not a part of his discourse. Recreating reality, beautiful in itself, is enough. His language is simple, without concealed meanings, without fancy clothing, reminding us that art, in its truest sense, may come from those who are not artists by profession. Though the novel is straightforward, its point of view contains multiple voices that, out of the nightmare of inspiration, rise like a phantom from the text and grab us. JONAH AND THE PINK WHALE sets forth a thematic vision of the cosmos, an oppressive, stifling atmosphere that surrounds the weary and empty characters. Disenchantment with the world and the hostility of the city, the growing rootlessness, loneliness, and dehumanization of individuals and families, and the extinction and decay of society turn the work spiritually into a confused, chaotic space where external reality is always polyfaceted and contradictory.
Jose Wolfango Montes Vannuci is a Bolivian writer. His novel Jonah and the Pink Whale won the Casa de las AmEricas Award in 1987 and was also chosen as one of Bolivia's Top Ten Novels.
When Elizabeth Bishop first went to Brazil in 1952 and asked friends which Brazilian books she should begin reading, this diary was most frequently mentioned. It had first been published privately in a small edition in 1942. Georges Bernanos, who was living in Brazil in exile, discovered it and gave away many copies. It reputation began to spread in literary circle, new editions followed, and now it is a classic. This is a true story, kept by a girl between the ages of twelve and fifteen, in a provincial diamond-mining town called Diamantina, the highest town in brazil, during the years 1893 to 1895. Everything in THE DIARY OF ‘HELENA MORELY' really did happen. There really was a Dona Teadora, the grandmother who managed her family with an iron will; there really was a Sia Ritnha who stole her neighbors' but not the Morley chickens; there really were a father Neves, and a spinster English Aunt Madge, bravely keeping up her standards in a financially ruined town. As the translator states. ‘Much of it could have happened in any small provincial town or village, and at almost any period of history - at least before the arrival of the automobile and the moving-picture theatre. Certain pages reminded me of more famous and ‘literary' ones: Nausicca doing her laundry on the beach, possibly with the help of her freed slaves; bits from Chaucer; Wordsworth's poetical children and country people . .' Though scenes and event of THE DIARY OF ‘HELENA MORLEY' happened long ago, what it says is fresh, sad, funny, and eternally true.
Helen Morley was a young girl who lived in a mining town in Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century. Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 - October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976.
Born in Todos los Santos de La Nueva Rioja, a city founded in the wrong place in 1591, Triclinio needs to work and so takes up the violin. However, to his dismay he discovers that La Rioja's demand for violinists is saturated. In search of work, he migrates to Buenos Aires, the capital city. There he finds political convulsions, coups, tanks and tear-gas: sounds that threaten to drown any music he might make. A chance encounter with a tottering President raises Triclinio's hopes that once more music might be heard. But the thunderous noise of the rebels' tanks grows to a crescendo and the presidential guard is overcome. Silence descends on the country - a silence that paradoxically affects the torturers more than the tortured. With musical metaphor and delicate irony, Daniel Moyano has written a political novel for post-political' times. . Daniel Moyano was born in Buenos Aires in 1930. His opposition to Argentina's military dictatorship brought first imprisonment and then, in 1976, exile to Spain, where he now lives. In 1968, El oscuro, an early novel, won the Primera Plana-Sudamericana literary prize, whose judges that year were Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Augusto Roa Bastos and Leopoldo Marechal. Further novels, El trino del diablo (The Devils Trill),El vuelo del tigre and Libro de navios y borrascas, have established Moyano as a leading figure among a new generation of Argentinian writers who, rejecting magical realism, use irony, black humour and satire to express the reality, brutal and otherwise, of the continent. This edition of The Devil's Thill marks the first publication in English of a major literary voice of our time.
Daniel Moyano, writer and teacher, born Buenos Aires 6 October 1930, married 1959 Irma Capellino (one son, two daughters), died Madrid 1 July 1992. DANIEL MOYANO is one of the lesser known of the best of Latin American writers. The endorsement for his entry into the group of the greats could not have been better - in 1967 his novel El Oscuro won the literary prize instituted by Primera Plana magazine, which under Jacobo Timerman had revolutionised journalism in Latin America. The award judges were Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His first book, a collection of short stories, Artista de variedades ('Variety Artists') had been published in 1960 when he was 30. His second collection had appeared in 1964, with an introduction by the Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos, who found in the stories elements of the writings of Franz Kafka and Cesare Pavese. His work in English is limited to the novel The Devil's Trill (1974), carefully translated by Giovanni Pontiero and published in 1988, and more recently a short story, included in Norman di Giovanni's anthology Hand-in-Hand Alongside the Tracks. The Devil's Trill is a witty but compassionate defence of fantasy and artistic licence as political turmoil seized Argentina and Moyano's life. He was an immensely warm and humorous man. Born in Buenos Aires, his documents said he was born in Cordoba, central Argentina. His mother had refused to register his birth and, when he was 17, in need of a birth certificate, a sympathetic judge had roped in two witnesses off the street and redelivered Moyano in Cordoba. His grandparents were Italians, and one was a Brazilian Indian, which, he said, gave him his dark and wiry looks. His mother died in 1937 when he was nine, and his father walked out on the family. His adolescent years were a constant move from one aunt's house to another. Moyano's early teachers were English and Welsh pastors working in the Cordoba hills, and his schoolmates included Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and Manuel de Falla. Julio Cortazar had urged him to write down this early life. Moyano said that was too much like writing his memoirs. But many of his best passages include reminiscences and fantasy of that troubled childhood. He trained as a builder and plumber - a job he was to take up when forced into exile. From Cordoba, Moyano moved to the Andean province of La Rioja, which became his home, and where he worked on the local newspaper, El Independiente, founded by the Paoletti family. When he met his wife, Irma, they eloped because her father, of Montenegrin immigrant stock, said a suitor had to own cattle or land or was not suitable. Years later when their first child, Ricardo (today an accomplished guitarist), was born, there was reconciliation with the in-laws. Irma's father, inspecting some brick flooring laid by Moyano, informed all about that Daniel was 'not just a writer, but a good writer. You can tell by the brick-laying.' The Cordoba priests had also taught Moyano music and he was an accomplished violist, playing in a quartet in La Rioja and teaching at the provincial conservatory.
Oppressors in the form of percussionists who hate silence and cats descend on the village of Hualacato. The villagers resist with silence and signs. When the despots ban one musical key, the people tune up their instruments in another, and so multiply their powers to resist. Daniel Moyano believed that the first step a Latin American writer had to take was to learn to live in a forest full of painted scenery which hides the real landscape'. In The Flight of the Tiger, he uses black, surreal humor to expose the pervasiveness of oppression.
Daniel Moyano, writer and teacher, born Buenos Aires 6 October 1930, married 1959 Irma Capellino (one son, two daughters), died Madrid 1 July 1992. DANIEL MOYANO is one of the lesser known of the best of Latin American writers. The endorsement for his entry into the group of the greats could not have been better - in 1967 his novel El Oscuro won the literary prize instituted by Primera Plana magazine, which under Jacobo Timerman had revolutionised journalism in Latin America. The award judges were Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His first book, a collection of short stories, Artista de variedades ('Variety Artists') had been published in 1960 when he was 30. His second collection had appeared in 1964, with an introduction by the Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos, who found in the stories elements of the writings of Franz Kafka and Cesare Pavese. His work in English is limited to the novel The Devil's Trill (1974), carefully translated by Giovanni Pontiero and published in 1988, and more recently a short story, included in Norman di Giovanni's anthology Hand-in-Hand Alongside the Tracks. The Devil's Trill is a witty but compassionate defence of fantasy and artistic licence as political turmoil seized Argentina and Moyano's life. He was an immensely warm and humorous man. Born in Buenos Aires, his documents said he was born in Cordoba, central Argentina. His mother had refused to register his birth and, when he was 17, in need of a birth certificate, a sympathetic judge had roped in two witnesses off the street and redelivered Moyano in Cordoba. His grandparents were Italians, and one was a Brazilian Indian, which, he said, gave him his dark and wiry looks. His mother died in 1937 when he was nine, and his father walked out on the family. His adolescent years were a constant move from one aunt's house to another. Moyano's early teachers were English and Welsh pastors working in the Cordoba hills, and his schoolmates included Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and Manuel de Falla. Julio Cortazar had urged him to write down this early life. Moyano said that was too much like writing his memoirs. But many of his best passages include reminiscences and fantasy of that troubled childhood. He trained as a builder and plumber - a job he was to take up when forced into exile. From Cordoba, Moyano moved to the Andean province of La Rioja, which became his home, and where he worked on the local newspaper, El Independiente, founded by the Paoletti family. When he met his wife, Irma, they eloped because her father, of Montenegrin immigrant stock, said a suitor had to own cattle or land or was not suitable. Years later when their first child, Ricardo (today an accomplished guitarist), was born, there was reconciliation with the in-laws. Irma's father, inspecting some brick flooring laid by Moyano, informed all about that Daniel was 'not just a writer, but a good writer. You can tell by the brick-laying.' The Cordoba priests had also taught Moyano music and he was an accomplished violist, playing in a quartet in La Rioja and teaching at the provincial conservatory.
Sandro Benedetto, physician and astrologer to my kinsman, the illustrious Niccolô Orsini, a condottiere who after his death was compared to the heroes of the Iliad, cast my horoscope on March 6, 1512, the day on which I was born, at two o'clock in the morning, in Rome. Thirty-seven years before, on the same March 6, but in 1475, also at two o'clock in the morning, Michelangelo Buonarroti saw the uncertain light of the world for the first time in an Etruscan village . . . . As sumptuous, dazzling, corrupt and gorgeous as the i6th-century Italian Renaissance in which it is set, BOMARZO is the story of Pier Francesco Orsini, the hunchbacked, ruthless but vulnerable Duke of Bomarzo, ancient fortress in the mountains outside Rome. The despised son of a family of warriors, throughout his youth Orsini endured his father's contempt and the taunts and torments of his heroic brothers, feeding his soul with visions of revenge and dreams of the sensual beauty and love denied him, preparing himself for a typically Renaissance combination of art and murder. A friend of Cellini's, a contemporary of Michelangelo's, an associate and relative of the great Renaissance families - De Medici, Farnese, Colonna-Orsini, as he comes of age, destroys his brothers and grasps his father's title, embroiling himself in Tuscan feuds and alliances as the great families fight over the papacy and combine to support or resist the invasion of Charles V Yet even as Orsini plunges into the violence of plot and counterplot, of sexual liaisons and marriages for power or lust, he creates a monumental work of art on his castle's grounds, a fabulous Wood of Monsters, still standing in the hills, vast sculptures cut into limestone, figures that spring from his deepest obsessions, the mythical flowering of his dreams and desires. Throughout, in unforgettable detail, all the color and richness of the Italian Renaissance is revealed: princes and harlots, courtesans and cardinals, alchemists, artists and artisans, emperors, assassins and scholars proceeding to festivities, corona- tions, weddings, journeys, battles and sieges from the plains of Picardy to the sea-born conflagration at Lepanto. With a combination of scenic and historical description and modern psychological complexity and atmospheric sensitivity, Mujica-Lainez has created a miracle of historical literature. At 60, Manuel Mujica-Lainez, a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is one of South America's most distinguished men of letters. He is Commander of the Order of Merit (Italy), Officer of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres (France), and has won numerous literary prizes including the coveted John F. Kennedy medal, shared with Julio Cortazar, author of Hopscotch. He has been Secretary of the National Museum of Decorative Art and General Director of Cultural Relations in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and has been on the staff of the newspaper La Nacion since 1932. He has lived in Paris and London and traveled extensively in the United States, Europe and Asia. He has written some seventeen books and translated Shakespeare and Moliere into Spanish. BOMARZO is the first of his books to appear in the United States.
Manuel Mujica Láinez (11 September 1910, Buenos Aires, Argentina- 21 April 1984, Cruz Chica, La Cumbre, Cordoba, Argentina) was an Argentine novelist, essayist and art critic. His parents belonged to old and aristocratic families, being descended from the founder of the city, Juan de Garay, as well as from notable men of letters of 19th century Argentina, such as Florencio Varela and Miguel Cane. As was traditional at the time, the family spent protracted periods in Paris and London so that Manuel, known proverbially and famously as Manucho, could become proficient in French and English. He completed his formal education at the Colegio Nacional de San Isidro, later dropping out of Law School. In spite of their proud ancestry, the Mujica-Laínez family was not notably well-off by this time, and Manucho went to work at Buenos Aires' newspaper La Nacion as literary and art critic. This permitted him to marry in 1936, his bride being a beautiful patrician girl, Ana de Alvear, descended from Carlos María de Alvear. They had two sons (Diego and Manuel) and a daughter (Ana). 1936 was also the year of the 25-year-old's first publication, Glosas castellanas. Mujica Lainez was a member of the Argentine Academy of Letters and the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1982 he received the French's Legion of Honor. He died at his Villa ‘El Paraíso' (The Paradise) in Cruz Chica, Cordoba Province, in 1984. Mujica Láinez was preeminently a narrator and enumerator of Buenos Aires, from its earliest colonial times to the present. The society of Buenos Aires, especially high society, its past triumphs and present decadence, its quirks and geographies, its language and lies, its sexual vanities and dreams of love: he relished bringing all this to his elegantly written, quietly ironic, subtly subversive page. He was also a great translator. He translated Shakespeare's Sonnets and works by Racine, Moliere, Marivaux, and others.
You may be sure that fairies and angels exist, as they did in the Middle Ages. Angel and fairy - they were the Middle Ages. And the Devil, of course - ‘My name is Melusine. This is a fairy's life, a fairy story. Anyone who doesn't believe in fairies had better shut these pages here and now and throw them into the wastepaper basket, or cut them up to line his bookshelves (and very expensive that will be). Not only will he be rejecting the evident truth that nothing, absolutely nothing, is explicable in this mysterious world, but he will miss some extremely interesting things, and I am sorry for him. Of the many ways of being poor in spirit, and dismissing the earth as a dull sort of place, perhaps the stupidist is to say no to the hidden relish that gives this life its touch of magic.' This is the story of the fairy Melusine, whose legend is an ancient one: cursed by her wicked mother, the beautiful Melusine turns into a serpent-woman every Saturday, and is forbidden to let her husband discover her secret. When at last he grows suspicious and spies on her she is trapped in her bat-wings and scaly tail forever - an immortal outcast. But the classic legend is only the beginning of this enthralling medieval romance. With delightful wit and candor (and insight gained from her later reading of Proust and Freud), Melusine tells of languishing in her tower for centuries, lonely and invisible (materializing is such a bother)-until she sets eyes on a handsome youth and falls desperately in love. She abandons her castle to follow the lad across 12th-century Europe as he meets princes and priests, hermits and troubadours, and learns the secrets of chivalry, from jousting to ‘courtly love. In time their adventures take them across the sea to the decadent splendor of the Crusader kingdoms, where they join the Leper-King of Jerusalem in his struggle to save the Holy City from Saladin and the armies of Islam. As Jorge Luis Borges writes in his Foreword ‘Láinez' characters are more than actors in an adventure-story plot: they have life beyond their settings . . . . We live out the fate of his people as though it were our own. . Manuel Mujica Láinez lives in Argentina and is one of South America's most distinguished authors. He has written numerous novels, biographies, and short stories. Among his works are Los Cisnes, El Gran Teatro, and Los Porteños, as well as the brilliant historical novel BOMARZO, which inspired the opera of the same name. He is a member of the Argentine Academy of Letters and the National Academy of Fine Arts, and his awards include Argentina's First National Prize of Letters, the John F. Kennedy Prize, the Premio Gerchunoff, and he is the current recipient of the Legion d'Honneur in France. . Mary Fitton lived in Spain for some years but has now returned to England. She has translated many books from Spanish and French, and has written The Faithful Servant, a biography of one of Marie Antoinette's attendants, and a history of Málaga.
Manuel Mujica Láinez (11 September 1910, Buenos Aires, Argentina- 21 April 1984, Cruz Chica, La Cumbre, Cordoba, Argentina) was an Argentine novelist, essayist and art critic. His parents belonged to old and aristocratic families, being descended from the founder of the city, Juan de Garay, as well as from notable men of letters of 19th century Argentina, such as Florencio Varela and Miguel Cane. As was traditional at the time, the family spent protracted periods in Paris and London so that Manuel, known proverbially and famously as Manucho, could become proficient in French and English. He completed his formal education at the Colegio Nacional de San Isidro, later dropping out of Law School. In spite of their proud ancestry, the Mujica-Laínez family was not notably well-off by this time, and Manucho went to work at Buenos Aires' newspaper La Nacion as literary and art critic. This permitted him to marry in 1936, his bride being a beautiful patrician girl, Ana de Alvear, descended from Carlos María de Alvear. They had two sons (Diego and Manuel) and a daughter (Ana). 1936 was also the year of the 25-year-old's first publication, Glosas castellanas. Mujica Lainez was a member of the Argentine Academy of Letters and the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1982 he received the French's Legion of Honor. He died at his Villa ‘El Paraíso' (The Paradise) in Cruz Chica, Cordoba Province, in 1984. Mujica Láinez was preeminently a narrator and enumerator of Buenos Aires, from its earliest colonial times to the present. The society of Buenos Aires, especially high society, its past triumphs and present decadence, its quirks and geographies, its language and lies, its sexual vanities and dreams of love: he relished bringing all this to his elegantly written, quietly ironic, subtly subversive page. He was also a great translator. He translated Shakespeare's Sonnets and works by Racine, Moliere, Marivaux, and others.
ENCLOSED GARDEN if Angelina Muniz-Huberman's fourth work of fiction, and in 1985, it was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia prize. Although the author does not consider herself in the mainstream of Mexican letters, and her stories are often removed in time and place from the realities of contemporary Mexico, her stories, in their thematic concerns for both political and psychological exile are of course contemporary. CONTENTS: I On the Unicorn; II In the Name of His Name; III. The Sarcasm of God; IV The Most Precious Offering; V The Grand Duchess; VI Jocasta's Confession; VII Tlamapa; VIII Salicio and Amarylis; IX Rising, Mournful, from the Earth; X Christian Gentleman; XI The Fortunes of the Infante Arnaldos; XII. The Minstrel; XIII The Prisoner; XIV Brief World; XV The Dream Curtain; XVI Enclosed Garden; XVII Longing; XVIII Vaguely, at Five in the Afternoon; XIX Life Has No Plot; XX The Chrysalis of Clay Will Give Birth to a Butterfly; XXI Retrospection; Afterword: ‘Meditations on the Enclosed Garden of Exile: A Conversation with Angelina Muñiz-Huberman,' by Elena Poniatowska.
The author, Angelina Muniz-Huberman was born in Hyeres, France, of Spanish parents in 1937; she has lived most of her life in Mexico City. Her novels include Morada interior (1972), Tierra adentro (1977), and La Guerra del unicornio (1983). She has a collection of poetry Vilano al viento (1983), and writes regularly for the Mexican periodicals, Vuelta and Uno mas uno. Another collection of short fiction was published in 1988 by the Fondo de Cultura Economica in Mexico City. Ms. Muniz-Huberman is professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. . The translator: Lois Parkinson Zamora is professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Houston. She has written critical studies on contemporary U.S. and Latin American fiction, including WRITING THE APOCALYPSE: HISTORICAL VISION IN CONTEMPORARY U.S. AND LATIN AMERICAN FICTION (Cambridge University Press). She is currently translating selected short fiction by the Uruguayan writer, Felisberto Hernandez. The cover artist: Giulia Cardinali was born in Milan, Italy. Ashe studied design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, and then completed her doctorate in architecture at the Polytechnic University in Milan. She is currently professor of Architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She has had exhibitions of her engravings in Mexico City, New York, Venice, and Rome. .
Latin American novels are not only literary works; they can also shed light on social and cultural developments. Braulio Munoz has used novels to underscore the changing status of the Indian in South and Central America. He concentrates on novels written between 1919 and 1964 in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico, as part of a socio-literary movement known as Indigenismo, whose ostensive aim was to liberate the Indian from oppression and discrimination. But Muñoz finds in these novels both a hidden search for a Latin American identity and a strong desire for the cultural unity of Latin America. The ostensive aim of Indigenismo, Muñoz argues, was in fact incompatible with these underlying concerns. Confronted with conflicting goals, the literati believed the only way to save the Indian without endangering the search for a Latin American identity or for cultural unity was through mestizaje-the incorporation of the Indian into a unified mestizo culture. The Indian had to be westernized into oblivion in order to be saved. Muñoz shows how Indian magico-realist novels illustrate the success of the mestizo in asserting his cultural hegemony. He ends his engaging study by examining a new, more powerful, threat to cultural unity, the force of international culture. The central characteristics of the new Spanish American novel, Muñoz argues, show the intensive challenge to mestizo Spanish America pre-sented by international culture.
BRAULIO MUNOZ was born in Chimbote, Peru. He has traveled extensively in Latin America and Europe. He was well-known in Peru as a labor leader, a writer, and a journalist. Muñoz received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and is in the Department of Sociology at Swarthmore College.
Elsa, the enigmatic protagonist of this deeply atmospheric novel, is a destructive yet passive catalyst in an extended series of incidents that bring death, sickness or injury to nearly everyone around her. Although she herself is incapable of generating evil, she is both victim, witness, and accessory to the people and the forces surrounding her, all of whom seem marked by some form of doom. While she does not appear to guide her own destiny, she is nevertheless an affecting agent in events and in her relations with various men. Possessed of this hapless quality, and incapable of wilfully injuring anyone, she can still question the puzzling turns of her existence and experience great suffering from it. The setting of this highly charged story is Buenos Aires in Peronist Argentina. Besides turning on Elsa's enigmatic and fated character, the plot revolves around one Achard's plan to commit the perfect bank robbery. A further theme is Elsa's incipient-yet never consumated-incestuous attachment to her brother. The reader is drawn to follow her with strange fascination to the end, when chance alone frees Elsa of her fates, and she emerges as from a long, bad dream. . Hector A. Murena is well-known as a publisher and author in his native Argentina, and his work has been published abroad. The Laws of the Night is his first book to appear in the United States. The translation is by Rachel Caffyn, an Englishwoman whose rendering of The Shipyard (Juan Carlos Onetti) was well received here.
HEctor Alberto Álvarez (February 14, 1923, Buenos Aires, Argentina - May 6, 1975, Buenos Aires, Argentina), better known under his pen name of H. A. Murena, was an Argentine writer and poet. He is perhaps best remembered for Las Leyes de la Noche (1958), translated into English as The Laws of the Night.
From Mexico City to San Francisco's Mission District nothing comes easy - in life or in love. Vivid, authentic, and honest, these nine stories depict a world as treacherous as it is tender, as hilariou as it is heartbreaking. The second collection of stories by an American Book Award-winner.
Alejandro Murguía was born in California, but raised in Mexico City. His experiences as an international volunteer in the Nicaraguan Insurrection of 1979 are recounted in his second collection of short stories Southern Front (American Book Award,1991). He lives in San Francisco, where he teaches Latin American literature at San Francisco State University. He was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 2012.
Haunting, sensuous, and romantic, these three novellas feature an original and charismatic hero called Maqroll the Gaviero (the Lookout)- adventurer, sailor, intense and devoted hut temporary lover, loyal friend, student of Saint Francis, and entrepreneur of dubious schemes. Maqroll's wanderings have taken him throughout the world, frequently on ventures of doubtful legality-from smuggling rugs in Alicante, to managing a sophisticated brothel in Panama, to unwitting involvement with guerrillas in South America. Maqroll's turbulent and episodic life is filled with startling situations and memorable if not always admirable characters. Set against a vivid, elusive, and somewhat mysterious background of place, circumstance, and mood, Maqroll remains a skeptical and intelligent observer of his own actions and destiny. Alvaro Mutis is a masterful writer whose prose creates immediate and sharp impressions of people and places-a steamy coastal town, a decaying jungle settlement, the ironic veteran of the river patrol, or the beautiful and enigmatic Larissa. Both in narrative and style, Mutis is a supremely original, eloquent, and lyrical writer whose poetry and prose have been translated into French. German, Italian, Russian, and Portuguese.
Álvaro Mutis Jaramillo (August 25, 1923 - September 22, 2013) was a Colombian poet, novelist, and essayist and author of the compendium The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. He was awarded the 2002 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Mutis was born in Bogotá and lived in Brussels from the age of two until eleven, where his father, Santiago Mutis Dávila, held a post as a diplomat. They would return to Colombia by ship for summer holidays. During this time Mutis' family stayed at his grandfather's coffee and sugar cane plantation, Coello. For Álvaro Mutis, the impressions of these early years, his reading of Jules Verne and of Pablo Neruda's Residencia en la tierra, and, especially, contact with 'el tropico' (the tropics), are the mainspring of his work. Mutis studied high school in Bogotá under the tutelage of the Colombian poet Eduardo Carranza. Although he never finished school, he entered the literary world in Bogotá as a poet, a member of the Cántico group that emerged in 1940s. In 1948 Mutis and Carlos Patiño published a chapbook of poems called La balanza. He lived in Mexico City since 1956, gaining renown there as the result of Octavio Paz's positive reviews of his work. Mutis' poetry was first published in 1948 and his first short stories in 1978. His first novella featuring Maqroll, La nieve del Almirante (The Snow of the Admiral) was published in 1986 and gained him popular and critical acclaim. He has received many literary awards, including the Prix Medicis (France, 1989), Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras (Spain, 1997), Premio Miguel de Cervantes (Spain, 2001), and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (United States, 2002), for The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, a volume collecting all seven novellas about Maqroll the Gaviero. Mutis has combined his career as a writer of poetry and prose with a diverse set of non-literary occupations. Like his protagonist Maqroll, Mutis traveled widely in his professional roles including five years as Standard Oil's public relations director and over 20 years as sales manager for Twentieth Century Fox and Columbia Pictures in their Latin American television divisions. Latin Americans first became familiar with his voice when he did the narration for the Spanish-language television version of The Untouchables. The late Octavio Paz was a champion of Mutis' early poetry. In the 1950s, Mutis spent 15 months in a Mexican prison as a consequence of his handling of money intended for charitable use by Standard Oil. His experience in prison had a lasting influence on his life and work, and is chronicled in the book Diario de Lecumberri. Mutis' close friend, Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez, called him 'one of the greatest writers of our time.' Mutis' works are most widely read in Latin America and Europe. Mutis is not well known in the anglophone world, probably because he is not easy to categorize. His literary work is not part of what is commonly understood in the American academy as 'Latin American Literature'. Maqroll, his most well-known character, is of indeterminate origin, nationality, age and physiognomy. He is not evidently from Latin America and does not represent anything particularly Latin American in character. Maqroll is a solitary traveler who brings a stranger's detachment to his encounters and his lovers; he searches for meaning in a time of violence and inhumanity. In this sense some literary critics has compared Maqroll to Sophocles' Oedipus.
Haunting, sensuous, and romantic, these three novellas feature an original and charismatic hero called Maqroll the Gaviero (the Lookout)- adventurer, sailor, intense and devoted hut temporary lover, loyal friend, student of Saint Francis, and entrepreneur of dubious schemes. Maqroll's wanderings have taken him throughout the world, frequently on ventures of doubtful legality-from smuggling rugs in Alicante, to managing a sophisticated brothel in Panama, to unwitting involvement with guerrillas in South America. Maqroll's turbulent and episodic life is filled with startling situations and memorable if not always admirable characters. Set against a vivid, elusive, and somewhat mysterious background of place, circumstance, and mood, Maqroll remains a skeptical and intelligent observer of his own actions and destiny. Alvaro Mutis is a masterful writer whose prose creates immediate and sharp impressions of people and places-a steamy coastal town, a decaying jungle settlement, the ironic veteran of the river patrol, or the beautiful and enigmatic Larissa. Both in narrative and style, Mutis is a supremely original, eloquent, and lyrical writer whose poetry and prose have been translated into French. German, Italian, Russian, and Portuguese. . THE SNOW OF THE ADMIRAL Originally published in Spain in 1986 under the title La Nieve del Almirante by Alianza Editorial, S.A. ILONA COMES WITH THE RAIN Originally published in Spain under the title Ilona Llega con la Lluvia by Mondadori España, S.A. UNA BEL MORIR Originally published in Spain by Mondadori España, S.A.
Álvaro Mutis Jaramillo (August 25, 1923 - September 22, 2013) was a Colombian poet, novelist, and essayist and author of the compendium The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. He was awarded the 2002 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Mutis was born in Bogotá and lived in Brussels from the age of two until eleven, where his father, Santiago Mutis Dávila, held a post as a diplomat. They would return to Colombia by ship for summer holidays. During this time Mutis' family stayed at his grandfather's coffee and sugar cane plantation, Coello. For Álvaro Mutis, the impressions of these early years, his reading of Jules Verne and of Pablo Neruda's Residencia en la tierra, and, especially, contact with 'el tropico' (the tropics), are the mainspring of his work. Mutis studied high school in Bogotá under the tutelage of the Colombian poet Eduardo Carranza. Although he never finished school, he entered the literary world in Bogotá as a poet, a member of the Cántico group that emerged in 1940s. In 1948 Mutis and Carlos Patiño published a chapbook of poems called La balanza. He lived in Mexico City since 1956, gaining renown there as the result of Octavio Paz's positive reviews of his work. Mutis' poetry was first published in 1948 and his first short stories in 1978. His first novella featuring Maqroll, La nieve del Almirante (The Snow of the Admiral) was published in 1986 and gained him popular and critical acclaim. He has received many literary awards, including the Prix Medicis (France, 1989), Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras (Spain, 1997), Premio Miguel de Cervantes (Spain, 2001), and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (United States, 2002), for The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, a volume collecting all seven novellas about Maqroll the Gaviero. Mutis has combined his career as a writer of poetry and prose with a diverse set of non-literary occupations. Like his protagonist Maqroll, Mutis traveled widely in his professional roles including five years as Standard Oil's public relations director and over 20 years as sales manager for Twentieth Century Fox and Columbia Pictures in their Latin American television divisions. Latin Americans first became familiar with his voice when he did the narration for the Spanish-language television version of The Untouchables. The late Octavio Paz was a champion of Mutis' early poetry. In the 1950s, Mutis spent 15 months in a Mexican prison as a consequence of his handling of money intended for charitable use by Standard Oil. His experience in prison had a lasting influence on his life and work, and is chronicled in the book Diario de Lecumberri. Mutis' close friend, Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez, called him 'one of the greatest writers of our time.' Mutis' works are most widely read in Latin America and Europe. Mutis is not well known in the anglophone world, probably because he is not easy to categorize. His literary work is not part of what is commonly understood in the American academy as 'Latin American Literature'. Maqroll, his most well-known character, is of indeterminate origin, nationality, age and physiognomy. He is not evidently from Latin America and does not represent anything particularly Latin American in character. Maqroll is a solitary traveler who brings a stranger's detachment to his encounters and his lovers; he searches for meaning in a time of violence and inhumanity. In this sense some literary critics has compared Maqroll to Sophocles' Oedipus.
These four novellas continue the saga of Maqroll, the charismatic and elusive character powerfully introduced in the earlier three novellas of the Maqroll cycle, which were praised as ‘fascinating and original' (New York Times), ‘exquisite' (Los Angeles Times), and ‘spellbinding' (Boston Globe). The works are unified by the characters Maqroll and the Bashur family, and by the narrator, identified only as ‘I' but presumably Mutis himself. In Amirbar Maqroll finds gold in an abandoned mine in the South American jungle and is nearly burned alive by a woman companion. The Tramp Steamer's Last Port of Call is the haunting love story of Warda, twenty-three, the rebellious younger sister of Abdul Bashur, and Jon Iturri, the fiftyish captain of the tramp steamer Alcion , which lasts until the ship is wrecked and destroyed in Venezuela. All his life Abdul Bashur, a Lebanese shipowner, dreamed of finding the perfect ship, and the novella named for him chronicles his life and friendship with Maqroll and their shady schemes, from selling rare Oriental rugs to transporting Muslim pilgrims from the former Yugoslavia to Mecca. Triptych tells of three incidents in the Maqroll cycle-the suicide of an old Norwegian friend, Maqroll's encounters with a famous painter, and the culminating, poignant story of Maqroll's year with four-year-old Jamil, the son of Abdul Bashur, recently killed in a plane crash. The same qualities that Mutis exhibited so tellingly in his previous work are evident here-immediate and sharp impressions of people and places, a sense of the exotic, and mysterious, haunting images of circumstance and mood. Edith Grossman's translation is admirable; she received the ALTA (American Literary Translators Association) award for her translation of Maqroll.
Álvaro Mutis Jaramillo (August 25, 1923 - September 22, 2013) was a Colombian poet, novelist, and essayist and author of the compendium The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. He was awarded the 2002 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Mutis was born in Bogotá and lived in Brussels from the age of two until eleven, where his father, Santiago Mutis Dávila, held a post as a diplomat. They would return to Colombia by ship for summer holidays. During this time Mutis' family stayed at his grandfather's coffee and sugar cane plantation, Coello. For Álvaro Mutis, the impressions of these early years, his reading of Jules Verne and of Pablo Neruda's Residencia en la tierra, and, especially, contact with 'el tropico' (the tropics), are the mainspring of his work. Mutis studied high school in Bogotá under the tutelage of the Colombian poet Eduardo Carranza. Although he never finished school, he entered the literary world in Bogotá as a poet, a member of the Cántico group that emerged in 1940s. In 1948 Mutis and Carlos Patiño published a chapbook of poems called La balanza. He lived in Mexico City since 1956, gaining renown there as the result of Octavio Paz's positive reviews of his work. Mutis' poetry was first published in 1948 and his first short stories in 1978. His first novella featuring Maqroll, La nieve del Almirante (The Snow of the Admiral) was published in 1986 and gained him popular and critical acclaim. He has received many literary awards, including the Prix Medicis (France, 1989), Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras (Spain, 1997), Premio Miguel de Cervantes (Spain, 2001), and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (United States, 2002), for The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, a volume collecting all seven novellas about Maqroll the Gaviero. Mutis has combined his career as a writer of poetry and prose with a diverse set of non-literary occupations. Like his protagonist Maqroll, Mutis traveled widely in his professional roles including five years as Standard Oil's public relations director and over 20 years as sales manager for Twentieth Century Fox and Columbia Pictures in their Latin American television divisions. Latin Americans first became familiar with his voice when he did the narration for the Spanish-language television version of The Untouchables. The late Octavio Paz was a champion of Mutis' early poetry. In the 1950s, Mutis spent 15 months in a Mexican prison as a consequence of his handling of money intended for charitable use by Standard Oil. His experience in prison had a lasting influence on his life and work, and is chronicled in the book Diario de Lecumberri. Mutis' close friend, Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez, called him 'one of the greatest writers of our time.' Mutis' works are most widely read in Latin America and Europe. Mutis is not well known in the anglophone world, probably because he is not easy to categorize. His literary work is not part of what is commonly understood in the American academy as 'Latin American Literature'. Maqroll, his most well-known character, is of indeterminate origin, nationality, age and physiognomy. He is not evidently from Latin America and does not represent anything particularly Latin American in character. Maqroll is a solitary traveler who brings a stranger's detachment to his encounters and his lovers; he searches for meaning in a time of violence and inhumanity. In this sense some literary critics has compared Maqroll to Sophocles' Oedipus. EDITH GROSSMAN, who has translated the poetry and prose of major contemporary Latin American writers including Gabriel Garcia Márquez, is the author of The Antipoetry of Nicanor Parra. She received the ALTA translation award for Maqroll and previous Fulbright and Woodrow Wilson Fellowships. She has lived in New York since 1963.
THERE NEVER WAS A ONCE UPON A TIME is a collection of brief, beautifully written, lyrical stories. Naranjo creates children who are also creators: the child who invents an imaginary girlfriend, the one who imagines an older brother. These child protagonists open hidden worlds to their readers through first person narrative voices as they face the cruel reality of an exterior world in sharp conflict with their most intimate beliefs. A unique and appealing collection, expertly translated by Linda Britt. CONTENTS: Foreword; There Never Was a Once Upon a Time; Eighteen Ways to Make a Square; It Happened That Day; The Game That Is Only Played Once; Everybody Loves Clowns; Maybe the Clock Played with Time; When I Invented Butterflies; Old Cat Meets Young Cat; Tell Me a Story; Olo.
Carmen Naranjo Coto (January 30, 1928 - January 4, 2012) was a Costa Rican novelist, poet and essayist. Naranjo was born in Cartago, the capital city of the Cartago Province. She received her primary education there at the Escuela República de Perú and her secondary at the Colegio Superior de Señoritas. She received her licenciatura in Philology from the University of Costa Rica and pursued post-graduate studies at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico and the University of Iowa. Naranjo served as Costa Rica's ambassador to Israel in the 1970s and also as the country's minister of culture. She was the author of the Costa Rican system of social security. She was inducted into La Galería de las Mujeres de Costa Rica (The Women's Gallery of Costa Rica) in 2005. Naranjo wrote multiple books, including poetry, novels, storybooks, and essays. Her novels and stories have had much success, such as her first novel Los perros no ladraron (1966); however, Naranjo is also known for her poetry, such as La cancion de la ternura (1964) and Hacia tu isla (1966). After Naranjo returned to Costa Rica in 1964, having worked for United Nations in Venezuela, her literary career began to take off. She enrolled in a writer's workshop, led by Lilia Ramos (Costa Rican essayist), she began reading work by Latin American authors such as Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo, Jorge Luis Borges, and Octavio Paz, and she published her first volumes of poetry, Hacia tu isla (1966) and Misa a oscuras (1964). She published her first novel, Los perros no ladraron in 1966, and in 1968, two more followed: Memorias de un hombre de palabra and Camino al mediodía. The success she had from her first three novels opened an international opportunity for her career and literary reputation. Upon accepting an invitation to the University of Iowa in the United States, Naranjo spent a year in 1969 in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she completed her next novel, Diario de una multitud (published in 1974). In 1970, after much success with Camino al mediodía, which won second place in The Central American and Panama Flower Games (Los Juegos Florales Centroamericanos y de Panamá), she began to teach workshops (writing classes), and as a direct result of these classes, Naranjo was inspired to write her next notable novel, Responso Por El Niño Juan Manuel (1970). DR. LINDA BRITT is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Maine at Farmington. She has published critical studies on Cervantes and Garcia Lorca as well as on Carmen Naranjo.
This play is one of the products of the Black Experimental Theater - BET - which I founded in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1944, as an exigency of the lamentable situation in which black people found themselves in Brazilian society and, particularly, in the Brazilian Theater. Confronted by the very special characteristics of the historical formation of the country and taking into consideration the bases which govern relations between blacks and whites, we were fully aware of the type of challenge which we would have to face a challenge rather more difficult than that faced by blacks here in the United States or in Africa. - From: Callaloo, Volume 18, Number 4, Fall 1995.
Abdias do Nascimento (March 14, 1914 - May 23, 2011) was a prominent African Brazilian scholar, artist, and politician. Also a poet, dramatist, and Pan-African activist, Nascimento created the Black Experimental Theater (1944) and the Black Arts Museum (1950), organized the National Convention of Brazilian Blacks (1946), the First Congress of Brazilian Blacks (1950), and the Third Congress of Black Culture in the Americas (1982). Professor Emeritus, State University of New York at Buffalo, he was the first Afro-Brazilian member of Congress to champion black people's human and civil rights in the National Legislature, where in 1983 he presented the first Brazilian proposals for affirmative action legislation. He served as Rio de Janeiro State Secretary for the Defense and Promotion of Afro-Brazilian People and Secretary of Human Rights and Citizenship. While working as curator of the Black Arts Museum project, he began developing his own creative work (painting), and from 1968 on, he exhibited widely in the U.S., Brazil and abroad. He received national and international honors for his work, including UNESCO's special Toussaint Louverture Award for contribution to the fight against racism, granted to him and to poet AimE CEsaire in 2004. He was officially nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Born in Franca, Sao Paulo state, Nascimento attended public school as a child and joined the military in 1929, but was excluded from the Army as a result of resisting racial discrimination a few years later. He received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Rio de Janeiro in 1938, and graduate degrees from the Higher Institute of Brazilian Studies (1957) and the Oceanography Institute (1961). From 1939 to 1941, Nascimento travelled throughout South America with a group of poets who called themselves the "Santa Hermandad Orquidea", or "Holy Brotherhood of the Orchid." At the Municipal Theater of Lima, Peru, they attended a performance of Eugene O'Neill's play The Emperor Jones with a blackfaced white actor in the leading role. Then and there, he decided to create a black theater in Brazil to fight against racism. In Argentina, Nascimento spent a year with the "Teatro del Pueblo" (People's Theater) in Buenos Aires, where he learned the technical and performance aspects of theater. Returning to Sao Paulo, he was imprisoned, having been convicted in absentia by the civilian court for the same incident of resisting racial discrimination for which he had been excluded from the Army. While in prison at the Carandiru Penitentiary, he created the Convict's Theater, in which prisoners wrote, directed, and performed in their own plays and musical productions. When released, Nascimento moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he founded the Black Experimental Theater (Teatro Experimental do Negro, TEN) in 1944. TEN premiered on May 8, 1945 with a production of O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, surprising skeptical critics with a presentation that was highly acclaimed for its technical and dramatic effectiveness. With intense activity in theatrical production, TEN also was responsible for stellar initiatives in black activism, such as the National Convention of Brazilian Blacks (1945-46), the Conference of Brazilian Blacks (1949), and the First Congress of Brazilian Blacks (1950). A resolution of the 1950 congress advocated the need for a Black Arts Museum in Brazil, and the Black Experimental Theater embraced the project. Many artists donated works and the first exhibition was held in 1968 at Rio de Janeiro's Museu da Imagem e do Som (Museum of Image and Sound). The Black Experimental Theater organized the cast for the play Orfeu da Conceição, by Vinicius de Moraes, which was later adapted into the motion picture Black Orpheus, directed by Marcel Camus. Nascimento became a leader in Brazil's black movement, and was forced into exile by the military regime in 1968. From 1968 to 1981 Nascimento was very active in the international Pan-African Movement and was elected Vice-President and Coordinator of the Third Congress of Black Culture in the Americas. For the next decade Nascimento was a visiting professor at several universities in the United States, including the Yale School of Drama (1969–1971), and University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, where he founded the chair in African Cultures in the New World, Puerto Rican Studies Program in 1971. He held the position of Professor Emeritus at SUNY-Buffalo. Nascimento also taught at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in Nigeria. Nascimento returned to Brazil in 1983 and was elected to the federal Chamber of Deputies as a member of the Democratic Labour Party (PDT). There, his focus was supporting legislation to address racial problems. In 1994 he was elected to the Senate and served until 1999. In 2004 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace. A biography of Nascimento by the journalist Sandra Almada was published in 2009 as part of the Retratos do Brasil Negro series. Nascimento suffered from diabetes and died on 23 May 2011, in Rio de Janeiro, due to cardiac arrest.
A collection of 60 reflections in poetic prose.
Amado Nervo (August 27, 1870 - May 24, 1919) also known as Juan Crisostomo Ruiz de Nervo, was a Mexican poet, journalist and educator. He also acted as Mexican Ambassador to Argentina and Uruguay. His poetry was known for its use of metaphor and reference to mysticism, presenting both love and religion, as well as Christianity and Hinduism. Nervo is noted as one of the most important Mexican poets of the 19th century. Amado Nervo was born in Tepic, Nayarit (1870). His father died when Nervo was 9 years old. Two more deaths were to mark his life: the suicide of his brother Luis, who was also a poet, and the death of his wife Ana Cecilia Luisa Daillez, just 11 years after marriage. His early studies were at the Colegio San Luis Gonzaga, located in Jacona, Michoacán. After graduation, he began studying at the Roman Catholic Seminary in nearby Zamora. His studies at the seminary included science, philosophy and the first year of law. It was here, that Nervo cultivated an interest in mystical theories, which were reflected in some of his early works. While Nervo had early plans to join the priesthood, economic hardship led him to accept a desk job in Tepic. He later moved to Mazatlán, where he alternately worked in the office of a lawyer and as a journalist for El Correo de la Tarde (The Evening Mail). He went on to become a successful poet, journalist, and international diplomat. In 1894, Nervo continued his career in Mexico City, where he became known and appreciated, working in the magazine Azul, with Manuel GutiErrez Nájera. It was during this time that he was introduced to the work of Luis G. Urbina, Tablada, Dávalos, RubEn Darío, Jose Santos Chocano, and Campoamor. His background in journalism and news reporting flourished during these years, as he continued writing for El Universal, El Nacional, and El Mundo. He maintained a formal partnership with El Mundo through June 1897. In October 1897, El Mundo launched a supplement called La Comedia del Mundo, with Nervo taking responsibility for the overall production. In January 1898, the supplement was established independently from El Mundo and changed its name to La Comedia. Nervo gained a national reputation in the literary community after the publication of his novel El bachiller (The Bachelor) and his books of poetry, including Místicas (Mystical) and Perlas Negras (Black Pearls). In 1898, Nervo founded, along with Jesús Valenzuela, La Revista Moderna (The Modern Magazine). The magazine was the successor to Azul. He was the cousin of the renowned artist Roberto Montenegro Nervo. His cousin's first illustrations were produced for La Revista Moderna magazine. In 1902, Nervo wrote "La Raza de Bronce" ("The Bronze Race") in honor of Benito Juárez, former president of Mexico. In 1919, Bolivian writer Alcides Arguedas used the term in his novel, Raza de Bronce. In 1925, the term was used by Mexican luminary Jose Vasconcelos in his essay, La Raza Cosmica. Nervo spent the first years of the twentieth century in Europe, particularly in Paris. While there, he was an academic correspondent of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua. While in Paris, Nervo befriended Enrique Gomez Carrillo and Aurora Cáceres, for whom he wrote a prologue for the book La rosa muerta. When Nervo moved back to Mexico, he was appointed the Mexican Ambassador to Argentina and Uruguay. In 1901, while he was in Paris he met and married Ana Cecilia Luisa Dailliez. They lived happily until her death in 1912. Out of his grief and desperation, Nervo wrote his most important work, La Amada Inmovil (The Immovable Loved One), published posthumously in 1922.
Bento Munhoz da Rocha Neto (Paranaguá, December 17, 1905 - Curitiba, November 12, 1973 ) was a Brazilian engineer, teacher, writer, sociologist, and politician. He was a federal deputy from 1946 to 1950, when he was elected governor of the state of Paraná , governing from January 31, 1951 to April 3, 1955. In 1955 he took over the Ministry of Agriculture, and from 1958 to 1962 he was a federal deputy. He taught History of America at the Federal University of Paraná , Sociology at the Catholic University and Political Economy at the Faculty of Engineering. He was a constituent federal deputy from 1946 to 1950, when he was elected governor of the State of Paraná and, in 1955, he assumed the Ministry of Agriculture, and from 1958 to 1962 he was a federal deputy. As a constituent deputy, he was the first secretary of the Federal Chamber, being one of the leaders of the movement that extinguished the Iguaçu Territory, created by the Estado Novo. Elected governor of Paraná by a coalition of parties for the five-year period 1951–1955, he did not fully complete his mandate, resigning from governance on February 2, 1955, to be a candidate for the vice presidency of the Republic. Disarticulated the movement, occupied the Pasta of Agriculture, in the governments of CafE Filho and Carlos Luz. Among his fourteen published works, the following stand out: An Interpretation of the Americas (translated into English ), November Radiography (2nd edition), Message from America (translated into English), Itinerary (2nd edition), Profiles , Tingüís and Presença of Brazil , among others.
Claudio's apartment faces a wall. Rising from bed, he sets his feet on the floor at the same time, to ground himself. Cecilia sits at her window, contemplating a cemetery, the radio her best companion. In parallel and entwining stories that move from Havana to Paris to New York City, no routine, no argument for the pleasures of solitude, can withstand our most human drive to find ourselves in another, and fall in love. And no depth of emotion can protect us from love's inevitable loss.
Guadalupe Nettel (born 1973) is a Mexican writer. She won the Premio de Narrativa Breve Ribera del Duero and the Premio Herralde literary awards. She has been a contributor to Granta, The White Review, El Pais, The New York Times en Español, La Repubblica and La Stampa. Her works have been translated to 17 languages She is the editor of the Revista de la Universidad de MExico, the oldest cultural magazine in Mexico. Guadalupe Nettel was born in Mexico City and spent part of her childhood in the south of France. She obtained a PhD in linguistics from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her work has been translated to more than 17 languages. She is a contributor to various magazines and publications including as Granta, El País, The New York Times en Español, La Repubblica and La Stampa. She is the editor of the Revista de la Universidad de MExico of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She has published in several genres, both fiction and non-fiction. Her collection of short stories El matrimonio de los peces rojos won the Premio Internacional de Narrativa Breve Ribera del Duero and has since been translated into English under the title Natural Histories. She won the Premio Herralde in 2014 for her novel DespuEs del invierno (After the winter). In 2007, she was named as one of the Bogotá 39, a list of the most promising young Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine announced at the Hay Festival Bogota. She has published two English-language works of fiction with Seven Stories Press, Natural Histories (2014) and The Body Where I was Born (2015). The Body Where I Was Born was recognized on the Three Percent Best Translated Book Longlist and as a Neustadt International Prize for Literature Finalist.
Searching for an inn, the enigmatic traveler Hans stops in a small city on the border between Saxony and Prussia. The next morning, Hans meets an old organ-grinder in the market square and immediately finds himself enmeshed in an intense debate - on identity and what it is that defines us - from which he cannot break free. Indefinitely stuck in Wandernburg until his debate with the organ-grinder is concluded, he begins to meet the various characters who populate the town, including a young freethinker named Sophie. Though she is engaged to be married, Sophie and Hans begin a relationship that defies contemporary mores about female sexuality and what can and cannot be said about it. TRAVELER OF THE CENTURY is a deeply intellectual novel, chock-full of discussions about philosophy, history, literature, love, and translation. It is a book that looks to the past in order to have us reconsider the conflicts of our present. The winner of Spain's prestigious Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, TRAVELER OF THE CENTURY marks the English-language debut of Andres Neuman, a writer described by Roberto Bolaño as being ‘touched by grace.'
Andres Neuman was born in 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and grew up in Spain. He has a degree in Spanish philology from the University of Granada. Neuman was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists and was elected to the Bogotá-39 list. TRAVELER OF THE CENTURY was the winner of the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, Spain's two most prestigious literary awards.
Essays on Jorge Luis Borges. Contributors include: Mary Kinzie, Richard Howard, Mary Kinzie. Ronald Christ, Nestor Ibarra, Alastair Reid, Emir Rodriguez Monegal, R. H. W. Dillard, Humberto M. Rasi, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Kenneth Fields, Jaime Alazraki, Ben Belitt, Anthony Kerrigan, John C. Murchison, Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Alter, John Wright, Alexander Coleman, Frank Macshane, Carter Wheelock, Victoria Ocampo, Ronald Christ, John Hollander, And Norman Thomas Di Giovanni. .
CHARLES NEWMAN was a novelist, critic and founding editor of TriQuarterly, Newman transformed what had been a student and faculty publication at Northwestern University into a literary journal with international reach. As editor from 1964 to 1975, he championed writers as diverse as Sylvia Plath and John Barth and introduced the vanguard of Latin American and Eastern European authors, including Jorge Luis Borges and Czeslaw Milosz, to TriQuarterly’s discerning readership of American writers and intellectuals. Mary Kinzie (born September 30, 1944) is an American poet and critic, who spent much of her career teaching and directing the Creative Writing Program at Northwestern University. She received her B.A. from Northwestern University in 1967, and returned there to teach in 1975. She won Fulbright and Woodrow Wilson fellowships to do graduate work at the Free University of Berlin and Johns Hopkins University. She was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1985 and a National Humanities Center Fellowship in 2005. Kinzie won the Folger Shakespeare Library's 2008 O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize, the only major American prize to recognize a poet for teaching as well as writing.
These two autobiographical novels lay bare the life journey of a Mexican Jewish woman reconciling herself with a Sephardic background, her parents' dictates, and her husband's and family's expectations. The only constant in her life is a need to find her own way, and the story of how she does so is intensely personal and yet universal in its humanness. This quest begins in Oshinica's childhood: at about age ten she's taken from the public school in Mexico City and placed in a Jewish one. There she begins to understand what it means to he Jewish. Though somewhat indifferent to Hebrew lessons, she warms to the teacher who shares experiences of the Holocaust and learns that being Jewish means being different. Oshinica's family thwarts her desire to enter the university and instead she's pushed into marriage at age seventeen. Children follow quickly, four in all, and into the 1960s Oshinica tries to be a dutiful wife and mother while continuing to be an obedient daughter. But the insular Jewish neighborhood that sheltered and defined her life is impinged upon as modernity transforms Mexico City. Seeing films like the Fellini movie 8 1/2 and experiencing a culturally changing capital city sets her on a quest for her own voice and space. Eventually she separates and divorces, supports herself as a commercial photographer, and enrolls in a creative writing course taught by Elena Poniatowska, one of Mexico's most prominent women authors. These remarkable stories tell how Oshinica's many and often painful journeys of discovery led to a personal peace.
ROSA NISSAN lives in Mexico City and is a photographer and filmmaker.
A poor ignorant campesino on a large Cuban plantation becomes innocently embroiled in revolution and an earth-shaking, although brief, affair with his patrons daughter. He escapes persecution with his newborn daughter just before the cataclysm befalls Cuban society. Unknown to father and daughter, a twin brother was born shortly after their escape. Juan grows up pampered and spoiled in the lap of luxury among the wealthiest class of Cubans in Miami, but nevertheless senses that something fundamental is missing in his life of splendors. The beautiful, humble Esmeralda grows up in Spanish Harlem as the daughter of a fundamentalist preacher who honors his deceased wife by abusing the unwitting girl, who resembles her so. Widely seen to have inherited her father's mysticism, Esmeralda becomes the pride and wonder of El Barrio. Then, one day, a handsome young man is drawn to her church, to her life, to her love. All of the spirits, the muses, nature itself, have conspired to bring together the now inseparable pair. Neither the violence of her libidinous father nor the financial resources of Juan's parents can tear the two asunder in this marvelous satire of magic realism and the literature of exile and immigration.
Himilce Novas (born 1944) is a novelist, historian, journalist and human rights activist. Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1960 her family fled to the United States. Novas was educated in New York City, where she has spent most of her life. Novas' career spans several decades and encompasses works of fiction and non-fiction. Her published work includes poetry, plays, novels, reference books, and a cookbook about Latin American cuisine. She began her writing career as a teenager, when Nobel Prize laureate Camilo Jose Cela published her poems in his literary journal, Papeles de son Armadans. Later, she worked as a journalist, magazine editor and publicist for Vanidades, The New York Times, The Connoisseur, The Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. As a human rights activist, Novas was an early member of the National Organization for Women. She continues to work on behalf of women and those in the GBLT community and was featured in the book Feminists Who Changed America, 1963–1975 (2006). She has served on the Board of Veteran Feminists of America. In 2011, Himilce Novas was the recipient of a National Women's Political Caucus Women of Courage Award. Among Other 2011 eight other recipients included Representative Nancy Pelosi, past Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman and Ambassador Mary Olmsted. The National Women's Political Caucus established the NWPC Women of Courage awards to honor women from diverse backgrounds who have demonstrated courage by taking a stand on or against unpopular or controversial issues to further civil rights and equality, and who typify women's leadership. As a public speaker and visiting professor at educational institutions such as Wellesley College, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Clark University, Novas has specialized in a wide range of topics, including her own fiction and non-fiction works, Latino culture, feminism, and Gay and Lesbian history and culture. While living in Santa Barbara, Novas hosted the cultural interview radio talk show, The Novas Report, over KQSB 990-AM. She is a frequent contributor and has served as feature editor for The Multicultural Review.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, 1839-1908, a mulatto, was Brazil's greatest prose fiction writer. Of humble origin, Machado de Assis was in large measure self-taught. During the liberal empire of nineteenth-century Brazil, color and class were not insurmountable obstacles as the success of many men of similar station and color attests. Machado de Assis rose from typographer to upper level civil servant with relative ease. According to the contemporary Brazilian critic Antonio Cândido, the only moment when his color seemed to be an impediment was when he married a white Portuguese. From all indications, her family objected to the match. Obviously, Machado de Assis's color meant little or nothing to his bride and the couple enjoyed a long and reportedly happy marriage. Machado de Assis counted among his friends many talented and distinguished Brazilians. The Brazilian author was an extremely private person who led the quiet and somewhat regimented life of the civil servant and devoted the remainder of his time to his writing and to his wife. Understandably, his creations and his genius have elicited much speculation about Machado de Assis the man. Despite the many works that have delved into his life, the enigma of this man of genius remains unsolved. The character of Machado de Assis has been maligned and vindicated by the many people who have written about him. He emerges as quite a different person from the man of the legend. What becomes immediately apparent is that he was too subtle for his detractors. It is true that he was more concerned with the perfection of his art than with taking a militant role in social causes. Nevertheless, he took his stand on the issues and his perception of them was farsighted enough to comprehend more than their immediate implications. His art is a testimony to his success and fulfillment in his life's goal. He did not wish perhaps to be known as a black, white, or mulatto artist but as an artist. His concerns reflect a desire to be accepted in his unique identity, a desire common to all great artists and even to lesser human beings.
MARIA LUISA NUNES was Professor of Portuguese at the State University of New York at Stonybrook. Of Cape Verdean origin, she graduated with a BA from Barnard in 1961, and went on to earn an M.A. from Columbia and a Ph.D. from CUNY. Professor Nunes taught at Yale and Pittsburgh before coming to Stony Brook, from which she retired in 1997 after 13 years of service. She was the author of five books about the literature and culture of the Portuguese speaking world. In her most important work, Becoming True to Ourselves, she examined the Portuguese, Brazilian, and African colonial experiences as viewed through the eyes of native contemporary writers. During her Emerita years she took an interest in environmental issues and studied music theory and piano. To her friends (and in her published autobiography, In the Light of Memory, 1999), she often expressed her gratitude for her good fortune.
The prose of Ernesto Sábato, one of the most widely read and discussed writers of contemporary Argentina, reveals two primary ideological currents: a definition of Argentina together with an analysis of its current problems, and a study of twentieth century man and his relationship to an inhospitable world dominated by science and reason. In the final analysis, however, Sábato emerges as the often unseen protagonist of his two novels and some seven Volumes . . . of essays, and, while his themes are both national and universal, he at all times engages in a tortuous analysis of himself as the only human being of whom he can speak with complete authority. Born in Rojas in the province of Buenos Aires in 1911, Sábato received his early education in science and mathematics in the provincial capital of La Plata and later engaged in study and research in Paris and Cambridge, Massachusetts. By 1945 when his first volume of essays appeared it was already apparent that Sábato had rejected science in favor of a literary career. The appearance in 1948 of El tunel, the tragic tale of a misunderstood painter, clearly established its author in the world of contemporary letters. Thirteen years later Sobre heroes y turn bas, a complex, overpowering, enigmatic panorama of modern Argentina, placed Sábato in the category of the major novelists of the world today. Critical comment and translations of his works have appeared in the major languages of Europe and the New World.
Harley Dean Oberhelman received the Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Kansas in 1958 at which time he joined the staff of Texas Tech University where from 1963 to 1969 he was chairman of the Department of Classical and Romance Languages. In 1961 he lectured under the auspices of the Fulbright Commission at the National University of Tucumán, Argentina. He has traveled widely throughout Latin America, especially in Mexico and the River Plate region, and is the author of various critical studies of modern and contemporary Spanish American literature and of two textbooks. . .
In this, Silvina Ocampo's first book of stories, we discover the purest form of what would become her signature style over the years: lyrical, oneiric, and menacing - and an atmosphere, both mundane and mysterious, bordering on the fantastical. Forgotten Journey takes its title from the story of a girl who struggles to recall the events of her birth in order to remember her identity. Another story follows a friendship between two girls, one poor and one wealthy, who grow up to appear identical to one another, enabling them to trade lives and families. In "The Enmity of Things," a young man begins to suspect that his mundane possessions are conspiring against him. When he flees to his rural childhood home, the silent countryside proves only more sinister and mysterious. This collection of 28 short stories, first published in 1937 and now in English translation for the first time, introduced readers to one of Argentina's most original and iconic authors. With this, her fiction debut, poet Silvina Ocampo initiated a personal, idiosyncratic exploration of the politics of memory, a theme to which she would return again and again over the course of her unconventional life and productive career.
Silvina Ocampo (1903–1993) was born to an old and prosperous family in Buenos Aires, the youngest of six sisters. After studying painting with Giorgio de Chirico and Fernand LEger in Paris, she returned to her native city - she would live there for the rest of her life - and devoted herself to writing. Her eldest sister, Victoria, was the founder of the seminal modernist journal and publishing house Sur, which championed the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, and in 1940 Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo were married. The first of Ocampo's seven collections of stories, Viaje olvidado (Forgotten Journey), appeared in 1937; the first of her seven volumes of poems, Enumeracion de la patria (Enumeration of My Country) in 1942. She was also a prolific translator - of Dickinson, Poe, Melville, and Swedenborg - and wrote plays and tales for children. The writer and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky once wrote, For decades, Silvina Ocampo was the best kept secret of Argentine letters. Silvina Ocampo: Selected Poems is published by NYRB/Poets.
Silvina Ocampo is one of the most disturbing and fascinating writers a reader can hope to encounter. Many of her stories are about the uneasy conjunction of opposites: evil and saintliness, love and hate, the difficult world of childhood and the dangerously simple world of adults. Borges has written that the cruelty of Ocampo's stories is no doubt the result of the nobility of her soul, a judgement no less paradoxical than much of her own writing. Powerful and haunting, these stories about emotions carried to their limits are among the world's finest. Preface by Jorge Luis Borges. ‘Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature.' - Jorge Luis Borges. ‘I don't know of another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us.' - Italo Calvino. ‘Silvina Ocampo is, together with Borges and Garcia Marquez, the leading writer in Spanish.' - Jorge Amado. Few writers have an eye for the small horrors of everyday life; fewer still see the everyday marvellous. Other than Silvina Ocampo. I cannot think of a single writer who, at any time or in any language, has chronicled both with such wise and elegant humour.' - Alberto Manguel.
Silvina Ocampo Aguirre (July 28, 1903 - December 14, 1993) was an Argentine poet and short-fiction writer. Ocampo was born in Buenos Aires, the youngest of the six children of Manuel Ocampo and Ramona Aguirre. She was educated at home by tutors. One of her sisters was Victoria Ocampo, the publisher of the literarily important Argentine magazine Sur. She studied drawing in Paris under Giorgio de Chirico. She was married to Adolfo Bioy Casares, whose lover she became (1933) when Bioy was 19. They were married in 1940. In 1954 she adopted Bioy's daughter with another woman, Marta Bioy Ocampo (1954–94), who was killed in an automobile accident just three weeks after Silvina Ocampo's death, leaving two children. The estate of Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares was recently (as of 2006) awarded by a Buenos Aires court to yet another love child of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Fabián Bioy. Fabián Bioy died, aged 40, in February 2006. With Fabián Bioy's death, it is likely the many documents and manuscripts of both writers will soon become available to scholars. Ocampo began as a writer with the book of short stories Viaje olvidado in 1937, and followed up with three books of poetry, Enumeracion de la patria, Espacios mEtricos and Los sonetos del jardín. With Espacios mEtricos, which had been published in 1942 by the publishing house Sur, she won the Premio Municipal in 1954. She won the second prize in the National Poetry Comptetition for Los nombres in 1953 and came back to win the first place prize in 1962 with Lo amargo por dulce. Co-authored with Adolfo Bioy Casares, Ocampo published Los que aman, odian, in 1946, and with Juan Rodolfo Wilcock she published the theatrical work Los Traidores in 1956. With Borges and Bioy Casares, Ocampo co-authored the celebrated Antología de la literatura fantástica in 1940, and also the Antología poEtica Argentina in 1941.
A woman traveling on a transatlantic ship has fallen overboard. Adrift at sea, she makes a promise to Saint Rita, "arbiter of the impossible," that if she survives, she will write her life story. As she drifts, she wonders what she might include in the story of her life - a repertoire of miracles, threats, and people parade through her mind. Little by little, her imagination begins to commandeer her memories, escaping the strictures of realism. Translated into English for the very first time, The Promise showcases Silvina Ocampo at her most feminist, idiosyncratic and subversive. Ocampo worked quietly to perfect this novella over the course of twenty-five years, nearly up until the time of her death in 1993. The narrator's conflicted memory, as well as the intrusion of memories that are not her own, illustrate Ocampo's struggle with dementia in the last years of her life, and much like the author herself, here we find a narrator writing "against a world of conventional ideas."
Silvina Ocampo (1903–1993) was born to an old and prosperous family in Buenos Aires, the youngest of six sisters. After studying painting with Giorgio de Chirico and Fernand LEger in Paris, she returned to her native city - she would live there for the rest of her life - and devoted herself to writing. Her eldest sister, Victoria, was the founder of the seminal modernist journal and publishing house Sur, which championed the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, and in 1940 Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo were married. The first of Ocampo's seven collections of stories, Viaje olvidado (Forgotten Journey), appeared in 1937; the first of her seven volumes of poems, Enumeracion de la patria (Enumeration of My Country) in 1942. She was also a prolific translator - of Dickinson, Poe, Melville, and Swedenborg - and wrote plays and tales for children. The writer and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky once wrote, For decades, Silvina Ocampo was the best kept secret of Argentine letters. Silvina Ocampo: Selected Poems is published by NYRB/Poets.
Thus Were Their Faces offers a comprehensive selection of the short fiction of Silvina Ocampo, undoubtedly one of the twentieth century's great masters of the story and the novella. Here are tales of doubles and impostors, angels and demons, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old woman, a suicidal romance, and much else that is incredible, mad, sublime, and delicious. Italo Calvino has written that no other writer better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us. Jorge Luis Borges flatly declared, Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature. Dark, gothic, fantastic, and grotesque, these haunting stories are among the world's most individual and finest. PRAISE
Silvina Ocampo (1903–1993) was born to an old and prosperous family in Buenos Aires, the youngest of six sisters. After studying painting with Giorgio de Chirico and Fernand LEger in Paris, she returned to her native city - she would live there for the rest of her life - and devoted herself to writing. Her eldest sister, Victoria, was the founder of the seminal modernist journal and publishing house Sur, which championed the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, and in 1940 Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo were married. The first of Ocampo's seven collections of stories, Viaje olvidado (Forgotten Journey), appeared in 1937; the first of her seven volumes of poems, Enumeracion de la patria (Enumeration of My Country) in 1942. She was also a prolific translator - of Dickinson, Poe, Melville, and Swedenborg - and wrote plays and tales for children. The writer and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky once wrote, For decades, Silvina Ocampo was the best kept secret of Argentine letters. Silvina Ocampo: Selected Poems is published by NYRB/Poets.
When she hears about the suicide of a Buenos Aires train driver who has left a note confessing to four mortal ‘accidents' on the train tracks, journalist Veronica Rosenthal decides to investigate. For the police the case is closed (suicide is suicide), for Veronica it is the beginning of a journey that takes her into an unfamiliar world of grinding poverty, crime-infested neighborhoods, and train drivers on commuter lines haunted by the memory of bodies hit at speed by their locomotives in the middle of the night. Aided by a train driver with whom she has a tumultuous and reckless affair, a junkie in rehab and two street kids willing to risk everything for a can of Coke, she uncovers a group of men involved in betting on working-class youngsters convinced to play Russian roulette by standing in front of fast-coming trains to see who endures the longest.
Sergio Olguín was born in Buenos Aires in 1967 and was a journalist before turning to fiction. Olguín has won a number of awards, among others the Premio Tusquets 2009 for his novel Oscura monotona sangre (Dark Monotonous Blood) His books have been translated into German, French and Italian. The Fragility of Bodies is his first novel to be translated into English. Miranda France is the author of two acclaimed volumes of travel writing: Don Quixote's Delusions and Bad Times in Buenos Aires. She has also written the novels Hill Farm and The Day Before the Fire and translated much Latin American fiction, including Claudia Piñeiro's novels for Bitter Lemon Press.
The second in Antonio Olinto's Africa Trilogy. Freed slaves from Brazil return to the West Coast of Africa, and the trilogy follows the fortunes of thier descendents.
Antônio Olinto Marques da Rocha (May 10, 1919 - September 12, 2009) was a Brazilian writer, essayist and translator. Among his work are included poetry, novels, literary criticism, political analysis, children's literature and dictionaries. He occupied the 8th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1997 until his death in 2009.
Eight years before Alex Haley made headlines with the novel Roots, this bestselling family saga emerged from the wealth of South American literature to the critical applause of three continents. This is the first U.S. edition of Antonio Olinto's magnificent novel which has been compared to the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Amado and Mario Vargas Llosa. 1898. The year of the great flood and the emancipation of African slaves in Brazil. Some choose to stay in the exotic mixture of blood and cultures of the Bahia backwoods. Others try to return to the purity of land and language in their homeland Nigeria. Yet there is no real departing or arriving, but a fluid communion of continents across the great waters. THE WATER HOUSE is the story of the pilgrimage of Mariana Silva, a Brazilian-African girl who is born into the black's newfound freedom. She is carried by her Grandmother through a nightmarish. six-month journey from Brazil to her family's ancestral home. Mariana becomes wealthy and builds the water house. With her success, she becomes a matriarchal figure symbolizing a new Africa. The novel originated out of a social and historical study of Brazilians in Africa which Olinto compiled while serving as a cultural attache in Lagos. Along with the author's first-hand experience and authoritative knowledge, Olinto writes with a love of on id , a primitive, daily, conversational poetry deriving from the western African language, Yoruba. THE WATER HOUSE is written out of love and respect, and a desire to sculpt Mariana's story as if it were a vibrant figure innately realized and kinetically released within the novel's structure. The narrative runs on the rhythms and contours of Mariana's poetic consciousness. Olinto himself is not a carver, a molder imposing ideas, but a dancer becoming the dance, evoking a freed, spiritual world in which man can discover his in most self.
Antônio Olinto Marques da Rocha (May 10, 1919 - September 12, 2009) was a Brazilian writer, essayist and translator. Among his work are included poetry, novels, literary criticism, political analysis, children's literature and dictionaries. He occupied the 8th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1997 until his death in 2009.
Juan Carlos Onetti, the man perhaps most responsible for resetting the course of Latin American literature, a leading member of the so-called Generation of 1945, whose work prepared the ground for such writers as Cortázar, Garcia Mârquez, and Vargas Llosa: here is his masterpiece, his most dazzling work of fiction, A BRIEF LIFE, originally published in Spanish twenty-five years ago, now in English for the first time. A work of awesome complexity and eroticism, A BRIEF LIFE concerns an advertising copywriter in his forties who seeks release from himself and from the physical empirical world he knows, in order to experience a moment of psychic weightlessness-a ‘brief life.' As he stalks this moment, stripping himself of his own history, even his own imagination, he resolves to channel his consciousness through persons both real and imagined, through improbable objects, through a ‘desperate attention to all nuances.' The story unfolds as a series of imaginings, in scenes that repeat themselves in new contexts where characters recur, transformed into others who die and are born again. The protagonist's fantasies spin off in many directions and his mental processes move fluidly on the wave of Onetti's extraordinary prose, prismatically revealing each new dimension of being and each new aspect of sexuality. It is a brilliant novel. It is a literary event. JUAN CARLOS ONETTI was born in Montevideo in 1909, and won Uruguay's national prize for literature in 1961. In 1974 he was jailed by that country's police for participating in a literary panel that awarded first prize to a short story declared obscene and subversive by the government.
Juan Carlos Onetti (July 1, 1909, Montevideo - May 30, 1994, Madrid) was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories. A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time. 500 copies of the book were printed, most of them left to rot at the only bookstore that sold it, Barreiro (the book was not reprinted until the 60's, with an introduction and preliminary study by Ángel Rama). Aged 30, Onetti was already working as editing secretary of the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. He had lived for some years in Buenos Aires, where he published short stories and wrote cinema critiques for the local media, and met and befriended the notorious novelist and journalist Roberto Arlt, author of the novels El juguete rabioso, Los siete locos, Los lanzallamas. He went on to become one of Latin America's most distinguished writers, earning Uruguay National Literature Prize in 1962. He was considered a senior member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, among others. In 1974, he and some of his colleagues were imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Their crime: as members of the jury, they had chosen Nelson Marra's short story El guardaespaldas (i.e. ‘The bodyguard') as the winner of Marcha's annual literary contest. Due to a series of misunderstandings (and the need to fill some space in the following day's edition), El guardaespaldas was published in Marcha, although it had been widely agreed among them that they shouldn't and wouldn't do so, knowing this would be the perfect excuse for the military to intervene, considering the subject of the story (the interior monologue of a top-rank military officer who recounts his murders and atrocious behavior, much as it was happening with the functioning regime). Onetti left his native country (and his much-loved city of Montevideo) after being imprisoned for 6 months in Colonia Etchepare, a mental institution. As soon as he was released, Onetti fled to Spain with his wife, violin player Dorotea Mühr. There he continued his career as a writer, being awarded the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Cervantes. He remained in Madrid until his death in 1994. He is interred in the Cementerio de la Almudena in Madrid.
A Dream Come True collects the complete stories of Juan Carlos Onetti, presenting his existentialist, complex, and ironic style over the course of his writing career. Onetti was praised by Latin America's greatest authors, and regarded as an inventor of a new form and school of writing. Juan Carlos Onetti's A Dream Come True depicts a sharp, coherent, literary voice, encompassing Onetti's early stages of writing and his later texts. They span from a few pages in Avenida de Mayo - Diagonal - Avenida de Mayo to short novellas, like the celebrated detective story The Face of Disgrace and Death and the Girl, an existential masterpiece that explores the complexity of violence and murder in the mythical town of Santa María. His stories create a world of writing which is both universal and highly local, mediating between philosophical characters and the quotidian melodrama of Uruguayan villages.
Juan Carlos Onetti (July 1, 1909, Montevideo - May 30, 1994, Madrid) was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories. A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time. 500 copies of the book were printed, most of them left to rot at the only bookstore that sold it, Barreiro (the book was not reprinted until the 60's, with an introduction and preliminary study by Ángel Rama). Aged 30, Onetti was already working as editing secretary of the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. He had lived for some years in Buenos Aires, where he published short stories and wrote cinema critiques for the local media, and met and befriended the notorious novelist and journalist Roberto Arlt, author of the novels El juguete rabioso, Los siete locos, Los lanzallamas. He went on to become one of Latin America's most distinguished writers, earning Uruguay National Literature Prize in 1962. He was considered a senior member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, among others. In 1974, he and some of his colleagues were imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Their crime: as members of the jury, they had chosen Nelson Marra's short story El guardaespaldas (i.e. ‘The bodyguard') as the winner of Marcha's annual literary contest. Due to a series of misunderstandings (and the need to fill some space in the following day's edition), El guardaespaldas was published in Marcha, although it had been widely agreed among them that they shouldn't and wouldn't do so, knowing this would be the perfect excuse for the military to intervene, considering the subject of the story (the interior monologue of a top-rank military officer who recounts his murders and atrocious behavior, much as it was happening with the functioning regime). Onetti left his native country (and his much-loved city of Montevideo) after being imprisoned for 6 months in Colonia Etchepare, a mental institution. As soon as he was released, Onetti fled to Spain with his wife, violin player Dorotea Mühr. There he continued his career as a writer, being awarded the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Cervantes. He remained in Madrid until his death in 1994. He is interred in the Cementerio de la Almudena in Madrid.
BODY SNATCHER Is a major literary event: the masterpiece of Uruguayan Juan Carlos Onetti, who has for decades been acknowledged throughout South America and Europe as a world-class writer of fiction. Set in Santa Maria, an imaginary provincial town on the banks of the River Plate (reminiscent of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County), BODY SNATCHER, a tragicomic novel of grotesque ideals and lost illusions, recounts two attempts at self-fulfillment, two Promethean stories by turns. Larsen, a boldly original pimp of weary whores, tries to establish the perfect brothel; passionate Julita, a mad widow, refuses to accept the death of her husband by taking his younger brother as her lover. In their sordid, self- righteous society, which pits stupidity and lust against honor and love, both characters are doomed to failure. Informed by the gothic sobriety of Faulkner, the desperate cynicism of CEline, hysterically funny avant-garde nihilism, and the stark precision of Dostoevsky, Body Snatcher is a formidable work of fiction.
Juan Carlos Onetti (July 1, 1909, Montevideo - May 30, 1994, Madrid) was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories. A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time. 500 copies of the book were printed, most of them left to rot at the only bookstore that sold it, Barreiro (the book was not reprinted until the 60's, with an introduction and preliminary study by Ángel Rama). Aged 30, Onetti was already working as editing secretary of the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. He had lived for some years in Buenos Aires, where he published short stories and wrote cinema critiques for the local media, and met and befriended the notorious novelist and journalist Roberto Arlt, author of the novels El juguete rabioso, Los siete locos, Los lanzallamas. He went on to become one of Latin America's most distinguished writers, earning Uruguay National Literature Prize in 1962. He was considered a senior member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, among others. In 1974, he and some of his colleagues were imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Their crime: as members of the jury, they had chosen Nelson Marra's short story El guardaespaldas (i.e. ‘The bodyguard') as the winner of Marcha's annual literary contest. Due to a series of misunderstandings (and the need to fill some space in the following day's edition), El guardaespaldas was published in Marcha, although it had been widely agreed among them that they shouldn't and wouldn't do so, knowing this would be the perfect excuse for the military to intervene, considering the subject of the story (the interior monologue of a top-rank military officer who recounts his murders and atrocious behavior, much as it was happening with the functioning regime). Onetti left his native country (and his much-loved city of Montevideo) after being imprisoned for 6 months in Colonia Etchepare, a mental institution. As soon as he was released, Onetti fled to Spain with his wife, violin player Dorotea Mühr. There he continued his career as a writer, being awarded the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Cervantes. He remained in Madrid until his death in 1994. He is interred in the Cementerio de la Almudena in Madrid.
BODY SNATCHER Is a major literary event: the masterpiece of Uruguayan Juan Carlos Onetti, who has for decades been acknowledged throughout South America and Europe as a world-class writer of fiction. Relatively unknown in America, Onetti, with the English language publication of Body Snatcher, confirms his competitive preeminence among the great novelists of the Boom of Latin American fiction - including Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Fuentes, and others. Set in Santa Maria, an imaginary provincial town on the banks of the River Plate (reminiscent of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County), BODY SNATCHER, a tragicomic novel of grotesque ideals and lost illusions, recounts two attempts at self-fulfillment, two Promethean stories by turns. Larsen, a boldly original pimp of weary whores, tries to establish the perfect brothel; passionate Julita, a mad widow, refuses to accept the death of her husband by taking his younger brother as her lover. In their sordid, self- righteous society, which pits stupidity and lust against honor and love, both characters are doomed to failure. Informed by the gothic sobriety of Faulkner, the desperate cynicism of CEline, hysterically funny avant-garde nihilism, and the stark precision of Dostoevsky, Body Snatcher is a formidable work of fiction. Juan Carlos Onetti was born in Montevideo in 1909. He currently lives in Spain.
Juan Carlos Onetti (July 1, 1909, Montevideo - May 30, 1994, Madrid) was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories. A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time. 500 copies of the book were printed, most of them left to rot at the only bookstore that sold it, Barreiro (the book was not reprinted until the 60's, with an introduction and preliminary study by Ángel Rama). Aged 30, Onetti was already working as editing secretary of the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. He had lived for some years in Buenos Aires, where he published short stories and wrote cinema critiques for the local media, and met and befriended the notorious novelist and journalist Roberto Arlt, author of the novels El juguete rabioso, Los siete locos, Los lanzallamas. He went on to become one of Latin America's most distinguished writers, earning Uruguay National Literature Prize in 1962. He was considered a senior member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, among others. In 1974, he and some of his colleagues were imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Their crime: as members of the jury, they had chosen Nelson Marra's short story El guardaespaldas (i.e. ‘The bodyguard') as the winner of Marcha's annual literary contest. Due to a series of misunderstandings (and the need to fill some space in the following day's edition), El guardaespaldas was published in Marcha, although it had been widely agreed among them that they shouldn't and wouldn't do so, knowing this would be the perfect excuse for the military to intervene, considering the subject of the story (the interior monologue of a top-rank military officer who recounts his murders and atrocious behavior, much as it was happening with the functioning regime). Onetti left his native country (and his much-loved city of Montevideo) after being imprisoned for 6 months in Colonia Etchepare, a mental institution. As soon as he was released, Onetti fled to Spain with his wife, violin player Dorotea Mühr. There he continued his career as a writer, being awarded the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Cervantes. He remained in Madrid until his death in 1994. He is interred in the Cementerio de la Almudena in Madrid.
In FAREWELLS, a young international basketball player is dying of tuberculosis. His arrival at a sanatorium in a mountain holiday resort prompts speculative and, at times, vicious gossip among the guests. The narrator, cafE-owner cum shopkeeper, recalls the physical beauty of the dying sportsman with admiration and affection. The male nurse and motel maid, the tubercular residents and the cafE clientele wonder over this enigmatic loner. Letters arrive . . . Two women visit - his wife and his mistress? He moves into a chalet . . . Making love in his condition? Is this a scandalous threesome? Incest? Or that oddity, a well-knit family? Who can tell? Subtle detail, snatches of conversation and the cafE-owner's recollections create a mysterious network of unlikely relationships in 1950's Argentina. In A GRAVE WILL NO NAME Onetti returns to the imaginary world of Santa Maria, the mythical city which forms the backdrop to many of his novels. A woman dies. A doctor watches the bizarre funeral procession straggling through the poor farmsteads with a goat bringing up the rear - ‘lame, slavering down its beard, one leg in a splint . . . ‘ He gradually pieces together the story - or stories - behind this woman, who might be Rita, who had stood outside the railway station begging - or soliciting - in the company of her goat. In his attempt to uncover her true history, to distinguish fact from fiction, the narrator is irresistibly drawn into a world of tumbledown shacks and shattered dreams. FAREWELLS (1954) and A GRAVE WITH NO NAME (1959) are both fine examples of Onetti's taut prose, laconic dialogue and probing narrative. His exploration of failure of lost illusions and ill-fated lives is playful, imbued with stoicism and shrewd humor, yet ‘his stark, direct prose generates a strange poetry of the soul' (El Pais). . Born in Montevideo in 1909, JUAN CARLOS ONETTI began to write in the 1930s and was the first editor of the magazine Marcha. From 1941-55 he worked for Reuters in Buenos Aires. In 1974 he was briefly imprisoned by the military regime in Uruguay for being part of the Marcha committee which awarded a prize to a short story concerning a policeman who practiced torture. In 1975 he and his wife moved to Madrid. In 1980 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize. He died in 1994.
Juan Carlos Onetti (July 1, 1909, Montevideo - May 30, 1994, Madrid) was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories. A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time. 500 copies of the book were printed, most of them left to rot at the only bookstore that sold it, Barreiro (the book was not reprinted until the 60's, with an introduction and preliminary study by Ángel Rama). Aged 30, Onetti was already working as editing secretary of the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. He had lived for some years in Buenos Aires, where he published short stories and wrote cinema critiques for the local media, and met and befriended the notorious novelist and journalist Roberto Arlt, author of the novels El juguete rabioso, Los siete locos, Los lanzallamas. He went on to become one of Latin America's most distinguished writers, earning Uruguay National Literature Prize in 1962. He was considered a senior member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, among others. In 1974, he and some of his colleagues were imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Their crime: as members of the jury, they had chosen Nelson Marra's short story El guardaespaldas (i.e. ‘The bodyguard') as the winner of Marcha's annual literary contest. Due to a series of misunderstandings (and the need to fill some space in the following day's edition), El guardaespaldas was published in Marcha, although it had been widely agreed among them that they shouldn't and wouldn't do so, knowing this would be the perfect excuse for the military to intervene, considering the subject of the story (the interior monologue of a top-rank military officer who recounts his murders and atrocious behavior, much as it was happening with the functioning regime). Onetti left his native country (and his much-loved city of Montevideo) after being imprisoned for 6 months in Colonia Etchepare, a mental institution. As soon as he was released, Onetti fled to Spain with his wife, violin player Dorotea Mühr. There he continued his career as a writer, being awarded the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Cervantes. He remained in Madrid until his death in 1994. He is interred in the Cementerio de la Almudena in Madrid.
‘The translation of Los adioses by Balderston is excellent. It captures the style, tone, and meaning of one of Onetti's most important narratives -LANIN A. GYURKO, PROFESSOR OF SPANISH, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA . . . This newly translated collection, GOODBYES AND STORIES, highlights fiction outside the Santa Maria cycle, giving English-speaking readers access to a much greater range of Onetti's work. GOODBYES is one of Onetti's most perfect stories. Full of ambiguity, it explores the curiosity excited in a small mountain town by the arrival of a tubercular former basketball player-and the two women who visit him. Daniel Balderston's translation of this story was co-winner of the Eugene M. Kayden National Translation Award for 1987. Nine short stories - ‘A Dream Come True', ‘Esbjerg by the Sea', ‘The House on the Sand', ‘The Photograph Album', ‘Hell Most Feared', ‘The Image of Misfortune', ‘Sad as She', ‘New Year's Eve', and ‘The Stolen Bride' - round out the volume. Balderston's introduction situates Onetti's writing in its literary and cultural context and relates GOODBYES AND STORIES to the rest of the author's work. . Juan Carlos Onetti is the most outstanding Uruguayan prose writer of our time. Best known for a cycle of novels about Santa Maria, an imaginary town on the Rio de la Plata, his work bears a strong affinity to the Yoknapatawpha novels of William Faulkner, whom he greatly admires. . Daniel Balderston is associate professor of Spanish at Tulane University.
Juan Carlos Onetti (July 1, 1909, Montevideo - May 30, 1994, Madrid) was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories. A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time. 500 copies of the book were printed, most of them left to rot at the only bookstore that sold it, Barreiro (the book was not reprinted until the 60's, with an introduction and preliminary study by Ángel Rama). Aged 30, Onetti was already working as editing secretary of the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. He had lived for some years in Buenos Aires, where he published short stories and wrote cinema critiques for the local media, and met and befriended the notorious novelist and journalist Roberto Arlt, author of the novels El juguete rabioso, Los siete locos, Los lanzallamas. He went on to become one of Latin America's most distinguished writers, earning Uruguay National Literature Prize in 1962. He was considered a senior member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, among others. In 1974, he and some of his colleagues were imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Their crime: as members of the jury, they had chosen Nelson Marra's short story El guardaespaldas (i.e. ‘The bodyguard') as the winner of Marcha's annual literary contest. Due to a series of misunderstandings (and the need to fill some space in the following day's edition), El guardaespaldas was published in Marcha, although it had been widely agreed among them that they shouldn't and wouldn't do so, knowing this would be the perfect excuse for the military to intervene, considering the subject of the story (the interior monologue of a top-rank military officer who recounts his murders and atrocious behavior, much as it was happening with the functioning regime). Onetti left his native country (and his much-loved city of Montevideo) after being imprisoned for 6 months in Colonia Etchepare, a mental institution. As soon as he was released, Onetti fled to Spain with his wife, violin player Dorotea Mühr. There he continued his career as a writer, being awarded the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Cervantes. He remained in Madrid until his death in 1994. He is interred in the Cementerio de la Almudena in Madrid.
The archetypal Onetti hero, Medina is at different times of his life a (phony) doctor, a painter, a police chief. He lives in Lavanda, across the river from Santa Maria, a town he is not allowed to enter and that he therefore wishes to destroy. In the end the wind speaks by devouring Santa Maria with its flames. The first novel written in exile in Spain, LET THE WIND SPEAK is Onetti coming to terms with his exclusion from the Santa Marias of his childhood, his fist sexual conquests, his first cigarettes, his first double whiskeys. A lover's hitter lament - it ends in the destruction of the object of adoration. ‘Latin American literature has few secrets to divulge to the English-speaking world; but one of them is the Uruguayan novelist Juan Carlos Onetti.' - Gerald Martin in The Guardian. ‘Is THE SHIPYARD a one-off masterpiece? I hope that having reconstituted it for English readers, the translator and publisher will decide to take the rust off the rest of Onetti's works.' - John Spurling in The Spectator. ‘The Graham Greene of Uruguay . . . foreshadowing the work of Beckett and Camus.' - Sunday Telegraph. ‘Onetti's voice and subject matter are his own . . . his work is always on a knife-edge . . . He is laconic, elegant, literary.' - London Review of Books. A Serpent's Tail paperback original.
Juan Carlos Onetti (July 1, 1909, Montevideo - May 30, 1994, Madrid) was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories. A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time. 500 copies of the book were printed, most of them left to rot at the only bookstore that sold it, Barreiro (the book was not reprinted until the 60's, with an introduction and preliminary study by Ángel Rama). Aged 30, Onetti was already working as editing secretary of the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. He had lived for some years in Buenos Aires, where he published short stories and wrote cinema critiques for the local media, and met and befriended the notorious novelist and journalist Roberto Arlt, author of the novels El juguete rabioso, Los siete locos, Los lanzallamas. He went on to become one of Latin America's most distinguished writers, earning Uruguay National Literature Prize in 1962. He was considered a senior member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, among others. In 1974, he and some of his colleagues were imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Their crime: as members of the jury, they had chosen Nelson Marra's short story El guardaespaldas (i.e. ‘The bodyguard') as the winner of Marcha's annual literary contest. Due to a series of misunderstandings (and the need to fill some space in the following day's edition), El guardaespaldas was published in Marcha, although it had been widely agreed among them that they shouldn't and wouldn't do so, knowing this would be the perfect excuse for the military to intervene, considering the subject of the story (the interior monologue of a top-rank military officer who recounts his murders and atrocious behavior, much as it was happening with the functioning regime). Onetti left his native country (and his much-loved city of Montevideo) after being imprisoned for 6 months in Colonia Etchepare, a mental institution. As soon as he was released, Onetti fled to Spain with his wife, violin player Dorotea Mühr. There he continued his career as a writer, being awarded the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Cervantes. He remained in Madrid until his death in 1994. He is interred in the Cementerio de la Almudena in Madrid.
In NO MAN'S LAND, Juan Carlos Onetti dissects a restless, rootless generation of intellectuals, would-be artists and political activists in the city of Buenos Aires. Their parents came from Europe to find a land of plenty in Argentina and now they are caught in a void: neither Argentinian nor European. Theirs are spiked conversations in shadowy bars and brothels, ringing with disillusion. Political idealism has been shattered by the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact. Men and women find no solace in flesh or in the feeling as they pursue ghosts from their amorous pasts. Abortion, suicide, and failure weigh heavier than fantasies of tropical islands or the dream of a new world. The chaos of lives on the edge of the abyss is caught in a jagged, cinematic narrative, swiftly moving through sequences of abrupt scenes. In Onetti's cycle of novels, NO MAN'S LAND is a ket work, in which the focus shifts from the solitary protagonist of THE PIT, to the first appearance of Onetti's greatest creations: Larsen the corpse-gatherer and the vividly realized imaginary town of Santa Maria. If THE PIT anticipated Sartre's existentialism, then NO MAN'S LAND is an early incursion into the fragmented space of an end-of-history post-modernism. It reads as if it were written for today.
Juan Carlos Onetti (July 1, 1909, Montevideo - May 30, 1994, Madrid) was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories. A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time. 500 copies of the book were printed, most of them left to rot at the only bookstore that sold it, Barreiro (the book was not reprinted until the 60's, with an introduction and preliminary study by Ángel Rama). Aged 30, Onetti was already working as editing secretary of the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. He had lived for some years in Buenos Aires, where he published short stories and wrote cinema critiques for the local media, and met and befriended the notorious novelist and journalist Roberto Arlt, author of the novels El juguete rabioso, Los siete locos, Los lanzallamas. He went on to become one of Latin America's most distinguished writers, earning Uruguay National Literature Prize in 1962. He was considered a senior member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, among others. In 1974, he and some of his colleagues were imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Their crime: as members of the jury, they had chosen Nelson Marra's short story El guardaespaldas (i.e. ‘The bodyguard') as the winner of Marcha's annual literary contest. Due to a series of misunderstandings (and the need to fill some space in the following day's edition), El guardaespaldas was published in Marcha, although it had been widely agreed among them that they shouldn't and wouldn't do so, knowing this would be the perfect excuse for the military to intervene, considering the subject of the story (the interior monologue of a top-rank military officer who recounts his murders and atrocious behavior, much as it was happening with the functioning regime). Onetti left his native country (and his much-loved city of Montevideo) after being imprisoned for 6 months in Colonia Etchepare, a mental institution. As soon as he was released, Onetti fled to Spain with his wife, violin player Dorotea Mühr. There he continued his career as a writer, being awarded the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Cervantes. He remained in Madrid until his death in 1994. He is interred in the Cementerio de la Almudena in Madrid.
On his deadbed, the protagonist reviews the diary annotations of his life from the day his wife left him and the country. His sour resignation of the emotional loneliness of existence and the bleak struggle for material survival frames a return to Onetti's universe of Santamaria and sleazy brothels, now compounded by a drug-smuggling scenario. The hero abandons city life to befriend the local players in the racket behind a dam-construction project. He is drawn into the lives of Dr. Diaz Grey and his wife, a mulatto housekeeper and her stepdaughter, truck drivers, the ‘Turkish' postman, the denizens of the brothel . . . and Professor Paley, co-ordinator of the North American fromt organization, whose local reps (their physiques fashioned on baseball fields and their minds trained by Bible classes) upholds the company motto ‘In gold we trust' by scattering coins to pay off their black and mestizo laborers. Hardly havens of political correctness, the spare vision of these lives is suffused with warmth and irony. There is a sense that PAST CARING? is Onetti's last will and testament to the inner world of his imagination, and a fictional farewell to his readers: a meditation on the approaching death that would curtail further forays from a mind trapped in a failing body. . JUAN CARLOS ONETTI was born in Montevideo in 1909. He began to write in the 1930s and was the first editor of the magazine Marcha. From 1941-55 he worked for Reuters in Buenos Aires. In 1974 he was briefly imprisoned by the military regime in Uruguay for being part of the Marcha committee which awarded a prize to a short story concerning a policeman who practiced torture. In 1975 he and his wife moved to Madrid. In 1980 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize. He died in 1994.
Juan Carlos Onetti (July 1, 1909, Montevideo - May 30, 1994, Madrid) was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories. A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time. 500 copies of the book were printed, most of them left to rot at the only bookstore that sold it, Barreiro (the book was not reprinted until the 60's, with an introduction and preliminary study by Ángel Rama). Aged 30, Onetti was already working as editing secretary of the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. He had lived for some years in Buenos Aires, where he published short stories and wrote cinema critiques for the local media, and met and befriended the notorious novelist and journalist Roberto Arlt, author of the novels El juguete rabioso, Los siete locos, Los lanzallamas. He went on to become one of Latin America's most distinguished writers, earning Uruguay National Literature Prize in 1962. He was considered a senior member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, among others. In 1974, he and some of his colleagues were imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Their crime: as members of the jury, they had chosen Nelson Marra's short story El guardaespaldas (i.e. ‘The bodyguard') as the winner of Marcha's annual literary contest. Due to a series of misunderstandings (and the need to fill some space in the following day's edition), El guardaespaldas was published in Marcha, although it had been widely agreed among them that they shouldn't and wouldn't do so, knowing this would be the perfect excuse for the military to intervene, considering the subject of the story (the interior monologue of a top-rank military officer who recounts his murders and atrocious behavior, much as it was happening with the functioning regime). Onetti left his native country (and his much-loved city of Montevideo) after being imprisoned for 6 months in Colonia Etchepare, a mental institution. As soon as he was released, Onetti fled to Spain with his wife, violin player Dorotea Mühr. There he continued his career as a writer, being awarded the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Cervantes. He remained in Madrid until his death in 1994. He is interred in the Cementerio de la Almudena in Madrid.
These two novels are striking examples of Onetti's fiction of urban alienation in Latin America affected by political devastation in Europe. Individuals attempt to communicate and attain freedom through encounters in shabby rooms, downtown bars and brothels in Montevideo and Buenos Aires. THE PIT was originally published in 1939. Eladio Linacero, ‘a lonely man having a smoke in some old corner of the city', dwells upon fragments from his past on his fortieth birthday. From afar he sees the rising tides of Stalinism and Fascism in Europe, but is uninspired by the left-wing activities of his roommate and the mythical endeavours of thirty-three heroic gauchos fighting for Uruguayan national independence. His relationships with women - dominated by memories of his rape of a girl in his youth - are a futile quest for lost innocence. Married love perished when an interest in crockery and refrigerators took over. A chance encounter with the poet Cordes kindles a spark of friendship which soon dies when he responds coldly to Eladio's writing. ‘Why don't things happen to the man who waits and reaches out with all his heart from some forsaken street corner?' Originally published in 1943, TONIGHT is set in a port which has surrendered to the forces of an anonymous general. It could be Valencia in 1939, Buenos Aires or any city after a dictator has come to power. Inspired by conversations with anarchists exiled in Buenos Aires after their defeat in the Spanish Civil War, Onetti structures his novel as a thriller to map out the despair of the men trying to avoid capture and the sadism of those in pursuit. Morasan's secret police patrol the seedy quayside bars, hunting down Barcala and Ossorio. In an atmosphere of suspicion, fear and betrayal, these erstwhile revolutionary leaders question their political inspiration, cling to memories of moments of warmth and passion as the net draws ever tighter around them: ‘All there is is this trap and us waiting to be cut to pieces.' Onetti's stark and ironic prose brilliantly conveys the pointlessness of war, the terror of betrayal and the futility of death in the name of lost heroic causes. . JUAN CARLOS ONETTI was born in Montevideo in 1909. He began to write in the 1930s and was the first editor of the magazine Marcha. From 1944-55 he worked for Reuters in Buenos Aires. He has published a cycle of novels set in the imaginary city of Santa Maria. In 1974 he was briefly imprisoned by the military regime in Uruguay for being part of the Mracha committee which awarded a prize to a short story concerning a policeman who practiced torture. In 1975 he and his wife moved to Madrid. In 1980 this ‘literary giant' (le Monde) was awarded the Cervantes Prize.
Juan Carlos Onetti (July 1, 1909, Montevideo - May 30, 1994, Madrid) was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories. A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time. 500 copies of the book were printed, most of them left to rot at the only bookstore that sold it, Barreiro (the book was not reprinted until the 60's, with an introduction and preliminary study by Ángel Rama). Aged 30, Onetti was already working as editing secretary of the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. He had lived for some years in Buenos Aires, where he published short stories and wrote cinema critiques for the local media, and met and befriended the notorious novelist and journalist Roberto Arlt, author of the novels El juguete rabioso, Los siete locos, Los lanzallamas. He went on to become one of Latin America's most distinguished writers, earning Uruguay National Literature Prize in 1962. He was considered a senior member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, among others. In 1974, he and some of his colleagues were imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Their crime: as members of the jury, they had chosen Nelson Marra's short story El guardaespaldas (i.e. ‘The bodyguard') as the winner of Marcha's annual literary contest. Due to a series of misunderstandings (and the need to fill some space in the following day's edition), El guardaespaldas was published in Marcha, although it had been widely agreed among them that they shouldn't and wouldn't do so, knowing this would be the perfect excuse for the military to intervene, considering the subject of the story (the interior monologue of a top-rank military officer who recounts his murders and atrocious behavior, much as it was happening with the functioning regime). Onetti left his native country (and his much-loved city of Montevideo) after being imprisoned for 6 months in Colonia Etchepare, a mental institution. As soon as he was released, Onetti fled to Spain with his wife, violin player Dorotea Mühr. There he continued his career as a writer, being awarded the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Cervantes. He remained in Madrid until his death in 1994. He is interred in the Cementerio de la Almudena in Madrid.
As the first of his novels to appear in the United States, The Shipyard introduces to readers in this country a Uruguayan with a literary reputation well established in Latin America and increasingly known abroad. Chief character in this strongly atmospheric story is one Larsen, an enigmatic figure who returns to the town of Santa Maria, from which he had been expelled five years earlier. Larsen takes over the managership of Santa Maria's once-prosperous shipyard but soon discovers he has entered a world compounded of the quicksands of illusion and delusion. Onetti chronicles Larsen's inexorable yet witting descent into the quagmire of meaningless forms and motions with a stylistic detail that lends the force of an imperative to the course of his actions. The world of the shipyard - a claustrophobic phantasy which Onetti has made an actuality - not only submerges its participants - but immerses the reader as well.
Juan Carlos Onetti (July 1, 1909, Montevideo - May 30, 1994, Madrid) was an Uruguayan novelist and author of short stories. A high school drop-out, Onetti's first novel, El pozo, published in 1939, met with his close friends' immediate acclaim, as well as from some writers and journalists of his time. 500 copies of the book were printed, most of them left to rot at the only bookstore that sold it, Barreiro (the book was not reprinted until the 60's, with an introduction and preliminary study by Ángel Rama). Aged 30, Onetti was already working as editing secretary of the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha. He had lived for some years in Buenos Aires, where he published short stories and wrote cinema critiques for the local media, and met and befriended the notorious novelist and journalist Roberto Arlt, author of the novels El juguete rabioso, Los siete locos, Los lanzallamas. He went on to become one of Latin America's most distinguished writers, earning Uruguay National Literature Prize in 1962. He was considered a senior member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement: Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Mario Arregui, Mauricio Muller, Jose Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Tola Invernizzi, Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Cunha, among others. In 1974, he and some of his colleagues were imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Their crime: as members of the jury, they had chosen Nelson Marra's short story El guardaespaldas (i.e. ‘The bodyguard') as the winner of Marcha's annual literary contest. Due to a series of misunderstandings (and the need to fill some space in the following day's edition), El guardaespaldas was published in Marcha, although it had been widely agreed among them that they shouldn't and wouldn't do so, knowing this would be the perfect excuse for the military to intervene, considering the subject of the story (the interior monologue of a top-rank military officer who recounts his murders and atrocious behavior, much as it was happening with the functioning regime). Onetti left his native country (and his much-loved city of Montevideo) after being imprisoned for 6 months in Colonia Etchepare, a mental institution. As soon as he was released, Onetti fled to Spain with his wife, violin player Dorotea Mühr. There he continued his career as a writer, being awarded the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Cervantes. He remained in Madrid until his death in 1994. He is interred in the Cementerio de la Almudena in Madrid.
The torturer has no name, but we come to know him well as he plies his craft from episode to episode, culminating in one of the most brutal and saddening scenes of western fiction. He serves his apprenticeship with the devotion of the professional. Victim after victim is strapped down before him as he perfects his vocation. They fade away as he moves upward in the hierarchy of his bizarre career. So many questions lie behind, as posed by Elvira Orphee: ‘How can torturers have a family' Is it possible that they love their own children and intensely hate the children of others? Do they feel the suffering they induce and watch? Is it possible for them to imagine themselves in the place of their victims?' . ELVIRA ORPHEE seems concerned with commentary about her native Argentina, where she still resides, but she is most interested in the universal notion of torture. This novel, her fifth and initially published in Spanish in her sister country of Venezuela, is a special contribution to our understanding of a sorrowful human condition. It finally appeared in Argentina in November, 1984, seven years after its first publication.
Elvira OrphEe (born 29 May 1930 in San Miguel de Tucumán) is an Argentine writer. She settled in Buenos Aires at the end of the 1940's. OrphEe was married to the painter Miguel Ocampo, father of her three daughters, whom he accompanied as a diplomat to Rome where he became friends with Alberto Moravia, Italo Calvino and Elsa Morante. In 1961 she returned to Argentina and then to Paris where she was Counsellor of Latin American literature to the publishing house Gallimard. Her novel, 'Sweet air' (1966), has been recently reprinted under the label Bajo La Luna (August 2009 - Buenos Aires).
Together with the late Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the 1982 Nobel laureate, stands at the pinnacle of Latin American literature. His work, in the words of Julio Ortega, ‘contains its own ‘deconstructive' force-a literary power capable of reshaping natural order and rhetorical tradition in order to ‘carnivalize' the Borges' library and allow us to hear the voices-and the laughter-of a culture, that of Latin America.' This reshaping force invites us to read the works of Garcia Márquez in a new way, one that bypasses the traditional, inadequate approaches through Latin American politics, history, and ‘magical realism.' In GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ AND THE POWERS OF FICTION, noted scholars Julio Ortega, Ricardo GutiErrez Mouat, Michael Palencia-Roth, Anibal Gonzalez, and Gonzalo Diaz-Migoyo offer English-speaking readers a new approach to Garcia Márquez's work. Their poststructuralist readings focus on the peculiar sign-system, formal configuration, ultra-discursivity, and unfolding representation in the novels ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL, IN EVIL HOUR, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, and CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, and in several of the author's short stories. Also included as an appendix is a translation of Garcia Marquez's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, ‘The Solitude of Latin America.'
Julio Ortega is professor of Latin American and comparative literature at Brandeis University and director of the Latin American program there. Poetics of Change, one of his many critical studies, was also published by the University of Texas Press.
When Peruvian peasant leader Alfonso Cánepa is murdered and mutilated by the police, he sets out to recover his missing bones and seek Christian burial. During his pilgrimage from his mountain village to the capital, the dead man relates a sort of epic mockery in a Peru torn apart by a decade of terrorism and government repression. Cánepa finds humor, cynicism and hope in a nation that has become ‘a graveyard with an airport.' First published in Spanish in 1986, AYACUCHO, GOODBYE was adapted for the stage and presented in Lima, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin and New York by the Peruvian group Yuyachkani. In MOSCOW'S GOLD, another national allegory, a Peruvian teenager's life is unexpectedly disrupted and complicated by the strains and repressions of the Cold War era.
A native of Peru, Professor Julio Ortega is an accomplished scholar, poet, playwright, and novelist, with 15 books as well as several critical editions to his credit. After six years of teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, and two years as professor and chairperson at Brandeis University, Professor Ortega joined Brown's Department of Hispanic Studies in 1989. He has also been a visiting professor at numerous universities both in the United States and abroad, including recent terms as Simon Bolivar Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge (1995-96) and Catedra de Estudios Avanzados at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (Summer 1995). EDITH GROSSMAN is an eminent translator noted for her English versions OF LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH and STRANGE PILGRIMS, by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Her 1992 translation of Alvaro Mutis' MAQROLL was named one of the year's best by the American Literary Translators Association. Her recent projects include Mutis' THE ADVENTURES OF THE MAQROLL and Garcia Márquez's LOVERS AND OTHER DEMONS. ALITA KELLEY, a native of Yorkshire, England, has published many prose and verse translations of noted contemporary writers in both English and Spanish. Kelley formerly edited the Peruvian bilingual literary journals Haravec and Interlace, and has published five volumes of poetry.
‘Thanks to Julio Ortega, I think many writers will discover, as I have, diverse perspectives and unexpected aspects of their own works about which the creator is ignorant-luckily, I think- at the time he writes, but which are an essential part of his work. Ortega has surprised me many times with his analyses of my writing; these surprises are good and necessary, and for them I thank him.' - Julio Cortázar. Too often literary criticism is academic exercise rather than creative act. For the multifaceted Julio Ortega-respected poet, dramatist, and novelist in his own right-the act of criticism becomes profoundly creative, his incisive readings of the text far transcending the pedantry that may falsely pass for imagination, intelligence, and rigor. Nearly every. Spanish-American writer of consequence, from Paz to Fuentes, Cortãzar to Lezama Lima, has extolled Ortega's criticism as not merely a reflection but an essential part of the renaissance that has taken place in Spanish-American letters during the past several decades. Poetics of Change brings together Ortega's most penetrating and insightful analyses of the fiction of Borges, Fuentes, Garcia Márquez, Carpentier, Rulfo, Cabrera Infante, and others responsible for the best new writing from Spanish America. Ortega concerns himself most with the semantic innovations of these masters of the modern narrative and their play with form, language, and the traditional boundaries of genre. Mapping their creative territory, he finds that the poetics of Spanish-American writing today is that of a dynamically changing genre that has set exploration at its very heart. . Julio Ortega has been called ‘Peru's leading literary intellectual' (American Book Review). Since receiving the Doctoral de Literatura from Universidad Catolica in Lima, he has taught at several universities, including Yale and the University of Pittsburgh, and has published some seven works of his own fiction, drama, and poetry, as well as numerous critical editions and works of literary criticism. At present he is professor of Spanish at the University of Texas at Austin. . .
A native of Peru, Professor Julio Ortega is an accomplished scholar, poet, playwright, and novelist, with 15 books as well as several critical editions to his credit. After six years of teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, and two years as professor and chairperson at Brandeis University, Professor Ortega joined Brown's Department of Hispanic Studies in 1989. He has also been a visiting professor at numerous universities both in the United States and abroad, including recent terms as Simon Bolivar Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge (1995-96) and Catedra de Estudios Avanzados at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (Summer 1995).
An experimental, utopian fiction from one of Peru's leading literary intellectuals. Julio Ortega's work is known to American readers through such respectable publications as PERU: THE NEW POETRY (New York, 1977), TriQuaterly, Yale Litt, and Texas Quarterly. THE LAND IN THE DAY. However, is the first of his many books to be translated and published in English. Long recognized as an authority in the field of utopian literature, Mr. Ortega has in this work created a utopian text of his own, one that comes from the tradition yet one that is radically modified by his contemporary vision. He has taught at Yale in the past and is now a professor of Spanish at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1974, he was a Guggenheim fellow.
A native of Peru, Professor Julio Ortega is an accomplished scholar, poet, playwright, and novelist, with 15 books as well as several critical editions to his credit. After six years of teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, and two years as professor and chairperson at Brandeis University, Professor Ortega joined Brown's Department of Hispanic Studies in 1989. He has also been a visiting professor at numerous universities both in the United States and abroad, including recent terms as Simon Bolivar Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge (1995-96) and Catedra de Estudios Avanzados at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (Summer 1995).
An international bestseller about the blackest period of Argentinean history. Luz, a twenty-year-old Argentinean, is on vacation in Madrid with her husband and newborn son. But Luz has a secret mission-to find her real father. Carlos was a desaparecidos, one of the many political activists who disappeared in Argentina during its dictatorship in the seventies. Her mother, a political prisoner, was killed while trying to flee the country, and Luz is brought up by a wealthy, politically influential couple. There are only three people who know Luz's real identity: her adopted father Eduardo, racked by guilt at this deception; her adopted grandfather, the powerful and corrupt General Alfonso who is determined to keep the secret buried; and Miriam, the prostitute who befriended Luz's real mother in her final days and who returns from exile determined to tell Luz the truth. Met by politics, wealth, and corruption at every turn, Luz's search to find her father ultimately turns into a dangerous fight to save herself. In this taut, riveting thriller, Elsa Osorio has written a powerful story about a young girl's quest to find her identity. At the core, Luz's story mirrors that of the Argentinean people: how can we hope to understand ourselves if our history is shrouded in secrets and tragedy?. .
Elsa Osorio was born in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires in 1952. She studied literature at the university there in order to become a teacher, and has since worked as a writer, journalist, scriptwriter and assistant professor. In 1994 she left Argentina and resettled in Madrid, nowadays she live again in Argentina. At the centre of her literary work lies an examination of contemporary Argentine history. In the process, she turns her attention in particular to the ramifications of politics for the individual, which she illustrates using striking biographies. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that the author succeeds in convincing readers that the instruments of the art of story-telling are shown to be most effective at that point at which they lead us back to reality, where our perspective and our interests, whetted by the imagination, are recalled to reality. In 1982 she debuted with the volume of short stories Ritos privados (t: Private rites), for which she was awarded the most prestigious literature prize of her country, the Premio Nacional de Literatura Argentina, in the following year. She later published Beatriz Guido (1991), a novel of this Argentine writer's life, and a collection of political and linguistic essays Las malas lenguas (1994; t: The wicked tongues). Her sixth novel, A veinte anos, Luz (1998; Eng. My name is Light, 2003), was greeted with acclaim on the international scene. It won her Amnesty International's literary prize, was translated into more than fifteen languages, and published in twenty-three countries - only in Argentina was she unable to find a publisher at first. The novel deals with a dark chapter of the Argentine military dictatorship. It tells the story of the fate and search for identity of a young woman, born to opponents of the Junta, who is taken away by the family of an officer who is loyal to the regime. Another prevailing theme in Osorio's work is tango, which she focused on in her screenplay, La Leccion de tango (1997; t: The tango lesson). Her most recent novel, Cielo de tango (2006; t: Tango Sky), also deals with the Argentine dance and merges history and imagination. Like the former work, it unfolds over various temporal planes and tells of two families of differing social backgrounds whose lives are intertwined through tango, beginning with the rise of Argentina in the late eighteenth century and leading up to the present day. The narrative technique of this recent work, which also describes the history of tango, is adopted from the movements of the dance itself: it moves forwards, backwards and sideways, and then changes direction. For this novel she received the Premio de Bibliotecas in Italy and the Premio Acerbi. Among Osorio's further distinctions are an award for best comedy as well as a prize for journalistic satire. She has been living since 2006 once again mostly in Buenos Aires, where she is running creative writing workshops. From 2007 to 2010 she took part in different congresses and fairs, as for example in Saint Malo, "Etonnants Voyageurs", the International Literature Festival in Berlin, the Bookfair in Paris, the Bookfair in the Spanish Gijon, the "Festival de la Palabra" in Puerto Rico, the Bookfair in Medellin and the Bookfair in Frankfurt. In 2009 she spent a month in Berlin under the LiteraturRaum project. In 2009 she published "Callejon con salida" a collection of short stories which received the Premio Roma for foreign literature in 2010.
Pacheco himself has said that he believes that his work could never really appeal to anyone outside of Mexico City. Yet none of us lives very far away from the city he so implacably portrays. His sinking, stinking metropolis becomes a metaphor for something much larger and threatening, and we respond with natural feeling to his quiet-spoken outrage. BATTLES IN THE DESERT & OTHER STORIES, a companion volume to the author's bilingual Selected Poems, includes work written over a period of two decades. The stories were translated by Katherine Silver, who has also translated Pacheco's poetry and the recently published short novel DEAR DIEGO by Elena Poniatowska (Pantheon, 1986). For those readers of Latin American literature who are tired of being fed a particularly monochrome tin age of Mexico-replete with virgins rising into the heavens sheathed in white gowns, with idealized peasants, tortillas in hand, staring off at the volcano in deep contemplation of The Revolution That Cannot Fail-Jose Emilio Pacheco will come as a welcome relief. One of Mexico's leading poets, he has also successfully ventured into the area of the short story and the novel. BATTLES IN THE DESERT & OTHER STORIES, a collection of short fiction that deals mainly with themes of childhood and innocence betrayed, is the first book of Pacheco's fiction to appear in English. Here there are no narrative arabesques, no flights of magical-realist fancy. Instead, Pacheco confronts the reader with the uglier sides of urban Mexico-its grime, its beggars, its suffocating pollution, the constricted lives of its lower middle class-all with a simplicity and directness of style impeccably shaped and clearly distilled. CONTENTS: The Pleasure Principle; You Wouldn't Understand; The Sunken Park; The Captive; August Afternoon; Acheron; Battles In The Desert.
Jose Emilio Pacheco Berny (June 30, 1939 - January 26, 2014) was a Mexican poet, essayist, novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the major Mexican poets of the second half of the 20th century. The Berlin International Literature Festival has praised him as 'one of the most significant contemporary Latin American poets'. In 2009 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize for his literary oeuvre. He taught at UNAM, as well as the University of Maryland, College Park, the University of Essex, and many others in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. He died aged 74 in 2014 after suffering a cardiac arrest. He was awarded the following prizes: Premio Cervantes 2009, Reina Sofía Award (2009), Federico García Lorca Award (2005), Octavio Paz Award (2003), Pablo Neruda Award (2004), Ramon Lopez Velarde Award (2003), Alfonso Reyes International Prize (2004), Jose Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature (2000), National Jose Asuncion Silva Poetry Award (1996), and Xavier Villaurrutia Prize. In 2013 he was awarded the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings festival in Struga, Macedonia. He was elected by unanimous acclaim to the Mexican Academy (Academia Mexicana de la Lengua) on March 28, 2006. He was a member of The National College (El Colegio Nacional) since 1986.
Heberto Padilla's frankly autobiographical novel is the story of a writer who refuses to give over to the revolutionary state the power of his art. In the process, Heroes Are Grazing in My Garden paints an astonishingly realistic portrait of an idealist movement gone sour, and the lives of the men and women lost in the somber turn of the tide. A web of people-writers and writers manquë, sociologists and philosophers, bureaucrats and spiritualists-struggle to maintain some semblance of individualism in a system that is everywhere resistant to the individual. Nostalgic, erotic, political, and literary dreams form a counterplot, especially for the two central characters, Julio and Gregorio. Julio is a translator betrayed by the system he labored to build and by the wife he wooed through the revolution. Gregorio Suarez, trapped in a disappointing marriage, struggles to write the novel of Cuba while sinking deeper and deeper into a self-destructive alcoholism. Their lives touch in a mutual dream of frustration and aggression. Heberto Padilla offers here a stunning portrait of the once glamorous city of Havana in sharp counterpoint to the grinding drabness of its contemporary life.
Heberto Padilla (20 January 1932 - 25 September 2000) was a Cuban poet, and the center of the so-called 'Padilla affair.'. He was born in Puerta de Golpe, Pinar del Río, Cuba. His first book of poetry, Las rosas audaces (The Audacious Roses), was published in 1949. After a failed first marriage and three children, he married poet Belkis Cuza MalE in 1972. His son, Ernesto Padilla, was born in 1972. Although Padilla initially supported the revolution led by Fidel Castro, by the late 1960s he began to criticize it openly, and in 1971 he was imprisoned by the Castro regime. A number of prominent Latin American, North American, and European intellectuals, including Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, Susan Sontag, and Jean-Paul Sartre, spoke out against Padilla's incarceration, and the resulting controversy came to be known as 'the Padilla affair.' The reaction of the international intellectual and literary community eventually led to Padilla's release from prison, but he was not allowed to leave the country until 1980. He lived in New York, Washington, D.C. and Madrid, before finally settling in Princeton, NJ. Padilla was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Farrar Straus & Giroux published several editions of his poetry, a novel, En mi jardín pastan los hEroes (translated as Heroes Are Grazing in My Garden), and a book of memoirs, La mala memoria (translated as Self-Portrait of the Other). He was the Elena Amos Distinguished Scholar in Latin American Studies at Columbus State University, Columbus GA, 1999-2000. He died on September 24, 2000 while teaching at Auburn University in Alabama.
HEBERTO PADILLA, Cuba's foremost living poet as well as one of the finest twentieth-century writers in the Spanish language, is a man whose personal and political destiny has been viewed as a cautionary tale of the Cuba of Fidel Castro. Many myths have been created around Padilla-he has been extravagantly admired and bitterly vilified - but, even after his immigration to the United States in 1980, the poet has guarded his silence. Now, in SELF-PORTRAIT OF THE OTHER, his long- awaited autobiography, Padilla breaks that silence, telling the story of his life and times, in his own words and, artistically and intellectually, on his own terms. SELF-PORTRAIT OF THE OTHER is both a poet's prose and a memoir of Castro's Cuba in which the political realities of that regime and the personalities of the artists who flocked from all over the world to support it are depicted.
Heberto Padilla (20 January 1932 - 25 September 2000) was a Cuban poet, and the center of the so-called 'Padilla affair.'. He was born in Puerta de Golpe, Pinar del Río, Cuba. His first book of poetry, Las rosas audaces (The Audacious Roses), was published in 1949. After a failed first marriage and three children, he married poet Belkis Cuza MalE in 1972. His son, Ernesto Padilla, was born in 1972. Although Padilla initially supported the revolution led by Fidel Castro, by the late 1960s he began to criticize it openly, and in 1971 he was imprisoned by the Castro regime. A number of prominent Latin American, North American, and European intellectuals, including Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, Susan Sontag, and Jean-Paul Sartre, spoke out against Padilla's incarceration, and the resulting controversy came to be known as 'the Padilla affair.' The reaction of the international intellectual and literary community eventually led to Padilla's release from prison, but he was not allowed to leave the country until 1980. He lived in New York, Washington, D.C. and Madrid, before finally settling in Princeton, NJ. Padilla was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Farrar Straus & Giroux published several editions of his poetry, a novel, En mi jardín pastan los hEroes (translated as Heroes Are Grazing in My Garden), and a book of memoirs, La mala memoria (translated as Self-Portrait of the Other). He was the Elena Amos Distinguished Scholar in Latin American Studies at Columbus State University, Columbus GA, 1999-2000. He died on September 24, 2000 while teaching at Auburn University in Alabama.
From the author of the critically acclaimed novel SHADOW WITHOUT A NAME comes ANTIPODES, a stunning volume of fictions that evoke the work of Jorge Luis Borges and ltalo Calvino. Here are twelve short stories that effortlessly move across tune, place, and culture, from the Gobi Desert to the he4ts of Mount Everest and the jungles of lava. In ‘The Antipodes and the Century,' a great Scottish engineer, left to die in the middle of the desert, is rescued by a tribe of nomads and inspires them to build an exact replica of the city of Edinburgh in the dunes; ‘Ever Wrest Log of the Journey' is the tale of a dying cross-dressing pilot who allegedly climbs Mount Everest and then mysteriously disappears; ‘Hagiography of the Apostate' tells of a monk who conjures the devil in an effort to prove the devil's existence; and in ‘A Bestiary' the line between the spectators and the creatures on display becomes alarmingly blurred. Interweaving history and legend with dazzling ingenuity, Antipodes confirms Ignacio Padilla's reputation as one of our most inventive contemporary writers. The result is a work that delights and terrifies as it entrances. . IGNACIO PADILLA was born in Mexico City and is the author of several award-winning novels and short story collections His novel SHADOW WITHOUT A NAME was the first of his works to be translated into English.
Ignacio Padilla (born 1968) is a noted Mexican novelist and short story writer whose works have been translated into several languages. Padilla helped found the Crack Movement along with fellow Mexican writers Eloy Urroz, Jorge Volpi, and Pedro Angel Palou as a means for Mexican authors to find their own voice and write beyond Magic Realism. Ignacio Padilla was born in Mexico City in 1968. From an early age, Padilla notes that he was drawn to writing, and as he grew older, he became immersed in the literary works of James Joyce, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Robert Louis Stevenson, whose works often centered on the theme of human identity. Padilla attended High school at Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa in Mbabane Swaziland and thereafter received his undergraduate education at Universidad Iberoamericana where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies. He later received a Master's degree in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh and a Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic-American literature from the University of Salamanca. Upon completing his higher education, Padilla returned to Mexico. During the early 1990s, Padilla worked as an editorial director for Playboy magazine's Latin American publication while also writing his column, 'El baúl de los cadáveres' in Mexico's literary magazine 'Sábado.' In 1989, Padilla received the Mexican Alfonso Reyes literary award for his work 'Subterráneos', and in 1994 the Juan de la Cabada literary award for his children's story 'Las tormentas del mar embotellado', the Mexican Juan Rulfo Literary Award for a first novel, 'La catedral de los ahogados', and the Mexican Malcolm Lowry Literary Award for his literary essay 'El dorado esquivo: espejismo mexicano de Paul Bowles'. That same year, Padilla published 'El año de los gatos amurallados', which was awarded the Mexican Kalpa literary award for Science Fiction. In 1996, Padilla joined with longtime friends and fellow writers Jorge Volpi, Eloy Urroz, Pedro Ángel Palou García, and Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, who collectively presented a proposal based on their literary criticism and personal opinions of Mexican and Latin American literature. This literary critique, a reaction to the Latin American Boom, became known as the Crack Manifesto and was presented as a means for Mexican authors to find their own voice, and write beyond Magic Realism. In addition to breaking with the Latin American tradition of Magic Realism, the Crack Movement called for a return to the complexity of plot and style as found in the works of Latin American authors such as Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges.That same year, Sandro Cohen published Nueva Imagen, a collection of stories by the authors of the Crack Movement. In 1999 Padilla received the Mexican Jose Revueltas literary award for his literary essay 'Los funerales del alcaraván: historia apocrifa del realismo mágico', as well as the Mexican Gilberto Owen literary award for his short story publication 'Las antípodas y el siglo'. In 2000, Padilla received the Premio Primavera de Novela for his novel 'Amphitryon'. In 2001, Padilla was chosen as Cultural AttachE for the Mexican embassy of Great Britain, a post he held until 2003. During this time, he republished 'Cronicas africanas' which he had previously published in Mexican literary magazine 'Nostromo.' In 2007, Mexican President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa named Ignacio Padilla director of the Jose Vasconcelos national library of Mexico. However, the structural integrity of the building in which the library was housed was unfit to safely house the national library, and in March 2007 the decision was made to temporarily close the national library. Padilla released a statement that repairs to the building were absolutely necessary, and that he would not open the doors until the building was safe from structural damages. On August 15 of 2007, the Mexican newspaper Milenio Diario published an article stating that Padilla had stepped down as director of the national library.
The winner of Spain's prestigious Premio Primavera Award. In 1916, on a train heading to the Austro-Hungarian Empire's disastrous Eastern Front, Viktor Kretzschmar and Thadeus Dreyer face each other over a chessboard. It is a game to the death: the winner will take Kretzschmar's identity as a railway signalman and live Out the war in safety. The loser will go to the Front. When the game ends, a sequence of events that will span decades as well as continents has been set in motion. In 1943, the decorated World War I hero and influential Nazi General Thadeus Dreyer is in charge of training doubles to stand in for leading Nazis at dangerous public events. But when the Amphitryon Project falls out of favor with Goering, Dreyer and his team of doubles vanish, and their disappearance remains unsolved. In 1960, an escaped Nazi is uncovered in Buenos Aires, where he has been living under an assumed name. One of the few Nazis to be recaptured, he is extradited to Israel and executed. Only an old Polish count claims to know his true identity, but he dies before it can be revealed. The clues that connect these men are concealed in an old encrypted manuscript that the count has left to his heirs-an unlikely trio of misfits who suddenly find themselves at the center of a dangerous game as they are compelled to decipher the deceits of decades past. Mesmerizing and suspenseful, Shadow Without a Name explores questions of identity and history against the backdrop of the darkest periods of twentieth-century Europe, and stands as an impressive introduction to one of Mexico's most gifted contemporary writers.
Ignacio Padilla (born 1968) is a noted Mexican novelist and short story writer whose works have been translated into several languages. Padilla helped found the Crack Movement along with fellow Mexican writers Eloy Urroz, Jorge Volpi, and Pedro Angel Palou as a means for Mexican authors to find their own voice and write beyond Magic Realism. Ignacio Padilla was born in Mexico City in 1968. From an early age, Padilla notes that he was drawn to writing, and as he grew older, he became immersed in the literary works of James Joyce, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Robert Louis Stevenson, whose works often centered on the theme of human identity. Padilla attended High school at Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa in Mbabane Swaziland and thereafter received his undergraduate education at Universidad Iberoamericana where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies. He later received a Master's degree in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh and a Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic-American literature from the University of Salamanca. Upon completing his higher education, Padilla returned to Mexico. During the early 1990s, Padilla worked as an editorial director for Playboy magazine's Latin American publication while also writing his column, 'El baúl de los cadáveres' in Mexico's literary magazine 'Sábado.' In 1989, Padilla received the Mexican Alfonso Reyes literary award for his work 'Subterráneos', and in 1994 the Juan de la Cabada literary award for his children's story 'Las tormentas del mar embotellado', the Mexican Juan Rulfo Literary Award for a first novel, 'La catedral de los ahogados', and the Mexican Malcolm Lowry Literary Award for his literary essay 'El dorado esquivo: espejismo mexicano de Paul Bowles'. That same year, Padilla published 'El año de los gatos amurallados', which was awarded the Mexican Kalpa literary award for Science Fiction. In 1996, Padilla joined with longtime friends and fellow writers Jorge Volpi, Eloy Urroz, Pedro Ángel Palou García, and Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, who collectively presented a proposal based on their literary criticism and personal opinions of Mexican and Latin American literature. This literary critique, a reaction to the Latin American Boom, became known as the Crack Manifesto and was presented as a means for Mexican authors to find their own voice, and write beyond Magic Realism. In addition to breaking with the Latin American tradition of Magic Realism, the Crack Movement called for a return to the complexity of plot and style as found in the works of Latin American authors such as Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges.That same year, Sandro Cohen published Nueva Imagen, a collection of stories by the authors of the Crack Movement. In 1999 Padilla received the Mexican Jose Revueltas literary award for his literary essay 'Los funerales del alcaraván: historia apocrifa del realismo mágico', as well as the Mexican Gilberto Owen literary award for his short story publication 'Las antípodas y el siglo'. In 2000, Padilla received the Premio Primavera de Novela for his novel 'Amphitryon'. In 2001, Padilla was chosen as Cultural AttachE for the Mexican embassy of Great Britain, a post he held until 2003. During this time, he republished 'Cronicas africanas' which he had previously published in Mexican literary magazine 'Nostromo.' In 2007, Mexican President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa named Ignacio Padilla director of the Jose Vasconcelos national library of Mexico. However, the structural integrity of the building in which the library was housed was unfit to safely house the national library, and in March 2007 the decision was made to temporarily close the national library. Padilla released a statement that repairs to the building were absolutely necessary, and that he would not open the doors until the building was safe from structural damages. On August 15 of 2007, the Mexican newspaper Milenio Diario published an article stating that Padilla had stepped down as director of the national library.
MALIGNANT TALES is the first and only translation of Clemente Palma's ‘Historietas malignas' (1925), a book now out of print in its Spanish original. This translation, then, fills a double void; it makes the narrative accessible to the English-reading public and to those unable to obtain the original text.
Clemente Palma (born December 3, 1872 in Lima - d. August 13, 1946 in Lima) was a Peruvian writer. He was the son of famous Peruvian author and scholar Ricardo Palma and his lover Clemencia Ramínez. His halfsister AngElica Palma was also a writer. On 1876, his father married Cristina Román, and they had seven children: FElix Vital, AngElica, Ricardo, Peregrina Augusta, Cristina, Cristián and RenEe Cristina. In 1897 he obtained a degree in Letters from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, with a thesis entitled El Porvenir de las Razas en el Perú ("The Future of the Races in Peru") in which he defended the controversial thesis that the Peruvian race had to be improved and that this could be achieved through the introduction of Germans into Peru. He also obtained a doctorate from this university with a thesis on philosophy and art and became a professor at the university subsequently. In 1899 he obtained a bachelor of law degree from the same university. During his university studies, he worked as curator of the National Library of Peru and started his activities as a writer. From 1902 to 1904 he was the consul of Peru in Barcelona. In Spain he met Maria Manuela Schmalz whom he married in 1902. They had five children: Judith, Clemente Ricardo, Ricardo, Clemencia and Isabel. Upon his return to Peru, he resumed his position as curator of the National Library of Peru, a post that he held until November 1911. During this period, he founded several cultural and literary magazines such as Prisma and Variedades and the daily newspaper La Cronica. From 1911 to 1918, he dedicated himself to the direction of these magazines. He was director of the magazines Prisma (1906–1908) and Variedades (1908–1931) and the newspaper La Cronica (1912–1929). Between 1919 and 1930, Clemente Palma was a Member of Parliament, supporting the authoritarian President Augusto B. Leguia, who had taken power through a coup. During this period, he remained active in the press and also taught classes of aesthetics and art history at his alma mater. In 1930, he was imprisoned for a while after the coup of Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro. He was liberated thanks to the pressure of his friends but was forced into exile to Chile in 1932. He could return to Peru only after the assassination of Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro in 1933. During his exile in Chile, he wrote the science fiction novel XYZ. After the publication of this novel, he mainly wrote literary criticism and essays. Clemente Palma was an important literary critic in Peru and exercised an important influence through the magazine Variedades. In that role, he has been criticized for not recognising the genius of CEsar Vallejo when the latter sent him one of his early poems for review. Palma's best known works are in the realm of fiction. He is one of the first adherents of modernism in Peru. He made a great contribution to the development of the short story and science fiction in Peru and introduced new themes in its literature. His stories deal mostly with fantastic themes, psychological horror and science fiction. He was attracted to the morbid and many of his characters are abnormal and perverse. As his father was the director of the National Library of Peru, he had the opportunity to read the works of many foreign authors. His work shows a strong influence of Edgar Allan Poe and, to a lesser extent, nineteenth-century Russian writers and symbolist and decadent French writers, as well as the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. His two short story collections Cuentos malEvolos ("Malevolent Tales") (1904) and Historietas Malignas ("Malignant Tales") (1925) are in the style of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's Contes cruels. Influenced by decadent themes and subject matter, they are filled with dark humor, blasphemy and the supernatural. His Tres cuentos Verdes (1922) were in the style of his father's Tradiciones en Salsa Verde. He also wrote several novels, including Mors et Vita ("Death and Life") (1923) and XYZ (1934). This last novel has some similarities with the science fiction novel The Invention of Morel published by the Argentine Adolfo Bioy Casares in 1940.
Peruvian author Ricardo Palma (1838-1919) was one of the most popular and imitated writers in Latin America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As head of the National Library in Lima, Palma had access to a rich source of historical books and manuscripts. His historical miscellanies, which he called ‘traditions,' are witty anecdotes about conquerors, viceroys, corrupt and lovelorn friars, tragic loves and notorious characters. Humor, irony and word play characterize his collection of over five hundred traditions written between 1872 and 1906, whether describing violent deeds or amorous misadventures. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the second half of the nineteenth century, Palma did not write transparent didactic fictions and defend elite cultural forms. Rather, he reveled in ironic approaches to written sources, political authorities and church institutions as well as in popular speech and knowledge. Both fiction and history, Palma's delightful Peruvian Traditions represents a hybrid literary form that constructs historical memory distinct from the dominant literary trends of the time.
Manuel Ricardo Palma Soriano (February 7, 1833 - October 6, 1919) was a Peruvian author, scholar, librarian and politician. His magnum opus is the Tradiciones peruanas. Ricardo Palma was born into a family that was living in Lima after migrating from the province. His mother was a mestiza with African roots. His parents separated when he was still young. He was educated at a Jesuit school and attended the University of San Carlos on an irregular basis. He suspended his studies to perform voluntary service in the Peruvian navy for six years. From a young age he dabbled in politics as a member of the liberal camp. In 1860 he was believed to have participated in a failed plot against president Ramon Castilla which resulted in an exile to Chile from which he returned in October 1862. He made a trip to Europe in 1864-1865 and when he returned to Lima in 1865 he became involved again in political affairs and public service until 1876. He held the positions of Consul of Peru in Pará, Brazil, Senator for the Loreto and official in the Ministry of War and Navy. The War of the Pacific (1879–1883) between Chile and Peru disrupted Palma's life and resulted in the virtually complete destruction of his own library as well as that housed in the National Library of Peru. After the war Palma was named director of the National Library, a post he held until his retirement in 1912. Palma successfully took on the task of rebuilding the National Library that was ransacked by the occupation forces of the Chilean army in 1881 following the battle of Lima during the War of the Pacific. Palma was able to bring the National Library back from the ashes so that it regained its previous stature and became recognized once again as one of the top libraries in South America. It was through his personal friendship with the then Chilean president Domingo Santa María that Palma was able to recover an estimated 10,000 books from Chilean hands, as well as many other works which were recovered through his own personal efforts. He married Cristina Román Olivier with whom he had several children. His son Clemente Palma became a prominent writer of fantastic tales, usually horror stories, that were influenced by Edgar Allan Poe. His daughter AngElica Palma was also a writer and a member of the early feminist movement in Peru. Ricardo Palma published his first verses and became the editor of a political and satiric newssheet called El Diablo (The Devil) at 15. During his early years, Ricardo Palma composed romantic dramas (which he later repudiated) and poetry. His first book of verse, Poesías (Poems), appeared in 1855. He gained an early reputation as a historian with his book on the activities of the Spanish Inquisition during the period of the Viceroyalty of Peru (Anales De La Inquisicion De Lima: Estudio Historico, 1863). He also wrote for the satirical press of Peru where he distinguished himself as a prolific columnist and one of the bastions of Peruvian political satire in the nineteenth century. He collaborated with the satirical sheet El Burro (The Donkey) and became later one of the principal contributors to the satirical magazine La Campana (The Bell). Later he founded the magazine La Broma (The Joke). He was also a regular contributor to serious publications such as El Mercurio, El Correo, La Patria, El Liberal, Revista del Pacífico and Revista de Sud AmErica. He was further active as a foreign newspaper correspondent during the War of the Pacific. Palma's literary reputation rests upon his creation and development of the literary genre known as tradiciones, short stories that mix history and fiction, written both to amuse and educate, according to the author's declared intention. It was by creatively using poetic license and by deviating from 'pure' history that Palma gained his large South American readership. His Tradiciones peruanas span several centuries, with an emphasis on earlier colonial and republican times in Peru. The Tradiciones were published from 1872 to 1910 in a series of volumes. There are also many different editions and selections of the Tradiciones commercially available. The Tradiciones peruanas do not meet formal historical standards of accuracy or reliability sufficiently to be considered 'history,' but Palma never intended them to be read as 'pure' history. Since they are primarily historical fiction, they should be understood and enjoyed as such. The author's opinion, the opinions of the other primary sources or oral narrators of the stories he collects and transmits, as well as hearsay play a large role in his stories. One of the best-known of the Tradiciones, especially within American Spanish literature classes, is 'La camisa de Margarita'. Some of the Tradiciones peruanas have been translated into English under the title The Knights of the Cape and Thirty-seven Other Selections from the Tradiciones Peruanas of Ricardo Palma (ed. by Harriet de Onís, 1945) and more recently under the title Peruvian Traditions (ed. by Christopher Conway and translated by Helen Lane, Oxford University Press, 2004). The Tradiciones peruanas are recognised as a considerable contribution to Peruvian and South American literature. Some critics have classified the Tradiciones as part of nineteenth-century Romanticism. Palma's Tradiciones en Salsa Verde were published posthumously. These stories are similar to the Tradiciones peruanas but, because of their bawdy nature, they were not published during Palma's lifetime for fear of shocking the sedate Lima establishment. Throughout his life, Ricardo Palma published various articles and books on history, the results of his own historical research such as the Anales De La Inquisicion De Lima: Estudio Historico (1863) and Monteagudo y Sánchez Carrion (1877). He was a noted linguistic scholar and wrote a number of works on the subject including the Neologismos y americanismos and Papeletas lexográficas. He campaigned for recognition by the Real Academia Española of the Latin-American and Peruvian contributions to the Spanish language. In 1999, a well-known London auction house announced the sale of a batch of 50 letters that Ricardo Palma had written to an Argentinian friend. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peru persuaded the National Library of Peru to participate in the auction. It had been more than 50 years since Peru had bought cultural heritage abroad. Today these letters are kept at the National Library of Peru. Ricardo Palma University has recently published the letters of Palma in three volumes (2005–2007).
His volume contains thirty-eight tales selected from the Peruvian Traditions (Tradiciones Peruanas) of Ricardo Palma. Told in a gay, sprightly, vivid style, they are chiefly semi-historical sketches about actual episodes in the history of Peru from the time of the Conquest to the end of the nineteenth century. Many kinds of stories are included-folk tales, scandalous adventures, and anecdotes about important personages. All are witty, racy, irreverent-and vastly entertaining. The Knights of the Cape introduces for the first time in English a great Latin-American classic. . RICARDO PALMA lived from 1833 to 1919 in the ancient and fabulous city of Lima, founded by Pizarro and long the seat of government of the richest and greatest of the Spanish viceroyalties in the New World. When Palma began to write, Lima was still surrounded by bastioned walls with strong gates. The adventurous exploits and racy scandals of past worthies, together with legends of ghosts and buried treasure, were still subjects of common knowledge and lively conversation. These gave him material for some of the stories in his four volumes of Tradiclones Peruanas. He also used material from the great National Library in Lima, the fruit of Palma's own loving toil over a period of twenty years. He saw this library looted during the Chilean occupation in the early 1880's. It was later rebuilt, and until the end of his life Palma was its librarian. . Originally published in Spanish as Tradiciones Peruanas.
Manuel Ricardo Palma Soriano (February 7, 1833 - October 6, 1919) was a Peruvian author, scholar, librarian and politician. His magnum opus is the Tradiciones peruanas. Ricardo Palma was born into a family that was living in Lima after migrating from the province. His mother was a mestiza with African roots. His parents separated when he was still young. He was educated at a Jesuit school and attended the University of San Carlos on an irregular basis. He suspended his studies to perform voluntary service in the Peruvian navy for six years. From a young age he dabbled in politics as a member of the liberal camp. In 1860 he was believed to have participated in a failed plot against president Ramon Castilla which resulted in an exile to Chile from which he returned in October 1862. He made a trip to Europe in 1864-1865 and when he returned to Lima in 1865 he became involved again in political affairs and public service until 1876. He held the positions of Consul of Peru in Pará, Brazil, Senator for the Loreto and official in the Ministry of War and Navy. The War of the Pacific (1879–1883) between Chile and Peru disrupted Palma's life and resulted in the virtually complete destruction of his own library as well as that housed in the National Library of Peru. After the war Palma was named director of the National Library, a post he held until his retirement in 1912. Palma successfully took on the task of rebuilding the National Library that was ransacked by the occupation forces of the Chilean army in 1881 following the battle of Lima during the War of the Pacific. Palma was able to bring the National Library back from the ashes so that it regained its previous stature and became recognized once again as one of the top libraries in South America. It was through his personal friendship with the then Chilean president Domingo Santa María that Palma was able to recover an estimated 10,000 books from Chilean hands, as well as many other works which were recovered through his own personal efforts. He married Cristina Román Olivier with whom he had several children. His son Clemente Palma became a prominent writer of fantastic tales, usually horror stories, that were influenced by Edgar Allan Poe. His daughter AngElica Palma was also a writer and a member of the early feminist movement in Peru. Ricardo Palma published his first verses and became the editor of a political and satiric newssheet called El Diablo (The Devil) at 15. During his early years, Ricardo Palma composed romantic dramas (which he later repudiated) and poetry. His first book of verse, Poesías (Poems), appeared in 1855. He gained an early reputation as a historian with his book on the activities of the Spanish Inquisition during the period of the Viceroyalty of Peru (Anales De La Inquisicion De Lima: Estudio Historico, 1863). He also wrote for the satirical press of Peru where he distinguished himself as a prolific columnist and one of the bastions of Peruvian political satire in the nineteenth century. He collaborated with the satirical sheet El Burro (The Donkey) and became later one of the principal contributors to the satirical magazine La Campana (The Bell). Later he founded the magazine La Broma (The Joke). He was also a regular contributor to serious publications such as El Mercurio, El Correo, La Patria, El Liberal, Revista del Pacífico and Revista de Sud AmErica. He was further active as a foreign newspaper correspondent during the War of the Pacific. Palma's literary reputation rests upon his creation and development of the literary genre known as tradiciones, short stories that mix history and fiction, written both to amuse and educate, according to the author's declared intention. It was by creatively using poetic license and by deviating from 'pure' history that Palma gained his large South American readership. His Tradiciones peruanas span several centuries, with an emphasis on earlier colonial and republican times in Peru. The Tradiciones were published from 1872 to 1910 in a series of volumes. There are also many different editions and selections of the Tradiciones commercially available. The Tradiciones peruanas do not meet formal historical standards of accuracy or reliability sufficiently to be considered 'history,' but Palma never intended them to be read as 'pure' history. Since they are primarily historical fiction, they should be understood and enjoyed as such. The author's opinion, the opinions of the other primary sources or oral narrators of the stories he collects and transmits, as well as hearsay play a large role in his stories. One of the best-known of the Tradiciones, especially within American Spanish literature classes, is 'La camisa de Margarita'. Some of the Tradiciones peruanas have been translated into English under the title The Knights of the Cape and Thirty-seven Other Selections from the Tradiciones Peruanas of Ricardo Palma (ed. by Harriet de Onís, 1945) and more recently under the title Peruvian Traditions (ed. by Christopher Conway and translated by Helen Lane, Oxford University Press, 2004). The Tradiciones peruanas are recognised as a considerable contribution to Peruvian and South American literature. Some critics have classified the Tradiciones as part of nineteenth-century Romanticism. Palma's Tradiciones en Salsa Verde were published posthumously. These stories are similar to the Tradiciones peruanas but, because of their bawdy nature, they were not published during Palma's lifetime for fear of shocking the sedate Lima establishment. Throughout his life, Ricardo Palma published various articles and books on history, the results of his own historical research such as the Anales De La Inquisicion De Lima: Estudio Historico (1863) and Monteagudo y Sánchez Carrion (1877). He was a noted linguistic scholar and wrote a number of works on the subject including the Neologismos y americanismos and Papeletas lexográficas. He campaigned for recognition by the Real Academia Española of the Latin-American and Peruvian contributions to the Spanish language. In 1999, a well-known London auction house announced the sale of a batch of 50 letters that Ricardo Palma had written to an Argentinian friend. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peru persuaded the National Library of Peru to participate in the auction. It had been more than 50 years since Peru had bought cultural heritage abroad. Today these letters are kept at the National Library of Peru. Ricardo Palma University has recently published the letters of Palma in three volumes (2005–2007).
The Trail We Leave received rave reviews in Denmark for its exploration of the lives of exiles in Scandinavia and the difficulty of living between two cultures (with sometimes comic, sometimes tragic results). These stories are told from moments of crisis as the various characters try to assimilate into a new culture-the highly intelligent Chilean schoolgirl who suffers the pressure of achieving in a difficult foreign language, the romantic young man from Bangladesh brought to ruin because he misinterprets the sexual mores of Scandinavia or the Chilean couple whose marriage crumbles under the tensions of exile.
Born in Santiago, in 1954, Ruben Palma grew up in one of Santiago's larger, working-class quarters of that time. He left Chile in 1973, immediately following the coup. Since 1974, he has resided in Denmark and is now a Danish citizen. Employed by the Danish Red Cross since 1985, he is a member of the Danish Author's Society and has published three works of fiction in Denmark to critical praise, Letter to Denmark, Meeting with Denmark, and The Trail We Leave. His two plays, To the Flesh-To the Heart and The Trade were published and performed in Denmark. Alexander Taylor has translated numerous Danish writers, including Benny Andersen, Klaus Rifbjerg, and Ole Sarvig.
Jose Agrippino de Paula e Silva (São Paulo, July 13, 1937 - Embu das Artes, July 4, 2007) was a Brazilian writer. Among his books, PanAmerica ( 1967 ) stands out as a fundamental work for the development of the Tropicália movement. The book features irreverant portraits of personalities like Che Guevara, Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, John Wayne, Marlon Brando, Cecil B. de Mille, Andy Warhol, among other icons of mass culture. In the book, these characters participate in filming episodes of the Bible and act in scenes without a logical sequence and with a picturesque or cinematic bias. He directed the film Hitler 3º Mundo in 1968, and one of the actors in the film, Jô Soares, commented: For many it is an incomprehensible film, but the truth is that it is the most misunderstood film in Brazilian cinema. It is the damned among the damned . The story of the film is about a samurai (Jô) who controls the business of dwarf beggars and distributes them through the neighborhoods of the city of São Paulo and disputes this market with Captain America, who is Hitler's lover and lives in the Liberdade neighborhood. Cast members Ruth Escobar and Túlio de Lemos , director of photography Jorge Bodanzky.
THE MATTER OF DESIRE is the story of Pedro, a Bolivian-American political scientist who teaches at a university in upstate New York. Having become entangled in an erotically charged romance with Ashley, a beautiful red-headed graduate student, he returns to Bolivia to seek answers to his own life by investigating the mysteries of his father's past. Trapped between two cultures, Pedro ultimately finds himself in an existential dilemma of tragic dimensions. THE MATTER OF DESIRE combines elements of the political thriller and the family mystery with a torrid illicit love affair and brilliantly elucidates the complex relationship between Latin America and the United States.
Jose Edmundo Paz-Soldán Ávila (Cochabamba, March 29, 1967) is a Bolivian writer. His work is a prominent example of the Latin American literary movement known as McOndo, in which the magical realism of previous Latin American authors is supplanted by modern realism, often with a technological focus. His work has won several awards. He has lived in the United States since 1991, and has taught literature at Cornell University since 1997.
The Marquis De Sade (1740-1814) has always attracted controversy. Condemned by some as a monster and hailed by others as an apostle of sexual freedom, Sade spent three decades of his life in jail-his manuscripts were burned and his books banned. When, as a young man in postwar Paris, Octavio Paz first encountered the writings of the Marquis de Sade, his reaction was one of astonishment and horror, curiosity and disgust, admiration and recognition. In an early poem and two subsequent essays written over a span of five decades, Paz pierces through the narrow image of Sade as pornographer and examines his work in the context of the paradox of human freedom and civilized man. He insists that Sade is worth reading, that the danger lies not in his books but in the passions of his readers. Exuberantly life-affirming, AN EROTIC BEYOND: SADE is philosophy of the first order, with an admixture of authority and irreverence that will surely provoke conversation and debate. . OCTAVIO PAZ was born in 1914. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. His most recent books are THE DOUBLE FLAME: LOVE AND EROTICISM (1995) and IN LIGHT OF INDIA (1997). He lives in Mexico City.
Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet-diplomat and writer. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 1951 Octavio Paz traveled to India to serve briefly as an attachE in the Mexican Embassy. Eleven years later he returned as Mexico's ambassador and served for six years. In Light of India is Paz's celebration of that country and his most personal work of prose to date. As in all of his essays, he brings poetic insight and voluminous knowledge to bear on the subject; the result is a series of fascinating discourses on India's landscape, culture, and history. ‘The Antipodes of Coming and Going' is a lyrical remembrance of Paz's days in India, evoking with astonishing clarity the sights, sounds, smells, and denizens of the subcontinent. ‘Religions, Castes, Languages' gives a survey of Indian history and its astonishing polyglot society. ‘A Project of Nationhood' is an examination of modern Indian politics, comparing the respective Islamic, Hindu, and Western civilizations through the course of history. ‘The Full and the Empty' is a brilliant exploration into what Paz calls the soul of India-its art, literature, music, and philosophy-and an uncompromising indictment of the self-centered materialism of Western society. Startling, illuminating, always engaging, IN LIGHT OF INDIA is a memorable excursion. CONTENTS: THE ANTIPODES OF COMING AND GOING; Bombay; Delhi; Return RELIGIONS, CASTES, LANGUAGES; Rãma and Allah; The Cosmic Matrix; Babel; A PROJECT OF NATIONHOOD; Feasts and Pasts; The Singularity of Indian History; Gandhi - Center and Extreme; Nationalism, Secularism, Democracy; THE FULL AND THE EMPTY; The Apsarã and the Yakshi; Chastity and Longevity; The Critique of Liberation; The Contraptions of Time; FAREWELL; Acknowledgments.
Octavio Paz was born in 1914. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. Eliot Weinberger is the highly acclaimed translator of Octavio Paz's poetry and the editor of The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz 1957-1987. . This is a translation of Vislumbres de la India, 1995 - Editorial Seix Barral, S.A,Barcelona (Espana) .
Brimming with insight, thoughtfulness, and sincerity, Paz's essays are a poetic road map to the past, present, and future of love. - Kirkus Reviews. In THE DOUBLE FLAME, Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz explores the intimate connection between sex, eroticism, and love-themes that have been a constant in his writing, from his first published poems to the great works of his maturity. Beginning with Plato's Symposium, he gives a short history of love and eroticism in literature throughout the ages: from the influence of the great cities Alexandria and Rome on the development of love poetry, to courtly love in Heian Japan and twelfth-century France, to love in modern novels such as MADAME BOVARY and ULYSSES. Rich in scope, The Double Flame examines everything from taboo to repression, Carnival to Lent, Sade to Freud, Original Sin to artificial intelligence. Illuminating and provocative, these essays are a memorable discourse on what Paz calls ‘our share of paradise.' . Octavio Paz was born in 1914, He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. He lives in Mexico City.
Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet-diplomat and writer. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.
One of the major poets of our time here probes and defines Mexican character and culture in a series of perceptive essays. But this is far more than a book on Mexico, for Octavio Paz is a writer of vision and compassion, and he constantly compares and relates his observations on Mexico to other cultures. Thus when he speaks of the Mexican's profound sense of solitude, which he sees as his primary trait, that solitude ‘which alternately affirms and denies itself in melancholy and rejoicing, silence and sheer noise, gratuitous cries and religious fervor,' he demonstrates how different it is from that of the North American, ‘who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens, and moral precepts.' When he discusses the Conquest and the resulting dichotomy and loss of identity of the Mexican people, or when he details the causes and results of the Mexican Revolution, he situates each in the context of colonialism and revolution in their various forms throughout the world. And in his final chapter, ‘The Dialectic of Solitude' Paz synthesizes his thoughts in a profound, universally applicable evaluation of the situation of contemporary man. . OCTAVIO PAZ was born in Mexico City in 1914 and studied at The National University of Mexico. During the Spanish Civil War he fought on the side of the Republicans, and since the end of World War II has lived and worked several years in France, for the past two years as a member of the Mexican diplomatic corps in Paris. He has published ten books of poetry, most of which have recently been gathered into a single volume, Libertad bajo Palabra.
Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet-diplomat and writer. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Octavio Paz is Mexico's leading poet, critic, and philosopher. Tireless traveler both through continents and through realms of the mind, Paz has preoccupations that range from surrealism, art, and socialism, to archeology and Oriental philosophy. ‘A virtuoso of several genres . . . an intellectual-literary one-man band' (Irving Howe, The New York Times Book Review). Paz here uses a mind-journey to the Indian city of Galta, partly ruined, in the countryside of or i din hills-as the springboard for his musings and speculations about all manner of things. Images of the landscape and the holy city, replete with its wild hordes of marauding monkeys that constantly obtrude on the philosopher/grammarian, alternate with ruminations about the nature of time and space and reality; movement and fixity; and the nature of nature itself. Because Paz is a poet, THE MONKEY GRAMMARIAN is a visual work, its every page rich in images, descriptions of people and places which in themselves are both stunning and startling and which, as in all Paz's work, set off flows of thought that are like electric charges of energy unleashed. Paz's exquisite prose is filled with insights that set a man, a trend, an idea, into dazzling perspective. . Octavio Paz was born in Mexico in 1914. One of the major poets of the Spanish language, he is also a diplomat, publisher, and teacher. His other works include LABYRINTH OF SOLITUDE, ALTERNATING CURRENT, CONJUNCTIONS AND DISJUNCTIONS, and MARCEL DUCHAMP. In 1977 he was awarded the prestigious Jerusalem Prize, which is awarded biannually by the City of Jerusalem to an author whose works express ‘the freedom of the individual in society.' . Helen R. Lane translates with equal ease and brilliance from the Spanish, French, and Portuguese. She has won virtually every major prize awarded translators, including the National Book Award, in 1974, for her translation of Paz's ALTERNATING CURRENT.
Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet-diplomat and writer. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Three essays and a postscript which complement El laberinto de la soledad. Develops ideas concerning the role of 'third world' nations in determining man's future. In THE LABYRINTH OF SOLITUDE: LIFE AND THOUGHT IN MEXICO, Octavio Paz, one of the major poets of our time, defined the character and culture of Mexico in what has now become a modern classic of critical interpretation. In this book, Paz provides a brilliant supplement and extension to his earlier work, not only bringing it up to date, but also offering a new attempt to decipher the modern Mexican reality. Mexican student unrest came to a climax on October 2, 1968 with the massacre in the Plaza of Tlatelolco in Mexico City of more than three hundred students. The killings ended an epoch in Mexican history. In The Other Mexico, Paz traces the ‘invisible history' of his country which led to the bloodshed - the survival, amid the trappings of a modern culture, of the Aztec model of domination and ritualistic sacrifice. Paz examines the symbol of the truncated pyramid of the Aztecs as an image of the world and a projection of the human society which continues to rule the development of Mexico even in modern times. This important historical and philosophical essay about modern Mexico has particular relevance in the light of the political unrest in Latin America. As a treatment of the development of today's Mexico from a political, historical, and cultural point of view, this book by a major Latin American writer and poet is without doubt a seminal contribution to the history of our time.
Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet-diplomat and writer. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.
In THE LABYRINTH OF SOLITUDE: LIFE AND THOUGHT IN MEXICO, Octavio Paz, one of the major poets of our time, defined the character and culture of Mexico in what has now become a modern classic of critical interpretation. In this book, Paz provides a brilliant supplement and extension to his earlier work, not only bringing it up to date, but also offering a new attempt to decipher the modern Mexican reality. Mexican student unrest came to a climax on October 2, 1968 with the massacre in the Plaza of Tlatelolco in Mexico City of more than three hundred students. The killings ended an epoch in Mexican history. In The Other Mexico, Paz traces the ‘invisible history' of his country which led to the bloodshed - the survival, amid the trappings of a modern culture, of the Aztec model of domination and ritualistic sacrifice. Paz examines the symbol of the truncated pyramid of the Aztecs as an image of the world and a projection of the human society which continues to rule the development of Mexico even in modern times. This important historical and philosophical essay about modern Mexico has particular relevance in the light of the political unrest in Latin America. As a treatment of the development of today's Mexico from a political, historical, and cultural point of view, this book by a major Latin American writer and poet is without doubt a seminal contribution to the history of our time.
Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet-diplomat and writer. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Nicomedes Guzmán was a leader in the Chilean literary Generation of 1938, one of the proletarian movements that set the stage for the presidency of Salvador Allende. His writings are a personalized view of the proletarian mode in the Chilean environment. Guzmán's La sangre y La esperanza won the prestigious Santiago Municipal Prize in 1944 and showed his great promise as a novel1st. Unfortunately various political and personal setbacks led to his death of alcoholism in 1964. Professor Pearson covers the life of Guzmán, the Generation of 1938, and a critical analysis of Guzmán's work. In addition, he analyzes the meaning and purpose of proletarian literature, especially as it applies to Latin America.
Lon Pearson is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Missouri, Rolla. He received his B.A. from the University of Utah in 1965 (Phi Beta Kappa), and from the University of California, Los Angeles he received his M.A. (1968), his C. Phil. (1969), and his Ph.D.-1973. Professor Pearson spent two summers on University of Missouri Faculty Research Grants in Chile. There he met Guzmám's family and friends and located manuscripts and books unavailable in the U.S. In 1975 he received from the National Endowment for the Humanities a Fellowship in Residence at Johns Hopkins University. His reviews have appeared in numerous journals and newspapers.
THRESHOLD, Penna's first and shortest novel, had already been completed in 1933 and published two years later, This was followed by Dois Romances de Nico Horta (Two Novels of Nico Horta) in 1939; Repouso (Repose) in 1948; and A Menina Morta (The Dead Child) in 1954, all of them critical, but certainly not popular, successes. These four novels constitute the only literary output of their author, except for a few fragments of an uncompleted novel entitled Alma Branca (White Soul), which was published with the complete novels in 1958, the year of Penna's death. A few words about the novels of CornElio Penna, While they continue the line of the psychological novel as initiated in Brazil by Machado and Raul Pompeia, they truly constitute a world apart, one which bears at least a superficial resemblance to the works of the so-called Catholic novelists in France: Francois Mauriac, Marcel Jonhandeau, Georges Bernanos and Julien Green. Indeed, Green's short novel Le voyageur sur la terre (1925), like Threshold, is also concerned with the spiritual quest of an introvert and also makes use of the diary manuscript device. But most important, Penna's novels do not belong in the company of the Nordeste novelists in Penna's own country. The novel of social protest or social preoccupation in the Brazil of the Thirties paid scant attention to the psyche or the mind of the Backlands, Penna's novels, then, represent a protest against the political and sociological orientation of his fellow novelists Jose AmErico de Almeida, Lins do Rego or Jorge Amado and others of that generation. But not only do all of Penna's novels lie outside the mainstream of Brazilian (and modern) fiction, they are a deliberate attempt to avoid the traditional form and substance. The Northeast novel in Brazil had been nearly of a documentary character and had not failed to utilize the crudest sort of naturalism, The first merit of Threshold, then, is its reliance on the creativity of its author and not on the currents of fiction then dominating the scene.
CornElio Penna (February 20, 1896, Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - February 12, 1958, Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a solitary figure among the Brazilian writers of the generation which begins to write in the Thirties and continues until around mid-century. Born in Petropolis in 1896 to an upper middle class family, a doctor's son and the youngest of five children, he was precocious as a child and was taught reading by his sister well before reaching school age. In his mature years he recalled that, living in the small town of Itabira (Minas Gerais) as a child, two experiences above all others became fixed in his mind: the sighting of Halley's comet and the death of a certain Maria Santa, an event surrounded by mystery and legend. It is the obsession, the persistent recollection of the latter which takes the form of Penna's first novel, THRESHOLD (Fronteira), published in 1935. By the time Penna reached the age of thirteen, he had read all the novels of Camilo Castelo Branco, whose very name connotes romance and passion to Portuguese and Brazilian readers. (Penna once confided that Camilo's novels influenced him enormously and made him sad for the rest of his life.) Even as a youth, Penna was morose and solitary, little given to recreation other than reading. In his teens he made the discovery of French and Russian authors, along with the works of his compatriot Machado de Assis - Penna's great predecessor in the Brazilian psychological novel - and he began, as he later said, to dress in black or in dark colors, There is a story concerning his reading of Machado's Quincas Borba (English translation, Philosopher or Dog?) that bears repeating. Penna said: ‘One day I read Quincas Borba and was left trembling, extremely moved, certain that I too was mad. That suspicion of madness stayed with me until just a few years ago when I finally surrendered myself to the truth: I became resigned that I was completely sane.' Meanwhile the young Penna himself dabbled in writing, though the urge to paint was equally strong in him. But he also was obliged to receive an education befitting one of his social class, and accordingly, graduated in law from Sao Paulo in 1919. Soon, however, journalism and the graphic arts lured him away from the legal profession, and his first job was as illustrator and journalist, a contributor to the Gazeta de Noticias, A Nação and O Jornal. In Rio, in 1928, Penna exhibited his paintings and illustrations in what was his first and only one-man show. Then, after painting his ‘Warring Angels' around 1935 (are they, significantly, the angels of art and literature, we wonder?) Penna decided to make a clean break with painting as a career and to devote himself wholeheartedly to writing. . Originally published in Portuguese as Fronteira in 1935.
MARCORE, first published in Rio de Janeiro in 1957, won the coveted prize for fiction awarded by the Brazilian Academy of Letters and has been praised by leading critics and writers in Brazil. Now in its fourth edition, the novel has maintained favor with the Brazilian public and has also been published and received with enthusiasm in Portugal. Adopting the intimist, introspective approach characteristic of such writers as Machado de Assis and Graciliano Ramos, Pereira tells a moving, bittersweet tale of personal problems and family relationships. The central character of MARCORE is the narrator, a modest, introverted individual who, aware of his own human condition, tends to view life with pessimism tempered with compassion. As the narrator reflects on his life and relationships in a small town in the state of São Paulo, an unobtrusive document of Brazilian family life unfolds. The novel contains several highly dramatic scenes as well as many tender and entertaining ones and introduces a set of very human, very credible characters, including a most irascible mother-in-law and a wife who makes a strange vow. The reactions, thoughts, and hidden motivations of the characters are revealed in precise and economical language-evidence of the author's powers of observation and knowledge of human nature. Rachel de Queiroz has described MARCORE as a ‘beautiful and tormented book.' It is well on its way to becoming a modern Brazilian classic.
ANTONIO OLAVO PEREIRA was born in the town of Batatais, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, in 1913. He is a member of the publishing house of Jose Olympio and has published two other novels, Contra-mao (which was awarded the Fábio Prado prize) and Fio de Prumo. The translators' interest in MARCORE is a result of their appreciation of Brazil and its literature. . Alfred Hower, a professor of Portuguese at the University of Florida, has published several articles on Brazilian and Portuguese literature. John V. D. Saunders, who was born in Brazil, is a professor of sociology at the University of Florida and has published numerous studies dealing with social problems of Latin America.
In vivid, seductive, mysterious Guatemala, young Victor Perera is an oddity He is Jewish, and although being different has isolated him since earliest childhood it has also given him a wry and penetrating eye. Guatemala itself abounds in differences with its whites and Indians, its Catholics and its Mayans, its warmth and brutality. With its excesses and contradictions, the country proves a harsh teacher for a boy to be schooled in alienation, machismo, and violence. Perera's boyhood is a rich and beguiling fabric, hilarious, exquisitely poignant, darkly menacing. Burlesque are the schoolboy antics: mass masturbation by a classroom of boys atop their desks; Perera's first night in the house of a Catholic friend, a mestizo boy whose father provides an outlandish initiation; the gang's crazed and awkward infatuation with a blond, long-legged American teacher. Poignant is the depiction of a Jewish family, struggling to hold on to roots yet struggling to feel at home, and similarly touching a young friend's discovery of his homosexuality, which leaves him suspended between himself and the expectations of a macho environment. Dark is the progressive unhinging of minds, the gradual disintegration of family, the rampant violence - the mala saña, fury in the marrow - that consumes Guatemala as Perera leaves boyhood and Guatemala for manhood and the North. When he returns to Guatemala as an adult, the world of Perera's boyhood is no more. The country has undergone a political upheaval that has left its mark on everyone and everything. In a chilling last scene, the survivors of the boyhood circle gather for a final reunion that probes the core of Guatemala's darkness.
VICTOR PERERA was born of Sephardic Jewish parents in Guatemala City in 1934 and raised in Brooklyn, where he attended Brooklyn College. During postgraduate work at the University of Michigan, he was awarded a coveted Avery Hopwood award in writing, and he has continued writing at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Married to an Indian writer, the former Padma Hejmadi, Mr. Perera currently teaches at Vassar. His stories and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, Partisan Review and other magazines. A major section of THE CONVERSION was first published in Commentary.
MAKE LIFE YOUR ANALYST! USE IT - YOUR PAIN, YOUR FAILURES, YOUR ACCIDENTS. YOU MUST BE RUTHLESS WITH YOURSELF. USE ALL YOUR LIFE. DON'T RUN AWAY FROM IT, STANLEY, OR IT WILL SWALLOW YOU WHOLE! THE CONVERSION is the story of Stanley Bendana's great run toward life, a run across Europe and across a young man's troubled soul, undertaken by a Don Quixote from Flatbush. Stanley Bendana, an American graduate student of Sephardic Jewish background, has come to Spain to study Cervantes. But Stanley's real quest, both spiritual and sensual, is for manhood and for expiation of an all but overwhelming sense of guilt - guilt about his dead father, for whom he had promised to recite Kaddish once a year; guilt about his deserted sister, now languishing in a Long Island mental hospital; and guilt about his reluctance to follow tradition and duty. Stanley was the first member of his family to set foot in Spain since the Expulsion in 1492. At turns raffish and powerfully affecting, The Conversion takes Stanley through a series of bold adventures, vivid encounters, foiled and victorious seductions, and other of life's growing pains and pleasures - from an opening joust with a shrewd Spanish priest to whom an astonished Stanley pretends to be Catholic, to his final attempt to play protector to a group of voluble Spanish domestics held in Dickensian bondage in modern London. In story, THE CONVERSION is straight and true. In theme, it is a mosaic: the pieces - Spanish Catholic, American Jew, Inquisition and Auschwitz, the healing of a haunted soul. To Stanley - as he moves from guilt to self-awareness, from introspection to active involvement with others - the puzzle is himself. The solution is revealed in expressive moments with companion wanderers: Jacob Penman, exiled painter and survivor of Nazi gas ovens - a flawed man, but timely spiritual guide or Tzaddik, confessor and redeemer - bestowing his blessing on Stanley; beautiful and elusive Pilar, laughing convulsively on the bed as Stanley parades around the room in bedcovers reciting a eulogy for lost virginity; Father Francisco Bandena with ear cocked, listening for a word from the Almighty. THE CONVERSION is a wonderfully satisfying first novel. Intelligent, engaging, deftly ironic and, at center, deeply serious - it is a pleasure that enriches.
VICTOR PERERA (1934 - 14 June 2003) was born of Sephardic Jewish parents in Guatemala City in 1934 and raised in Brooklyn, where he attended Brooklyn College. During postgraduate work at the University of Michigan, he was awarded a coveted Avery Hopwood award in writing, and he has continued writing at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Married to an Indian writer, the former Padma Hejmadi, Mr. Perera taught at Vassar. His stories and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, Partisan Review and other magazines. A major section of THE CONVERSION was first published in Commentary.
The ‘idle fictions' of the vanguard novel in Spain and Spanish America represented a kind of interlude of playfulness-a vacation or parenthetical insertion-in what was perceived as the established course of the modern Hispanic novel's development. Yet, as Perez Firmat argues, though this genre saw itself as recreative and intersticial, it deliberately precipitated ‘a class war, not between social classes but between literary classes.' Concentrating on source material not widely available, Perez Firmat reconstructs the reception these novels received at the time of their publication, then develops a reading of them based on the intellectual context of this reception. On one level this book fills a gap by recovering a lively moment in the recent history of the Hispanic novel. On another, it reflects the relationship between literature and criticism during a decisive period-that of the multifarious isms of the vanguard movements-in the cultural life of this century. ‘Perez provides rich insight into the esthetic values and the artistic tensions that prevailed in the ‘20's and ‘30's (not Only in the Hispanic world). His is a book of consummate originality that bears the imprint of a critic as strong-minded as he is perceptive. It is certainly a work of enviable maturity.' - John W. Kronik, Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University.
Gustavo Perez Firmat is Assistant Professor of Romance Languages, Duke University. A native of Cuba, he has published many articles on Hispanic fiction.
From time to time, a writer bursts on the scene with a compelling novel of such extraordinary power, maturity, insight that it leaves an indelible mark. Such is the case with Loida Maritza Perez, whose luminous storytelling is both captivating and heartbreaking. Iliana believed that by attending a college more than five hours from New York City, she could gain independence and escape the watchful eyes of her overprotective, religiously conservative parents. She soon realizes, however, that familial bonds are impossible to break, and that barriers created by time and distance can easily be collapsed. A disembodied voice that Iliana believes is her mother's haunts her nights with disturbing news about her sisters: Marina is careening toward a mental breakdown; Beatriz has disappeared; Rebecca continues in a marriage that has her and her children trapped in a brownstone also populated by hundreds of hens. Convinced she might be of help, Iliana reluctantly returns to New York City. In this dislocating urban environment, far from her native country, the Dominican Republic, she confronts all the contradictions, superstitions, joys, and pains of someone who is caught between two cultures but intent on finding ‘home.' Narrated in electrifying prose and inhabited by characters who are as boldly imaginative as they are completely believable, GEOGRAPHIES OF HOME is a stunningly original debut from a major new literary talent. . LOIDA MARITZA PEREZ was born in the Dominican Republic in 1963. She lives in New York City. . .
Loida Maritza PErez, author of Geographies of Home, was born in the Dominican Republic in 1963. At the time of her birth, the Dominican Republic was awash in political and economic chaos caused by the ruthless dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Though he was assassinated two years prior to PErez's birth, the effects of his 31 year dictatorship were still being felt throughout this small island nation. Due to the economic strain, PErez's family moved to the United States when she was three years old.
A soldier at the age of eleven. An honorably discharged veteran at the age of thirteen. A miner, a cotton-picker, a shepherd, and a graduate of Hollywood High. Luis Perez lived an incredible life and then shaped his story into a vividly realized autobiographical novel. El Coyote, the Rebel, originally published in 1947, tells how the toddler Luis, son of an Aztec mother and a French diplomat father, ended up in the care of an uncle who soon drank away most of the boy's inheritance. Having run away from cruel treatment, Luis by chance came to fight with the rebel armies in the 1910 Mexican Revolution, received the nickname of El Coyote for his cunning, and was wounded in combat. Upon being given a discharge and a twenty-dollar bill, he walked across the border to become an American and the beginning of a new tomorrow.
In Chile, in the expansive, colorful days after the Conquistadores had finished their work, there lived a strangely beautiful woman, not untouched by the breath of scandal. Half Indian by blood, immensely rich, she was Doña Catalina de los Rios, the daughter of the Corregidor of Santiago, and known to the fearful yet admiring populace as ‘La Quintrala'-the Scarlet Flower. Her fourteen crimes, beginning with the poisoning of her father when she was but sixteen, still await their equal in the annals of history. She has been rightly called the Lucrezia Borgia of Chile; and the tale of her life and trial-with her father confessor playing an important role-which attracted great attention in its day, makes melodramatic and colorful reading in any period. It combines witchcraft, poison, intrigue, and torture; and, in contrast, reflects as well the placid and lovely landscapes of central Chile, overhung by the majestic Andes. ‘La Quintrala,' recognized as one of the best South American novels of the past several years, won a contest conducted by La Nacion in Santiago, and became a best seller in Chile and Argentina. It is a fascinating and unusual story which should have considerable appeal for all American readers both as a first-rate thriller and as a work of real literary distinction. Senorita Petit says: ‘As a child, music was what I liked best. I also had a leaning toward medicine and read all the medical publications my father used to receive. But, in spite of my inclination, a very poor memory prevented my studying medicine. Instead, psychology was, and Continues to be, my particular interest. When I began to write, it was evident that that was the line of writing which interested me most. It struck me that it would be especially interesting to make a study of the peculiar psychology of a criminal: and who could better personify crime than Catalina de los Rios, a sort of Chilean Lucrezia Borgia who, in the delicate nicety of her sadism, and in audacity, far surpassed not only a Borgia, but any others of the best known great criminals? Her fourteen crimes, beginning with the poisoning of her own father when she was but sixteen, still await their equal in the archives of history. ‘Travelling is, without doubt, one of my greatest enthusiasms. I have gone to Europe three times; of the South American countries I know Argentina, as well as many other places from the Atlantic to the Pacific-but only in passing, during the brief hours while the boat was in port. I know Chile from A to Z.'
Magdalena Petit Marfán (1903 in Peñaflor, Chile - 1968) was a Chilean writer, notable for her popular novels La Quintrala, Los Pincheira and Los Hijos del Caleuche, inter alias. Also she wrote theater pieces, essays and biographies. She died in 1968, as the result of an accidental fall at home.
In this exceptional book-an attempt at what Jorge Luis Borges has called ‘the pure detective story' - one of the greatest writers of Latin American letters is introduced to American readers for the first time. The book's opening gambit is a stunning one: a dictator is assassinated in public, but it is soon revealed that the murdered man was a double. The real leader had been killed the night before. On the surface the question is: did the assassin know that he was after the wrong man? But later events seem to distort all sense of logic and reality, until in the final moment the circuitous routes of the labyrinth seem to straighten into a short and too inevitable line. Jorge Luis Borges has remarked in his introduction to this book that there abound, ‘as in the work of the renowned Dostoevsky, shrewd interrogations and treacherous dialogues; the spheres of the search and of what is sought are interwoven and become confused. We experience the melancholy that is the attribute of any dictatorship, the systematic oppression of stupidity, but also mockery and courage . . . I do not hesitate to declare that Manuel Peyrou is one of the first storytellers of Hispanic letters.'
Manuel Peyrou (May 23, 1902 - January 1, 1974) was an Argentine writer and journalist. Peyrou was born in San Nicolás de los Arroyos in 1902. He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires and obtained a Law Degree in 1925, but never practiced law, instead working for a time for an English Argentine railway company, and ultimately joining the editorial staff of La Prensa, then the country's second-most circulated daily. His short story, La noche incompleta (The Unfinished Night) was published by La Prensa in 1935, and Peyrou became an editor of the daily's respected literary supplement, eventually becoming the section's chief editor. He contributed to literary critic Victoria Ocampo's Sur, and a close friend from his days at the university, Jorge Luis Borges, later brought him on as chief film critic for Los Anales de Buenos Aires, Borges' literary review. La espada dormida (The Sleeping Sword), Peyrou's 1944 pulp fiction work, was followed by a satire, El estruendo de las rosas, in 1948, which earned him a Municipal Literary Prize; Peyrou's later works departed from the detective genre and were mainly realist narratives. A number, including Las leyes del juego (The Rules of the Game, 1959), El árbol de Judas (The Judas Tree, 1963), Marea de fervor (Tide of Fervor, 1967), and El hijo rechazado (The Rejected Son, 1969), were also acclaimed by critics. His short stories were published by Selecciones (the Spanish-language edition of Reader's Digest) and by Greek publisher George Humuziadis, among others. His 1949 work, El estruendo de las rosas, was translated into English by Donald A. Yates and published by Herder Publishers in 1972 as Thunder of Roses: A Detective Novel. Peyrou died in Buenos Aires in 1974.
Contrasting the twentieth century's ‘ignoble savages' with the ‘noble' eighteenth-century savages of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mariano Picon-Salas wrote an entertaining, polemic, and profound extended critique of contemporary civilization, politics, art, and public philosophy. He spoke of divided Berlin, of the atmosphere pervading Paris and other European capitals, of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and Brigitte Bardot and the Devil, of the passion for novelty, of the disintegrating power of the tactical lie, and of many other aspects -all of them bitter or tragic-of our tense era. He also spoke of Latin America (he was a distinguished Venezuelan man of letters who had represented his country in UNESCO), of the function that the southern half of the Western Hemisphere could and eventually must fulfill in the world. Picon-Salas's final point of view, though reached through bitterness and even despair, was not of hopelessness: it was the attitude of a man representing a world that still is young. Rooted in the philosophy of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Picon-Salas invited us to look within ourselves and about us to inquire whether or not the Universe makes sense. Regarding evolution as a continuing process, one to be participated in consciously by men, he joined Father Teilhard in believing that, despite our vices and flaws, we are seeking-and approaching however slowly-the ‘distant point Omega' of a better world. Armed with a stiletto-sharp critical sense and vast culture, Picon-Salas wrote with acid tempered by the milk of human kindness. He analyzed in these pages the conscience and consciousness of the present-day world, that mental confusion marked by fear, anxiety, ideological myths, rebellions, and the pretensions of the new powers. What he never forgot, fortunately for us, is that we will not read on unless we are stimulated, engaged- in the best sense of the word-entertained. Mariano Picon-Salas died on January 1, 1965.
Mariano Federico Picon Salas, an influential Venezuelan diplomatic, cultural critic and writer of the 20th century, was born in MErida (MErida State) on January 26, 1901, and died in Caracas on January 1, 1965. Among his books, his collection of essays on history, literary criticism and cultural history are remarkable. He travelled a lot through the Americas. His work is also important because of his wide perspective, studying the culture of the entire continent. He left Venezuela, under the political persecution of dictator Juan Vicente Gomez. Living for a large period in Chile, he studied history, gaining the degree of Profesor de Historia and later a doctorate in philosophy and letters. He came back to Venezuela in 1936, working as a professor and author. He founded the Asociacion de Escritores de Venezuela (Writers Association from Venezuela), and worked for the Ministry of Education. His studies on "Barroco de Indias" (the term that he coined to talk about the baroque from Hispanic America) are very influential among the general study of Baroque. He received the National Prize for Literature in 1954. He taught at Columbia University, New York. He was twice married, first to a Chilean lady, Isabel Cento, with whom he had his only daughter, named Delia Isabel Picon de Morles. He later married Venezuelan Beatriz Otáñez.
The field of the historical novel has been somewhat neglected by contemporary Spanish-American writers, despite the wealth of material offered by the Spanish conquest and exploration and by the Wars of Independence. But in 1931, Arturo Uslar Pietri, already, at the age of twenty-five, a leader in Venezuelan literary and diplomatic circles, wrote a brilliant first novel, Las lanzas coloradas, which was quickly recognized, both by the critics and by the reading public of the continent, not only as a landmark in the historical novel, but as one of the great novels of Spanish America. Las lanzas coloradas is a story of the first Venezuelan war of Independence. The two great figures of the war, Miranda and Bolivar, do not appear as characters in the story, but as symbols, briefly glimpsed, yet always present in the thoughts of the obscure people - timorous or headstrong, landowners or slaves, royalists or republicans - who are the real heroes of the book. It is a dramatic story, filled with suspense and action, yet overlaid with the tragedies of misunderstanding and of uncertain progress toward freedom and unity. The novel is beautifully written, and with a simplicity and directness of style which make it admirably suited for student reading in third-year high-school classes or in college courses in Spanish-American history and literature. The present edition is based upon the second edition, published in Santiago de Chile in 1940. The text has been shortened by about one-third, largely by deletions and omissions in the early chapters, which deal with the family history and the childhood of Fernando Fonta. There are 2,700 words in the vocabulary which cover the approximately 39,500 running words of the novel. A sampling of every fifth page of the vocabulary for range of difficulty gave the following distribution as checked against Buchanan's A GRADED SPANISH WORD BOOK: within the range of the first thousand words in the Buchanan list are 845 words, or 31.3 per cent of the vocabulary; in the second thousand are 535, or 19.8 per cent; in the third thousand are 330, or 12.2 per cent; in the fourth thousand are 220, or 8.2 per cent; in the fifth thousand are 210, or 7.8 per cent; in the sixth thousand are 120, or 4.4 per cent; in the last seven hundred words are 40, or 1.5 per cent of the vocabulary. Only 400, or 14.8 per cent of the words in the vocabulary, are not in the Buchanan list. The 381 idioms in the vocabulary were checked against Keniston's Spanish Idiom List, with the following results: the vocabulary contains 24 of the 30 idioms in the Keniston list with a range of over 50; 31 of the 39 idioms with range 49-40; 36 of the 47 idioms with range 39-30; 56 of the 109 idioms with range 29-20; 96 of the 269 idioms with range 19-10; 94 of the 783 idioms with range 9-3. There are in the vocabulary only 44 idioms not in the Keniston List. Many of the 400 words and 44 idioms not included in the Buchanan and Keniston lists are colloquial forms and Americanisms, which did not come within the scope of these lists. . . . This is a bold and powerful novel about the 1811 War of Independence in Venezuela. The principal characters are Fernando Fonta and his young sister InEs, heirs to a vast estate and last representatives of a long line of aristocratic Spanish planters; also, Presentacion Campos, the brutal, ambitious overseer of the Fonta estate - the prototype of the ‘new man,' who thrives in the chaos of revolution, and whose seemingly unlimited urge for destruction finds its full expression in the rage of war. The twilight civilization of the Old World drawing room and the dark primordial forces of the New World jungle clash violently in the persons of these characters, and are illuminated in the blood-red glow of revolution. In the background move the historical figures of Bolivar, Miranda, Ribas, Boves, Páez, the leaders of the revolution and the counter-revolution. Uslar Pietri's novel is in effect a huge goyaesque fresco that portrays in vivid tones the horror and inhumanity of war. Originally published in 1930, this book has come to be regarded as a classic in South American literature, a novel to be compared in impact and intention to Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. .
Arturo Uslar Pietri (16 May 1906 in Caracas - 26 February 2001), was a Venezuelan intellectual, lawyer, journalist, writer, television producer and politician. Born on 16 May 1906 in Caracas, Venezuela, his parents were general Arturo Uslar Santamaría and Helena Pietri de Uslar. The last name Uslar is of German origin and can be traced back to Johann von Uslar, who fought for the rebel cause during Venezuela's independence wars. As a young boy and then teenager he lived in various cities in the comparatively urbanised central northern valleys of the country. He moved back to Caracas in 1924 to read political sciences at the Central University of Venezuela, where he graduated Doctor of Political Sciences in 1929. That same year he obtained a law degree. Uslar led a remarkably fruitful life, influential in Venezuelan politics, historical analysis and literature, and as an educator. His period of activity spanned the last years of Venezuelan Caudillismo, the transition to democracy and most of the democratic era of 1958 - 1999. He held posts such as Secretary for the Venezuelan Delegation at the League of Nations, delegate at the International Labour Organization, minister of education, minister of finance, contributor to the Act of Constitution of the New Democratic Government (1958), ambassador to the United States of America, professor of Latin American literature at Columbia University, professor of political economics at the Central University of Venezuela, chief editor of a main newspaper, candidate for the Presidency and member of the Royal Spanish Academy. Uslar Pietri had a lifetime involvement in the Venezuelan media as a cultural figure. He wrote regionally influential essays and novels, of which The Red Lances, an account of life during the Venezuelan War of Independence from various social perspectives is arguably the most famous. In his works he championed mestizaje, or miscegenation, as a valuable feature of Latin American culture. His literary output was recognised in 1990 with a Prince of Asturias Award. He was several times nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Uslar Pietri died on 26 February 2001 in Caracas. He had announced his retirement as an author in 1998 and last figured prominently in political debate in 1993.
This is a bold and powerful novel about the 1811 War of Independence in Venezuela. The principal characters are Fernando Fonta and his young sister InEs, heirs to a vast estate and last representatives of a long line of aristocratic Spanish planters; also, Presentacion Campos, the brutal, ambitious overseer of the Fonta estate - the prototype of the ‘new man,' who thrives in the chaos of revolution, and whose seemingly unlimited urge for destruction finds its full expression in the rage of war. The twilight civilization of the Old World drawing room and the dark primordial forces of the New World jungle clash violently in the persons of these characters, and are illuminated in the blood-red glow of revolution. In the background move the historical figures of Bolivar, Miranda, Ribas, Boves, Páez, the leaders of the revolution and the counter-revolution. Uslar Pietri's novel is in effect a huge goyaesque fresco that portrays in vivid tones the horror and inhumanity of war. Originally published in 1930, this book has come to be regarded as a classic in South American literature, a novel to be compared in impact and intention to Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage.
Arturo Uslar Pietri (16 May 1906 in Caracas - 26 February 2001), was a Venezuelan intellectual, lawyer, journalist, writer, television producer and politician. Born on 16 May 1906 in Caracas, Venezuela, his parents were general Arturo Uslar Santamaría and Helena Pietri de Uslar. The last name Uslar is of German origin and can be traced back to Johann von Uslar, who fought for the rebel cause during Venezuela's independence wars. As a young boy and then teenager he lived in various cities in the comparatively urbanised central northern valleys of the country. He moved back to Caracas in 1924 to read political sciences at the Central University of Venezuela, where he graduated Doctor of Political Sciences in 1929. That same year he obtained a law degree. Uslar led a remarkably fruitful life, influential in Venezuelan politics, historical analysis and literature, and as an educator. His period of activity spanned the last years of Venezuelan Caudillismo, the transition to democracy and most of the democratic era of 1958 - 1999. He held posts such as Secretary for the Venezuelan Delegation at the League of Nations, delegate at the International Labour Organization, minister of education, minister of finance, contributor to the Act of Constitution of the New Democratic Government (1958), ambassador to the United States of America, professor of Latin American literature at Columbia University, professor of political economics at the Central University of Venezuela, chief editor of a main newspaper, candidate for the Presidency and member of the Royal Spanish Academy. Uslar Pietri had a lifetime involvement in the Venezuelan media as a cultural figure. He wrote regionally influential essays and novels, of which The Red Lances, an account of life during the Venezuelan War of Independence from various social perspectives is arguably the most famous. In his works he championed mestizaje, or miscegenation, as a valuable feature of Latin American culture. His literary output was recognised in 1990 with a Prince of Asturias Award. He was several times nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Uslar Pietri died on 26 February 2001 in Caracas. He had announced his retirement as an author in 1998 and last figured prominently in political debate in 1993.
Ricardo Piglia's ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION was published in Argentina in 1981 and immediately became a strange sort of best seller: despite the considerable difficulty of the text, it became an essential reference point for readers hungry after years of violence and lies and repression. Piglia impressed readers with his surpassing intelligence and immense personal valor, and despite a much different situation now, more than a decade later, his novel still speaks with authority and depth. The figure of Arocena in the first half of the novel is an ironic double to the ideal reader of this text. Inquisitive, endlessly inventive, Arocena hopes to find secret meanings in the letters from the future, Yet he is denied any knowledge of the context of those letters, so his hunches are always off, no matter how ingenious. The problem facing the reader of this novel is that it circles around horrors that are quite literally unspeakable. The tide of the novel suggests, by a sort of anagram, that the theme is the Argentine Republic itself in its tragic history. The two men to whom the novel is dedicated are among the thousands of the ‘disappeared,' and the action begins in April 1976, just days after the military coup of March 24, 1976. Piglia was known above all for a superb collection of short stories, Nombrefalso (Assumed Name), published in 1975, which includes the highly ingenious novella ‘Homage to Roberto Arlt.' He had published an earlier collection of stories, called La invasion in its Argentine edition and Jaulario in the Cuban edition, which won a coveted prize from the Casa de las Americas in Havana. ‘Homage to Roberto Arlt' revealed a complex literary genealogy, with its homages not only to Arlt but also to Onetti and Borges; it also showed Piglia's talent for writing fiction that doubles as literary criticism, updating a genre perhaps best exemplified in the Borges stories of the 1940s.
Ricardo Piglia (November 24, 1941, Adrogue, Argentina - January 6, 2017, Buenos Aires) was one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers. Piglia was born in Adrogue and raised in Mar del Plata, where he went to live in 1955 after the fall of Juan Peron, whom his father supported. He studied history in the National University of La Plata. He then went to work in various publishing houses in Buenos Aires and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well known authors of crime fiction including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis and Horace McCoy. A fan of American literature he was also influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, as well as by European authors Franz Kafka and Robert Musil. He is known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories; the novels Artificial Respiration (1980), The Absent City (1992), Burnt Money (1997); and criticism including Criticism and Fiction (1986), Brief Forms (1999) and The Last Reader (2005). Piglia has received a number of awards, including the Premio internacional de novela Romulo Gallegos (2011), Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras (2005), Premio Planeta (1997), Premio Casa de las Americas (1967). He was a longtime resident of the United States, where he taught Latin American literature at Princeton University.
Ricardo Piglia's ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION was published in Argentina in 1981 and immediately became a strange sort of best seller: despite the considerable difficulty of the text, it became an essential reference point for readers hungry after years of violence and lies and repression. Piglia impressed readers with his surpassing intelligence and immense personal valor, and despite a much different situation now, more than a decade later, his novel still speaks with authority and depth. The figure of Arocena in the first half of the novel is an ironic double to the ideal reader of this text. Inquisitive, endlessly inventive, Arocena hopes to find secret meanings in the letters from the future, Yet he is denied any knowledge of the context of those letters, so his hunches are always off, no matter how ingenious. The problem facing the reader of this novel is that it circles around horrors that are quite literally unspeakable. The tide of the novel suggests, by a sort of anagram, that the theme is the Argentine Republic itself in its tragic history. The two men to whom the novel is dedicated are among the thousands of the ‘disappeared,' and the action begins in April 1976, just days after the military coup of March 24, 1976. Piglia was known above all for a superb collection of short stories, Nombrefalso (Assumed Name), published in 1975, which includes the highly ingenious novella ‘Homage to Roberto Arlt.' He had published an earlier collection of stories, called La invasion in its Argentine edition and Jaulario in the Cuban edition, which won a coveted prize from the Casa de las Americas in Havana. ‘Homage to Roberto Arlt' revealed a complex literary genealogy, with its homages not only to Arlt but also to Onetti and Borges; it also showed Piglia's talent for writing fiction that doubles as literary criticism, updating a genre perhaps best exemplified in the Borges stories of the 1940s.
Ricardo Piglia (November 24, 1941, Adrogue, Argentina - January 6, 2017, Buenos Aires) was one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers. Piglia was born in Adrogue and raised in Mar del Plata, where he went to live in 1955 after the fall of Juan Peron, whom his father supported. He studied history in the National University of La Plata. He then went to work in various publishing houses in Buenos Aires and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well known authors of crime fiction including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis and Horace McCoy. A fan of American literature he was also influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, as well as by European authors Franz Kafka and Robert Musil. He is known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories; the novels Artificial Respiration (1980), The Absent City (1992), Burnt Money (1997); and criticism including Criticism and Fiction (1986), Brief Forms (1999) and The Last Reader (2005). Piglia has received a number of awards, including the Premio internacional de novela Romulo Gallegos (2011), Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras (2005), Premio Planeta (1997), Premio Casa de las Americas (1967). He was a longtime resident of the United States, where he taught Latin American literature at Princeton University.
The stories in Assumed Name, written before the 1976 military coup d'Etat in Argentina, invoke a stark socio-political situation that foreshadows the repressive dictatorship that the country was to suffer from 1976 to 1983. But the plight of the marginalized characters in these stories is also a universal one, as they search for ways to communicate and live with each other, and to come to terms with the reality in which they find themselves. "Assumed Name," the novella which gives its title to the collection, is a unique and fascinating piece - doubling at times as literary criticism - reminiscent of the style exemplified by Jorge Luis Borges' work. The author himself is the protagonist attempting to solve the mystery of an unpublished manuscript allegedly written by the Argentine writer Roberto Arlt.
Ricardo Piglia (November 24, 1941, Adrogue, Argentina - January 6, 2017, Buenos Aires) was one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers. Piglia was born in Adrogue and raised in Mar del Plata, where he went to live in 1955 after the fall of Juan Peron, whom his father supported. He studied history in the National University of La Plata. He then went to work in various publishing houses in Buenos Aires and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well known authors of crime fiction including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis and Horace McCoy. A fan of American literature he was also influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, as well as by European authors Franz Kafka and Robert Musil. He is known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories; the novels Artificial Respiration (1980), The Absent City (1992), Burnt Money (1997); and criticism including Criticism and Fiction (1986), Brief Forms (1999) and The Last Reader (2005). Piglia has received a number of awards, including the Premio internacional de novela Romulo Gallegos (2011), Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras (2005), Premio Planeta (1997), Premio Casa de las Americas (1967). He was a longtime resident of the United States, where he taught Latin American literature at Princeton University. Sergio Gabriel Waisman is a writer and translator, born in the U.S. to Argentine parents. He received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. His translation of Assumed Name received a Meritorious Achievement Award in the 1995 Eugene M. Kayden National Translation Contest.
Love and betrayal complicate a robbery gone wrong in this edgy true-crime novel based on a 1965 Argentine bank robbery. There's the drama of the botched raid itself, followed by a blowout afterparty, an attempted double-crossing of the corrupt local authorities, and a final shootout where, as a last act of rebellion, the robbers burn all the loot. This gritty tale has been adapted for a major motion picture by renowned Argentine director Marcelo Pinyero. Piglia, one of Argentina's best-known contemporary writers (Absent City; Artificial Respiration), again delivers his signature blend of noirish crime and social commentary in this provocative tale of a 1965 Buenos Aires bank robbery and its bloody aftermath, based on a real crime. The story is simple, but Piglia gives it depth by focusing on the sexed-up, drug-abusing, reckless robbers whose actions shocked Argentina. They are Dorda, the mentally unbalanced assassin; Brignone, the passionate youngster; Mereles, the shady ladies' man; and Malito, their compulsive boss. After stealing millions from the bank, the men, high on cocaine and self-congratulation, escape to a small hideout in Montevideo and await the return of their leader, stocking up on food, alcohol, drugs and weapons. Despite their eagerness to start a new life in New York City, they fall into a delirium of memories brought on by whiskey and sex. While they binge, 300 police officers follow a tip and surround their hideout along with TV crews and reporters. Heading the raid is Police Commissioner Silva, a dirty cop eager to cover up department scandals. A long, bloody, drug-fueled battle erupts between the reckless desperados and the officers, which becomes the source of Argentinean legend. By drawing on witness statements and police reports, Piglia proves that the bandits' raid was not just about the money; it was about freeing themselves from their old lives.
Ricardo Piglia (November 24, 1941, Adrogue, Argentina - January 6, 2017, Buenos Aires) was one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers. Piglia was born in Adrogue and raised in Mar del Plata, where he went to live in 1955 after the fall of Juan Peron, whom his father supported. He studied history in the National University of La Plata. He then went to work in various publishing houses in Buenos Aires and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well known authors of crime fiction including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis and Horace McCoy. A fan of American literature he was also influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, as well as by European authors Franz Kafka and Robert Musil. He is known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories; the novels Artificial Respiration (1980), The Absent City (1992), Burnt Money (1997); and criticism including Criticism and Fiction (1986), Brief Forms (1999) and The Last Reader (2005). Piglia has received a number of awards, including the Premio internacional de novela Romulo Gallegos (2011), Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras (2005), Premio Planeta (1997), Premio Casa de las Americas (1967). He was a longtime resident of the United States, where he taught Latin American literature at Princeton University.
Winner of the International Romulo Gallegos Novel Prize and National Critics Prize in 2011 and chosen as the best novel in Spanish in 2010, Target in the Night marks the pinnacle of Argentine maestro Ricardo Piglia's remarkable literary career. Hailed as a modern classic immediately upon publication, Target in the Night is a passionate, politically-charged thriller in which the madness of the detective Croce, a retired police captain, is integral to solving mysteries. In this novel he is dispatched to solve the mysterious murder of Toni Durán, a Puerto Rican living in New York, who arrived in this remote corner of the Pampas in Buenos Aires Province with a flamboyant air, scandalously accompanying the town's beautiful Belladonna twin sisters. Emilio Renzi, a journalist from a Buenos Aires newspaper who appears in most of Piglia's work as the author's own alter ego, is sent to the countryside to cover the story. The investigation and reporting uncover a series of hidden tales that are gradually exposed to reveal an intense and tragic family history with echoes of King Lear.
Ricardo Piglia (November 24, 1941, Adrogue, Argentina - January 6, 2017, Buenos Aires) was one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers. Piglia was born in Adrogue and raised in Mar del Plata, where he went to live in 1955 after the fall of Juan Peron, whom his father supported. He studied history in the National University of La Plata. He then went to work in various publishing houses in Buenos Aires and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well known authors of crime fiction including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis and Horace McCoy. A fan of American literature he was also influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, as well as by European authors Franz Kafka and Robert Musil. He is known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories; the novels Artificial Respiration (1980), The Absent City (1992), Burnt Money (1997); and criticism including Criticism and Fiction (1986), Brief Forms (1999) and The Last Reader (2005). Piglia has received a number of awards, including the Premio internacional de novela Romulo Gallegos (2011), Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras (2005), Premio Planeta (1997), Premio Casa de las Americas (1967). He was a longtime resident of the United States, where he taught Latin American literature at Princeton University. Sergio Waisman, associate professor of Spanish at George Washington University, translates Latin American literature and is the author of Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery.
THE ABSENT CITY is Ricardo Piglia's third book to be translated into English, and the second published by Duke University Press, Since its original publication in Argentina in 1992, it has been widely read and hailed in the Spanish-speaking world for its combination of literary innovation and poignant sociopolitical reflection, With this translation, Duke makes available to an English-speaking audience one of the most fascinating novels to come out of Latin America in recent times. THE ABSENT CITY is a captivating novel that makes use of several literary genres. On the one hand, THE ABSENT CITY resembles a detective novel: Junior, the son of English immigrants in Argentina, is a newspaper reporter trying to solve the mystery of what is happening in the city of Buenos Aires. But it is much more than a detective novel, as, in a sense, the city becomes a metaphor for the novel, and vice versa. The world in which Junior operates is a futuristic Buenos Aires, in which the map of the city is constructed by a series of fictional narratives. The intrigue of each of these stories (written in different tones, or registers) multiplies as they intersect each other (like streets and avenues of a city) and unfold to make up the enigma of the text (the written, as well as the geographic and political text) that Junior is trying to solve.At the heart of the novel and the city is the unusual heroine, Elena, who used to be a woman but is now a machine (she is the center of the novel and the city, since she composes the stories that make up both). Elena was Argentine writer-philosopher Macedonio Fernández's wife. In the novel, he tries to save her, when she becomes terminally ill, by placing her memories in a machine. Thus under the surface there is also a story of love and loss. A man loses the woman he loves; he cannot bear that loss; therefore he builds a machine to try to preserve her memories; the machine then outlives the man. All this occurs in a city under intense police surveillance. The repressive setting reminds the reader of Argentina's deeply troubled military past, especially the period of dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. But it also has a broader resonance with the dangers of all totalitarian regimes, and some of the twentieth-century atrocities associated with them. Thus another theme that arises is the power of language to create and define reality-the State's official version of history; a machine that creates stories that become real; the attempts of the police to control the flow of information; a world in which people tell stories in an attempt to rewrite history or to prevent others from writing it for them. The proliferation of stories in The Absent City becomes important as a way to challenge official versions of reality. Through a series of reproductions, translations, simulacra, and simulations, narrative becomes a site of political and aesthetic resistance.
Ricardo Piglia (November 24, 1941, Adrogue, Argentina - January 6, 2017, Buenos Aires) was one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers. Piglia was born in Adrogue and raised in Mar del Plata, where he went to live in 1955 after the fall of Juan Peron, whom his father supported. He studied history in the National University of La Plata. He then went to work in various publishing houses in Buenos Aires and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well known authors of crime fiction including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis and Horace McCoy. A fan of American literature he was also influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, as well as by European authors Franz Kafka and Robert Musil. He is known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories; the novels Artificial Respiration (1980), The Absent City (1992), Burnt Money (1997); and criticism including Criticism and Fiction (1986), Brief Forms (1999) and The Last Reader (2005). Piglia has received a number of awards, including the Premio internacional de novela Romulo Gallegos (2011), Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras (2005), Premio Planeta (1997), Premio Casa de las Americas (1967). He was a longtime resident of the United States, where he taught Latin American literature at Princeton University.
Cognizant of his impending death, Piglia, the Argentine titan of letters who died of A.L.S. in January, prepared his 327 notebooks for publication in a trilogy…. Splendidly crafted and interspliced with essays and stories, this beguiling work is to a diary as Piglia is to Emilio Renzi: a lifelong alter ego, a highly self-conscious shadow volume that brings to bear all of Piglia's prowess as it illuminates his process of critical reading and the inevitable tensions between art and life. - Mara Faye Lethem, The New York Times Book Review. A giant of contemporary Latin American literature, Argentine novelist Ricardo Piglia's secret magnum opus was a compilation of 327 notebooks that he composed over nearly six decades, in which he imagined himself as his literary alter ego, Emilio Renzi. A world-weary detective, Renzi stars in many of his creator's works, much like Philip Roth's Nathan Zuckerman. But the Renzi of these diaries is something more complex - a multilayered reconstruction of the self that is teased out over intricate, illuminating pages. As Piglia/Renzi develops as a reader and writer, falls in love, and tussles with his tyrannical father, we get eye-opening perspectives on Latin America's tumultuous twentieth century. Obsessed with literary giants - from Borges and Cortázar (both of whom he knew), to Kafka and Camus - The Diaries comprise a celebration of reading as a vital, existential activity. When Piglia learned he had a fatal illness in 2011, he raced to complete his mysterious masterwork as rumors about the book intensified among his many fans. First released in Spanish as a trilogy to tremendous applause, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi cements Piglia's place in the global canon.
Ricardo Piglia (November 24, 1941, Adrogue, Argentina - January 6, 2017, Buenos Aires) was one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers. Piglia was born in Adrogue and raised in Mar del Plata, where he went to live in 1955 after the fall of Juan Peron, whom his father supported. He studied history in the National University of La Plata. He then went to work in various publishing houses in Buenos Aires and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well known authors of crime fiction including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis and Horace McCoy. A fan of American literature he was also influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, as well as by European authors Franz Kafka and Robert Musil. He is known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories; the novels Artificial Respiration (1980), The Absent City (1992), Burnt Money (1997); and criticism including Criticism and Fiction (1986), Brief Forms (1999) and The Last Reader (2005). Piglia has received a number of awards, including the Premio internacional de novela Romulo Gallegos (2011), Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras (2005), Premio Planeta (1997), Premio Casa de las Americas (1967). He was a longtime resident of the United States, where he taught Latin American literature at Princeton University. Sergio Waisman, associate professor of Spanish at George Washington University, translates Latin American literature and is the author of Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery.
The second installment of Argentine literary giant Ricardo Piglia's acclaimed bibliophilic trilogy follows his alter ego, Emilio Renzi, as his literary career begins to take off in the tumultuous years 1968-1975 - running a magazine, working as a publisher, and encountering the literary stars among whom he would soon take his place: Borges, Puig, Roa Bastos, Piñera. One writes, Ricardo Piglia asserts, only in order to know literature. Spanning the years 1968 to 1975, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: The Happy Years is a testament to Piglia's intimate, lifelong love affair with the written word. This second installment of the Argentinian master's diaries opens a window into a luminous literary community fertile with genius and ever-traipsing from bar to bar - as well as into a convulsing Argentina racked by the death of Peron, guerilla warfare, and a bloody military coup - and establishes itself as the definitive backbone of Piglia's monumental career.
Ricardo Piglia (November 24, 1941, Adrogue, Argentina - January 6, 2017, Buenos Aires) was one of the foremost contemporary Argentine writers. Piglia was born in Adrogue and raised in Mar del Plata, where he went to live in 1955 after the fall of Juan Peron, whom his father supported. He studied history in the National University of La Plata. He then went to work in various publishing houses in Buenos Aires and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well known authors of crime fiction including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis and Horace McCoy. A fan of American literature he was also influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, as well as by European authors Franz Kafka and Robert Musil. He is known for his fiction, including several collections of short stories; the novels Artificial Respiration (1980), The Absent City (1992), Burnt Money (1997); and criticism including Criticism and Fiction (1986), Brief Forms (1999) and The Last Reader (2005). Piglia has received a number of awards, including the Premio internacional de novela Romulo Gallegos (2011), Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras (2005), Premio Planeta (1997), Premio Casa de las Americas (1967). He was a longtime resident of the United States, where he taught Latin American literature at Princeton University. Robert Croll is a writer, translator, musician, and artist originally from Asheville, North Carolina. He first came to translation during his undergraduate studies at Amherst College, where he focused particularly on the short fiction of Julio Cortázar.
This volume contains most of the stories that Pinera published during his lifetime as well as some that were found among his papers after his death. None of them have ever appeared in English. Pinera's writing is shocking and often absurd; his lyrical and bloody metaphors take the reader through most of our contemporary infernos; his prose is ironic and incisive, at once tropical and cold, somewhere between tragedy and farce. He transforms the most unreal reality into startling lucidity. The tone that prevails, as is the case in many of Ionesco's and Beckett's plays, is that of inescapable fate. A sharp skepticism takes the form of perverse innocence, and it is the ridicule-Pinera's macabre excesses-more than the horrid, that shocks the reader. Says the author: ‘As these are heated times, these COLD TALES should, I think, come in handy. As soon as he faces them, the reader will find that their coldness is only apparent, that they are very hot, that the author himself is well into the oven, and that, like his fellow men, his body and soul blaze bright in an inferno of his own devising. The tales are cold because they limit themselves to the hard facts. The author maintains that life neither rewards nor punishes, neither condemns nor saves; or, to be more exact, does not distinguish these complex categories. He can only say that he lives, that he is not obliged to judge his own acts, to give them any significance whatsoever, to expect vindication at the end of his days. Instead, full of enthusiasm, we let the pen run freely. Soon, the words, the letters run together, become confused; in the end, we understand nothing, we revert to infancy, we are like children, their mouths stuffed with candy. And then, a mysterious babbling, spontaneous and noisy, bursts forth: ha, ha, ha, ha. CONTENTS: The Death of Virgdio by Guillermo Cabrera-Infante; The Fall; The Parts; The Switch; Design for a Dream; The Album; The Park; The Store; The Wedding; The Battle; The Locomotive; The Minister; The Transformation; A Few Beers; The Dummy; Affairs of Amputees; Insomnia; Hell; The Face; The Decoration; How I Lived and How I Died; The Trip; The Conflict; Swimming; A Saving Nakedness; Graphomania; An Unexpected Delivery; The Mountain; A Few Children; The Great Staircase of the Legislative Palace; The Philanthropist; Hot and Cold; The Employ of Darkness; Indestructible Union; Argument against the Free-Standing Bathtub; Look of Love; An a posteriori Ghost; The Candy; The Balcony; The One Who Came to Save Me; The Death of the Birds.
Virgilio Piñera Llera (Cárdenas, Cuba, August 4, 1912 - Havana, October 18, 1979) was a Cuban author, playwright, poet, short-story writer, and essayist. Among his most famous poems are 'La isla en peso' (1943), and 'La gran puta' (1960). He was a member of the 'Origenes' literary group, although he often differed with the conservative views of the group. In the late 1950s he co-founded the literary journal Ciclon. Following a long exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Piñera returned to Cuba in 1958, months before the Cuban Revolutionary won. His work includes essays on literature and literary criticism, several collections of short stories compiled under the title of Cold Tales, a great number of dramatic works, and three novels: La carne de RenE (Rene's Flesh), Presiones y Diamantes (Pressures and Diamonds), and Las pequeñas maniobras (Small Maneuvers). His work is seen today as a model by new generations of Cuban and Latin American writers. Some believe that his work influenced that of Reinaldo Arenas, who wrote in his memoir Before Night Falls of Piñera's time in Argentina and friendship there with Witold Gombrowicz. The magazine Union posthumously published autobiographical writing by Piñera in which he discussed how he concluded he was gay. However, his work can not be reduced to his open discussions on homosexuality in a time when such a topic was taboo, especially in the Spanish Caribbean. Piñera's literary and cultural perspective went beyond sexuality, to express concerns on national and continental identity, philosophical approaches to theater, writing and politics. This focus drew fire from the Spanish American literary establishment of his time, including Cuban poets Cintio Vitier and Roberto Fernandez Retamar, and leaders like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Due to Piñera's social points of view and especially to his homosexuality, he was censured by the revolution, and died without any official recognition. As more of his work has been translated into English, Piñera's work has been rediscovered by American academia as a testimony of 20th century resistance against totalitarian systems. Mark Schafer is a translator and poet who, after trying Sweden, Colombia, and New York, now lives in Tepoztlán, Mexico. He studied comparative literature at Wesleyan University, and he is currently translating Los Nombres del Aire, by Alberto Ruy Sanchez.
A single short story from Virgilio Pinera published as a limited edition of 50 copies.
Virgilio Piñera Llera (Cárdenas, Cuba, August 4, 1912 - Havana, October 18, 1979) was a Cuban author, playwright, poet, short-story writer, and essayist. Among his most famous poems are 'La isla en peso' (1943), and 'La gran puta' (1960). He was a member of the 'Origenes' literary group, although he often differed with the conservative views of the group. In the late 1950s he co-founded the literary journal Ciclon. Following a long exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Piñera returned to Cuba in 1958, months before the Cuban Revolutionary won. His work includes essays on literature and literary criticism, several collections of short stories compiled under the title of Cold Tales, a great number of dramatic works, and three novels: La carne de RenE (Rene's Flesh), Presiones y Diamantes (Pressures and Diamonds), and Las pequeñas maniobras (Small Maneuvers). His work is seen today as a model by new generations of Cuban and Latin American writers. Some believe that his work influenced that of Reinaldo Arenas, who wrote in his memoir Before Night Falls of Piñera's time in Argentina and friendship there with Witold Gombrowicz. The magazine Union posthumously published autobiographical writing by Piñera in which he discussed how he concluded he was gay. However, his work can not be reduced to his open discussions on homosexuality in a time when such a topic was taboo, especially in the Spanish Caribbean. Piñera's literary and cultural perspective went beyond sexuality, to express concerns on national and continental identity, philosophical approaches to theater, writing and politics. This focus drew fire from the Spanish American literary establishment of his time, including Cuban poets Cintio Vitier and Roberto Fernandez Retamar, and leaders like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Due to Piñera's social points of view and especially to his homosexuality, he was censured by the revolution, and died without any official recognition. As more of his work has been translated into English, Piñera's work has been rediscovered by American academia as a testimony of 20th century resistance against totalitarian systems.
RENE'S FLESH, along with two other important Cuban novels, Jose Lezama Lima's PARADISO and Alejo Carpentier's EXPLOSION AT THE CATHEDRAL, belongs to the illustrious line of the so-called novel of education or instruction, novels that tell the story of a young adolescent and his or her growing understanding of the value of life and the world: family, school, friends, sex, intellectual relationships . . . Each of these three novels, written, strangely enough, within just a few years of each other-PARADISO and RENE'S FLESH were started in 1949, EXPLOSION AT THE CATHEDRAL in 1956-are fairly good examples of the Bildungsroman: in Lezama's novel, the protagonist learns to participate in the kingdom of the image or poetry; in Carpentier, the kingdom of history, and in Piñera, the kingdom of the flesh. Setting aside their tremendous thematic and stylistic differences, these novels nevertheless seem engaged in conversation, in a three-way dialogue within Cuban culture. Any of the three could be related to either one of the others. How, one might ask, does Lezama conceive of the human body in Paradise? What value does Piñera concede to history in RENE'S FLESH or Carpentier to poetry in EXPLOSION AT THE CATHEDRAL? Furthermore, the three novels are examples of the complexity of Cuban narrative today, they proposed transcendent themes and knew how to present them intensely and adroitly. The action of RENE'S FLESH appears to occur in empty space. To be more precise, the novel does not unfold in any specific country, land, or city. Suggestions of locale or geography are scarce or lack relief. There are few props on the stages where the action takes place: neither furniture nor domestic objects abound. We are often unaware of how the characters dress, how old they are, and what they eat. Given the double meaning of the word came, which means both flesh and meat, and which Piñera puts to great use in his text, we might suppose that his characters eat beef and-as Mrs. Perez wishes RenE would do, seeing him so pallid-drink glasses of blood every now and then. Nevertheless, despite the space of the novel being stripped bare, despite the neutral tone of the narration, which is rather indifferent to the visible world and to any psychological development of its characters, the atmosphere is so precise and well designed that the insider sees everything. Virgilio Piñera, appealing to apparently simple recourses, achieves the participation of the reader.
Virgilio Piñera Llera (Cárdenas, Cuba, August 4, 1912 - Havana, October 18, 1979) was a Cuban author, playwright, poet, short-story writer, and essayist. Among his most famous poems are 'La isla en peso' (1943), and 'La gran puta' (1960). He was a member of the 'Origenes' literary group, although he often differed with the conservative views of the group. In the late 1950s he co-founded the literary journal Ciclon. Following a long exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Piñera returned to Cuba in 1958, months before the Cuban Revolutionary won. His work includes essays on literature and literary criticism, several collections of short stories compiled under the title of Cold Tales, a great number of dramatic works, and three novels: La carne de RenE (Rene's Flesh), Presiones y Diamantes (Pressures and Diamonds), and Las pequeñas maniobras (Small Maneuvers). His work is seen today as a model by new generations of Cuban and Latin American writers. Some believe that his work influenced that of Reinaldo Arenas, who wrote in his memoir Before Night Falls of Piñera's time in Argentina and friendship there with Witold Gombrowicz. The magazine Union posthumously published autobiographical writing by Piñera in which he discussed how he concluded he was gay. However, his work can not be reduced to his open discussions on homosexuality in a time when such a topic was taboo, especially in the Spanish Caribbean. Piñera's literary and cultural perspective went beyond sexuality, to express concerns on national and continental identity, philosophical approaches to theater, writing and politics. This focus drew fire from the Spanish American literary establishment of his time, including Cuban poets Cintio Vitier and Roberto Fernandez Retamar, and leaders like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Due to Piñera's social points of view and especially to his homosexuality, he was censured by the revolution, and died without any official recognition. As more of his work has been translated into English, Piñera's work has been rediscovered by American academia as a testimony of 20th century resistance against totalitarian systems.
‘1 left Trindade by train on a Friday long ago. I remember clearly that it was raining. As soon as the train whistle gave the signal to leave, I forced myself to look through the dirty windowpanes. I saw nothing but the downpour that blended the landscape with those who were standing in the station, frozen to the spot in astonishment, and who, unlike me, would never leave Trindade. Now, however, it is time to return. I am therefore coming back this June, arriving by the same train that I left on. I chose Friday so as to have the illusion that twenty years had not gone by. As for the rest, we 11 wait and see. It's life that whispers the message in our ear. Signed, Caetana.' Many years have passed since Caetana and her traveling carnival swept through Trindade, a small city in the interior of Brazil, leaving behind countless hopes and illusions as well as broken hearts. Now she has decided to return, rekindling myriad old flames-and wounds-among the town's citizens. Set against the backdrop of a thriving Brazil-new economic programs promise to make the country a top industrial power in Latin America, and PelE is leading the country to an unprecedented third World Cup championship-this latest novel by one of Brazil's most renowned writers is at once an intimate chronicle of the torrid intrigues of a provincial town and a grandiose spectacle in which myth and reality are inextricably fused. Caetana has spent her life pretending to be one of the world's great divas, and she draws into her world and into her fantasy the town's most illustrious citizens-among them, Polidoro, the cattle baron and town patriarch, whose romantic lust for her is all-consuming; Virgilio, the Greek, a historian and poet; Ernesto, the deeply insecure pharmacist; and the town whores, Gioconda and the Three Graces, who know everybody's secrets. CAETANA'S SWEET SONG is powerfully erotic and brilliantly composed-and resounds with the themes and passions of Latin America's literary tradition.
Nelida Piñon (born May 3, 1937) is a Brazilian writer. Born in Rio de Janeiro of Galician immigrants. Her first novel was Guia-Mapa de Gabriel Arcanjo (The Guidebook of Archangel Gabriel), written in 1961, it concerns a protagonist discussing Christian doctrine with her guardian angel. In the 1970s she became noted for erotic novels A casa de paixão (The House of Passion) and A força do destino (The Force of Destiny), written in 1977. In 1984 she perhaps had her greatest success with A Republica dos Sonhos, English translation The Republic of Dreams. The work involves generations of a family from Galicia who emigrated to Brazil. This relates to her own family's experience. She is a former President of Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters).
This huge, mesmeric novel brings before the reader four generations of a family torn between its Spanish past and its Brazilian present. It is a revelation of the complexities and astonishments not only of family life but of Brazil itself - a revelation also of the power of storytelling and the nature of dreaming. As the novel opens, the matriarch Eulália has begun her final task - the task of dying. Long, long ago, when she first came to Brazil from Spain, a young bride with her young and already formidable, iron-willed husband, Madruga, they brought with them the passion, inspired by Grandfather Xan, for making memories into tales -tales told as sustenance, proof, and hallmark, tales told as protection against the killing rush of time. Now, as both Eulália and her era near their end, that tradition achieves its most poignant flowering-in a burst of family lore, recrimination, and recollected dreams, as the clan, gathered at Eulália's side, relives the past and vies for the future. Madruga - founder of the family in Brazil - is the central figure not only of his own stories but of almost everyone else's, as he is of their lives. His reminiscences have the sweep and drama of history. His authority and - equally despotic - his love have shaped the lives of all his five children. His granddaughter Breta, whom he has chosen as heir to his greatest treasure-his memory-sees the family as ‘stubbornly programming the life of its members' so as to justify Madruga's desertion, decades before, of their ancestral Spain. His fellow EmigrE Venâncio-the historian, the dreamer (in counterpoint to Madruga's colonizer- industrialist)-feels unfit to live in the reality forged by men like his old friend. Through the recollections- unfolding in layers, moving backward and forward across the century - of Madruga and those connected to him by blood or circumstances, a stunning dynastic drama is played out.
Nelida Piñon (born May 3, 1937) is a Brazilian writer. Born in Rio de Janeiro of Galician immigrants. Her first novel was Guia-Mapa de Gabriel Arcanjo (The Guidebook of Archangel Gabriel), written in 1961, it concerns a protagonist discussing Christian doctrine with her guardian angel. In the 1970s she became noted for erotic novels A casa de paixão (The House of Passion) and A força do destino (The Force of Destiny), written in 1977. In 1984 she perhaps had her greatest success with A Republica dos Sonhos, English translation The Republic of Dreams. The work involves generations of a family from Galicia who emigrated to Brazil. This relates to her own family's experience. She is a former President of Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters).
translated from the Portuguese by Clifford E. Landers. From one of Brazil's most beloved writers, a magical tale of lust, power, betrayal, and forgiveness set in the royal court of thirteenth-century Baghdad: a sumptuous retelling of the legend of Scheherazade that illuminates her character as never before. In exquisite prose, NElida Piñon transports us from the Caliph's private sanctum to the crowded streets of the forbidden marketplace, to the high seas of imagination, and to Scheherazade's innermost life, as she weaves her tales night after night. As the novel opens, the Caliph, betrayed by the Sultana, vows to take his revenge on the women of his kingdom by marrying a different virgin each night and executing her at dawn. Born into privilege, a daughter of the Vizier, Scheherazade decides to risk her life by marrying the Caliph, in an effort to save the women of Baghdad. Every evening, in an amorous battle devoid of love, Scheherazade succumbs to the Caliph's advances, and every night, with the help of her devoted sister Dinazarda and her loyal slave Jasmine, she entices the Caliph with her storytelling, unfurling accounts from the desert, the tundra, the bazaar, the golden-domed mosques. Scheherazade gives herself entirely to her characters, speaking as both man and woman, capturing the call of the muezzin, the speech of the caravans, the voices of the scattered tribes from the Red Sea to Damascus. The Caliph, unable to sate his curiosity, prolongs her life each day, desperate to hear how her stories will end. As Scheherazade brings him the tales of his people, he begins to question his cruel mandate and his own hardened heart, until, finally, Scheherazade discovers how to live out her story in a way that not even she could have imagined. Here, for the first time, is the story of One Thousand and One Nights told from Scheherazade's perspective, giving us the full breadth and depth of her longings and desires, her jealousies and resentments. Voices of the Desert is the ancient story reinvented - as a woman's story, an erotic allegory, a haunting meditation on the power of storytelling.
Nelida Piñon (born May 3, 1937) is a Brazilian writer. Born in Rio de Janeiro of Galician immigrants. Her first novel was Guia-Mapa de Gabriel Arcanjo (The Guidebook of Archangel Gabriel), written in 1961, it concerns a protagonist discussing Christian doctrine with her guardian angel. In the 1970s she became noted for erotic novels A casa de paixão (The House of Passion) and A força do destino (The Force of Destiny), written in 1977. In 1984 she perhaps had her greatest success with A Republica dos Sonhos, English translation The Republic of Dreams. The work involves generations of a family from Galicia who emigrated to Brazil. This relates to her own family's experience. She is a former President of Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters).
In the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 1519, a jester named Juanillo joins an expedition for the Spice Islands and circles the entire world-' the greatest undertaking ever known to man' Huge sails unfurl in the breeze, church bells fill the air, and five black ships-the Trinidad, the San Antonio, the Concepcion, the Santiago, and the Victoria-embark, their crews infected with dreams: dreams of gold, adventure, the unknown, and of cloves, pepper, saffron, cinnamon, to make them rich and bring them titles and honors. Their leader is cold, stern Captain General don Fernando Magellan. Always in his armor, he paces the deck. In his cabin the crucifix has been replaced by an astrolabe. And he carries with him soil from his native Portugal, to cover him should he die during the voyage. In rich, sensuous, robust prose, with earthy humor and stunning poetry, Napoleon Baccino Ponce de LeOn, a new writer from Uruguay, spins a yarn of men and ships. Of fog, jungle mazes, thirst, fear, illness, scorching sun, icy winds, bad omens, mutiny, and madness. A tale of the real men behind history's list of names. Of homesickness, loneliness, and the need for women, who belong to the land, not the sea. And as Juanillo, the fool of the fleet, jokes and sings and plays his thousand tricks to beguile the sailors and don Fernando, his master-making irreverent asides about monarchs and the cruelty of power-he brings to us all the sights and sounds and smells of the voyage. The beating of the waves against the hull, the creaking of the boards, men hanging from the rigging like rag dolls, iron and bronze fittings covered with verdigris, seaweed dark and soft as moss, giant crabs that glint blue like sword blades in moonlight, fish like jewels, and the sad howling of sea lions on deserted coasts of gray rock. A marvelous novel about the first circumnavigation of the globe, about explorers who face suffering and death, and about the life-giving power of the imagination. Napoleon Baccino Ponce de Leon, born 1947 in Montevideo, is a literary critic. This, his first novel, received the Novela Casa de las Americas Award in 1989. He loves the sea.
Napoleon Baccino Ponce de Leon (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1947) is a Uruguayan writer. In 1989 he won the Casa de las AmEricas Prize for his novel Maluco. The novel of the discoverers. Napoleon Baccino devoted time to teaching and then worked as a columnist. But above all he is author of Maluco. The novel of the discoverers. With this work, Baccino aims to promote the concept of new historical novel (in accordance with the new story) and as a vision of progress considering that if we know our past actions, which are the cause of our present we can both know him better as well as portend a better future. With great elegance, but without forgetting the cruelties, Maluco tells the vicissitudes of Magellan and Sebastián Elcano, to find a new route to the Moluccas (Spice Islands). Or, better, chronicles the pragmatic Jester of Magellan, which directs it to King Carlos V, retired now at the monastery of Yuste, so his son Felipe II restored him his pension, which was denied by 'walk through villages and squares investigating nothing more than the truth'. The story is a mixture of dreams and reality, including marine fantasies and uncharted lands, and the idea of survival. But it is not reduced at all to a tale seaworthy.This is the case of Maluco. Here, the jester, nothing governing, he writes his own Chronicle of events, and puts into question the ideas practised on historical truth. This historical novel was winner of the Casa de las AmEricas Prize in 1989. In addition, the novel has been translated into English, as Five Black Ships. In 1990 he won the prize fine arts of narrative Colima for work published.
With contributions from seven of Mexico's finest journalists, this is reportage at its bravest and most necessary - it has the power to change the world's view of their country, and by the force of its truth, to start to heal the country's many sorrows. Supported the Arts Council Grant's for the Arts Programme and by PEN Promotes. Veering between carnival and apocalypse, Mexico has in the last ten years become the epicentre of the international drug trade. The so-called war on drugs has been a brutal and chaotic failure (more than 160,000 lives have been lost). The drug cartels and the forces of law and order are often in collusion, corruption is everywhere. Life is cheap and inconvenient people - the poor, the unlucky, the honest or the inquisitive - can be disappeared leaving not a trace behind (in September 2015, more than 26,798 were officially registered as not located ). Yet people in all walks of life have refused to give up. Diego Enrique Osorno and Juan Villoro tell stories of teenage prostitution and Mexico's street children. Anabel Hernandez and Emiliano Ruiz Parra give chilling accounts of the disappearance of forty-three students and the murder of a self-educated land lawyer. Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez and Marcela Turati dissect the impact of the violence on the victims and those left behind, while Lydia Cacho contributes a journal of what it is like to live every day of your life under threat of death. Reading these accounts we begin to understand the true nature of the meltdown of democracy, obscured by lurid headlines, and the sheer physical and intellectual courage needed to oppose it. CONTRIBUTORS: Emiliano Ruiz Parra, Elena Poniatowska, Lydia Cacho, Diego Enrique Osorno, Marcela Turati, Anabel Hernandez, Juan Villoro, Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez.
Elena Poniatowski (born May 19, 1932) is a French-born Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on those considered to be disenfranchised especially women and the poor. She was born in Paris to upper class parents, including her mother whose family fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. She left France for Mexico when she was ten to escape the Second World War. When she was eighteen and without a university education, she began writing for the newspaper ExcElsior, doing interviews and society columns. Despite the lack of opportunity for women from the 1950s to the 1970s, she evolved to writing about social and political issues in newspapers, books in both fiction and nonfiction form. Her best known work is La noche de Tlatelolco (The night of Tlatelolco, the English translation was titled 'Massacre in Mexico') about the repression of the 1968 student protests in Mexico City. She is considered to be Mexico's grande dame of letters and is still an active writer.
From one of Latin America's foremost women writers comes an exquisitely sad and beautiful story of passion, unrequited love, and a lost artistic life. It is 1921 in a bleak, Bohemian Paris, and Angelina Beloff, a romantic young Russian exile and painter, writes words of love and pain to Diego Rivera, her companion of ten years who has returned to Mexico without her. Sent across the ocean from the Old World to the New and never answered, her letters become a kind of monologue, a vehicle through which she explores herself as an artist and a woman alone on the threshold of a new era - perhaps our own - when the old forms are no longer viable and the current ones have not yet taken shape. Angelina does not shirk from her passions for Diego, his art, and her own. And as she becomes more thoroughly convinced that his silence is impenetrable, that she has nothing to lose, she begins to give expression to the anger, disappointment, and then renewed strength that follow unanswered devotion.
Elena Poniatowski (born May 19, 1932) is a French-born Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on those considered to be disenfranchised especially women and the poor. She was born in Paris to upper class parents, including her mother whose family fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. She left France for Mexico when she was ten to escape the Second World War. When she was eighteen and without a university education, she began writing for the newspaper ExcElsior, doing interviews and society columns. Despite the lack of opportunity for women from the 1950s to the 1970s, she evolved to writing about social and political issues in newspapers, books in both fiction and nonfiction form. Her best known work is La noche de Tlatelolco (The night of Tlatelolco, the English translation was titled 'Massacre in Mexico') about the repression of the 1968 student protests in Mexico City. She is considered to be Mexico's grande dame of letters and is still an active writer.
Elena Poniatowska's long-awaited HERE'S TO YOU, JESUSA! is a rich, sensitive, and compelling translation of her groundbreaking testimonial novel, Hasta no verte Jesusa mio!. First published in 1969, this blend of documentary and fiction blurred the boundaries of conventional genres, providing a new means of challenging official history and changing the path of Mexican literature. Based on Josefina Borquez, a working-class woman whose difficult life spanned some of the seminal events in early-twentieth-century Mexican history, Poniatowska's Jesusa is a tough, coarse-mouthed, cantankerous character who pushes contradiction to its limits. Mystical yet practical, she faces the obstacles in her path with gritty determination. A native of Oaxaca, Jesusa loses her mother at a young age, and she lives with her father until one of his girlfriends stabs her. Moved to her godmother's house, where she serves as a maid, Jesusa is reunited with her father during the Mexican Revolution, and joins the cavalry unit in the army of General Jesus Carranza. She marries another soldier, a chronic womanizer who systematically abuses and finally abandons her. After the Revolution, embittered by its failure to live up to his promises to the poor, Jesusa finds work in Mexico City, first as a domestic, then in a series of factories, and begins her long history of run-ins with the police. Poniatowska documents a life of brutal deprivation, extraordinary hardship, and hardscrabble humor while providing a unique perspective on politics and the place of women in twentieth-century Mexico. Reprinted more than twenty-eight times in the original Spanish, HERE'S TO YOU, JESUSA! stands as a classic of Mexican literature. ‘Elena Poniatowska is one of Mexico's leading literary figures.' - Robin Lippincott, The New York Times Book Review. ‘HERE'S TO YOU, JESUSA! is a journey. Traveling through the many lives hidden inside the life of a woman, the trip goes deep into the many secret Mexicos which Mexico conceals. Warning to all readers: no return tickets will ever be available.' - Eduardo Galeano, author of MEMORY OF FIRE. . Elena Poniatowska is the author of more than forty works, including the classic MASSACRE IN MEXICO and the novels DEAR DIEGO and TINISIMA. She lives in Mexico City. . (original title: Hasta no verte Jesusa mio!, 1969 - Ediciones Era, Mexico).
Elena Poniatowski (born May 19, 1932) is a French-born Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on those considered to be disenfranchised especially women and the poor. She was born in Paris to upper class parents, including her mother whose family fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. She left France for Mexico when she was ten to escape the Second World War. When she was eighteen and without a university education, she began writing for the newspaper ExcElsior, doing interviews and society columns. Despite the lack of opportunity for women from the 1950s to the 1970s, she evolved to writing about social and political issues in newspapers, books in both fiction and nonfiction form. Her best known work is La noche de Tlatelolco (The night of Tlatelolco, the English translation was titled 'Massacre in Mexico') about the repression of the 1968 student protests in Mexico City. She is considered to be Mexico's grande dame of letters and is still an active writer.
Elena Poniatowska is recognized today as one of Mexico's greatest writers. LILUS KIKUS, published in 1954, was her first book. However, it was labeled a children's book because it had a young girl as protagonist, it included illustrations, and the author was an unknown woman. LILUS KIKUS has not received the critical attention or a translation into English it deserved, until now. Accompanying LILUS KIKUS in this first American edition are four of Poniatowska's short stories with female protagonists, only one of which has been previously published in English. Poniatowska is admired today as a feminist, but in 1954, when LILUS KIKUS appeared, feminism didn't have broad appeal. Twenty-first-century readers will be fascinated by the way Poniatowska uses her child protagonist to point out the flaws in adult society. Each of the drawings by the great surrealist Leonora Carrington that accompany the chapters in LILUS KIKUS expresses a subjective, interiorized vision of the child character's contemplations on life. ‘A tantalizingly complex feminist author, whose importance and originality have yet to be appreciated in this country.'-Cynthia Steele, author of POLITICS, GENDER, AND THE MEXICAN NOVEL, 1968-1988. Elena Poniatowska is the award-winning author of over fifty books. Born in France to a Mexican citizen of French ancestry, she now lives in Mexico City. In 2004, she was honored with the Legion de Honor del Gobierno de Francia. Poniatowska has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Emeritus Fellowship from Mexico's National Council of Culture and Arts. In 1979, she became the first woman to win the Mexican National Award for Journalism. Elizabeth Coonrod Martinez is professor of Latin American and U.S. Latino literature at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California. .
Elena Poniatowski (born May 19, 1932) is a French-born Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on those considered to be disenfranchised especially women and the poor. She was born in Paris to upper class parents, including her mother whose family fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. She left France for Mexico when she was ten to escape the Second World War. When she was eighteen and without a university education, she began writing for the newspaper ExcElsior, doing interviews and society columns. Despite the lack of opportunity for women from the 1950s to the 1970s, she evolved to writing about social and political issues in newspapers, books in both fiction and nonfiction form. Her best known work is La noche de Tlatelolco (The night of Tlatelolco, the English translation was titled 'Massacre in Mexico') about the repression of the 1968 student protests in Mexico City. She is considered to be Mexico's grande dame of letters and is still an active writer.
Winner of the most prestigious Spanish-language award in the world, the Premio Alfaguara de Novelo, Elena Poniatowska's new novel, The Skin of the Sky, is the fascinating and haunting story of the life of Lorenzo de Tena, a brilliant and troubled astronomer. Born in the 1930s, the illegitimate son of a businessman and a peasant woman, Lorenzo lives happily with his mother, brothers, and sisters on a small plot of land outside Mexico City. But when Lorenzo's mother dies, the children's idyllic existence is shattered, and their father brings them to live with him in the capital. Thrust into a privileged world, they struggle to adjust, and an angry Lorenzo turns to the study of the stars to find solace. Lorenzo is fanatical about the pursuit of excellence in his life and work, and he expects the same of those around him. He strives to make his country a better place for all its people, especially the poor and disenfranchised, and believes passionately that education is the means to that end. He pursues his studies at Harvard. then returns to Mexico, where he attempts to do First World scientific research in a Third World country. Setting traditional beliefs against technological progress and personal sacrifice against professional achievement, The Skin of the Sky details the efforts of one country to join the twenty-first century, and paints a portrait of a complex, contradictory, and lonely man who can find true contentment and satisfaction only in the stars. . One of Mexico's most famous writers, Elena Poniatowska is the author of more than forty works, including the classic Massacre in Mexico and the novels Dear Diego, Tinisima (FSG, 1996), and Here's to You, Jesusa! (FSG, 2001). . Deanna Heikkinen (translator) is a graduate of the University of Michigan. She has translated a number of articles by Elena Poniatowska as well as Here's to You, Jesusa! . .
Elena Poniatowski (born May 19, 1932) is a French-born Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on those considered to be disenfranchised especially women and the poor. She was born in Paris to upper class parents, including her mother whose family fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. She left France for Mexico when she was ten to escape the Second World War. When she was eighteen and without a university education, she began writing for the newspaper ExcElsior, doing interviews and society columns. Despite the lack of opportunity for women from the 1950s to the 1970s, she evolved to writing about social and political issues in newspapers, books in both fiction and nonfiction form. Her best known work is La noche de Tlatelolco (The night of Tlatelolco, the English translation was titled 'Massacre in Mexico') about the repression of the 1968 student protests in Mexico City. She is considered to be Mexico's grande dame of letters and is still an active writer.
TINISIMA tells the tumultuous, tragic story of the notorious Tina Modotti, an Italian refugee in the United States who went from working as a seamstress at I. Magnin's to acting in Hollywood, where she was known as ‘the exotic.' Brilliant, beautiful, passionate, and promiscuous, Modotti modeled for Edward Weston, became his lover, and lived with him during the 1920s in Mexico. An accomplished photographer herself, she was committed to the cause of the working class, and turned into a militant member of the Mexican Communist Party. When she was accused of the murder of another lover, Cuban Julio Antonio Mella, she was made an instant cause cElèbre. The press dubbed her ‘the Mata Hari of the Comintern' and published nude photographs of her along with sensationalized accounts of her love affairs. Diego Rivera, who had also painted her nude in his murals, stepped forward to defend her. Deported from Mexico, Modotti fled to the U.S.S.R., where she forsook photography for politics and turned secret agent for the international revolutionary organization Red Aid. An extraordinary re-creation of the sensuous spirit of Modotti's life and the revolutionary fervor of the times, TINISIMA is a vibrant work of the imagination by ‘one of Mexico's leading literary figures' (The New York Times Book Review).
Elena Poniatowski (born May 19, 1932) is a French-born Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on those considered to be disenfranchised especially women and the poor. She was born in Paris to upper class parents, including her mother whose family fled Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. She left France for Mexico when she was ten to escape the Second World War. When she was eighteen and without a university education, she began writing for the newspaper ExcElsior, doing interviews and society columns. Despite the lack of opportunity for women from the 1950s to the 1970s, she evolved to writing about social and political issues in newspapers, books in both fiction and nonfiction form. Her best known work is La noche de Tlatelolco (The night of Tlatelolco, the English translation was titled 'Massacre in Mexico') about the repression of the 1968 student protests in Mexico City. She is considered to be Mexico's grande dame of letters and is still an active writer.
This volume marks the first appearance of the author's creative work in English translation. CONTENTS: Coming; In the Cold of the Malecon; A Throw of the Book of Changes; Station H; This Life; Heart of Skitalietz. . Antonio Jose Ponte was born in 1964 in Matanzas, Cuba. In 1980 he moved to Havana, where he lives now. After completing studies at the University of Havana, he worked for five years as an engineer in remote areas of Eastern Cuba. After leaving this profession to become a screenwriter, he wrote filmscripts for two full-length fiction films and a documentary. Today, he dedicates himself entirely to literature. Ponte has traveled in Spain, Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, Germany, and the southern United States. He has published three books of widely acclaimed poetry, collections of essays, novels, and stories; his work has been translated and published in France and in Spain. He is now working on a novel and another collection of short stories.
Antonio Jose Ponte was born in 1964 in Matanzas, Cuba. He moved to Havana in 1980, where he completed studies in hydraulic engineering at the University of Havana, and worked five years as an engineer. He left engineering to write for film, completing scripts for two full-length films and a documentary. In recent years, his award-winning books of essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in Cuba, Spain, France, Mexico, and Sweden. His collection of short stories, In the Cold of the Malecon and Other Stories, was published in English by City Lights Publishers in 2000. His second collection of short stories, Stories from Around the Empire, was published by City Lights Publishers in 2002.
In the manner of fabled storytellers, Ponte creates a vivid picture of contemporary Cuba - its real and imagined place in the world - through stories told by a foreign exchange physics student, urban planners who discover an underground metropolis in their own neighborhood, a traveler stranded in an airport restroom, a suspicious stranger listening to stories spun in a barbershop, and a Chinese butcher in love with a beautiful daughter of Ochún. This inventive brew of fantasy, popular religion, science and science fiction, travel adventure, and tall tales celebrates the Cuban spirit at home and abroad.
Antonio Jose Ponte was born in 1964 in Matanzas, Cuba. He moved to Havana in 1980, where he completed studies in hydraulic engineering at the University of Havana, and worked five years as an engineer. He left engineering to write for film, completing scripts for two full-length films and a documentary. In recent years, his award-winning books of essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in Cuba, Spain, France, Mexico, and Sweden. His collection of short stories, In the Cold of the Malecon and Other Stories, was published in English by City Lights Publishers in 2000. His second collection of short stories, Stories from Around the Empire, was published by City Lights Publishers in 2002.
Here is the first English translation of the lucid, enigmatic poems by Antonio Porchia-the great but little-known Argentine who died at 82 in 1968. Born in 1886 in Italy, Señor Porchia lived from 1911 in Buenos Aires, writing in Spanish and working as a potter or carpenter. The distinguished younger American poet W. S. Merwin has selected some 250 poems-often one or two line aphorisms-out of the 600 contained in the several editions of Voces which Señor Porchia published since 1943. Of the originality of these poems, Mr. Merwin comments in a succinct introduction: ‘The aphorisms are not, in his view, compositions of his own so much as emanations which he has heard and set down . . . The fidelity of Porchia's vision, and its personal embodiment in language, is too sharp, and frequently too desperate, to be tempted to homiletics. On the contrary, the distillate of suffering. . . is pure and profound irony- an irony not of defense but of acceptance.' The first collection of Porchia's VOICES appeared in Buenos Aires, in a private edition, in 1943, and attracted little attention. A copy was sent by the author to the French critic Roger Caillois, who was moved to translate a selection of the aphorisms and publish them, with an introduction, in 1949, The somewhat patronizing tone in which Caillois presented his discovery did not conceal a sense of having been given a rare and original work, and the aphorisms themselves, in his versions, found at the time a number of admirers in the French literary world. Caillois, wanting to find out what sort of man had written and sent this surprising volume, had looked into the matter and ‘found myself in the presence of a man somewhere in his fifties, respectably-though neither studiously nor elegantly-dressed; a potter or carpenter by trade, I forget which, and self-employed, what is more; at once simple and shy, and altogether such that I assured myself, simply as a formality, first by means of certain subterfuges, and then quite openly, that he had never in his life heard of Lao-Tzu or Kafka,' (By whom Caillois had suspected his unknown author to be influenced.) Judging by Caillois' observations, the remarkable content of the Voices is iii a peculiarly pure sense the product of Porchia's own non-literary experience. Of this, or of its circumstances, little is publicly known beyond a few facts so bare that they would fit on any tombstone, Antonio Porchia was born in Italy in 1886, lived in Argentina from 1911, and died in 1968, VOICES represents the whole of his writing-some six hundred entries in all, There have been several editions since the first one. The most recent (and in Porchia's judgment the most complete, though it does not include some from the first collection) was published in 1966, and it is from this edition that the present selection has been made, Some of the entries, Porchia has stated, evolved over the course of years; some he has deleted in favor of later ones which, in his opinion, convey the same sense better, But the aphorisms themselves are not, in his view, compositions of his own so much as emanations which he has heard and set down. It is easy to see why Caillios might have imagined that Porchia owed something to certain Eastern texts, and perhaps to some moderns such as Kafka, A few of the aphorisms have close affinities with sentences from Taoist and Buddhist scriptures; others suggest, among the moderns, not only Kafka but Lichtenberg, or-to someone whose language is English-Blake. Caillois' determining, to his own satisfaction, that Porchia was unfamiliar with such possible mentors is interesting, surprising, and in the end remains for the most part a matter of curiosity rather than a contribution to an assessment of the values and originality of Porchia's VOICES. For the authority which the entries invoke, both in their matter and in their tone, is not that of tradition or antecedents, but that of particular, individual experience. Whatever system may be glimpsed binding the whole together is not fashioned from any logic except that of one man's cast of existence, It is this which makes the work as a whole, and some of the separate sentences, elusive, but it is this which gives them their unmistakable pure immediacy-their quality of voice. At the same time, the entries and the work as a whole assume and evoke the existence of an absolute, of the knowledge of it which is truth, and of the immense desirability of such knowledge. With no doctrinal allegiances, nor any attempt at dogmatic system, Porchia's utterances are obviously, in this sense, a spiritual, quite as much as a literary, testament, And the center to which they bear witness as well as the matrix of their form, is the private ordeal and awe of individual existence, the reality that is glimpsed through time and circumstance, as a consequence of feeling and suffering. It is this ground of personal revelation and its logic, in the sentences, that marks their kinship, not with theology but with poetry. And yet the reality of the self, except as suffering, is not an unquestionable certainty. ‘My final belief is suffering. And I begin to believe that I do not suffer,' In any event, the self is less real than that which is greater than it, on which it depends. ‘We see by means of something which illumines us, which we do not see.' The fidelity of Porchia's vision, and its personal embodiment in language, is too sharp, and frequently too desperate, however, to be tempted to homiletics, On the contrary, the distillate of suffering in some of the entries is pure and profound irony-an irony not of defense but of acceptance. ‘Every toy has to break,' ‘When I throw away what I don't want, it will fall within reach.' It is finally the acceptance, with its irony, that underlies the suffering and the vision and relates them to each other in a way that suggests that the relation may be the privilege of man's existence. The first collection of Porchia's VOICES appeared in Buenos Aires, in a private edition, in 1943.
Antonio Porchia (November 13, 1885 - November 9, 1968) was an Argentinian poet. He was born in Conflenti, Italy, but, after the death of his father in 1900, moved to Argentina. He wrote a Spanish book entitled Voces ('Voices'), a book of aphorisms. It has since been translated into Italian and into English (by W.S. Merwin, Copper Canyon Press, 2003), French, and German. A very influential, yet extremely succinct writer, he has been a cult author for a number of renowned figures of contemporary literature and thought such as AndrE Breton, Jorge Luis Borges, Roberto Juarroz and Henry Miller, amongst others. Some critics have paralleled his work to Japanese Haiku and found many similarities with a number of Zen schools of thought.
Here is the first English translation of the lucid, enigmatic poems by Antonio Porchia-the great but little-known Argentine who died at 82 in 1968. Born in 1886 in Italy, Señor Porchia lived from 1911 in Buenos Aires, writing in Spanish and working as a potter or carpenter. The distinguished younger American poet W. S. Merwin has selected some 250 poems-often one or two line aphorisms-out of the 600 contained in the several editions of Voces which Señor Porchia published since 1943. Of the originality of these poems, Mr. Merwin comments in a succinct introduction: ‘The aphorisms are not, in his view, compositions of his own so much as emanations which he has heard and set down . . . The fidelity of Porchia's vision, and its personal embodiment in language, is too sharp, and frequently too desperate, to be tempted to homiletics. On the contrary, the distillate of suffering. . . is pure and profound irony- an irony not of defense but of acceptance.' The first collection of Porchia's VOICES appeared in Buenos Aires, in a private edition, in 1943, and attracted little attention. A copy was sent by the author to the French critic Roger Caillois, who was moved to translate a selection of the aphorisms and publish them, with an introduction, in 1949, The somewhat patronizing tone in which Caillois presented his discovery did not conceal a sense of having been given a rare and original work, and the aphorisms themselves, in his versions, found at the time a number of admirers in the French literary world. Caillois, wanting to find out what sort of man had written and sent this surprising volume, had looked into the matter and ‘found myself in the presence of a man somewhere in his fifties, respectably-though neither studiously nor elegantly-dressed; a potter or carpenter by trade, I forget which, and self-employed, what is more; at once simple and shy, and altogether such that I assured myself, simply as a formality, first by means of certain subterfuges, and then quite openly, that he had never in his life heard of Lao-Tzu or Kafka,' (By whom Caillois had suspected his unknown author to be influenced.) Judging by Caillois' observations, the remarkable content of the Voices is iii a peculiarly pure sense the product of Porchia's own non-literary experience. Of this, or of its circumstances, little is publicly known beyond a few facts so bare that they would fit on any tombstone, Antonio Porchia was born in Italy in 1886, lived in Argentina from 1911, and died in 1968, VOICES represents the whole of his writing-some six hundred entries in all, There have been several editions since the first one. The most recent (and in Porchia's judgment the most complete, though it does not include some from the first collection) was published in 1966, and it is from this edition that the present selection has been made, Some of the entries, Porchia has stated, evolved over the course of years; some he has deleted in favor of later ones which, in his opinion, convey the same sense better, But the aphorisms themselves are not, in his view, compositions of his own so much as emanations which he has heard and set down. It is easy to see why Caillios might have imagined that Porchia owed something to certain Eastern texts, and perhaps to some moderns such as Kafka, A few of the aphorisms have close affinities with sentences from Taoist and Buddhist scriptures; others suggest, among the moderns, not only Kafka but Lichtenberg, or-to someone whose language is English-Blake. Caillois' determining, to his own satisfaction, that Porchia was unfamiliar with such possible mentors is interesting, surprising, and in the end remains for the most part a matter of curiosity rather than a contribution to an assessment of the values and originality of Porchia's VOICES. For the authority which the entries invoke, both in their matter and in their tone, is not that of tradition or antecedents, but that of particular, individual experience. Whatever system may be glimpsed binding the whole together is not fashioned from any logic except that of one man's cast of existence, It is this which makes the work as a whole, and some of the separate sentences, elusive, but it is this which gives them their unmistakable pure immediacy-their quality of voice. At the same time, the entries and the work as a whole assume and evoke the existence of an absolute, of the knowledge of it which is truth, and of the immense desirability of such knowledge. With no doctrinal allegiances, nor any attempt at dogmatic system, Porchia's utterances are obviously, in this sense, a spiritual, quite as much as a literary, testament, And the center to which they bear witness as well as the matrix of their form, is the private ordeal and awe of individual existence, the reality that is glimpsed through time and circumstance, as a consequence of feeling and suffering. It is this ground of personal revelation and its logic, in the sentences, that marks their kinship, not with theology but with poetry. And yet the reality of the self, except as suffering, is not an unquestionable certainty. ‘My final belief is suffering. And I begin to believe that I do not suffer,' In any event, the self is less real than that which is greater than it, on which it depends. ‘We see by means of something which illumines us, which we do not see.' The fidelity of Porchia's vision, and its personal embodiment in language, is too sharp, and frequently too desperate, however, to be tempted to homiletics, On the contrary, the distillate of suffering in some of the entries is pure and profound irony-an irony not of defense but of acceptance. ‘Every toy has to break,' ‘When I throw away what I don't want, it will fall within reach.' It is finally the acceptance, with its irony, that underlies the suffering and the vision and relates them to each other in a way that suggests that the relation may be the privilege of man's existence. . The first collection of Porchia's VOICES appeared in Buenos Aires, in a private edition, in 1943.
Antonio Porchia (November 13, 1885 - November 9, 1968) was an Argentinian poet. He was born in Conflenti, Italy, but, after the death of his father in 1900, moved to Argentina. He wrote a Spanish book entitled Voces ('Voices'), a book of aphorisms. It has since been translated into Italian and into English (by W.S. Merwin, Copper Canyon Press, 2003), French, and German. A very influential, yet extremely succinct writer, he has been a cult author for a number of renowned figures of contemporary literature and thought such as AndrE Breton, Jorge Luis Borges, Roberto Juarroz and Henry Miller, amongst others. Some critics have paralleled his work to Japanese Haiku and found many similarities with a number of Zen schools of thought.
Antonio Porchia (1886–1968) wrote one book, a slender collection of poetic aphorisms that became a classic in the Spanish-speaking world. With affinities to Taoist and Buddhist epigrams, Voices bears witness to the awe of human existence. Revised and updated with a new introduction by translator W.S. Merwin, this bilingual volume brings back into print one of Latin America's great literary treasures.
Antonio Porchia (1886–1968) was born in Italy. After his father died, he emigrated to Argentina with his mother and seven siblings, and as the eldest child, started working at the age of 14. He was self-taught, and his only book, Voices, caught the attention of a noted French critic who assumed him to be a scholar of Kafka and Buddhism, rather than the humble man who loved to tend his garden. Today, Porchia's aphorisms are published in more than a dozen Spanish-language editions as well as in German, French and Italian. W.S. Merwin's awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the Tanning Prize, the Bollingen Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA. He is the author of dozens of books of poetry and translations. He lives in Hawaii.
Almost totally unknown in North America before the publication of his prizewinning novel, THE DOGS OF PARADISE, in 1990, Abel Posse received the highest praise for his first book to appear in English. THE DOGS OF PARADISE is about Columbus, and in DAIMON, Posse continues his trilogy about the early encounters between Europeans and his native continent in a book about Lope de Aguirre, one of the most rapacious conquistadores. Aguirre was one of Pizarro's lieutenants in the conquest of Peru. At a critical moment on an expedition in the Amazon he threw over everything that was valuable to him, slaying his comrades (including his fifteen-year-old daughter), betraying his commander, his king, and even his God to establish ‘the first free territory of America,' the Marañon Empire. From his jungle fastness Aguirre dreamed of seizing Peru, reconquering Spain, and taking over the world. Cruel, amoral, believing ‘solely in the will to power, the revels of war, the heat of delirium,' Aguirre in real life was unable to realize his brutal ambitions. But in this brilliant reimagining of his story, we see an Aguirre who lived on after death, aging and suffering in the Eternal Return, with profound implications for both the Old World and the New. Baroque, erotic, surreal, and profoundly ironic, DAIMON is fully the equal of Abel Posse's The Dogs of Paradise, which the San Francisco Chronicle described as ‘astonishing in its inventiveness, richness of historical detail, and vividness of description.' . Abel Posse is a career diplomat in the Argentine Foreign Service. He is the author of several novels and in 1987 received the Romulo Gallegos Prize (for the best Spanish novel for the previous five years) for his novel The Dogs of Paradise. He is presently the Argentine ambassador to Czechoslovakia.
Abel Parentini Posse, born Cordoba, Argentina, on 7 January 1934, is an Argentine diplomat and writer. He was designated at a diplomatic mission in Venice by Alejandro Agustín Lanusse in 1973 and hold similar offices during the following Argentine governments, both military and civilian. He was briefly considered as a possible foreign minister of NEstor Kirchner by the beginning of his mandate in 2003, but the role was finally designated to Rafael Bielsa. Posse's 1983 work Los perros del paraíso won the Venezuelan Romulo Gallegos Prize.
We have become accustomed to the daring and inventiveness of the contemporary Latin American novel, but nothing can have prepared us for THE DOGS OF PARADISE, the first novel to appear in English by the distinguished Argentinian author Abel Posse-a brilliant, profound and startlingly comic novel about the discovery of the Americas. Ranging from the decadent Spanish court of the late fifteenth century (presided over by an adolescent and perverse Isabel and Ferdinand) . . . to the shore of the Mediterranean (where the sea gods first whisper to a young, web-footed Columbus) . . . to the tropical earthly paradise (complete with angels) that the Admiral of the Ocean Sea does eventually discover, THE DOGS OF PARADISE triumphantly and exuberantly transforms old stories and familiar personages (and some not so familiar) into literature of a very high order. . Abel Posse was born in Cordoba, Argentina, in 1936. In 1959 he moved to Paris where he studied politics and literature. For many years a member of the Argentine diplomatic service, he presently resides in Buenos Aires. Posse is the author of several novels. THE DOGS OF PARADISE was awarded the Romulo Gallegos Prize-for the best novel written in Spanish over the previous five years-in 1987.
Abel Parentini Posse, born Cordoba, Argentina, on 7 January 1934, is an Argentine diplomat and writer. He was designated at a diplomatic mission in Venice by Alejandro Agustín Lanusse in 1973 and hold similar offices during the following Argentine governments, both military and civilian. He was briefly considered as a possible foreign minister of NEstor Kirchner by the beginning of his mandate in 2003, but the role was finally designated to Rafael Bielsa. Posse's 1983 work Los perros del paraíso won the Venezuelan Romulo Gallegos Prize.
This prize-winning novel by a gifted new Latin American writer concerns two youngmen caught up in a guerrilla action in the mountains of Bolivia. One is a seminarian with a compulsion to act, rather than moralize, who leaves his studies to follow a charismatic rev- olutionary leader. The other is a soldier in the pursuing army patrol. Their story is of certain truths discovered as they follow converging paths to a final fatal confrontation. The echo here of actual historical events adds interest, but it is the literary technique that makes the novel special. For in part Mr. Prada extends the traditional concepts of the dramatic unities, using overlapping planes of time, simultaneous actions and dialog, and montage effects which heighten the impact in a way that conventional story-telling could not. . Still in his early thirties, Renato Prada -short-story writer, novelist, and professor of philosophy-is emerging as one of Latin America's impressive new literary talents. Born in Potosi, Bolivia, he was schooled in Bolivia and has also studied in New York and Rome, where he is currently doing advanced work in philosophy. In 1967, he published a volume of short stories, Argal, which won a literary prize, foreshadowing the warm reception for THE BREACH. When he is not studying abroad, he makes his home in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Walter Redmond, the translator, currently holds the posts of Associate Professor of Philosophy at the National University of San Marcos and Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Catholic University-both in Lima, Peru.
Renato Prada Oropeza (born October 17, 1937, Potosí, Bolivia- September 9, 2011, Puebla, Mexico) was a Bolivian and Mexican scientist-literary researcher and writer, author of novels, short stories and poetry books, hermeneutics, semiotics and literary theory. Many of his literary works have been translated into several languages. He is one of the most distinguished semioticians in Mexico and Latin America. He was born in Bolivia in 1937. In 1976, due to the dictatorship in Bolivia, he moved to Mexico, where in 1983 he became a citizen. Since 1976, Prada has been a professor at the Autonomous University in Xalapa, Mexico and at the Autonomous University of Puebla. He is also an Academician of the National Council for Science and Technology of Mexico (an analog of the Academy of Sciences in other countries). He was married to the Mexican art historian Elda Rojas Aldunate. Their children are Ixchel Vanessa that is a designer and theatrical designer; Ingmar, a researcher and professor of Physics and Fabrizio Prada is a Mexican film director. Died in Puebla, Mexico on September 9, 2011 because of kidney cancer. He held the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the Sapienza University of Rome and a Doctor of Linguistics from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. He was the head of the scientific school of semiotics in the Autonomous University of Puebla and editor of some Mexican academic journals on literary theory and linguistics and semiotics. He directed doctoral researches, and his disciples work in Mexico, the United States, Italy, Russia, Guatemala, Spain and other countries. Some novels and short stories by Renato Prada have been translated into English and other languages. In addition to his literary and scientific work, he wrote the screenplays of some Mexican feature films, such as Tiempo Real and Chiles Xalapeños, and several short films. His novel Los fundadores del alba, winner of Prize Casa de las Americas in 1969, is onsidered one of the most significant works of Bolivian literature.
COUNTRY JUDGE, one of the finest artistic novels in all of Spanish-American literature, is a poet's attempt to portray his beloved land - what Waldo Frank would have called the Soul of Chile. Prado's device in COUNTRY JUDGE is an old but effective one. He places his protagonist (that is, the author himself, for the story is autobiographical) in the chair of a justice of the peace in a sordid suburb of Santiago, where he is compelled to observe the tragi-comedy of humanity: its meanness and nobility, its violence and cowardice, its loves and hates. And in this endless parade of conflict Solaguren undertakes the impossible: to administer justice - without sentimentality, but with tenderness and understanding. His inevitable failure and frustration force him to admit defeat, but in his defeat he transcends personal tragedy and soars into universals. The story is no longer a portrait of Chile, but of all humanity. To quote the Foreword of the distinguished Chilean poet and critic, Arturo Torres-Rioseco: ‘Solaguren's story is merely the framework upon which the stuff of the novel is stretched. That stuff is the wealth of stunning vignettes that occur on every page, the unforgettable 4 characters, the sensitive and glowing sketches of the Chilean landscape, and the symbolism artfully concealed under a cloak of reality. This is what makes the novel live, as it will live. . The translator, Lesley Byrd Simpson, is Professor Emeritus of Spanish at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of a number of books and monographs on the history of Mexico, the best known of which is MANY MEXICOS. His translations include Cortês: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary Lopez de Gômara, La Celestina, The 7 Poem of the Cid, Two Novels of Mexico ‘by Mariano Azuela, and The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico by Robert Ricard.
Pedro Prado (8 October 1886 - 31 January 1952) was a Chilean writer. He won the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 1949. He was the son of Absalon Prado Marín and Laura Calvo and was born October 8, 1886. His mom died when he was two years old, and his dad passed in 1905. In 1895, he was admitted to the Instituto Nacional General Jose Miguel Carrera where he studied the humanities until 1903. He also took elective courses in German, accounting, painting, and music. He finished the last two years of his college education at the University of Chile, in the School of Engineering. He then studied at the School of Architecture at the University of Chile for three years without earning a degree. He began exploring his interest in painting at that time, receiving lessons from Pedro Lira, a prominent Chilean artist during the 19th century. It was around this time that he traveled to northern Chile, then southern Argentina, where he married Adriana Jaramillo Bruce on January 1, 1910. That year he was elected President of the Federation of Students in Chile (FECH) and attended The Congress of Students in Buenos Aires as a delegate. He helped found the Chilean literary group Los Diez in 1914 during one of the most important Chilean intellectual movements of the twentieth century. In 1949 he was awarded the National Prize for Literature. He began writing poetry with Flores de cardo, a book published in 1908, which broke the mold of metric rhyme and marked the introduction of free verse in his country. In 1912, La casa abandonada introduced prose poetry, breaking the tradition of versified poetry and founding poetic prose. In 1913, he published El llamado del mundo, which was followed in 1915 by the prose poem Los diez, el claustro, la barca. That same year, Los Pájaros Errantes emerged, which is reputedly his most accomplished lyrical work, utilizing Parnassianism and symbolism. His poetic creations continued with Las Copas in 1921, Karez y Roshan in 1921, and the dramatic poem Androvar in 1925. He was a deeply philosophical novelist and his work infused creative and poetic imagery with the features of the novels popular within the region at the time. In this genre, he debuted in 1914 with La reina de Rapa Nui, an exotic novel where, in the guise of a simple love story, elements of Easter Island folklore are presented. In 1920, he produced his most important and well-known work: Alsino, a story with a mythical and philosophically relevant plot, written in prose and full of poetic and symbolic language. It tells the story of a small peasant boy who dreams of emulating Icarus; he lept from a tree, and as a result of the rough landing, he grew a hump on his back from which wings extended, allowing him to fly just as he desired. The author called it a romantic poem. In 1924, he published Un juez rural, a realistic-folkloric novel that was, to some extent, autobiographical. It reflected the authors beliefs as to the meaning of justice, the dilemmas of those who manage it, and the extent of its consequences. As an essay writer in 1916, he wrote Ensayo Sobre Arquitectura y Poesía, a book in which he elaborates his architectural thought. Later, his relationship with architecture is described in A los Estudiantes de Arquitectura, published in 1919 in Juventud Nº 3 magazine, as well as Del Sacrificio y la Salvacion de la Belleza, published in the 16th edition of the same magazine, and El arte obrero, la tradicion y el porvenir, published in Diario La Nacion on July 2, 1922. In 1924, after being asked by Arturo Alessandri, he wrote the essay Bases para un nuevo Gobierno y un Nuevo Parlamento, without any previous political experience. The military then wanted to declare themselves as co-authors, but was denied by Prado. In 1934, his book of sonnets was published, a genre some say he mastered. In 1935, he received the Premio Academia de Roma, granted by the Italian embassy. That year, he also received the Premio Municipal de Santiago. In 1949, he was given the Premio Nacional de Literatura. He was a member of the Academia Chilena de la Lengua in 1950, replacing Arturo Alessandri. However, he was not able to be inaugurated, since he died on January 31, 1952, due to a cerebral hemorrhage in his summer home in Vina del Mar. As a painter, having taken lessons with Pedro Lira, Prado devoted himself to the painting of Chilean landscapes and illustrated various publications of the time, including some of his own. In 1917 he received the Third Place Medal in Painting award at the Annual Exhibition of Fine Arts in Santiago. In 1918 he became a founding member of the National Society of Fine Arts created by Juan Francisco González. He held a showing at the Official Exhibition of Santiago in 1921, and that same year was named director of the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts, a position which he held until 1923. In 1922 he held a showing at the Winter Exposition of the Artists' Society of Chile in Santiago. As an architect he stressed his concern for the urban landscape, becoming a staunch critic of the planning of Santiago. While serving as director of the National Museum of Fine Arts, he directed repairs to the building and criticized the precarious conditions of its construction, which left it unfinished and with evident structural flaws only a decade after its opening. Within the museum, the Palacio Bruna stands out, an embassy and consulate of the United States. Prado represented Chile as a diplomat two times, first in 1925 for the celebration of the centennial of the Bolivian Declaration of Independence, and again in 1927 when he was appointed the Plenipotentiary Minister of Chile by Emiliano Figueroa in Colombia. He held this position until December 1928, and was awarded by Colombia with the Order of Boyaca, commander's grade.
Good description of the physical characteristics of the Andean region, but less successful in character development.
To write a fantasia that deepens into a thing of pity and horror without degenerating into mere unconvincing sensationalism is no mean achievement. It has been accomplished in ‘The Partner,' the story of Pardo, a Chilean business man, who invents an English partner, one Davis, as an excuse for rejecting embarrassing financial propositions. To his horror, he finds that a great many people are deeply interested in Davis, and diverting complications ensue. Comedy, however, changes to tragedy and Spenlow's Jorkins becomes Frankenstein's monster, finally overwhelming his creator. This unforgettable story grips the reader from the first page to the last.
Jenaro Prieto (5 August 1889 Santiago, Chile - 5 March 1946, Chile) was Chilean journalist, writer and politician. He served as a member of the National Congress of Chile for the Conservative Party during the 1930s. Amongst his best known works as a writer is the novel The Partner (1928) which has been turned into several films.
JOSE MANUEL PRIETO is one of the most exciting new talents in Latin America, combining the intellectual sophistication and luminous prose of Nabokov with the worldview of a scion of Castro's Cuba and post-communist Russia. Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire is a novel of immense power and originality. J. is a smuggler living on the fringes between Eastern and Western Europe, making his living fencing the flotsam of communism's collapse. He has taken a commission to illegally trap a rare Russian butterfly, and decides to use it as an opportunity to smuggle V., his Russian lover who has no papers, back into her homeland. Just over the border in the port of Odessa, she deserts him, so J. continues alone to their original destination, a small village on the Black Sea. Then she begins to send him letters, and he waits, searching for the answer that will lure the butterfly into his net and V. back into his life. Equal parts bittersweet love story, international intrigue, and one man's quest to write the perfect love letter, Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire is sure to establish Jose Manuel Prieto as a writer of international stature. . JOSE MANUEL PRlETO was born in Havana in 1962. In 1986 he graduated with a degree in engineering in Novosibirisk, the capital of western Siberia. He remained in the Soviet Union for twelve years, where, among other things, he translated the works of Joseph Brodsky and Anna Akhmatova into Spanish, was an engineer in a Siberian telephone plant, and worked in the import-export field. He is also the author of the novel The Encyclopedia of Living in Russia and a short-story collection. Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire is his first book to be published in English. Currently he lives in Mexico City with his wife, Yelena, and daughter, Alicia, where he is a professor of Russian history at the Centro de lnvestigacion y Doceniia Economicas in Mexico City.
Jose Manuel Prieto is a Cuban novelist, translator and scholar. Jose Manuel Prieto was born in Havana, Cuba in 1962. He earned his PhD in History in Universidad Nacional Autonoma de MExico and has taught at the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economica, Mexico City, from 1994 to 2004. In 2004-2005 he was the Margaret and Herman Sokol Fellow at The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers in The New York Public Library. Prieto has been the recipient of fellowships, grants and awards from Sistema Nacional de Creadores, MExico, January 2003 - 2005 the Santa Madalena Foundation, April del 2001, Florencia and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2002). Prieto's books have been translated into English, French, German, Norwegian, Italian and Russian and are available through a number of prominent publishing houses, including Grove Press, Suhrkamp, Anagrama, Christian Bourgois, and Faber and Faber. Prieto has translated poems by Anna Akhmatova, and Josef Brodsky, as well as prose by Andrey Platonov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Vladimir Nabokov. Prieto has lived in New York since 2004. He teaches literature at Seton Hall University.
Hailed as one of the most important young writers in Latin America today, Manuel Puig, in his widely praised first novel, re-creates with wry compassion the provincial world of a middle-class Argentine family. Through a series of dialogues and soliloquies, as real and sometimes mysterious as conversations overheard, the boy Toto, his relatives and neighbors, servants and schoolmates, spring unforgettably to life. For all of them the only escape from the dreariness of small-town living is the movies. They are all that give shape and color to their existence. Telling of their dreams and fears in language that may parody the clichEs of soap opera or the pseudo-literary style of a term paper, they speak of their marital troubles, of making ends meet, or getting girls, or finding a husband. Toto's cousin dreams of being a sports star, while a scholarship student hopes one day to eat North American pan queques (pancakes) - the status symbol of the day. Most of all, they dream of going to Buenos Aires, where the movies are even better. BETRAYED BY RITA HAYWORTH was originally published in Argentina, and has since been translated into French, German, Portuguese, and Italian. When published in France, Le Monde listed it as one of the best foreign novels of the year. In both Latin America and Europe, the critical praise has been extraordinary.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
SCREEN DREAMS . . . Life was so dull in the small provincial towns of Argentina. But oh those Hollywood movies that played in the local Theaters! Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers seemed to go on dancing forever. Norma Shearer (everyone knew she was as good as a saint) made a perfect Juliet. Rita Hayworth was so heartlessly cruel to Tyrone Power (how could she do it?). Shirley Temple was such a good actress for such a little girl and everyone in her movies loved her . . . And so the boredom of everyday life gives way to daydreams about those wonderful people upon the screen. A child dreams of rescuing Shirley from her latest captors. A young girl plays a balcony scene in her mind that is just as wistful as Norma's. A cool young stud plots how he would handle Rita Hayworth so that she would never betray him. And every day in their celluloid dream world, the line between fantasy and reality grows thinner and thinner.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
And when people look at the sky they remember a lot of different things, girlfriends, being a lot younger and all the things that were happening, they remember their whole lives. And the plans. One of the plans was to have his own car, which he never had and other important business for him was to grow and be very tall. And be well-dressed; and be a progressive guy, a guy who struggles and contributes to progress, and who makes a lot of cash. He didn't accomplish any of that, did he?' These are the sentiments of Josemar Ferreira, a Brazilian of the backlands with high ambitions, who is having a hard go at it, what with women and the rising cost of construction materials. Told retrospectively in the form of a dialogue between two characters - Josemar and Maria da Gloria, a young blonde of middle-class respectability who has trouble with her nerves as a result of some unfortunate developments in her life -BLOOD OF REQUITED LOVE brilliantly unravels the complexities of Josemar's twisted life, and reveals the ups and downs of a love affair once upon a time. Compassionate yet ruthless, BLOOD OF REQUITED LOVE is at once a poignant elegy for an adolescence that perhaps never occurred as described, and an unrelenting deconstruction of the fictions adults create out of their past to deal with the vicissitudes of the present.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
‘This novel was born of a crisis I went through. I had returned to New York from a trip, spiritually and morally exhausted. Within a few days I spotted this man, while I was working out in a gym. He was young, healthy, handsome. ‘I'd like to be like him I thought. I got to know him and soon discovered that he was morally bankrupt. The book is the outcome of a series of interviews I did with him' - Manuel Puig . . . ‘The brilliant Manuel Puig' (Newsweek), internationally acclaimed Latin American novelist - his books have appeared in fourteen languages - writes his first work in English, an elegant fiction, stunningly crafted, suffused with humanity brimming with humor, extraordinary for its subtlety and power In ETERNAL CURSE ON THE READER OF THESE PACES, Puig strikes a balance between irony and sympathy as he gives us a story of the dealings of two men - insecure and proud, therefore guileful and elusive - a tale of the collision of two ‘solitary fantasy systems. The late 1970s. Winter. Greenwich Village, New York City Ramirez, a demanding seventy-four-year-old Argentine, exiled to America ostensibly for political reasons, is an invalid, confined to a wheelchair, who lives in a nursing home under the auspices of a human rights group. Larry, a moody, self-absorbed thirty-six-year-old American down on his luck, who occupies a bare, grimy apartment on Carmine Street, is hired to push Ramirez about the neighborhood. As we follow Ramirez and Larry on their jaunts through the Village and overhear them in the old man's nursing-home and hospital rooms, their relationship becomes a complex of deceptions. Is Ramirez merely a pathetic hypochondriac/amnesiac who has forgotten his past, knows only the literal meanings of words and feels no emotions? A frightened man marked for murder? A perverse patriarch who terrorized his wife and son? Is Larry a crazed Vietnam veteran? A currently unemployed history professor? A son irremediably damaged by his abusive parents, as he so readily and frequently insists? While both men twist each other up in lies - and Larry slowly deciphers Ramirez's memoirs, encoded in French novels (Les Liaisons Dangereuses, La Princesse de Cleves, Adolphe) - Ramirez and Larry come to depend on each other; arrive, more often than not, at unspoken understandings; are provocatively shown to be each other's shadow - in preparation for the novel's jolting, disturbing, affecting denouement.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
What is it that attracts women, young and old, to Juan Carlos, so handsome and so doomed? Although it fails to solve this mystery, Heartbreak Tango has enthralled readers on two continents. A best seller in Italy, Argentina and France, this story of three young girls and a woman, all in love with one man who is soon to die, is punctuated by violence, tenderness, bitterness and passion. Manuel Puig conceived the novel as a lighthearted parody of a romance magazine serial of the forties. Whatever his intention, he has satisfied a universal hunger for believable romantic fiction. HEARTBREAK TANGO unerringly catches the sight and sound of the small town, the day-to-day boredom, the. near-illiterate prose of the local newspaper, the hunger for the big, city, the pitiful attempts to emulate the glamorous models offered by the popular press and the movies. The evocation of the 1940's is unquestionably funny, yet the reader shares with Puig the sympathy he feels toward his characters and their hopelessly romantic dreams, set to the strains of the everpresent tango. ‘Critics called BETRAYED BY RITA HAYWORTH a masterpiece, but Heartbreak Tango does everything the earlier book did and does it better.'-Ronald Christ, Review ‘73.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
Reprint. Originally published 1973. What is it that attracts women, young and old, to Juan Carlos, so handsome and so doomed? Although it fails to solve this mystery, Heartbreak Tango has enthralled readers on two continents. A best seller in Italy, Argentina and France, this story of three young girls and a woman, all in love with one man who is soon to die, is punctuated by violence, tenderness, bitterness and passion. Manuel Puig conceived the novel as a lighthearted parody of a romance magazine serial of the forties. Whatever his intention, he has satisfied a universal hunger for believable romantic fiction. HEARTBREAK TANGO unerringly catches the sight and sound of the small town, the day-to-day boredom, the. near-illiterate prose of the local newspaper, the hunger for the big, city, the pitiful attempts to emulate the glamorous models offered by the popular press and the movies. The evocation of the 1940's is unquestionably funny, yet the reader shares with Puig the sympathy he feels toward his characters and their hopelessly romantic dreams, set to the strains of the everpresent tango. ‘Critics called BETRAYED BY RITA HAYWORTH a masterpiece, but Heartbreak Tango does everything the earlier book did and does it better.'-Ronald Christ, Review ‘73.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
From the celebrated author of BETRAYED BY RITA HAYWORTH (‘A triumph . . . A dazzling and wholly original debut,' said Alexander Coleman in The New York Times Book Review) -an intensely moving novel about love and victimization. Two men are cellmates in an Argentine prison. Molina is a window dresser, homosexual, sentenced to eight years for ‘corruption of minors'; Valentin is a Marxist student, held without trial for three years for inciting ‘disturbances' at an auto factory. Molina is self-obsessed, self-denigrating, but charming, too-he entertains himself by telling Valentin, in elegant detail, the plots of his favorite romantic Hollywood movies. Trapped in naïve enslavement to an idea of men as powerful and responsible and strong, he sees himself as dependent, fragile, vulnerable; he identifies with the heroines of his films. Molina is haunted by the fear that his mother (‘the only good thing that's happened to me in my life') will die of heart disease before he is released, but he is still full of siy humor, brio, delight in life. Valentin is articulate, dogmatic, filled with revolutionary fervor, suppressing in shame his occasional spasms of longing for the ordinary comforts he has renounced and for the memory of a girl he left because she loved him more than politics, a girl ‘with class.' Their guarded but growing friendship - which is all they have and which slowly transfigures them - is threatened as prison officials try to enlist one of them to betray the other. As they live through crisis, caught in the tyranny of politics over feelings, caught in a profound test of human loyalty and in the corruption of their world (our own) - what happens to them is conveyed with extraordinary grace and power.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
From the celebrated author of BETRAYED BY RITA HAYWORTH (‘A triumph . . . A dazzling and wholly original debut,' said Alexander Coleman in The New York Times Book Review) -an intensely moving novel about love and victimization. Two men are cellmates in an Argentine prison. Molina is a window dresser, homosexual, sentenced to eight years for ‘corruption of minors'; Valentin is a Marxist student, held without trial for three years for inciting ‘disturbances' at an auto factory. Molina is self-obsessed, self-denigrating, but charming, too-he entertains himself by telling Valentin, in elegant detail, the plots of his favorite romantic Hollywood movies. Trapped in naïve enslavement to an idea of men as powerful and responsible and strong, he sees himself as dependent, fragile, vulnerable; he identifies with the heroines of his films. Molina is haunted by the fear that his mother (‘the only good thing that's happened to me in my life') will die of heart disease before he is released, but he is still full of siy humor, brio, delight in life. Valentin is articulate, dogmatic, filled with revolutionary fervor, suppressing in shame his occasional spasms of longing for the ordinary comforts he has renounced and for the memory of a girl he left because she loved him more than politics, a girl ‘with class.' Their guarded but growing friendship - which is all they have and which slowly transfigures them - is threatened as prison officials try to enlist one of them to betray the other. As they live through crisis, caught in the tyranny of politics over feelings, caught in a profound test of human loyalty and in the corruption of their world (our own) - what happens to them is conveyed with extraordinary grace and power.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
The latest play by Manuel Puig, South American author of KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN. A rich cantankerous old woman is tended by her newly appointed down-trodden nurse. An uneasy alliance develops between them as they come to recognize their common loneliness, resentment and despair. And the causes of their individual misery are acted out in fantasies and dreams which revive bitter memories, but also some tender ones, allowing both characters to come to terms with their private griefs, and to anticipate a hopeful future as loving friends. MYSTERY OF THE ROSE BOUQUET was first performed at the I rehouse on 24 July 1987. The cast was as follows: PATIENT: Brenda Bruce. NURSE: Genuna Jones.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
Writing at the peak of his powers, after the tremendous success of KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, Manuel Puig gives us a tour de force of paranoia and sexual obsession by taking us deep into the unconscious and conscious lives of two women. Cunningly crafted, PUBIS ANGELICAL combines elements of the espionage and suspense thriller and science fiction, as it tells, by turns, two intricately related tales. . . about a Viennese actress in the late 1930s, ‘the most beautiful woman in the world', married to a German weapons manufacturer, who possesses a secret sought by spies from Russia, Germany, America. . . and about Ana, a woman of the 1970s, convalescing in a hospital bed in Mexico City, a refugee from Argentina who is reflecting on her relationships with men.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
Like the heroine in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Leo Druscovich compulsively seeks to punish himself. He and his unwitting avenger, Gladys, are crippled sexually-by fear, by guilt, by the world they live in, the urban world of constant stress, competition, and ambition. When they fall in love, their love too is crippled. Gladys has never married. Upon graduation from art school, she leaves Buenos Aires and goes to New York City where she holds a series of office jobs, has several love affairs, is mugged and loses an eye, has a nervous breakdown, and returns to Argentina. Leo's life, too, has involved violence. He is, in fact, an undetected murderer. But until his success in the world of the arts, and his sponsorship of Gladys's career as an artist, he has been able to repress memory of that act. Now, with love and fame tantalizingly within reach, he fears that somehow he will be linked to the crime he committed twenty years earlier. Wry and profound, this impressive novel, about two tormented and unforgettable people, demands serious attention. Manuel Puig's two previous novels, BETRAYED BY RITA HAYWORTH and HEARTBREAK TANGO, received extensive critical acclaim and each was named an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year. The Buenos Aires Affair was an immediate bestseller in Argentina until banned by the police.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
TROPICAL NIGHT FAILING, Manuel Puig's last work, written just before his premature death in 1990, involves characters at the margins of society - in this case, the world of the elderly. Confined by age, and in a country not their own, Puig's characters spin a mesmerizing tale. At the heart of the story are two aged Argentine sisters, Luci and Nidia, living in self-imposed exile in Brazil. At eighty, Luci has outlived her husband, having tended him throughout a debilitating illness. Nidia has tragically lost her daughter to cancer. Together they share a life of gentle gossip against the tropical background of Rio. But through their sisterly conversations, Puig reveals the chaos and violence of the world around them. There is their neighbor, Silvia, a middle-aged psychologist forced to leave Buenos Aires during a Peronist purge; having survived a number of skewed love affairs, she becomes entangled in a bizarre sexual relationship with a grieving widower. There is Rinaldo, the smiling, handsome night watchman who wins Nidia's friendly attentions; in time she learns he is preying on her thirteen-year-old maid. Then there are the seemingly harmless construction workers across the street; by night they engage in debauched orgies with captive women. These stories become the avenues through which Luci and Nidia vicariously encounter the vicissitudes of life, isolated as they are from the mainstream. The dialogue moves from the banal to the personal and then to the most profound questions of dependency and cruelty.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, HEctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
Inverting life's hourglass by means of memory and imagination, UNDER A MANTLE OF STARS tilts past into present, wish into fulfillment, and identity into role, only to flip them back again in a shocking conflict of passion, fantasy, crime, and comedy where ‘everything is legitimate, starting with our desires.' Readers accustomed to Puig's dramatic novels will find here a play that reads like a novella. They will also find everything from voyeuristic, Oedipal sex to domestic farce in this hilariously stylized drama that pits the psychology of nostalgia against personal politics-the absurdly pathetic and terrifyingly funny world of Manuel Puig.
Manuel Puig (General Villegas, Argentina, December 28, 1932 - Cuernavaca, Mexico, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traicion de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, Hector Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical. He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires province). After unsuccessfully studying architecture in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, he began working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos Aires and later, in Italy after winning a scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter to write TV shows and movies. His career as a screenwriter never took off, however. In the 1960s, he moved back to Buenos Aires, where he penned his first major novel, a Traicion de Rita Hayworth. Because he had leftist political tendencies also foresaw a rightist wave in Argentina, Puig moved to Mexico in 1973, where he wrote his later works (including El beso de la mujer araña). Much of Puig's work can be seen as pop art. Perhaps due to his work in film and television, Puig managed to create a writing style that incorporated elements of these mediums, such as montage and the use of multiple points of view. He also made much use of popular culture (for example, soap opera) in his works. In Latin American literary histories, he is presented as a writer who belongs to the Postboom and Post-modernist schools. Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life. In 1989 Puig moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died in 1990. In the official biography, his close friend Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction writes that Puig had been in pain for a few days prior to being admitted to a hospital, where he was told that his gallbladder was inflamed and would have to be taken out. After the surgery, while Puig was recovering, he began to choke and gasp. The medical team were unable to help Puig. His lungs had filled with fluid, and he died of a heart attack at 4: 55am on July 22,1990.
The history of Brazilian literature is here told by a man who has the specialized learning, the enthusiasm, and the firsthand familiarity that alone remove any subject from the dryasdust-academic. This is a lively book: it is colorful and it is richly informative. Divided into four major sections - Backgrounds, Toward Autonomy, The Romantic Liberation, and The Modern Spirit - this book surveys the vital and human literature of the only important modern tropical culture. Readers acquainted with the works - or even the mere names - of such important Brazilian writers as Euclides da Cunha, Jorge Amado, Jose Lins do Rego, Gilberto Freyre, Erico Verissimo, and Graciliano Ramos will find those men brilliantly placed and criticized here. More, they will be informed of countless other writers and of their contributions to a body of books that has been growing for more than four centuries. Translator of great writers from Rabelais to Freyre, author of PARIS WAS OUR MISTRESS, and a corresponding member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, Samuel Putnam was perfectly equipped by background, training, and propensity to write this definitive book. He speaks with authority when he ends his history on the following words: ‘Brazil is the Land of the Future in more ways than one, and her writers are now ready to speak in the full, deep-throated accents of maturity.' Of Marvelous Journey Carleton Sprague Smith said: ‘It is by all odds the best study in English that has yet been made of writing in Brazil.'
Samuel Putnam (October 10, 1892, Rossville, IL - January 15, 1950, Lambertville, NJ) was born in Rossville, Illinois in 1892. Educated at the University of Chicago and the Sorbonne, he spent the 1920's in Paris, where he edited and contributed to various magazines. Among the fruits of this period of expatriation were biographies of Rabelais and Marguerite of Navarre, his EUROPEAN CARAVAN, and - published in 1947 - PARIS WAS OUR MISTRESS. Returning to the United States, Mr. Putnam began his extraordinary career as a translator: in the last two decades he has published nearly thirty book and play translations from the French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Among the European writers he has rendered into English are Aretino, Rabelais, Pirandello, Cocteau, Mauriac, Duhamel, Delteil, and Silone. It was in Europe that he first became particularly interested in the Portuguese language and culture. Since the early 1930's he has made a specialty of Brazilian literature. Since 1935 he has been editor of the Brazilian Literature section of the HANDBOOK OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, a position that requires him to read each year everything of literary importance published in Brazil. He has translated ‘the two most difficult books in the Portuguese language': Euclides da Cunha's OS SERTOES (REBELLION IN THE BACKLANDS) and Gilberto Freyre's CASA-GRANDE & SENZALA (THE MASTERS AND THE SLAVES), as well as Jorge Amado's remarkable novel, TERRAS DO SEM FIM (THE VIOLENT LAND). In 1946 the Cultural Relations Division of the a State Department sent Mr. Putnam to Brazil as an exchange professor. His journey was something of a triumphal tour, and as a result of it he was made a corresponding member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Shortly after his return to the United States he was awarded the Pandia Calogeras Prize for Literature. In 1947, too, the Brazilian government made him an officer of the Order of the Southern Cross.
A TRAGIC BOND - Her mother is the coldly beautiful mistress of a rich Brazilian estate. And Dora, nearly crushed by her mother's domination, is about to become a woman in one violent moment of passion. A highly acclaimed psychological novel, DORA, DORALINA immerses us in an unforgettable story of love, betrayal, and the bond between mother and daughter which not even death can break. Written with extraordinary insight, it lays bare the lives of two women, their innermost feelings of pain and fulfillment, and their fatal rivalry for a man they both want. As a young woman's torment drives her from the vast, isolated fazendas of the provinces to the wildly raucous streets of glittering Rio, there emerges a majestic portrait of a colorful, vibrant, and incomparably grand Brazil. TRANSLATED BY DOROTHY SCOTT LOOS.
Rachel de Queiroz (November 17, 1910-November 4, 2003) was a Brazilian author and journalist. She was born in Ceara, in the northeast of Brazil. Rachel de Queiroz began her career in journalism in 1927 and entered the literary world with the novel O Quinze in 1930. She further established her literary reputation with JOAO MIGUEL, CAMINA DE FEDRAS and AS TRES MARIAS. It was recently made into a film. In 1964 she became Brazil's representative to the UN and in 1977 became the first woman writer to enter the Academia Brasileira de Letras. De Queiroz won the Camões Prize (1993) and the Prêmio Jabuti. Rachel de Queiroz has also written children's literature, drama and television scripts. She is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and lives in Ceara and Rio with her husband. Rachel de Queiroz died of heart disease in her apartment at Rio de Janeiro about two weeks before her 93rd birthday.
Through this translation of As TrEs Marias the literary art of Rachel de Queiroz, one of Brazil's leading novelists, is introduced for the first time to the English-speaking world. None of her other books has been translated into English. Since the 1930's Rachel de Queiroz has been an important public figure in Brazil, noted for the emphatic expression of her humanitarian philosophy, her liberal political opinions, and her forthright views on the status of women in society. A novelist, playwright, and essayist, her voice has often been effectively raised in behalf of social reform and cultural and educational progress. Important for their intrinsic artistic merit, Rachel de Queiroz' literary works are also significant because they reveal an intense social consciousness and a deep feeling for her people, both derived from life in the arid backlands of her native Ceara. As TrEs Marias is perhaps her most widely significant work for it depends less on regional appeal than have her other novels. As the three Marias - Maria Augusta and her two friends, Maria Jose and Maria Gloria - approach womanhood, they are forced into an unfamiliar world. The narrator, Maria Augusta, struggles with her innocence, challenges society, succumbs to her rebellious desire for freedom, and is disillusioned by her experiences. As she and her two friends become acquainted with aspects of life which were hidden from them at home arid only partially revealed at school, they are confronted with the complexities that accompany experience. The wish to satisfy a ‘virgin's curiosity' is coupled with fear and hesitancy. The smallest compromise results in conflict and tension. Introspection and judgment, however, supplant the child's naive spontaneity, and the girls slowly gain insight into the nature of their womanliness. The story of Maria Augusta and her friends is warm and personal, a story with universal implications. Through his personal acquaintance with the author, his knowledge of her country, and his mastery of the Portuguese language, Fred P. Ellison, the translator, was enabled to capture the author's graceful and simple style and has successfully retained the perspective of an idealistic and gradually maturing girl.
Rachel de Queiroz (November 17, 1910-November 4, 2003) was a Brazilian author and journalist. She was born in Ceara, in the northeast of Brazil. Rachel de Queiroz began her career in journalism in 1927 and entered the literary world with the novel O Quinze in 1930. She further established her literary reputation with JOAO MIGUEL, CAMINA DE FEDRAS and AS TRES MARIAS. It was recently made into a film. In 1964 she became Brazil's representative to the UN and in 1977 became the first woman writer to enter the Academia Brasileira de Letras. De Queiroz won the Camões Prize (1993) and the Prêmio Jabuti. Rachel de Queiroz has also written children's literature, drama and television scripts. She is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and lives in Ceara and Rio with her husband. Rachel de Queiroz died of heart disease in her apartment at Rio de Janeiro about two weeks before her 93rd birthday. Over the past fifteen years Fred P. Ellison has been interested in Rachel de Queiroz' works and has corresponded with her. She was included in his study of the novelists of Brazil's northeast, BRAZIL'S NEW NOVEL: FOUR NORTHEASTERN MASTERS, published in 1954. In 1962, under the auspices of the Organization of American States, he sojourned in Rio de Janeiro, where he researched in contemporary Brazilian literature. At this time he visited the convent school pictured in the novel and met the prototypes of some of its characters. Mr. Ellison, whose special field is Brazilian and Spanish-American literature, taught at the University of Illinois for nine years. Since 1961 he has been in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Texas.
Nothing is more exciting than the appearance of a new writer on the scene, opening new vistas on to a previously untraveled terrain. Roberto Quesada, the youngest and freshest new voice from Latin America, has been hailed by Latin American critics as ‘one of our most talented and original new writers' (Ram(r) Luis Acevedo) and ‘among the most important Latin American writers' (German ~Jargasj A novel of Central America, THE SHIPS describes the occasional triumphs of daily life, usually in the form of silent laughter, in a world of near poverty It charts the progress of a young writer named Guillermo in the Honduran coastal town of La Ceiba. His nights alternate between falling deeply in love and loveless sexual escapades. His days are spent harvesting pineapples under a hot sun in the employ of the Standard Fruit Company In the background there is a workers' strike at the plantation, a dance in La Ceiba, radio reports of the revolution going on in Nicaragua only a few hours' drive south, and the drone of American helicopters overhead. Quesada's world is topsy-turvy only in the sense that here human values of love and friendship dwarf the ostensibly much-larger corporate, military and geopolitical issues. . . ‘Roberto Quesada is a lively and gifted writer full of amusing and thought-provoking ideas' - Kurt Vonnegut . . . ‘There is no doubt that Roberto Quesada has entered the front ranks of Central American literature, He shows it with bold ideas, vital magic, and an unerring human sensibility We welcome THE SHIPS to these Southern seas . . . ‘ - Manlio Argueta, author of ONE DAY OF LIFE . . . ‘THE SHIPS is one of the great surprises of contemporary Latin American literature.' - Andrew Hurley, professor of Latin American Literature, University of Puerto Rico.
Roberto Quesada was born on April 17, 1962 in Honduras, where he now lives, His collection of stories, El Desertor, was published in Spanish in 1985. It was followed in 1988 by the Spanish-language edition of THE SHIPS (Los barcos). THE SHIPS is his first book to appear in English.
These concise, fast-paced stories speak of a reality so intense that it borders on hallucination, of the courage and resilience of people living through an apocalypse, of an arbitrary world in which fate is decided in seconds and irony is for survivors. THE BETTER TO SEE YOU is a powerful collection of short stories about contemporary El Salvador. Sixteen distinct voices from widely different backgrounds within Salvadoran society reflect the human condition during the most terrible and prolonged crisis in the country's history. The distinguished Salvadoran writer and poet, Alfonso Quijada Urias, provides illuminating insight into the vortex of revolutionary idealism and merciless repression in his native land. Edited by Gena K. Gorrell. CONTENTS: In the Shadow of an Old Woman in Flower; Downhill Night; Mother Courage; Atlantis; The Last Game; A Trivial Story; The Nahual; Know What I'm Sayin'?; Juan Trimpot; Que Hi?; The Better to See You; Sweet Home; And Proudly Proclaim Ourselves Her Sons; MyJose; Short Fiction from El Salvador; To Tell the Story.
Alfonso Quijada Urías, born December 8, 1940 (age 74), is a Salvadoran poet and an author. Urías has published various poems such as the anthology 'De aquí en adelante' (San Salvador), in conjunction with the poets Jose Roberto Cea, Manlio Argueta, Tirso Canales and Roberto Armijo. Many of his works deal with the effects of war and the realities of urban life in Central America. Urías was born in Quezaltepeque, in the La Libertad Department of El Salvador. In 1962, he won the second prize in the III Certamen Cultural de la Asociacion de Estudiantes de Humanidades de la Universidad de El Salvador. In 1963, he won the third prize from the Juegos Florales de Zacatecoluca. In 1967, he won the first prize for poetry at the Juegos Florales de Quetzaltenango in Guatemala. In 1971 he won first prize at the Bienal de Poesía Latinoamericana in Panama. In 1981, he moved to Nicaragua, and later to Mexico, where he worked as a journalist. In 2003, he won the Cervantes prize known as the 'Premio de Poesía Instituto Cervantes'.
The narrator of this extraordinary novel about love and war is a young Argentine lieutenant, weary, cold, trapped in the battle for the Falkland Islands. Enrique writes to the English girl he met and loved in Paris. He tells her of his feelings and experiences and of his life in middle-class Buenos Aires under a repressive regime-and through it all of his love for her. Enrique writes while waiting for the attack by an enemy that he had been brought up to admire, knowing that his letter may never be delivered. It is his act of sanity in the endless, fear-filled days and nights of war, a memoir of a love affair shadowed by political turbulence in Enrique's homeland where disappearances and detentions were daily events. In the brief space of this novel, the author paints a moving, truthful picture of deep emotions and of a troubled land. It is a touching story, a quiet, powerful account of a man and a woman trapped by the events of the larger world.
Eduardo Quiroga is a pseudonym for an Argentine writer living in Paris.
Tales of horror, madness, and death, tales of fantasy and morality: these are the works of South American storyteller Horacio Quiroga. Author of some 200 pieces of fiction that have been compared to the works of Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, and Edgar Allan Poe, Quiroga experienced a life that surpassed in morbidity and horror many of the inventions of his fevered mind. THE DECAPITATED CHICKEN AND OTHER STORIES is the first representative collection in English of his tales, and it reflects the broad variety of forms that his stories assumed. Quiroga was obsessed with death, a legacy of the violence of his own life. His stories are infused with death, too, but they span a wide range of short fiction genres: jungle tale, Gothic horror story, morality tale, and psychological study. And, in spite of his preoccupation, Quiroga was an astute observer of the diversity of life and the problems of living. Many of his stories are set in the Misiones district of northern Argentina, the jungle where he spent much of his life; but his tales possess a universality that elevates them above the work of a regional writer. The stories in this volume have been selected to provide an overview of the scope of Horacio Quiroga's fiction and to show the versatility and skill that have made him a classic Spanish American writer. The Quiroga stories in this book are available in several Spanish editions. They were taken from the Biblioteca Rodo Series (Horacio Quiroga, Cuentos, Biblioteca Rodo Series, Montevideo, 1937-1945), in which the stories are located as follows: SUNSTROKE - La insolacion, vol. 2; THE PURSUED - Los perseguidos, vol. 7; THE DECAPITATED CHICKEN - La gallina degollada, vol. 1; DRIFTING - A la deriva, vol. 1; A SLAP IN THE FACE - Una bofetada, vol. 1; IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT - En la noche, vol. 3; JUAN DARIEN - Juan Darien, vol. 4; THE DEAD MAN - El hombre muerto, vol. 2; ANACONDA - Anaconda, vol. 3; THE INCENSE TREE ROOF - El techo de incienso, vol. 5; THE SON - El hijo, vol.1. THE FEATHER PILLOW (El almohadon de pluma) was taken from Quiroga's Sus mejores cuentos, with introduction and notes by John A. Crow (Mexico City: Editorial Cultura, 1943).
Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza (31 December 1878 - 19 February 1937) was an Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer. He wrote stories which, in their jungle settings, use the supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of man and animal to survive. He also excelled in portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states. His influence can be seen in the Latin American magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez and the postmodern surrealism of Julio Cortázar. Margaret Sayers Peden, who selected and translated the tales, is professor of Spanish and chairman of the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Missouri. She received her A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Missouri, Columbia, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1966. She has translated and provided critical introductions for a novel and several plays, including THE NORTHER and THE GOLDEN THREAD AND OTHER PLAYS by Emilio Carballido. She is also translator, with Lysander Kemp, of The Siren and the Seashell and Other Essays on Poets and Poetry by Octavio Paz.
Tales of horror, madness, and death, tales of fantasy and morality: these are the works of South American storyteller Horacio Quiroga. Author of some 200 pieces of fiction that have been compared to the works of Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, and Edgar Allan Poe, Quiroga experienced a life that surpassed in morbidity and horror many of the inventions of his fevered mind. THE DECAPITATED CHICKEN AND OTHER STORIES is the first representative collection in English of his tales, and it reflects the broad variety of forms that his stories assumed. Quiroga was obsessed with death, a legacy of the violence of his own life. His stories are infused with death, too, but they span a wide range of short fiction genres: jungle tale, Gothic horror story, morality tale, and psychological study. And, in spite of his preoccupation, Quiroga was an astute observer of the diversity of life and the problems of living. Many of his stories are set in the Misiones district of northern Argentina, the jungle where he spent much of his life; but his tales possess a universality that elevates them above the work of a regional writer. The stories in this volume have been selected to provide an overview of the scope of Horacio Quiroga's fiction and to show the versatility and skill that have made him a classic Spanish American writer. The Quiroga stories in this book are available in several Spanish editions. They were taken from the Biblioteca Rodo Series (Horacio Quiroga, Cuentos, Biblioteca Rodo Series, Montevideo, 1937-1945), in which the stories are located as follows: SUNSTROKE - La insolacion, vol. 2; THE PURSUED - Los perseguidos, vol. 7; THE DECAPITATED CHICKEN - La gallina degollada, vol. 1; DRIFTING - A la deriva, vol. 1; A SLAP IN THE FACE - Una bofetada, vol. 1; IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT - En la noche, vol. 3; JUAN DARIEN - Juan Darien, vol. 4; THE DEAD MAN - El hombre muerto, vol. 2; ANACONDA - Anaconda, vol. 3; THE INCENSE TREE ROOF - El techo de incienso, vol. 5; THE SON - El hijo, vol.1. THE FEATHER PILLOW (El almohadon de pluma) was taken from Quiroga's Sus mejores cuentos, with introduction and notes by John A. Crow (Mexico City: Editorial Cultura, 1943).
Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza (31 December 1878 - 19 February 1937) was an Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer. He wrote stories which, in their jungle settings, use the supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of man and animal to survive. He also excelled in portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states. His influence can be seen in the Latin American magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez and the postmodern surrealism of Julio Cortázar. Margaret Sayers Peden, who selected and translated the tales, is professor of Spanish and chairman of the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Missouri. She received her A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Missouri, Columbia, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1966. She has translated and provided critical introductions for a novel and several plays, including THE NORTHER and THE GOLDEN THREAD AND OTHER PLAYS by Emilio Carballido. She is also translator, with Lysander Kemp, of The Siren and the Seashell and Other Essays on Poets and Poetry by Octavio Paz.
At the turn of the century the subtropical territory of Misiones, in northeastern Argentina, was a frontier region, not only by virtue of its location between Brazil to the east and north and Paraguay to the west, but also, and especially, because it was a land of pioneers, somewhat like Alaska and the Yukon at the same moment in the history of North America. It was populated by aboriginal natives, mestizos, blacks, and whites; by Argentines, Brazilians, Paraguayans, and foreigners from abroad; by speakers of Guarani, of Spanish and Portuguese, and of a number of later immigrant languages from Europe. The zone was-and remains-important for its forest products, and above all its yerbales or plantations of yerba mate, the green tea especially favored in Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, and southern Brazil. Such plantations were first established by the Jesuits in the early seventeenth century, as a major economic venture of their reducciones (collective settlements) of Guarani natives, which flourished till the company was expelled from the Spanish dominions in 1767, It is of course the missions they founded which gave Misiones its name. This is the setting of almost all of the most celebrated stories of Horacio Quiroga, including those selected for the present volume-excepting the lead story, ‘Beasts in Collusion,' which is set in the Brazilian Mato Grosso to the north. They are tales of risk and danger, suffering, disease, horror, and death; but also of courage and dignity, hard work, and human endurance in the face of hostile nature and the frequent brutality of men. In most of the stories translated here (all but two appearing in English for the first time) there are piquant touches of humor and bemused irony as well. The title, THE EXILES AND OTHER STORIES, echoes that of one of Quiroga's own volumes, Los desterrados (1926), often said to be his best book. Included here are five stories from that collection, seven written earlier (1998-1923), and one subsequently (1929). This latest tale, ‘The Forerunners,' picks up a theme introduced in the title story, ‘The Exiles,' and is one of five that present characters who appear in more than one story. All thirteen are similar in inspiration, and may be said to constitute a kind of loosely structured, episodic novel-along with some of those published in THE DECAPITATED CHICKEN AND OTHER STORIES (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976). Quiroga is probably the most important precursor of the so-called ‘Boom' in Latin American fiction, which coincided, roughly, with the third quarter of the twentieth century. In recent years the names of Borges, Carpentier, Cortazar, Sábato, Bioy Casares, Onetti, Donoso, Fuentes, Rulfo, Vargas Llosa, Cabrera Infante, Nobel prizewinners Miguel Angel Asturias and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and a number of others, have become internationally familiar, and justifiably so. But they did not emerge from the void; the ground had been prepared, by Quiroga and some of his contemporaries, who were able to shed much of the artificiality, inflated rhetoric, and polemical tendentiousness, as well as many of the normative conventions (largely derived from European literature) of early twentieth-century fiction in Latin America. Their work became less shallow, less programmatic, less extraliterary in purpose. Quiroga in particular began to treat the more deep-seated, more central aspects of human experience-and to do so concretely, in strictly American terms. That he succeeded is shown most obviously by the fact that he is still widely read and appreciated, not only within but also beyond the Spanish-speaking world-indeed that his reputation has grown, his work now receiving increased attention from critics and literary historians. CONTENTS: Introduction; Translator's Note; Beasts in Collusion; The Contract Laborers; The Log-Fishermen; The YaciyaterE; The Charcoal-Makers; The Wilderness; A Workingman; The Exiles; Van-Houten; Tacuara-Mansion; The Darkroom; The Orange-Distillers; The Forerunners; Map of Misiones; List of Place Names; A Quiroga Chronology. . The Spanish titles of the stories translated for this book. Their first appearances, which are indicated by the dates in square brackets. The first story and the last were never collected by the author.1. Las fleras complices [1908]; 2. Los mensü [1914]; 3. Los pescadores de vigas [1913]; 4. El yaciyaterè [1917]; 5. Los fabricantes de carbon [1918]; 6. El desierto [1923]; 7. Un peon [1918]; 8. Los desterrados [1925]; 9. Van-Houten [1919]; 10.Tacuara-Mansion [1920]; 11.La cámara oscura [1920]; 12.Los destiladores de naranja [1923]; 13. Los precursores [1929].
Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza (31 December 1878 - 19 February 1937) was an Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer. He wrote stories which, in their jungle settings, use the supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of man and animal to survive. He also excelled in portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states. His influence can be seen in the Latin American magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez and the postmodern surrealism of Julio Cortázar. Horacio Quiroga was born in 1878 as the sixth child and second son of Prudencio Quiroga and Pastora Forteza, a middle-class family. At the time of his birth, his father worked for 18 years as head of the Vice-Consulate Argentine Break. Before Quiroga was two and a half months old, on March 14 of 1879 his father accidentally fired a gun he carried in his hand and died. Quiroga was baptized just about three months later in the parish of his birth town. Quiroga finished school in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. During this time, he worked in a repair shop and it was under the influence of the owner's son that he became interested in philosophy. He described the man as a, 'frank and passionate soldier of materialistic philosophy.' When he was 22, Quiroga put out his poetic feelers and discovered the poetry of Leopoldo Lugones and Edgar Allan Poe and would become a personal friend of the former. The discovery of these authors moved him to dabble in various schools and styles: post-romanticism, Symbolism and modernism. Armed with this background, he soon began to publish his poems in his hometown. As he continued studying, working with publications and Reform Magazine he improved his style and became well-known. During a carnival of 1898, the young poet met his first love, a girl named Mary Esther Jurkovski, who would inspire two of his most important works: The Slaughter (1920) and A Season of Love. Sadly, the misunderstandings caused by the parents of the young girl, who disapproved of the relationship because Quiroga wasn't Jewish, reached a crisis and the parents separated them. In his hometown he founded a magazine called Revista de Salto (1899). In the same year, his stepfather committed suicide by shooting himself and Quiroga found the body. With the money he received as inheritance he went on a four month trip to Paris. The trip was a failure and he came back sad and discouraged. Upon returning to his country, Quiroga gathered his friends Federico Ferrando, Alberto Brignole, July Jaureche, Fernandez Saldaña, Jose Hasd and Asdrubal Delgado, and with them founded the 'Consistorio del Gay Saber' (The Consistory of The Gay Science), a literary laboratory for their experimental writing where they found new ways to express themselves and their modernist goals. In 1901, Quiroga published his first book, Los Arrecifes de Coral ('Coral Reefs'), but this achievement was overshadowed by the deaths of his two brothers, Prudencio and Pastora, who were victims of typhoid fever in Chaco. The fateful year of 1901 still held another horrible surprise for the writer: his friend Federico Ferrando, had received bad reviews from Germain Papini, a Montevideo journalist, and challenged him to a duel. Quiroga, worried about the safety of Ferrando, offered to check and clean the gun that was to be used. Unexpectedly, while inspecting the weapon, he accidentally fired off a shot that hit Ferrando in the mouth, killing him instantly. When the police arrived, Quiroga was arrested, interrogated and transferred to a correctional prison. The police investigated the unfortunate circumstances of the homicide and deemed the incident accidental, releasing Quiroga after four days of detention. He was eventually exonerated. Racked with grief and guilt over the death of his beloved friend, Quiroga dissolved 'The Consistory' and moved from Uruguay to Argentina. He crossed the Rio de la Plata in 1902 and went to live with Mary, one of his sisters. In Buenos Aires, the artist reached professional maturity, which would reach its climax during his stays in the jungle. In addition, his sister introduced him to pedagogy, and found him work as a teacher under contract on the board of examination for the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires. He was appointed professor of Castilian in the British School of Buenos Aires in March 1903. He wrote the story el hijo. In June of that year, Quiroga, already an experienced photographer, would follow Leopoldo Lugones on an expedition, funded by the Ministry of Education, in which the famous Argentine poet planned to investigate some ruins of Jesuit missions in the province. The jungle missionary left a profound impression on Quiroga that marked his life forever: he spent six months and the last of his inheritance (seven thousand pesos) on some land for cotton in Chaco, located seven kilometers from Resistance, next to the Saladito River. The project failed, due to problems with his aboriginal workers, but Quiroga's life was enriched by experiencing life as a country man for the first time. His narrative benefited from his new knowledge of country people and rural culture; this permanently changed his style. Upon returning to Buenos Aires after his failed experience in the Chaco, Quiroga embraced the short story with passion and energy. In 1904 he published a book of stories called The Crime of Another, which was heavily influenced by the style of Edgar Allan Poe. Quiroga did not mind these early comparisons with Poe, and until the end of his life he would often say that Poe was his first and principal teacher. Quiroga worked for the next two years on a multitude of stories, many were about rural terror, but others were delightful stories for children. During this time he wrote the magnificent horror story, 'The Feather Pillow'. It was published in 1907 by a famous magazine in Argentina, Caras y Caretas ('Faces and Masks'), which went on to publish eight of his other stories that year. Shortly after it was published, Quiroga became famous and his writings were eagerly sought by thousands of readers. In 1906 Quiroga decided to return to his beloved jungle. Taking advantage of the fact that the government wanted the land to be used, Quiroga bought a farm (with Vincent Gozalbo) of 185 hectares in the province of Misiones, on the banks of the Upper Parana, and began making preparations, while teaching Castilian and Literature nearby. He moved in during the winter of 1908. Quiroga fell in love with one of his teenage students, Ana Maria Cires, to whom he would dedicate his first novel, entitled, History of a Troubled Love. Quiroga insisted on the relationship despite the opposition of her parents, eventually garnering their permission to marry her and take her to live in the jungle with him. Quiroga's parents-in-law were concerned about the risks of living in Misiones, a wild region, and that is why they decided to join their daughter and son-in-law, and live close by in order to help them. So, Ana Maria's parents and a friend of her mother, moved into a house near Quiroga. In 1911, Ana Maria gave birth to the couple's first child, at their home in the jungle; they named her Egle Quiroga. During the same year the writer began farming in partnership with his friend, fellow Uruguayan, Vicente Gozalbo, and was also appointed Justice of the Peace in the Civil Registry of San Ignacio. This job was t the best fit for Quiroga who, forgetful, disorganized and careless, took to the habit of jotting down deaths, marriages and births on small pieces of paper and 'archived' them in a cookie tin. Later, a character of one of his stories was given a similar trait. The following year Ana Maria gave birth to a son, named Darius. Quiroga decided, just as the children were learning to walk, that he would personally take care of their education. Stern and dictatorial, Quiroga demanded that every little detail was done according to his requirements. From a young age, his children got used to the mountains and jungle. Quiroga exposed them to danger (risk-free danger) so that they would be able to cope alone and overcome any situation. He even went as far as to leave them alone one night in the jungle, or another time made them sit on the edge of a cliff with their legs dangling in the void. The daughter learned to breed wild animals and the son to use the shotgun, ride a bike and sail alone in a canoe. Quiroga's children never refused to be part of these experiences and, actually, enjoyed them. Their mother, however, was terrified and exasperated. Between 1912 and 1915 the writer, who already had experience as a cotton farmer and herbalist, undertook a bold pursuit to increase the farming and maximize the natural resources of their lands. He began to distill oranges, produce coal and resins, as well as, many other similar activities. Meanwhile, he raised livestock, domesticated wild animals, hunted and fished. Literature continued to be the peak of his life: in the journal Fray Mocho de Buenos Aires Quiroga published numerous stories, many set in the jungle and populated by characters so naturalistic that they seemed real. But Quiroga's wife was not happy: although she had become well adapted to life in the jungle the relationship between her and her husband was fraught with discord. Clashes between the couple occurred frequently and although the cause was usually trivial their excessive arguments became daily setbacks. These incidences, accentuated by Quiroga's volatile nature, excacerbated his wife so greatly that she became severely depressed. So Ana Maria would become a new tragedy in Quiroga's life when, after a violent fight with the writer, she ingested a fatal dose of 'sublimado' or Mercury(II) chloride. Unfortunately, the poison did not kill her instantly; instead she was forced to endure terrible agony for eight days before finally dying in her husband's arms on December 14, 1915. The tragedy of Ana Maria's painful death left Quiroga and his two children, five-year-old Eglé and four-year-old Darío, plunged into dark despair. After this tragedy, Quiroga quickly left for Buenos Aires with his children where he became an Under-Secretary General Accountant in the Uruguayan Consulat, thanks to the efforts of some of his friends who wanted to help. Throughout the year 1917 Quiroga lived in a basement with his children on Avenue Canning, alternating his diplomatic work with setting up a home office and working on many stories, which were being published in prestigious magazines. Quiroga collected most of the stories in several books, the first was Tales of Love, Madness and Death (1917). Manuel Galvez, owner of a publishing firm, had suggested that he write it and the volume immediately became a huge success with audiences and critics, consolidating Quiroga as the true master of the Latin American short story. The following year he settled in a small apartment on Calle Agüero, while he published Jungle Tales (1918, a collection of children's stories featuring animals and set in the Misiones rainforest). Quiroga dedicated this book to his children, who accompanied him during that rough period of poverty in the damp basement. 1919 was a good year for Quiroga, with two major promotions in the consular ranks and the publication of his new book of stories, The Wild. The next year, following the idea of 'The Consistory', Quiroga founded the Anaconda Association, a group of intellectuals involved in cultural activities in Argentina and Uruguay. His only play, The Slaughtered, was published in 1920 and was released in 1921, when Anaconda was released (another book of short stories). An important Argentine newspaper, La Nación (The Nation), also began to publish his stories, which by now already enjoyed impressive popularity. Between 1922 and 1924, Quiroga served as secretary of a cultural embassy to Brazil and he published his new book: The Desert (stories). For a while the writer was devoted to film criticism, taking charge of the magazine section of 'Atlantis, The Home and The Nation'. He also wrote the screenplay for a feature film (The Florida Raft) that was never filmed. Shortly thereafter, was invited to form a School of Cinematography, by Russian investors, but it was unsuccessful. After Quiroga returned to Misiones. He was in love again, this time with a 22-year-old Ana Maria Palacio. He tried to persuade her parents to let her go to live in the jungle with him. The constant refusal of the parents and the consequent failure of love inspired the theme of his second novel, Past love (published later, in 1929). The novel contains autobiographical elements of the strategies he used himself to get the girl, like, leaving messages in a hollowed branch, sending letters written in code and trying to dig a long tunnel to her room with thoughts of kidnap. Finally the parents grew tired of Quiroga's attempts and took her away so he was forced to renounce his love. In the workshop in his home where he would build a boat baptized Gaviota. His home was on the water and he used the boat to go from San Ignacio downriver to Buenos Aires and on numerous river expeditions. In early 1926, Quiroga returned to Buenos Aires and rented a villa in a suburban area. At the very apex of his popularity, a major publisher honored him, along with other literary figures of the time such as Arturo Capdevila, Baldomero Fernandez Moreno, Benito Lynch, Juana de Ibarbourou, A lover of classical music, Quiroga came often to the concerts of the Wagner Association. He also tirelessly read technical texts, manuals on mechanics, and books on arts and physics. In 1927, Quiroga decided to raise and domesticate wild animals, while publishing his new book of short stories, Exiles. But the amorous artist had already set his eyes on what would be his last and final love: Maria Elena Bravo, a classmate of his daughter Egle, who married him that year, not even 20 years old (He was 49). In 1932 Quiroga last settled in Misiones, where he would retire, with his wife and third daughter (Maria Elena, called Pitoca ', who was born in 1928). To do this, he got a decree transferring his consular office to a nearby city. He was devoted to living quietly in the jungle with his wife and daughter. But due to a change of government, his services were declined and he was expelled from the consulate. To exacerbate Quiroga's problems, his wife did not like living in the jungle, so fighting and violent discussions became a daily activity. In this time of frustration and pain he published a collection of short stories titled Beyond (1935). From his interest in the work of Munthe and Ibsen, Quiroga began reading new authors and styles, and began planning his autobiography. In 1935 Quiroga began to experience uncomfortable symptoms, apparently related to prostatitis or other prostate disease. With the pain intensifying and difficulty urinating, his wife managed to convince him to go to Posadas, where he was diagnosed with prostate hypertrophy. But the problems continued for the Quiroga family: his wife and daughter left him permanently, leaving him alone and sick in the jungle. They went back to Buenos Aires, and the writer's spirits fell completely in the face of this serious loss. When he could not stand the disease anymore, Quiroga traveled to Buenos Aires for treatment. In 1937, an exploratory surgery revealed that he suffered from an advanced case of prostate cancer, untreatable and inoperable. Maria Elena and his large group of friends came to comfort him. When Quiroga was in the emergency ward, he had learned that a patient was shut up in the basement with hideous deformities similar to those of the infamous English Joseph Merrick (the 'Elephant Man'). Taking pity, Quiroga demanded that the patient, named Vicent Batistessa, be released from confinement and moved into his room. As expected, Batistessa befriended and paid eternal gratitude to the great storyteller. Feeling desperate about his present suffering and realizing that his life was over, he told Batistessa his plan to shorten his suffering and Batistessa promised to help. That morning (February 19, 1937) in the presence of his friend, Horacio Quiroga drank a glass of cyanide that killed him within minutes of unbearable pain. His body was buried in the grounds of the Casa del Teatro de la Sociedad Argentina de Escritores (SADE), of which he was the founder and vice president, though, his remains were later repatriated to his homeland. Follower of the modernist school founded by Rubén Darío and being an obsessive reader of Edgar Allan Poe and Guy de Maupassant, Quiroga was attracted to topics covering the most intriguing aspects of nature, often tinged with horror, disease, and suffering for human beings. Many of his stories belong to this movement, embodied in his work Tales of Love, Madness and Death. Quiroga was also inspired by British writer Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book), which is shown in his own Jungle Tales, a delightful exercise in fantasy divided into several stories featuring animals. His Ten Rules for the Perfect Storyteller, dedicated to young writers, provides certain contradictions in his own work. While the Decalogue touts economic and precise style, using few adjectives, natural and simple wording, and clarity of expression, in many of his own stories Quiroga did not follow his own precepts, using ornate language, with plenty of adjectives and at times ostentatious vocabulary. As he further developed his particular style, Quiroga evolved into realistic portraits (often anguished and desperate) of the wild nature around him in Misiones: the jungle, the river, wildlife, climate, and terrain make up the scaffolding and scenery in which his characters move, suffer, and often die. Especially in his stories, Quiroga describes the tragedy that haunts the miserable rural workers in the region, the dangers and sufferings to which they are exposed, and how this existential pain is perpetuated to succeeding generations. He also experimented with many subjects considered taboo in the society of the early twentieth century. In his first book, Coral Reefs, consisting of 18 poems, 30 pages of poetic prose, and four stories, Quiroga shows his immaturity and adolescent confusion. On the other hand, he shows a glimpse of the modernist style and naturalistic elements that would come to characterize his later work. His two novels: History of a Troubled Love and Past Love deal with the same theme that haunted the author in his personal life: love affairs between older men and teenage girls. In the first novel Quiroga divided the action into three parts. In the first, a nine-year-old girl falls in love with an older man. In the second part, it is eight years later, and the man, who had noticed her affection, begins to woo her. The third part is the present tense of the novel, in which it has been ten years since the young girl left the man. In Past Love history repeats itself: a grown man returns to a place after years of absence and falls for a young woman he had loved as a child. Knowing the personal history of Quiroga, the two novels feature some autobiographical components. For example, the protagonist in History of a Trouble Love is named Egle (the name of Quiroga's daughter, whose classmate he later married). Also, in these novels there is a great deal of emphasis on the opposition of the girls' parents, rejection that Quiroga had accepted as part of his life and that he always had to deal with. The critics never liked his novels and called his only play, The Slaughtered, 'a mistake.' They considered his short stories to be his most transcendent works, and some have credited them with stimulaing all Latin American short stories after him. This makes sense since Quiroga was the first to be concerned about the technical aspects of the short story, tirelessly honing his style (for which he always returns to the same subjects) to reach near-perfection in his last works. Though clearly influenced by modernism, he gradually begins to turn the decadent Uruguayan language to describing the natural surroundings with meticulous precision. But he makes it clear that Nature's relationship with man is always one of conflict. Loss, injury, misery, failures, starvation, death, and animal attacks plague Quiroga's human characters. Nature is hostile, and it almost always wins. Quiroga's morbid obsession with torment and death is much more easily accepted by the characters than by the reader: in the narrative technique the author uses, he presents players accustomed to risk and danger, playing by clear and specific rules. They know not to make mistakes because the forest is unforgiving, and failure often means death. Nature is blind but fair, and the attacks on the farmer or fisherman (a swarm of angry bees, an alligator, a bloodsucking parasite, etc.) are simply obstacles in a horrible game in which Man tries to snatch property or natural resources (reflecting Quiroga's efforts to in life), and Nature absolutely refuses to let go, an unequal struggle that usually ends with the human loss, dementia, death, or simply disappointment. Sensitive, excitable, given to impossible love, thwarted in his commercial enterprises but still highly creative, Quiroga waded through his tragic life and suffered through nature to construct, with the eyes of a careful observer, narrative work that critics considered 'autobiographical poetry'. Perhaps it is this 'internal realism' or the 'organic' nature of his writing that created the irresistible draw that Quiroga continues to have on readers.
The long-awaited memoir and meditation on the art of translating by the most acclaimed American translator of Latin American literature. In IF THIS BE TREASON : TRANSLATION AND ITS DYSCONTENTS Rabassa offers a cool-headed and humorous defense of translation, laying out his views on the art of the craft. Anecdotal, and always illuminating, IF THIS BE TREASON traces Rabassa's career, from his boyhood on a New Hampshire farm, his school days ‘collecting' languages, the two-and-a-half years he spent overseas during WWII, his travels, until one day ‘I signed a contract to do my first translation of a long work for a commercial publisher.' Rabassa concludes with his ‘rap sheet,' a consideration of the various authors and the over 40 works he has translated. This long-awaited memoir is a joy to read, an instrumental guide to translating, and a look at the life of one of its great practitioners.
Gregory Rabassa (born 9 March 1922) is a prominent literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese to English. Rabassa was born in Yonkers, New York, U.S., into a family headed by a Cuban EmigrE. After serving during World War II as an OSS cryptographer and receiving a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth, Rabassa enrolled as a graduate student at Columbia University, where he eventually earned a doctorate. He taught at Columbia for over two decades before accepting a position at Queens College, City University of New York. He works primarily in Spanish and Portuguese. He has produced English-language versions of the works of several major Latin American novelists, including Julio Cortázar, Jorge Amado and Gabriel García Márquez. On the advice of Cortázar, García Márquez waited three years for Rabassa's schedule to become open so that he could translate One Hundred Years of Solitude. He later declared Rabassa's translation to be superior to his own Spanish original. He received the PEN Translation Prize in 1977 and the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in 1982. Rabassa was honored with the Gregory Kolovakos Award from PEN American Center for the expansion of Hispanic Literature to an English-language audience in 2001. Rabassa had a particularly close and productive working relation with Cortázar, with whom he shared lifelong passions for jazz and wordplay. For his version of Cortázar's novel, Hopscotch, Rabassa split the inaugural U.S. National Book Award in category Translation. Rabassa formerly taught at Queens College, from which he retired as Distinguished Professor Emeritus. In 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Rabassa has translated without reading the book beforehand, working as he goes. He has written a memoir detailing his experiences as a translator, If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, A Memoir, a Los Angeles Times 'Favorite Book of the Year' for 2005. Rabassa received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir for If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents in 2006.
Sergio Ramirez is Nicaragua's leading prose writer, now also Vice President of his country. To Bury Our Fathers, his panoramic novel of Nicaraguan history, recently introduced him to audiences in North America and Britain and won him critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Now Readers International presents the first English translation of Dr Ramirez' important collection Charles Atlas Also Dies along with new works written in 1985 when - after a revolution and a pause of 10 years - the author returned to literature. In these sardonic and moving tales, Sergio Ramirez explores the comic yet painful condition of Latin America, locked into the pursuit of a cruelly elusive and banal "yanqui" culture. In "Charles Atlas Also Dies" a young Nicaraguan becomes a devoted follower of the American bodybuilder, only to discover that age and infirmity have consumed his cult hero. In ' 'To Jackie with All Our Heart" the pretensions of Managua's tiny country club set lead them into a monstrous hoax, In ' 'Saint Nikolaus" a failed Venezuelan student, scratching a living in Berlin, hires out as San- ta Claus to a rich West German _family - only to find himself the target of tensions and jealousies beyond his control. Of To Bury Our Fathers the critics say: "Very funny, very human, a must for any student of Latin America" - PUNCH. "Read slowly and carefully in order to appreciate and absorb all its nuances. Dr Ramirez is as important as the substantial literary merits of his book" - NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW. To Bury Our Fathers and his Stories confirm Sergio Ramirez as a major literary voice from Latin America today.
Sergio Ramírez Mercado (born August 5, 1942 in Masatepe, Nicaragua) is a Nicaraguan writer and intellectual who served in the leftist Government Junta of National Reconstruction and as Vice President of the country 1985-1990 under the presidency of Daniel Ortega. Born in Masatepe in 1942, he published his first book, Cuentos, in 1963. He graduated from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua of Leon in 1964, where he obtained the Gold Medal for being the best student. In 1977 Ramírez became head of the 'Group of Twelve', a group of prominent intellectuals, priests, businesspeople, and members of civil society who publicly stated their support for the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) in its struggle to topple the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. With the triumph of the Revolution in 1979, he became part of the Junta of the Government of National Reconstruction, where he presided over the National Council of Education. He was elected vice-president of Nicaragua in 1984 and was sworn in 1985. Though the FSLN lost power to the UNO coalition headed by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in 1990, Ramírez continued to serve as the leader of the Sandinista block in the National Assembly until 1995, when he founded the Movimiento de Renovacion Sandinista (MRS) because of his differences with other leaders of the FSLN, such as former president Daniel Ortega, on issues of democratic reform. He has since become retrospectively critical of certain Sandinista policies that he views as having turned the country against the FSLN. He made an unsuccessful bid for president on the MRS ticket in 1996. Since then, Ramírez has retired definitively from politics. He currently lives in Managua, Nicaragua. He married his wife, Gertrudis 'Tulita' Guerrero Mayorga, in 1964. He has three children: Sergio, Maria, and Dorel and 6 Grandchildren: Elianne, Carlos Fernando, Camila, Alejandro, Luciana and Andres. Even during his years in politics, Ramírez continued to publish his work, for which he has won numerous awards and distinctions.
Readers International proudly introduces in English TO BURY OUR FATHERS, the major work of Nicaragua's most important novelist, Sergio Ramirez: "There you are, now the door's wide open for you, Colonel. Who's keeping you a prisoner?" That was the moment when the colonel could have tried to push the table back, throw himself out into the corridor, cry for help. But he did nothing, and sat there pensive, without saying a word. He did not even ask for his gun back. So then Indio pulled his chair closer still, and draped his left arm round the back of the colonel's seat. Suddenly he plunged his other hand into his own mouth and carefully removed a set of false teeth, which he placed on the middle of the newspaper. The colonel stared first of all at the saliva-covered dentures - it took some time for him to register what they were exactly - then peered quizzically at Indio's puckered face. "See? I'm just a toothless old man, he said, lowering his voice, whispering to the colonel with the voice of someone reassuring a child in the dark, ' 'so there's no reason to be afraid of me, is there?" TO BURY OUR FATHERS is a panoramic novel of Nicaragua in the Somoza era, dramatically recreated by the country's leading prose artist. Cabaret singers, exiles, National Guardsmen, guerillas, itinerant traders, beauty queens, prostitutes and would-be presidents are the characters who people this sophisticated, lyrical and timeless epic of resistance and retribution.
Sergio Ramírez Mercado (born August 5, 1942 in Masatepe, Nicaragua) is a Nicaraguan writer and intellectual who served in the leftist Government Junta of National Reconstruction and as Vice President of the country 1985-1990 under the presidency of Daniel Ortega. Born in Masatepe in 1942, he published his first book, Cuentos, in 1963. He graduated from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua of Leon in 1964, where he obtained the Gold Medal for being the best student. In 1977 Ramírez became head of the 'Group of Twelve', a group of prominent intellectuals, priests, businesspeople, and members of civil society who publicly stated their support for the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) in its struggle to topple the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. With the triumph of the Revolution in 1979, he became part of the Junta of the Government of National Reconstruction, where he presided over the National Council of Education. He was elected vice-president of Nicaragua in 1984 and was sworn in 1985. Though the FSLN lost power to the UNO coalition headed by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in 1990, Ramírez continued to serve as the leader of the Sandinista block in the National Assembly until 1995, when he founded the Movimiento de Renovacion Sandinista (MRS) because of his differences with other leaders of the FSLN, such as former president Daniel Ortega, on issues of democratic reform. He has since become retrospectively critical of certain Sandinista policies that he views as having turned the country against the FSLN. He made an unsuccessful bid for president on the MRS ticket in 1996. Since then, Ramírez has retired definitively from politics. He currently lives in Managua, Nicaragua. He married his wife, Gertrudis 'Tulita' Guerrero Mayorga, in 1964. He has three children: Sergio, Maria, and Dorel and 6 Grandchildren: Elianne, Carlos Fernando, Camila, Alejandro, Luciana and Andres. Even during his years in politics, Ramírez continued to publish his work, for which he has won numerous awards and distinctions.
TO BURY OUR FATHERS is a panoramic novel of Nicaragua in the Somoza era, dramatically recreated by the country's leading prose artist. Cabaret singers, exiles, National Guardsmen, guerillas, itinerant traders, beauty queens, prostitutes and would-be presidents are the characters who people this sophisticated, lyrical and timeless epic of resistance and retribution.
Sergio Ramírez Mercado (born August 5, 1942 in Masatepe, Nicaragua) is a Nicaraguan writer and intellectual who served in the leftist Government Junta of National Reconstruction and as Vice President of the country 1985-1990 under the presidency of Daniel Ortega. Born in Masatepe in 1942, he published his first book, Cuentos, in 1963. He graduated from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua of Leon in 1964, where he obtained the Gold Medal for being the best student. In 1977 Ramírez became head of the 'Group of Twelve', a group of prominent intellectuals, priests, businesspeople, and members of civil society who publicly stated their support for the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) in its struggle to topple the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. With the triumph of the Revolution in 1979, he became part of the Junta of the Government of National Reconstruction, where he presided over the National Council of Education. He was elected vice-president of Nicaragua in 1984 and was sworn in 1985. Though the FSLN lost power to the UNO coalition headed by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in 1990, Ramírez continued to serve as the leader of the Sandinista block in the National Assembly until 1995, when he founded the Movimiento de Renovacion Sandinista (MRS) because of his differences with other leaders of the FSLN, such as former president Daniel Ortega, on issues of democratic reform. He has since become retrospectively critical of certain Sandinista policies that he views as having turned the country against the FSLN. He made an unsuccessful bid for president on the MRS ticket in 1996. Since then, Ramírez has retired definitively from politics. He currently lives in Managua, Nicaragua. He married his wife, Gertrudis 'Tulita' Guerrero Mayorga, in 1964. He has three children: Sergio, Maria, and Dorel and 6 Grandchildren: Elianne, Carlos Fernando, Camila, Alejandro, Luciana and Andres. Even during his years in politics, Ramírez continued to publish his work, for which he has won numerous awards and distinctions.
LUIZ DA SILVA. an orphan from the backlands of northeastern Brazil, lives at the lost edge of society. A small government clerk, free-lance contributor to a corrupt press, and victim of social and personal disintegration, he slides slowly and awfully toward insanity. It is the story of his final breakup that Graciliano Ramos has told in this grim and at times horrifying novel, which seems to owe its unique style to the author's study of Proust, Joyce, and Louis-Ferdinand Celine. ‘What matters in ANGUISH is Ramos's piling on 0f tiny details, its artful repetitions, its crescendo to an almost unbearable intensity of sheer sensation. In Brazilian Literature, Erico Verissimo wrote: ‘Graciliano Ramos, one of the most solid and profound of all Brazilian writers of today . . . is a notable story-teller.' Anguish is an addition to the small collection of distinguished literary works of our time.
GRACILIANO RAMOS was born in Quebrangulo. in the northeastern Brazilian state of Alagoas, in 1892. With the exception of short stays In Rio de Janeiro, he has passed most of his life in that northeast, which is the scene of his highly esteemed novels. SAO BERNARDO, AUGUSTIA, and Vidas Sêcas. He has been a small-town merchant, a student leader, a town prefect, and, a journalist. Senhor Ramos began to write poetry at the age of thirteen, but did not publish a book under his own name until he was forty-two. He has been married twice, and has had seven children. He has recently been living in Rio de Janeiro, where his position among Brazil's leading writers is firmly established.
BARREN LIVES could take place nowhere save in the drought-ridden interior of northeastern Brazil. (The literal meaning of the Portuguese title, Vidas Secas, ‘Dry Lives,' reflects both the parched atmosphere of the region and the desiccating effect it has on the existence of its inhabitants.) No aspect of the area has attracted greater attention, doubtless by reason of the dramatic effects it offers, than the terrible droughts that periodically visit the backlands. Only a hardy breed could survive such trials, especially when prospects of reward are so few. Fabiano and his family own little more than the clothes on their backs. Fabiano is a good herdsman, and the ranch prospers under his management as long as the rains come. He gets no thanks from the proprietor, however, whose conversation with his employee usually takes the form of a dressing-down. By a skillful system of advances of money and overcharges for interest, the proprietor sees, moreover, that little or nothing in the form of wages comes into Fabiano's hands at the end of the year. Tradesmen cheat the ranch hand, townspeople scorn him as a bumpkin, a policeman avenges his ill luck at cards by throwing him into jail. Yet Fabiano accepts all this abuse as his natural lot; so was his father used before him, and he has only vague illusions that his sons may know a better life. The height of his wife's ambition is ownership of a single piece of furniture, a comfortable bed.
GRACILIANO RAMOS is widely regarded as one of Brazil's most important writers, comparable with Machado de Assis. He was born in 1892. the son of a municipal judge, and died in 1953. Largely as a result of his background, Ramos developed a cynical attitude towards human nature and a suspicion of authority which are clearly reflected in his work. His themes concern man s struggle against his environment and the contrast between life in the remote countryside and what he regards as the corruption of the big cities. He wrote four novels, of which SAO BERNARDO (1934) is the second, as well as some short stories and an autobiographical book relating his experiences in a concentration camp during the Getulio Vargas regime. Two of his novels, including SAO BERNARDO, have been filmed.
In this Brazilian classic-a memoir presented like a novel in a series of linked episodes-Graciliano Ramos recreates his childhood in the Northeast of Brazil at the turn of the century. Written in 1945 at the end of Ramos's life, CHILDHOOD is the story of the author's discovery of his vocation as a writer and an account of the birth of the pessimistic view of life displayed in his novels. The early chapters, describing the author's infancy, resemble a prose poem, vivid and evocative. Later, as he matures, it is the human portraits that are most memorable. Here Ramos brings to life his immediate and extended family, the Negro ‘rascals' who serve them, and a range of figures-bizarre, frightening or friendly-who inhabit the towns and ranches of the backlands. From among all these it is his patents who emerge most strongly: his father, a failed rancher, cruel and unpredictable, punishing him for imaginary crimes; his mother, neurotic and sometimes violent. As he recalls his relations with these wayward yet formidable beings. Ramos gradually evokes an atmosphere of stifling terror. Ultimately, the father, probably ashamed that his son is still almost illiterate at the age of nine, commands him to fetch a book and read it. It is the beginning of a new life. As Professor Ashley Brown writes in his Introduction: ‘CHILDHOOD is episodic in structure but beautiful in its cumulative force and ‘felt life'. . . . Few writers have told us so acutely what it means to grow up, to find one's identity.' ‘Graciliano Ramos is the greatest among all modern South American novelists. Childhood is one of his masterpieces.' - Jorge Amado.
GRACILIANO RAMOS, widely regarded as one of Brazil's most important writers, was born in 1892. He spent most of his childhood in the sertao of Brazil's Northeast where his father, a small merchant, attempted to set up as a cattle rancher. In 1910 the family moved to Palmeira dos Indios in Alagoas, and Ramos lived there until 1930. In the 1920s he began a career in public life that was to continue for the rest of his life. In 1933 Ramos's first novel Caetes was published. It was followed by Sao Bernardo (1934; published in English by Peter Owen in 1975) and Anguish (1936). In 1936, during the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas, Ramos was dismissed from his post and imprisoned. Two years later, his health ruined, he was mysteriously released and appointed federal director of education. By this time his last and best-known novel, Barren Lives (1938), had been published, confirming Ramos's reputation. He wrote only one more work of the first rank. Childhood, which was published in 1945. Graciliano Ramos died in 1953, greatly honored by official Brazil. His books are widely read in Brazil and have been translated into at least ten languages.
Listed in 1974 Books in Print but unconfirmed. Possibly never released. Memorias do colrcere is an important essay collection of high literary quality.
GRACILIANO RAMOS, widely regarded as one of Brazil's most important writers, was born in 1892. He spent most of his childhood in the sertao of Brazil's Northeast where his father, a small merchant, attempted to set up as a cattle rancher. In 1910 the family moved to Palmeira dos Indios in Alagoas, and Ramos lived there until 1930. In the 1920s he began a career in public life that was to continue for the rest of his life. In 1933 Ramos's first novel Caetes was published. It was followed by Sao Bernardo (1934; published in English by Peter Owen in 1975) and Anguish (1936). In 1936, during the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas, Ramos was dismissed from his post and imprisoned. Two years later, his health ruined, he was mysteriously released and appointed federal director of education. By this time his last and best-known novel, Barren Lives (1938), had been published, confirming Ramos's reputation. He wrote only one more work of the first rank. Childhood, which was published in 1945. Graciliano Ramos died in 1953, greatly honored by official Brazil. His books are widely read in Brazil and have been translated into at least ten languages.
Considered one of the masterpieces of contemporary Brazilian literature, this book, set on a ranch in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provides a realistic portrayal of life in the remote countryside. The narrator, a self-made man, cunningly acquires a fazenda from a degenerate friend whom he later employs. The ranch prospers and he marries a schoolteacher, to whom he feels socially and intellectually inferior. The novel centers around their relationship, ending with her suicide caused by his unreasonable jealousy. GRACILIANO RAMOS was one of a group of writers, including Jorge Amado among others, whose work is set chiefly in the impoverished northeast of Brazil. It records the changes brought about by the slow influx of modern ideas and technological progress, set against the background of a hostile environment.
GRACILIANO RAMOS is widely regarded as one of Brazil's most important writers, comparable with Machado de Assis. He was born in 1892. the son of a municipal judge, and died in 1953. Largely as a result of his background, Ramos developed a cynical attitude towards human nature and a suspicion of authority which are clearly reflected in his work. His themes concern man s struggle against his environment and the contrast between life in the remote countryside and what he regards as the corruption of the big cities. He wrote four novels, of which SAO BERNARDO (1934) is the second, as well as some short stories and an autobiographical book relating his experiences in a concentration camp during the Getulio Vargas regime. Two of his novels, including SAO BERNARDO, have been filmed. Jacket design by Evelyn Brass.
SAO BERNARDO is considered to be the masterpiece of one of Brazil's most important writers. Set in the backlands of northeastern Brazil with its poverty-stricken peasants, its violence and feuds, and the decay of the old landed aristocracy, it is the story of the rise and fall of Paulo Honorio. In his blunt, first-person account, Paulo tells of his journey up from the slums and prison and his single-minded pursuit of the ownership of the haciendo, Sao Bernardo, where he had once worked as day laborer. Ramos's almost spartan prose, his subtle characterization, his taut style, and trenchant psychological insights are fully revealing of the inner Paulo Honorio behind the brutal exterior. In the end Honorio's marriage to Madalena and the tragic consequences tear away the protective shell that has hidden his real humanity from himself. This brilliant novel is superbly translated by R. L. Scott-Buccleuch.
GRACILIANO RAMOS was born in 1892 and grew up in this primitive area of northeastern Brazil. He held several government posts in education, and his second novel, SÃO BERNARDO, established his reputation after its publication in 1934. In 1936 under Getulio Vargas's dictatorship he was imprisoned and given a post as a federal inspector of education. He wrote three other novels as well as some short stories, an autobiography entitled CHILDHOOD, and an account of his imprisonment. Since his death in 1953 he has been considered one of Brazil's foremost writers.
On July, 19, 1979 the Nicaraguan people, under the banner of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, overthrew the 40-year-long Somoza family tyranny. Amongst those playing major roles in this popular revolution were many of the nation's leading poets and writers. Today, these men and women are focusing their creativity on the tasks of constructing a new nation and a new Nicaraguan culture. Through these interviews with 12 of Nicaragua's most important writers/revolutionaries we come to learn that Nicaragua's revolution, like its poetry, is an expression of great love, imagination and liberation. Writers interviewed - Sergio Ramirez, Vidaluz Meneses. Lizandro Chavez Alfaro, Carlos Guadamuz, Beltran Morales, Ernesto Cardenal, Michele Najlis, Omar Cabezas, Gioconda Belli, Daisy Zamora, Francisco de Asis Fernandez, Milagros Palma, Julio Valle-Castillo, Tomas Borge.
Margaret Randall (born December 6, 1936, New York City, USA) is an American-born writer, photographer, activist and academic. Born in New York City, she lived for many years in Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and spent time in North Vietnam during the last months of the U.S. war in that country. She has written extensively on her experiences abroad and back in the United States, and has taught at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and other colleges.
Eighteenth-century Europe, where the neoclassical ideals of balance and harmony are in tragic contrast with the squalor and violence of daily life, where the notion of a social contract emerges against a background of public torture and shameless political cynicism, where unprecedented advances in the sciences are besieged by militant superstition and religious bigotry-this is the Enlightenment, and Francisco Rebolledo's astonishing novel chronicles a soul's voyage through its hazards. The soul is that of Fausto Rasero, a young Spaniard hungry for wisdom. And what a peculiar hero Rasero is-bald since birth, sexually and intellectually precocious at his wet nurse's breast, passionate in manhood, tolerant, warmhearted. Strangely enough, Rasero is also orgasmically clairvoyant, given at the moment of carnal release to apocalyptic visions in which he beholds what we recognize as the horrors of our own century: the Holocaust, the atomic bomb, the Vietnam War. Rasero settles in Paris, the hub of European intellectual life. As he tries to reconcile the sanguine promises of the Enlightenment with the chilling prophecies of his visions, he comes to know virtually every important figure of his time. Through him we encounter the Marquise de Pompadour, Voltaire, Hume, Lavoisier, Diderot, Mozart, Rousseau, and such colorful secondary characters as an innkeeper's bawdy daughter, a lust-ridden priest, and a political zealot who dies accused of attempted regicide. As characters appear and reappear, as they age and mature, we follow Rasero from the libidinal extravagance of his youth to his transforming love for Mariana, a beautiful young widow from Mexico. It is that love, profound enough to suggest the transmigration and union of souls, that ultimately moves Rasero toward the wisdom he has so long sought. With wry melancholy, a generous dash of Magic Realism, and a kaleidoscopic chorus of voices, Rebolledo brings alive this heady mix of eighteenth-century politics, desire, philosophy, science, and art. At the conclusion of Rasero we cannot fail to see in this vanished world, with all its contradictions and sorrows, a troubled counterpart to our own.
FRANCISCO REBOLLEDO was born in Mexico City After teaching chemistry for many years, he became a full-time writer. He also serves as literature editor for the Vid Editorial Group of magazine publishers. Rasero is his first novel. HELEN R. LANE has translated works by Octavio Paz, Juan Goytisolo, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Among the prizes she has won are the Guggenheim Foundation Translation Prize, the National Book Award for Translation, and the PEN Translation Prize. She is also the recipient of the Gregory Kolovakos Lifetime Achievement Translation Award.
A collection of 11 stories, including the title story, by the Brazilian businessman and author,
The narrator of this story, writing guiltily through sleepless nights, accepted the job of running the orphanage in a remote Brazilian town because he was spiritually ambitious. He saw himself becoming Father Bernadino's right hand man, laying up treasure in heaven and earning much respect. It has turned out otherwise. The Father is concerned only with shooting and with local politics; the orphanage and its Inspector are of no importance in a society bogged down in conservatism, self-interest and petty corruption - no importance until the time comes when they can be used as pawns in the conflict between the Church and the Freemasons. This powerful novel tells what happens then, both to the orphanage and to the soul of the man in charge of it. Without ever departing from a particular man and his particular setting - indeed, both the characters and their environment are hallucinatingly real - Otto Lara Resende shows with a wonderful mingling of compassion and lucidity how poverty and ignorance, anywhere, can make monsters out of men. THE INSPECTOR OF ORPHANS (original title O braco direito) is a striking example of modern Brazilian literature.
Otto Lara Resende (1 May 1922 - 28 December 1992) was a Brazilian journalist and writer. Resende began teaching French at age fourteen and at eighteen years old began working as a journalist in the Belo Horizonte newspaper O Diário. In his career he worked at literary supplement of Diário de Minas. In Rio de Janeiro, Resende worked for the Diário de Notícias, O Globo, Diário Carioca, Correio da Manhã, Última Hora and Jornal do Brasil newspapers, Manchete and Senhor magazines, and TV Globo. He graduated in Law from the Federal University of Minas Gerais. On July 3, 1979 Resende was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters, taking the chair 39, vacant by the death of Elmano Cardim.
In the midst of war, the protagonists of A Tale of the Dispossessed are continuously searching: for a promised land, a destiny, the face of a woman who has disappeared-searching for an impossible love and, conversely, for a love that is possible. A way station for refugees from violence is the setting for an intense love triangle in which an uprooted and wandering people lead the reader to experience the collective drama of forced relocation. A Tale of the Dispossessed speaks to us about the inexorable law that has led man, expelled from paradise since the days of Adam through to modern times, in his search for a way back home.
Laura Restrepo (born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1950) is a Colombian author who began writing what were mainly political columns in her mid-twenties. Her first novel, Isle of Passion, is based on historical deeds that occurred on Clipperton Island.
Internationally acclaimed for the virtuosity and power of her fiction, Laura Restrepo has created in DELIRIUM a passionate, lyrical, devastating tale of eros and insanity. Aguilar, an unemployed literature professor who has resorted to selling dog food for a living, returns home from a short trip to discover that his wife, Agustina, has gone mad. He doesn't know what has happened during his absence, and in his search for answers, he gradually unearths profound and shadowy secrets about her past. On one level, Delirium reads like a detective story, as the reader pieces together information to discover the roots of Agustina's madness. But it is also a remarkably nuanced novel whose currents run much deeper, delving into the minds of four characters: Aguilar, a husband passionately in love with his wife and determined to rescue her from insanity; Agustina, a beautiful woman from an upper-class Colombian family who is caught in the throes of madness; Midas, a drug-trafficker and money-launderer who is Agustina's former lover; and Nicolas, Agustina's grandfather. Through the mixing of these distinct voices, Laura Restrepo creates a searing portrait of a society battered by war and corruption, as well as an intimate look at the daily lives of people struggling to stay sane in an unstable country. DELIRIUM already has been awarded the 2004 Premio Alfaguara, the 2006 Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in France for best translated fiction. It is an ambitious and deeply affecting masterwork by one of Latin America's most important contemporary voices. LAURA RESTREPO is the bestselling author of several prize-winning novels published in over twenty languages, including LEOPARD IN THE SUN, which won the Arzobispo San Clemente Prize, and THE ANGEL OF GALILEA, which won the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Prize in Mexico and the Prix France Culture in France. She was also awarded the 2004 Alfaguara Prize and the 2006 Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy for DELIRIUM. A recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Restrepo lives in Mexico City. .
Laura Restrepo (born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1950) is a Colombian author who began writing what were mainly political columns in her mid-twenties. Her first novel, Isle of Passion, is based on historical deeds that occurred on Clipperton Island.
Imagine the Sicilian history of The Godfather rewritten by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, or West Side Story reinterpreted by Isabel Allende, and you have a sense of Laura Restrepo's unforgettable novel of the making of Colombia's drug cartels. Written in a unique, mesmerizing style of questions and narratives -with the immediacy and color of oral tradition, LEOPARD IN THE SUN is an operatic Latin tragedy, complete with chorus of local gossips and popular legend. It begins with a fight over a woman, when Nando Barragán kills his best friend and cousin Adriano Monsalve in a passionate, drunken delirium. As a result, the wise family patriarch separates the two families forever - the Barragans will hold sway over the city; the Monsalves the port. Each year on the day known as the zeta, and only on that day, they will have the opportunity to avenge the previous year's deaths - and each year, the women are not yet out of their black mourning when a new round of deaths occurs. Nando Barragán sticks to the old way, leading his clan to ever-greater wealth, while living the simple peasant life in the village, womanizing far and wide, and trying to protect his brothers: the dandy Narciso, the innocent Arcángel, and the rogue Raca. Mani Monsalve tries to have it both ways, managing his family's black market affairs while trying to be accepted in legitimate society and keeping his ex-beauty queen wife happy. Every year on the zeta, Barragáns are killed by Monsalves and vice versa. The women suffer and devise increasingly elaborate strategies to protect their men. La Muda Barragan lovingly tends to the sequestered Arcangel. Alma Monsalve risks everything to protect her son from the primitive ways of his father's family.
Laura Restrepo (born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1950) is a Colombian author who began writing what were mainly political columns in her mid-twenties. Her first novel, Isle of Passion, is based on historical deeds that occurred on Clipperton Island.
A female journalist is sent to a poverty-stricken Colombian neighborhood to investigate reported sightings of an angel. Amid the slums of Galilea, the skeptical reporter finds herself falling under the spell of the silent young man's ethereal beauty and sexual power. Newly translated into English, Laura Restrepo's THE ANGEL OF GALILEA is a beautiful, enigmatic parable of faith, poverty~ politics, and sexuality. ‘Laura Restrepo breathes life into a singular amalgam of journalistic investigation and literary creation. Thus, the wretchedness and violence which nest in the heart of Colombian society are always present; but also there are her fascination with popular culture and the play of her impeccable humor, of that biting but at the same time tender irony that saves her novels from any temptation toward pathos or melodrama, and infuses them with unmistakable reading pleasures: ' - GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ. . . ‘We should be accustomed by now to receiving most of our literary surprises from Latin Americans. The newest is Laura Restrepo. In THE ANGEL OF GALILEA she compresses the colors and complexities of Latin America into the narrative investigations of a wonderfully clear-eyed and openhearted woman reporter concerning the appearance of an angel and its tangled consequences. Restrepo is a writer to treasure.' - ALASTAIR REID. . . ‘This barrio angel teaches us how to see behind the appearance of things and how to embrace reality with all the senses, above all with intuition, imagination, faith, and humor.' - ISABEL ALLENDE.
Laura Restrepo (born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1950) is a Colombian author who began writing what were mainly political columns in her mid-twenties. Her first novel, Isle of Passion, is based on historical deeds that occurred on Clipperton Island.
The Dark Bride is a slyly humorous yet poignant love story. It was sparked by a photograph (shown on the jacket) taken by the late Colombian master, Leo Matiz, of a sensual woman shrouded in mystery. Restrepo discovered the photo unexpectedly during her investigation into the rapacious workings of an American-controlled Colombian oil company and was immediately compelled to imagine the subject's life through a novel. Using a series of subtly textured interviews, Restrepo's journalist protagonist mines a rich trove of characters-fortune hunters, guerrilla chiefs, refinery workers, and prostitutes - who, together with the narrator, attempt to decipher the impulsive and mysterious life of the young Sayonara, the unlikely heroine of The Dark Bride. Drawn like an exotic moth to work beneath one of the colored lights of La Catunga, the local house of prostitution, Sayonara is enigmatic and arrogant beyond her years. Her Indian origins a puzzle, she is transformed by her sage madam, the surprisingly maternal Todos los Santos, into the queen of her squalid Colombian barrio. Each month, Sayonara charms the oil workers of the Tropical Oil Company, who have journeyed down from the mountains searching for some earthly bliss. But it is not just oil workers who are captivated by Sayonara. She is also the flame that draws an unpredictable mix of haunting characters into the tragicomic obsession that is her life-from Sacramento, the childhood playmate who is determined to rescue Sayonara from her unorthodox life, to the stranger PayanEs, who is her one true love and carries secrets of his own. Sayonara is the Dark Bride who subtly reveals a personal and political universe forever marked by her passing.
Laura Restrepo (born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1950) is a Colombian author who began writing what were mainly political columns in her mid-twenties. Her first novel, Isle of Passion, is based on historical deeds that occurred on Clipperton Island.
The English translation of these essays by Roberto Fernandez Retamar ought to be the occasion for rethinking the relations between poetry and politics - or even between literary criticism and politics in a situation in which increasingly no one wants to think about that relationship any longer. His classic CALIBAN is after all, if anything is, the Latin American equivalent of Edward Said's ORIENTALISM (which it preceded by some six or seven years) and generated a similar ferment and restlessness in the Latin American field. . Roberto Fernández Retamar is a Cuban poet and essayist whose work has been translated into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, German and other languages. He has been a professor at the University of Havana since 1955 and is currently president of the cultural institution, Casa de las Americas, whose journal he edited between 1965 and 1988. Retamar has also been a visiting professor at Yale University. In the early 1960's he was cultural counselor of the Cuban Embassy in Paris and coordinating secretary of the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists, and from 1977 through 1986, director of the Marti Studies Center. Retamar's books of essays include Idea de la estilistica (1958), Para una teoria de la literatura hispanoamericana (1975), Introduccion a Jose Marti (1978) and Algunos usos de civilizacion y barbarie (1988), and he contributes to the journals Cuba Socialista, Cuadernos Americanos and Revista de Critica Literaria Lantinoamericana, among others. . Edward Baker is an associate professor of Spanish at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. in Spanish from Harvard University. Baker has also taught at the University of California at San Diego, the University of Washington, and the University of Minnesota. He is co-editor of a collection of Nicaraguan verse, Nicaragua in Revolution (1980), and author of La lira mecánica (1986). Baker has contributed to Revista de Occidente, Sin Nombre, VRBI, and Maatstaaf. . .
Roberto Fernández Retamar (born June 9, 1930, Havana) is a Cuban poet, essayist, literary critic and President of the Casa de las AmEricas. In his role as President of the organization, Fernández also serves on the Council of State of Cuba. An early close confidant of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, he has remained a central figure in Cuba since the 1959 Revolution. Retamar has also written over a dozen major collections of verse and founded the Casa de las Americas cultural magazine. Professor De Castro Rocha, at the University of Manchester has described Retamar as ‘one of the most distinguished Latin American intellectuals of the twentieth century.' In 1989, he was award the National Prize for Literature, Cuba's national literary award and most important award of its type.
First published in Mexico in 1943, Human Mourning (El luto humana) won the Premio de Literatura and has since become one of the most widely read novels about the Mexican revolution. Revueltas's stunning narrative documents the aftermath of a particularly devastating defeat for the rural Indian proletariat and simultaneously exposes the "revolutionary" government's betrayal of the working masses in whose name it masquerades.
Jose Revueltas Sánchez (November 20, 1914, Canatlán, Durango - April 14, 1976) was a Mexican writer, essayist, and political activist. He was part of an important artistic family that included his siblings Silvestre (composer), Fermín (painter) and Rosaura (actress). He was often imprisoned for his political activism, almost from the time he was a boy (from the age of 14–15 years) and was still a minor when he was sent for the first time to the maximum-security jail of those days: the Islas Marías. He participated in the Railwaymen's Movement in 1958, for which they imprisoned him again. In 1968 he was accused of being the 'intellectual author' of the Mexican student movement that culminated in the Tlatelolco massacre, so he was arrested and sent to the jail of Palacio de Lecumberri (aka The Black Palace), where he wrote one of his more popular books: El apando (The Punishment Cell) (A. Revueltas 1998; Valle, Alvárez Garín, and J. Revueltas 1970). Jose Revueltas was a revolutionary from the start, because he practiced that which soon would become his most important pedagogical proposal: Academic Self-intervention, a product of his own form of studying reality by means of theoretical knowledge that supplies the reading. For this reason he left secondary school because they went very slowly and he dedicated himself, from then on, to visiting libraries and acquiring books. He was a complete man with many facets, bound to the necessities of the proletariat, of the people, he was dedicated on all the fronts in which he participated to the task of socializing and of politicizing society, the latter task a revolutionary one. He used literature, cinematographic scripts, the academy, partisan participation and the street to promote his project. He joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1928, but was expelled in 1943 for his criticisms of the organisation's bureaucratic practices and for one of the best analyses of the left in Mexico: Ensayo de un proletariado sin cabeza (Essay on a Proletariat without a Head). He founded the Liga Espartaquista (Spartacist League) and the Partido Popular Socialista (Popular Socialist Party, or PPS), from which he also was expelled for questioning and criticizing the errors of the left.
A classic of Mexican literature in the twentieth century, The Hole is a dazzlingly devastating novella. Set in a Mexican prison in the late 1960s, The Hole follows three inmates as they plot to sneak in drugs under the noses of their ape-like guards. The inmates desperately need to secure their next fix, and hatch a plan that involves convincing one of their mothers to bring the drugs into the prison, inside her person. But everything about their plan is doomed from the beginning, doomed to end in violence. Unfolding in a single paragraph, The Hole is a verbal torrent, a prison inside a prison, and an ominous parable about how deformed and wretched institutions create even more deformed and wretched individuals.
The writer and journalist Jose Revueltas (1914–1976) was a lifelong political dissident. In 1968, Revueltas spent two and a half years as a prisoner in the infamous Palacio de Lecumberri, a penitentiary near Mexico City. There, in the space of weeks, Revueltas wrote The Hole, using the real prison as the setting for his novella. Revueltas was awarded both prestigious the Premio Nacional de Literatura and the Xavier Villaurrutia Literary Prize. Amanda Hopkinson is a Professor of Literary Translation at City, University of London and has translated over 40 books from Spanish, French, and Portuguese. She also writes on photography and is the author of History of Photography in Mexico (2019). Sophie Hughes has translated numerous Spanish and Latin American authors, most recently Laia Jufresa and Rodrigo Hasbún. She is currently at work on novels by Enrique Vila-Matas and Fernanda Melchor for New Directions. Álvaro Enrigue was born in Mexico in 1969. He is an essayist, critic, professor, and the author of several novels and short story collections. His first novel La muerte de un instalador won the 1996 Joaquín Mortiz Prize. In 2007, the Bogotá39 project named him one of the most promising Latin American writers of his generation.
THE STONE KNIFE is a story of anguish and pain, a story which only a Mexican could write, for through it all run almost Dostoievskian antitheses of gentleness and savagery, of death wish and yearning for affirmation. From ancient times Mexico has been a country of death. The ancient religion has never wholly disappeared. Yet, at the same time, the people are stirred by a spirit of protest and revolt. After the descent into the tomb comes the resurrection. This is the meaning of the Mexican Revolution whose very name has acquired a curious, almost religious importance. And in contrast to the dark, bloody gods, Quetzalcoatl promised deliverance and was himself a promethean bringer of culture. Revueltas, therefore, is preoccupied with the two sides of revolution, the destructive and the creative; he is obsessed by the conflict between two religions, that of the Spaniards and that of the Aztecs, which negate each other and yet combine to mold a people which continues to be profoundly shaken by obscure religious urges. This is a wholly Mexican book, one of the few which truly express the country, yet, by reason of the intensity with which its author plumbs the nature of his own people, he raises all the great questions of existence. For today existence itself is upon trial. Today we are all in the valley of the shadow and every great question suddenly requires new answers. This, however, does not come as a surprise to the Mexican for he has been suffering for centuries. To him death is no new disease, a sudden product of the atomic age. No, to him death is his neighbor, an old friend, a near relative. Thus the Mexican is able to write of death with tremendous eloquence, he is able to meet it with something like tragic stature. Nor is this morbid or unhealthy. It is rather the opposite attitude which is unhealthy, the blind, optimistic belief that science is automatically manufacturing utopian immortality. No one who is content to ignore death will ever know much about life. And no one who is content to know little about life will be able to meet its most profound challenge. It is the task of such writers as Revueltas to remind us (and particularly Northamericans) of this axiom. . Originally published in Spanish as EL LUTO HUMANO. .
Jose Revueltas Sánchez (November 20, 1914, Canatlán, Durango - April 14, 1976) was a Mexican writer, essayist, and political activist. He was part of an important artistic family that included his siblings Silvestre (composer), Fermín (painter) and Rosaura (actress). He was often imprisoned for his political activism, almost from the time he was a boy (from the age of 14–15 years) and was still a minor when he was sent for the first time to the maximum-security jail of those days: the Islas Marías. He participated in the Railwaymen's Movement in 1958, for which they imprisoned him again. In 1968 he was accused of being the 'intellectual author' of the Mexican student movement that culminated in the Tlatelolco massacre, so he was arrested and sent to the jail of Palacio de Lecumberri (aka The Black Palace), where he wrote one of his more popular books: El apando (The Punishment Cell) (A. Revueltas 1998; Valle, Alvárez Garín, and J. Revueltas 1970). Jose Revueltas was a revolutionary from the start, because he practiced that which soon would become his most important pedagogical proposal: Academic Self-intervention, a product of his own form of studying reality by means of theoretical knowledge that supplies the reading. For this reason he left secondary school because they went very slowly and he dedicated himself, from then on, to visiting libraries and acquiring books. He was a complete man with many facets, bound to the necessities of the proletariat, of the people, he was dedicated on all the fronts in which he participated to the task of socializing and of politicizing society, the latter task a revolutionary one. He used literature, cinematographic scripts, the academy, partisan participation and the street to promote his project. He joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1928, but was expelled in 1943 for his criticisms of the organisation's bureaucratic practices and for one of the best analyses of the left in Mexico: Ensayo de un proletariado sin cabeza (Essay on a Proletariat without a Head). He founded the Liga Espartaquista (Spartacist League) and the Partido Popular Socialista (Popular Socialist Party, or PPS), from which he also was expelled for questioning and criticizing the errors of the left.
FROM PIMP TO PREACHER TO PR EXEC . . . Meet Mariano-the willy and ribald mascot of São Paulo's most infamous bordello . . . an expert in the carnal complexities of love Brazilian-style. Follow his lusty adventures as he tumbles from one raucous encounter to another-searching for the virginal streetwalker of his dreams . . . evading his archenemy Esmeraldo . . . and conning his way to the top of the corporate ladder only to land on skid row after a crazy turn of events. Hilariously rooted in the picaresque, MEMOIRS OF A GIGOLO makes its scamp of a hero the most appealing creation since Tom Jones, in a marvelous tale that pokes fun at the hungers of the flesh and the foibles of the heart.
Marcos Rey was born Edmundo Donato on Tuesday, February 17th, 1925, in São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. Marcos Rey's work has been adapted to the big screen with movies such as 'Patty, a Mulher Proibida', released in 1979, 'CafE na Cama'(1973), 'Memorias de um Gigolô'(1970). Also a screenwriter, Marcos Rey has worked on movies such as 'A Noite da Fêmeas', released in 1976, 'Enterro da Cafetina, O'(1970). Marcos Rey has written the story of movies such as 'Sexualista, O', released in 1975, 'Ainda Agarro Esta Vizinha...'(1974), 'Sedução'(1974), 'Clube dos InfiEis, O'(1974), 'A Filha de Madame Bettina'(1973), and 'Entre Mulheres e Espiões'(1961).He started writing short stories when he was sixteen years old. His first book is a novella which is called Um Gato no Triângulo, in 1953. He died on Thursday, April 1st, 1999 at the age of seventy-four (74) due to complications from a surgery.
A series of passionate and intelligent essays by a Spanish American.
Alfonso Reyes (born May 17, 1889 Monterrey, Mexico; died December 27, 1959), prolific literary critic, scholar, poet, and diplomat, one of the leading essayist from Mexico during the first half of the 20th century. Alfonso Reyes deeply influenced an entire generation of writers in his native land and elsewhere in Latin America. The Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges considered him the greatest prose writer in Spanish in any era. Reyes lived many years outside of Mexico. Central theme in Reyes work from his youth was the search for Mexican identity and the influence of the Spanish conquistadors and culture on the history of his country. 'Mexico is at once a world of mystery and clarity: in her landscape, mystery in the souls of he people.' Alfonso Reyes was born in Monterrey. His father, General Bernardo Reyes, was governor of the state of Nuevo Leon. He was shot in February 1913 in the Zocalo in Mexico City. '... with him fell what was left of Mexico's Belle Epoque,' said later the writer Carlos Fuentes. Reyes was educated in Monterrey and in Mexico City where he attended National Preparatory School. In 1912 he cofounded the School of Higher Studies, National Autonomous University of Mexico, and was its secretary. With the Dominican Republic critic Pedro Henríquez Ureña (1884-1946), Antonio Caso, and Jose Vasconcelos he founded the Ateneo de la Juventud (Atheneum of Youth) literary society, which had a strong influence in Mexican intellectual life. Reyes was also part of the Centennial Generation lecture society. Reyes started to publish verse in 1906. At the age of 21 Reyes published his first book, Cuestiones estEticas, a collection of essays. It gained an immediate success. Vision de Anáhuac (1917) was a colorful, poetic description of the ancient city of Mexico, Tenochtitlan, which amazed the Spanish invaders. Reyes's vision of the capital offers for the reader insights on the relationship between the ancient and the modern. In 1912 Reyes married Manuela Mota; they had one son. The next year he received a law degree and then taught the history of the Spanish language and literature for a brief period. After the death of his father, he went to France as Undersecretary of the Mexican legation and began his career in the diplomatic service. Following the German invasion of Paris in 1914, he moved to Spain and studied in Madrid under Ramon MenEndez Pidal (1869-1968). Reyes earned his living as a translator and editor of the cultural section of the newspaper El Sol. As a classical scholar, Reyes remained somewhat apart from all literary movements. He upheld aesthetic value as an intangible absolute towards which it is a duty to strive. He also could combine classics with topical issues as in 'Discurso por Virgilio' (1933), which touched government's wine-growing policies. Ifigenia cruel (1924), a poem of exile, is among Reyes's most famous masterpieces. 'I was another, being myself; / I was he who wanted to leave. / To return is to to cry. I do not repent of this wide world. / It is not I who return, / But my shackled feet.' The poem was based on the myth of Iphigenia at Tauris. According to the story, Iphigenia was carried by Artemis (Diana) to Tauris just before she was meant to be sacrificed. There she became the priestess of the goddess. A new twist in the story is that the heroine has lost her memory. She tries to find her true identity and break the cycle of violence that afflicts her family. From 1920 to 1924 Reyes was the first secretary of the Mexican legation in Spain. In the mid-1920s he was a diplomat in Paris and from 1927 Mexican ambassador to Argentina and Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro Reyes published Monterrey literary bulletin. In the 1930s, Reyes established himself as the spokesperson for an antifascist, liberal americanista intelligentsia. When Reyes returned in 1939 to Mexico City, he was named president of the House of Spain - the forerunner of the College of Mexico, a cultural research centre. He housed his sizable library in a new residence (Capilla Alfonsina) he built. During the early years of World War II, he worked as a professor at the College of St. Nicholas, Morelia, Michoacán, and the National Autonomous University. Now the state university library in Mexico, inaugurated in 1980, is known as the Capilla Alfonsina. Reyes's four lessons at College of St. Nicholas were collected in El deslinde (1944). With La experiencia literaria (1942), it is his most developed contribution to the science of literary theory. Reyes made a distinction between pure literature and service literature, which has extrinsic purposes. He placed 'essay' alongside the novel and the sonnet, defining it as the 'centauro de los gEneros,' a form in which diverse genres are combined. In 1945 Reyes was awarded the National Prize for Arts and Letters. He cofounded El Colegio Nacional, which offered series of lectures in the arts and the sciences open to the general public. He was the honorary president of FEdEration des Alliances Francaises and in 1957 he was elected director of Mexican Academy of the Language. When the Mexican journalist Elena Poniatowska interviewed Reyes in May 1959 in his library, she was surprised how good-natured and helpful he was, ready to answer all questions. He told humorous anecdotes of his life and career and appeared anything but a gloomy intellectual. Reyes died of a heart attack in Mexico City on December 27, 1959. His epitaph was: 'Aquí yace un hijo menor de la Palabra.' (A small child of the Word lies here.) Although he was a serious candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature, the prize eluded him despite lobbying by Borges, Bioy Casares, and Ocampo. Reyes was appreciated for his stylistic versatility and ranked among the finest in 20th-century Spanish America. Octavio Paz has said that Reyes transformed the anecdote in a literary genre. In his essays Reyes sought to reconcile and blend the cultures of pre-Columbian and modern-day Mexico. 'Traveler, you have reached the clearest region of the air,' Reyes wrote in his famous poem describing a Mexico City long vanished. His impressionistic sketches reveal his extensive knowledge of European classical antiquity and the multiple cultural heritage of his own country. The figures of great literature were for him more real than many historical heroes. Reyes saw that the discovery and cultivation of the uniquely Mexican cultural and artistic values are essential to the expressions of a universal national culture. In 'Notas sobre la inteligencia Americana' (1937) and 'Posicion de AmErica' (1942) he presented a cultural synthesis that would fuse Old World and native American values. Reyes translated Robert Louis Stevenson, G.K. Chesterton, Anton Chekhov, and Jules Romains. His translation of the Iliad (La Ilíada) appeared in 1951. Reyes also edited a number of scholarly editions of such writers as Francisco de Quevedo, Baltasar Gracián, Lope de Vega, and Amado Nervo. His publications of classical criticism ranges from Socrates to the Hellenistic philosophers, and from Homer and Virgil to the essence of Greek tragedy. Later Carlos Fuentes wrote that Reyes 'translated all of Western culture into Latin American terms.' Fuentes met the author first time in Rio in the 1930s, where his father served as Reyes's secretary.
Savant, humanist, polymath, man of letters, historian, classicist, and human being - Alfonso Reyes distills in essays of wonderful clarity and formal elegance whole universes of raw material. Each of his pieces offers the reader a phial of liquid at once essential and absolutely transparent. Into the creation of these essays have gone a possibly unparalleled acquaintance with what really matters in world literature; a bibliographic erudition of immense inclusiveness; a complete mastery of language; a personal charm that is one function of a delicate balance. Although there are many writers to contrast with Reyes, there are few to compare to him, for, he is also a philosopher and a psychologist. The subjects of the essays chosen and translated for this book by Harriet de Onis are all American in either subject matter or pervading spirit,, and usually in both. Alfonso Reyes's first appearance in English is a literary event of importance.
Alfonso Reyes (born May 17, 1889 Monterrey, Mexico; died December 27, 1959), prolific literary critic, scholar, poet, and diplomat, one of the leading essayist from Mexico during the first half of the 20th century. Alfonso Reyes deeply influenced an entire generation of writers in his native land and elsewhere in Latin America. The Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges considered him the greatest prose writer in Spanish in any era. Reyes lived many years outside of Mexico. Central theme in Reyes work from his youth was the search for Mexican identity and the influence of the Spanish conquistadors and culture on the history of his country. 'Mexico is at once a world of mystery and clarity: in her landscape, mystery in the souls of he people.' Alfonso Reyes was born in Monterrey. His father, General Bernardo Reyes, was governor of the state of Nuevo Leon. He was shot in February 1913 in the Zocalo in Mexico City. '... with him fell what was left of Mexico's Belle Epoque,' said later the writer Carlos Fuentes. Reyes was educated in Monterrey and in Mexico City where he attended National Preparatory School. In 1912 he cofounded the School of Higher Studies, National Autonomous University of Mexico, and was its secretary. With the Dominican Republic critic Pedro Henríquez Ureña (1884-1946), Antonio Caso, and Jose Vasconcelos he founded the Ateneo de la Juventud (Atheneum of Youth) literary society, which had a strong influence in Mexican intellectual life. Reyes was also part of the Centennial Generation lecture society. Reyes started to publish verse in 1906. At the age of 21 Reyes published his first book, Cuestiones estEticas, a collection of essays. It gained an immediate success. Vision de Anáhuac (1917) was a colorful, poetic description of the ancient city of Mexico, Tenochtitlan, which amazed the Spanish invaders. Reyes's vision of the capital offers for the reader insights on the relationship between the ancient and the modern. In 1912 Reyes married Manuela Mota; they had one son. The next year he received a law degree and then taught the history of the Spanish language and literature for a brief period. After the death of his father, he went to France as Undersecretary of the Mexican legation and began his career in the diplomatic service. Following the German invasion of Paris in 1914, he moved to Spain and studied in Madrid under Ramon MenEndez Pidal (1869-1968). Reyes earned his living as a translator and editor of the cultural section of the newspaper El Sol. As a classical scholar, Reyes remained somewhat apart from all literary movements. He upheld aesthetic value as an intangible absolute towards which it is a duty to strive. He also could combine classics with topical issues as in 'Discurso por Virgilio' (1933), which touched government's wine-growing policies. Ifigenia cruel (1924), a poem of exile, is among Reyes's most famous masterpieces. 'I was another, being myself; / I was he who wanted to leave. / To return is to to cry. I do not repent of this wide world. / It is not I who return, / But my shackled feet.' The poem was based on the myth of Iphigenia at Tauris. According to the story, Iphigenia was carried by Artemis (Diana) to Tauris just before she was meant to be sacrificed. There she became the priestess of the goddess. A new twist in the story is that the heroine has lost her memory. She tries to find her true identity and break the cycle of violence that afflicts her family. From 1920 to 1924 Reyes was the first secretary of the Mexican legation in Spain. In the mid-1920s he was a diplomat in Paris and from 1927 Mexican ambassador to Argentina and Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro Reyes published Monterrey literary bulletin. In the 1930s, Reyes established himself as the spokesperson for an antifascist, liberal americanista intelligentsia. When Reyes returned in 1939 to Mexico City, he was named president of the House of Spain - the forerunner of the College of Mexico, a cultural research centre. He housed his sizable library in a new residence (Capilla Alfonsina) he built. During the early years of World War II, he worked as a professor at the College of St. Nicholas, Morelia, Michoacán, and the National Autonomous University. Now the state university library in Mexico, inaugurated in 1980, is known as the Capilla Alfonsina. Reyes's four lessons at College of St. Nicholas were collected in El deslinde (1944). With La experiencia literaria (1942), it is his most developed contribution to the science of literary theory. Reyes made a distinction between pure literature and service literature, which has extrinsic purposes. He placed 'essay' alongside the novel and the sonnet, defining it as the 'centauro de los gEneros,' a form in which diverse genres are combined. In 1945 Reyes was awarded the National Prize for Arts and Letters. He cofounded El Colegio Nacional, which offered series of lectures in the arts and the sciences open to the general public. He was the honorary president of FEdEration des Alliances Francaises and in 1957 he was elected director of Mexican Academy of the Language. When the Mexican journalist Elena Poniatowska interviewed Reyes in May 1959 in his library, she was surprised how good-natured and helpful he was, ready to answer all questions. He told humorous anecdotes of his life and career and appeared anything but a gloomy intellectual. Reyes died of a heart attack in Mexico City on December 27, 1959. His epitaph was: 'Aquí yace un hijo menor de la Palabra.' (A small child of the Word lies here.) Although he was a serious candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature, the prize eluded him despite lobbying by Borges, Bioy Casares, and Ocampo. Reyes was appreciated for his stylistic versatility and ranked among the finest in 20th-century Spanish America. Octavio Paz has said that Reyes transformed the anecdote in a literary genre. In his essays Reyes sought to reconcile and blend the cultures of pre-Columbian and modern-day Mexico. 'Traveler, you have reached the clearest region of the air,' Reyes wrote in his famous poem describing a Mexico City long vanished. His impressionistic sketches reveal his extensive knowledge of European classical antiquity and the multiple cultural heritage of his own country. The figures of great literature were for him more real than many historical heroes. Reyes saw that the discovery and cultivation of the uniquely Mexican cultural and artistic values are essential to the expressions of a universal national culture. In 'Notas sobre la inteligencia Americana' (1937) and 'Posicion de AmErica' (1942) he presented a cultural synthesis that would fuse Old World and native American values. Reyes translated Robert Louis Stevenson, G.K. Chesterton, Anton Chekhov, and Jules Romains. His translation of the Iliad (La Ilíada) appeared in 1951. Reyes also edited a number of scholarly editions of such writers as Francisco de Quevedo, Baltasar Gracián, Lope de Vega, and Amado Nervo. His publications of classical criticism ranges from Socrates to the Hellenistic philosophers, and from Homer and Virgil to the essence of Greek tragedy. Later Carlos Fuentes wrote that Reyes 'translated all of Western culture into Latin American terms.' Fuentes met the author first time in Rio in the 1930s, where his father served as Reyes's secretary.
All that is most typically Spanish is summed up in this love story of Paco, the dazzling Andalusian bull fighter, and Puriya, the greatest living Spanish dancer. Tragedy, poignant and bitter, comes when Puriya stabs the man she loves more than life itself, and that to save the man she hates above all others; but neither she nor Paco regret the price of their ecstatic passion.'Others manufacture locomotives,' exclaims the bull fighter, ‘we make castanets . . . . Is it nobler and more useful to create riches than enjoyment? We think of life as a perpetual source of enjoyment, which we seek with passion and at any price.' Never before has the soul of Spain been described more freshly or with more deep insight! is the opinion of Unamuno, the great Spanish poet and philosopher, and his fellow countrymen seem to have agreed with him, for this novel has enjoyed a phenomenal success throughout Spain. As Cervantes caught once and for all the Quixotic aspect of the Spanish character, so has Reyles, with lesser genius, undoubtedly, but with amazing depth of feeling, portrayed that passionate, carefree, pleasure - loving Spain, ever ready to put off until tomorrow whatever interferes with the enjoyment of today, to hazard the whole future for the ecstasy of a moment - that langorous, sensuous, lazy Spain that in the twinkling of an eye can become electrically alive and vigorous, the Spain of flower-pots, barred windows and moonlight serenades, and of flashing daggers and delirious bull fights.
Carlos Reyles (October 30, 1868, Montevideo, Uruguay - July 24, 1938, Montevideo, Uruguay) was an Uruguayan writer of realistic psychological novels, writing in favor of the accumulation of material wealth, a position rarely found among intellectuals of the period. Reyles, the son of Carlos Reyles and Maria Gutierrez, was born on October 30, 1868, in Montevideo, where he was educated at the Hispano-Uruguayan School (1878-1885). He devoted himself to a literary career while still very young. When Reyles was eighteen years old he had a fortune of a million pesos left him by his father, who was one of the first to devote himself in Uruguay to the improvement of cattle-rearing. To this his son also gave some attention, spending a great part of his life improving and enlarging his ranches, where he specialized in the breeding of horses and cattle. Carlos Reyles founded the political club Vida Nueva, which brought together under its banner the intellectual youth of the Colorado Party. For some time he lived outside his country, making his home in Buenos Aires and pursuing a literary life.
MAIRA is a young Amazon Indian who has been converted to Christianity, departs for Rome to attend a Catholic seminary. Haunted by his heritage, racked by doubts, he abjures his oath before he is ordained as a priest. Reverting to Ava, his indigenous name, he returns to his people-the Mairun-to become their chieftain. Alma, a young white woman undergoing a profound crise d'identitE searches for spiritual fulfillment as she aims to join a group of nuns who are to work as missionaries among Isais's people. As the destinies of Ava and Alma converge, we are plunged into the endlessly fascinating everyday life of the Mairun, a highly ritualistic, rational world where clans-the House of the Jaguar and the House of the Falcon-are exactly complementary; where every being, every animal, every plant has a prescribed role, resulting in the union of man with the great All of the jungle. A mystery unfolds: One day Alma, the young white woman, is discovered, curiously marked, dead on a beach, having discharged stillborn twins. As Maira, the Sun, and Micura, the Moon-mythic gods of the Mairun-watch, petrified by impotence, we hear the piercing cry of a civilization in its death throes.
Darcy Ribeiro (October 26, 1922 - February 17, 1997) was a Brazilian anthropologist, author and politician. His ideas of Latin American identity have influenced several later scholars of Latin American studies. As Minister of Education of Brazil he carried out profound reforms which led him to be invited to participate in university reforms in Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico and Uruguay after leaving Brazil due to the 1964 coup d'Etat. Darcy Ribeiro was born in Montes Claros, MG, the son of Reginaldo Ribeiro dos Santos and of Josefina Augusta da Silveira. He completed his primary and secondary education in his native town, at the Grupo Escolar Gonçalves Chaves and at the Ginásio Episcopal de Montes Claros. He is best known for development work in the areas of education, sociology and anthropology and for being, along with his friend and colleague Anísio Teixeira, one of the founders of the University of Brasília (Universidade de Brasília) in the early 1960s. (See John Dewey). He also served as the first rector of that university. He was the founder of the State University of Norte Fluminense (Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense) as well. He wrote numerous books, many of them about the indigenous populations of Brazil. During the first mandate of governor Leonel Brizola in Rio de Janeiro (state) (1983–1987), Darcy Ribeiro created, planned and directed the implementation of the Integrated Centres for Public Instruction (Centros Integrados de Ensino Público), a visionary and revolutionary pedagogical project of assistance for children, including recreational and cultural activities beyond formal instruction - making concrete the projects envisioned decades earlier by Anísio Teixeira. Long before politicians incorporated the importance of education for the development of Brazil into their discourse, Darcy Ribeiro and Leonel Brizola had already developed these ideals. In the elections of 1986, Ribeiro was the Democratic Labour Party PDT candidate for the governorship of Rio de Janeiro (state), running against Fernando Gabeira (at that time affiliated with the Workers' Party PT), Agnaldo Timoteo of the Social Democratic Party (PDS) and Moreira Franco of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB). Ribeiro was defeated, being unable to overcome the high approval rating of Moreira who was elected due to the popularity of the then-recent currency reform, the Cruzado Plan (Plano Cruzado). Another defeat was in 1994, when he was Brizola's running-mate in presidential election; Darcy Ribeiro was also chief of staff (Ministro-chefe da Casa Civil) in the cabinet of President João Goulart, vice-governor of Rio de Janeiro (state) from 1983 to 1987 and exercised the mandate of senator from Rio de Janeiro from 1991 until his death - which was preceded by a long battle with cancer that emotionally touched all of Brazilian society: Darcy Ribeiro, ever the ardent and controversial defender of his ideas, received during his long illness recognition and admiration not only from friends but also from adversaries. He died in Brasília, aged 74. Darcy Ribeiro's ideas belonged to the evolutionist school of sociology and anthropology. He believed that people went through a 'civilizatory process' beginning as hunter-gatherers. This 'civilizatory process' was according to him marked by technological revolutions, and among these he stress the eight more important as the following: the agricultural revolution; the urban revolution; the irrigation revolution; the metallurgic revolution; the livestock revolution; the mercantile revolution; the industrial revolution; the thermonuclear revolution. Ribeiro proposed also a classification scheme for Latin American countries where he identified 'New Peoples' (Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela etc.), that merged from the mix of several cultures; 'Testimony Peoples' (Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and Bolivia), remnants of ancient civilizations; and Argentina and Uruguay, former 'New Peoples' that became 'Transplantated Peoples', essentially European, after massive immigration. Darcy Ribeiro was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters (Academia Brasileira de Letras) on October 8, 1992. His election was to Chair Number 11, which has as its Patron Fagundes Varela. He was formally received into the Academy on April 15, 1993, by author Cândido Mendes.
This vast and panoramic novel set in Brazil is at once a national epic, a family saga, a rich tapestry of life of generation upon generation covering nearly four hundred years from the arrival of the Portuguese to the present. In a strikingly diverse prose style, the novel recounts the lives and actions of a large and memorable cast of characters from all classes and races. Combining history. anecdote, and myth, An Invincible Memory ranges in tone and subject from the formality and pretense of the rich and powerful to the stark realities of the poor. Full and rich in its depiction of everything from battles to love stories to drawing room society to whaling to macumba ceremonies, the navel is unsparingly honest about the lives and actions of its many characters, bringing them vividly to life with humor, sympathy, and ultimate hope through victory and defeat, joy and sorrow, birth and death. A bestseller for nearly a year in Brazil, Ubaldo Ribeiro's novel is being published In England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Finland. Jorge Amado says: ‘I don't know of any Brazilian novel published in the last twenty years more beautifully written or more Important . . . altogether universal.'
JOAO UBALDO RIBEIRO was born on the island of Itaparica (in the middle of All Saints Bay and is part of the state of Bahia, Brazil), and spent much of his childhood in the neighboring state of Sergipe. He went to law school at the Federal University of Bahia ‘because it was the thing to do for intellectuals such as I fancied myself to be.' Ubaldo Ribeiro then went to the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, graduating as a Master of Public Administration with a minor in Political Science. In 1972-1973 was a guest of the University of Iowa International Writing Program. His first novel, SETEMBRO NAO TEM SENTIDO (September Has No Meaning), brought him early critical acclaim. He worked as a journalist and a teacher in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, but decided he wanted to be a full-time writer and ‘fish occasionally.' Ubaldo Ribeiro has been married three times and has four children. After living in Salvador, Portugal, and Rio de Janeiro, he returned to live in Itaparica. Of AN INVINCIBLE MEMORY he says: ‘I kept making up the story as I went along. The rest is Brazilian history as was taught to me in school, and I didn't believe a word of it. My grandfather was a historian of sorts and used to talk to me about our island all the time. It took me longer to translate it into English (about two years) than to write (about a year and a half).' He is also the author of SERGEANT GETULIO (1978), which was hailed as ‘an astounding success' (The Atlantic). In 1971 SERGEANT GETULIO was published and won Brazil's prestigious Jabuti Prize for best novel of the year. It has been in published in Portugal and (in translation) in France. Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro currently lives in Salvador, Brazil, where he is editor in chief of the Tribuna da Bahia. In the English speaking world his An Invincible Memory has been highly praised. Several of his books and short tails have been turned into movies and TV series in Brazil.
In this epic saga of the human spirit, set in the harsh backlands of Northeastern Brazil, the reader inhabits the unusual mind of Sergeant Getulio, a hired gunman capable of terrible brutality and brilliant primitive philosophy, as he fulfills a mission. His boss's orders: to capture a political enemy and deliver him up for retribution. But as Getulio is returning with his captive, federal troops intercept him and attempt to rescue the prisoner. Getulio, unable or unwilling to understand that he has been betrayed by his own boss, resists them. The only morality he knows is to complete his mission. He is a classic hero, rigid in his integrity, suddenly brought into conflict with an incomprehensibly modern kind of evil. In the end he must choose between his manhood and his life. SERGEANT GETULIO is a taut, tightly crafted novel, vivid and raw and bloody, alternately funny and poignant, but always compelling. When it first appeared in 1971 it was immediately hailed as a masterpiece and won the highest literary honor Brazil offers: the Jabuti Prize for the best novel of the year. It has since been published in Portugal and (in translation) in France. JOAO UBALDO RIBEIRO lives in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, where he is editor-in-chief of the Tribuna da Bahia. He holds an M.A. in political science from the University of Southern California and in 1972-73 was a guest of the University of Iowa International Writing Program. ‘Ribeiro's Getâlio is a revelation. This murdering, betrayed thug on a vicious mission becomes before our very eyes a free man whom we must love and honor. How the reader and unlikely hero come to self-knowledge on his harrowing trip is an exhilarating mystery, a triumph we have forgotten to expect of literature.' - Jose Yglesias. . JOAO UBALDO RIBEIRO was born on the island of Itaparica (in the middle of All Saints Bay and is part of the state of Bahia, Brazil), and spent much of his childhood in the neighboring state of Sergipe. He went to law school at the Federal University of Bahia ‘because it was the thing to do for intellectuals such as I fancied myself to be.' Ubaldo Ribeiro then went to the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, graduating as a Master of Public Administration with a minor in Political Science. In 1972-1973 was a guest of the University of Iowa International Writing Program. His first novel, SETEMBRO NAO TEM SENTIDO (September Has No Meaning), brought him early critical acclaim. He worked as a journalist and a teacher in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, but decided he wanted to be a full-time writer and ‘fish occasionally.' Ubaldo Ribeiro has been married three times and has four children. After living in Salvador, Portugal, and Rio de Janeiro, he returned to live in Itaparica. Of AN INVINCIBLE MEMORY he says: ‘I kept making up the story as I went along. The rest is Brazilian history as was taught to me in school, and I didn't believe a word of it. My grandfather was a historian of sorts and used to talk to me about our island all the time. It took me longer to translate it into English (about two years) than to write (about a year and a half).' He is also the author of SERGEANT GETULIO (1978), which was hailed as ‘an astounding success' (The Atlantic). In 1971 SERGEANT GETULIO was published and won Brazil's prestigious Jabuti Prize for best novel of the year. It has been in published in Portugal and (in translation) in France. Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro currently lives in Salvador, Brazil, where he is editor in chief of the Tribuna da Bahia. In the English speaking world his An Invincible Memory has been highly praised. Several of his books and short tails have been turned into movies and TV series in Brazil. .
JOAO UBALDO RIBEIRO was born on the island of Itaparica (in the middle of All Saints Bay and is part of the state of Bahia, Brazil), and spent much of his childhood in the neighboring state of Sergipe. He went to law school at the Federal University of Bahia ‘because it was the thing to do for intellectuals such as I fancied myself to be.' Ubaldo Ribeiro then went to the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, graduating as a Master of Public Administration with a minor in Political Science. In 1972-1973 was a guest of the University of Iowa International Writing Program. His first novel, SETEMBRO NAO TEM SENTIDO (September Has No Meaning), brought him early critical acclaim. He worked as a journalist and a teacher in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, but decided he wanted to be a full-time writer and ‘fish occasionally.' Ubaldo Ribeiro has been married three times and has four children. After living in Salvador, Portugal, and Rio de Janeiro, he returned to live in Itaparica. Of AN INVINCIBLE MEMORY he says: ‘I kept making up the story as I went along. The rest is Brazilian history as was taught to me in school, and I didn't believe a word of it. My grandfather was a historian of sorts and used to talk to me about our island all the time. It took me longer to translate it into English (about two years) than to write (about a year and a half).' He is also the author of SERGEANT GETULIO (1978), which was hailed as ‘an astounding success' (The Atlantic). In 1971 SERGEANT GETULIO was published and won Brazil's prestigious Jabuti Prize for best novel of the year. It has been in published in Portugal and (in translation) in France. Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro currently lives in Salvador, Brazil, where he is editor in chief of the Tribuna da Bahia. In the English speaking world his An Invincible Memory has been highly praised. Several of his books and short tails have been turned into movies and TV series in Brazil.
In this epic saga of the human spirit, set in the harsh backlands of Northeastern Brazil, the reader inhabits the unusual mind of Sergeant Getulio, a hired gunman capable of terrible brutality and brilliant primitive philosophy, as he fulfills a mission. His boss's orders: to capture a political enemy and deliver him up for retribution. But as Getulio is returning with his captive, federal troops intercept him and attempt to rescue the prisoner. Getulio, unable or unwilling to understand that he has been betrayed by his own boss, resists them. The only morality he knows is to complete his mission. He is a classic hero, rigid in his integrity, suddenly brought into conflict with an incomprehensibly modern kind of evil. In the end he must choose between his manhood and his life. SERGEANT GETULIO is a taut, tightly crafted novel, vivid and raw and bloody, alternately funny and poignant, but always compelling. When it first appeared in 1971 it was immediately hailed as a masterpiece and won the highest literary honor Brazil offers: the Jabuti Prize for the best novel of the year. It has since been published in Portugal and (in translation) in France. ‘Ribeiro's Getâlio is a revelation. This murdering, betrayed thug on a vicious mission becomes before our very eyes a free man whom we must love and honor. How the reader and unlikely hero come to self-knowledge on his harrowing trip is an exhilarating mystery, a triumph we have forgotten to expect of literature.' - Jose Yglesias.
JOAO UBALDO RIBEIRO was born on the island of Itaparica (in the middle of All Saints Bay and is part of the state of Bahia, Brazil), and spent much of his childhood in the neighboring state of Sergipe. He went to law school at the Federal University of Bahia ‘because it was the thing to do for intellectuals such as I fancied myself to be.' Ubaldo Ribeiro then went to the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, graduating as a Master of Public Administration with a minor in Political Science. In 1972-1973 was a guest of the University of Iowa International Writing Program. His first novel, SETEMBRO NAO TEM SENTIDO (September Has No Meaning), brought him early critical acclaim. He worked as a journalist and a teacher in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, but decided he wanted to be a full-time writer and ‘fish occasionally.' Ubaldo Ribeiro has been married three times and has four children. After living in Salvador, Portugal, and Rio de Janeiro, he returned to live in Itaparica. Of AN INVINCIBLE MEMORY he says: ‘I kept making up the story as I went along. The rest is Brazilian history as was taught to me in school, and I didn't believe a word of it. My grandfather was a historian of sorts and used to talk to me about our island all the time. It took me longer to translate it into English (about two years) than to write (about a year and a half).' He is also the author of SERGEANT GETULIO (1978), which was hailed as ‘an astounding success' (The Atlantic). In 1971 SERGEANT GETULIO was published and won Brazil's prestigious Jabuti Prize for best novel of the year. It has been in published in Portugal and (in translation) in France. Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro currently lives in Salvador, Brazil, where he is editor in chief of the Tribuna da Bahia. In the English speaking world his An Invincible Memory has been highly praised. Several of his books and short tails have been turned into movies and TV series in Brazil.
‘MY EQUAL HAS NOT YET BEEN BORN . . . I run, I roar and I shoot better and drink better and fight better.' SERGEANT GETULIO is a bone-chilling journey into the macabre, brutal, and all too familiar world of man's modern political treachery and age-old battle with evil. Getulio, a police officer, plunges deep into the harsh backlands of northeastern Brazil to capture an enemy of the regime. But Getulio is also a classic hero, forced to choose between his manhood and his life. ‘SPLENDID . . . As serious fiction goes, it is as exultantly bloody as anything west of de Sade.' - Newsweek . . . ‘Overriding the violence . . . is the memorable portrait of hero-narrator Getulio: he is as credible as Cyrano, Tom Jones, or Mr. Micawber.' - Chicago Tribune . . . ‘Getulio will offend everyone and yet take most readers prisoner and carry them all the way to the explosive conclusion of his journey.' - Los Angeles Times.
JOAO UBALDO RIBEIRO was born on the island of Itaparica (in the middle of All Saints Bay and is part of the state of Bahia, Brazil), and spent much of his childhood in the neighboring state of Sergipe. He went to law school at the Federal University of Bahia ‘because it was the thing to do for intellectuals such as I fancied myself to be.' Ubaldo Ribeiro then went to the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, graduating as a Master of Public Administration with a minor in Political Science. In 1972-1973 was a guest of the University of Iowa International Writing Program. His first novel, SETEMBRO NAO TEM SENTIDO (September Has No Meaning), brought him early critical acclaim. He worked as a journalist and a teacher in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, but decided he wanted to be a full-time writer and ‘fish occasionally.' Ubaldo Ribeiro has been married three times and has four children. After living in Salvador, Portugal, and Rio de Janeiro, he returned to live in Itaparica. Of AN INVINCIBLE MEMORY he says: ‘I kept making up the story as I went along. The rest is Brazilian history as was taught to me in school, and I didn't believe a word of it. My grandfather was a historian of sorts and used to talk to me about our island all the time. It took me longer to translate it into English (about two years) than to write (about a year and a half).' He is also the author of SERGEANT GETULIO (1978), which was hailed as ‘an astounding success' (The Atlantic). In 1971 SERGEANT GETULIO was published and won Brazil's prestigious Jabuti Prize for best novel of the year. It has been in published in Portugal and (in translation) in France. Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro currently lives in Salvador, Brazil, where he is editor in chief of the Tribuna da Bahia. In the English speaking world his An Invincible Memory has been highly praised. Several of his books and short tails have been turned into movies and TV series in Brazil.
THE LIZARD'S SMILE is the first novel in five years from the internationally acclaimed Brazilian novelist João Ubaldo Ribeiro. A best-seller in his native land, it is a suspenseful, spirited, and very funny novel about a truly serious subject-the hazards of genetic engineering-that confirms Ribeiro's reputation as one of the masters of the Latin American novel. Set on an island off the coast of Bahia in northeast Brazil, THE LIZARD'S SMILE centers on one João Pedroso, a disenchanted biologist who has given up his profession to become a fishmonger. Kindly if a bit enigmatic, given to drink and rumination, João has recently been disturbed by a vague but pervasive sense 0f evil, manifesting itself chiefly among the island's animal family. Arrayed around him are such figures as the Secretary of Health for Bahia, Dr. Angelo Marcos Barreto, a fastidious, compulsive, and corrupt millionaire who has been diagnosed as having cancer, his much younger wife, Ana Clara, who has developed an appetite for her husband's medicinal stash 0f marijuana, for the seemingly irresistible João, and for a pseudonymous journal in which she records her adventures in high style . Father Monteirinho, the local priest, who finds it increasingly hard to be confidant and drinking partner to his parishioners while exercising his churchly duties, and Dr. Lücio NemEsio, surgeon and director 0f the island's new, state-of-the-art hospital, an older man, easily worried by the behavioral tics he is beginning to witness around him.
JOAO UBALDO RIBEIRO was born on the island of Itaparica (in the middle of All Saints Bay and is part of the state of Bahia, Brazil), and spent much of his childhood in the neighboring state of Sergipe. He went to law school at the Federal University of Bahia ‘because it was the thing to do for intellectuals such as I fancied myself to be.' Ubaldo Ribeiro then went to the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, graduating as a Master of Public Administration with a minor in Political Science. In 1972-1973 was a guest of the University of Iowa International Writing Program. His first novel, SETEMBRO NAO TEM SENTIDO (September Has No Meaning), brought him early critical acclaim. He worked as a journalist and a teacher in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, but decided he wanted to be a full-time writer and ‘fish occasionally.' Ubaldo Ribeiro has been married three times and has four children. After living in Salvador, Portugal, and Rio de Janeiro, he returned to live in Itaparica. Of AN INVINCIBLE MEMORY he says: ‘I kept making up the story as I went along. The rest is Brazilian history as was taught to me in school, and I didn't believe a word of it. My grandfather was a historian of sorts and used to talk to me about our island all the time. It took me longer to translate it into English (about two years) than to write (about a year and a half).' He is also the author of SERGEANT GETULIO (1978), which was hailed as ‘an astounding success' (The Atlantic). In 1971 SERGEANT GETULIO was published and won Brazil's prestigious Jabuti Prize for best novel of the year. It has been in published in Portugal and (in translation) in France. Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro currently lives in Salvador, Brazil, where he is editor in chief of the Tribuna da Bahia. In the English speaking world his An Invincible Memory has been highly praised. Several of his books and short tails have been turned into movies and TV series in Brazil.
THE MYSTERY OF THE SHELL PEOPLE - The women of the Sambaqui, the Shell People, are delicate and lovely. The men, rigid in belief and unyielding. Their culture is cannibalistic, exotic and macabre. Here the intelligent, handsome Karincai chooses the beautiful Malai for his bride - and dares the gods with his rebellion. As history moves his people toward undreamed-of horror, Karincai alone may make the life-and-death difference for his tribe. But for Malai, the future holds a different destiny . . . her world terribly and irrevocably changed as the Shell People face a final confrontation for survival. A moving, chilling account of genocide that touches the heart of humanity's darker instincts, Sambaqui is real - a society that vanished but never died, its heritage and tragedy our own.
STELLA CARR RIBEIRO (February 4, 1932, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 2008, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil) was born in Guanabara, Brazil, and now lives and works in Sao Paulo. She comes from a long line of writers and journalists and was formerly the director and vice president of the Brazilian Union of Writers. A poet, journalist, and author of children's literature, Stella Carr Ribeiro published her first novel, SAMBAQUI, in Brazil in 1975. This highly acclaimed work is based on one of the great passions of her life: anthropology, which she studied under the well-known scholar Paulo Duarte
Julio Ramon Ribeyro has been widely acclaimed Peru's master storyteller. Until now, however, few of his stories have been translated into English. This volume brings together fifteen stories written during the period 1952-1975, which were collected in the three volumes of La palabra del mudo. Ribeyro's stories treat the social problems brought about by urban expansion, including poverty, racial and sexual discrimination, class struggles, alienation, and violence. At the same time, elements of the fantastic playfully interrupt some of the stories. As Ribeyro's characters become swept up in circumstances beyond their understanding, we see that the only freedom or dignity left them comes from their own imaginations. The fifteen stories included here are ‘Terra Incognita,' ‘Barbara,' ‘The Featherless Buzzards,' ‘Of Modest Color,' ‘The Substitute Teacher,' ‘The Insignia,' ‘The Banquet,' ‘Alienation (An Instructive Story with a Footnote),' ‘The Little Laid Cow,' ‘The Jacaranda Trees,' ‘Bottles and Men,' ‘Nothing to Do, Monsieur Baruch,' ‘The Captives,' ‘The Spanish,' and ‘Painted Papers.' ‘A magnificent storyteller, one of the best of Latin America and probably of the Spanish language, unjustly not recognized as such.' - Mario Vargas Llosa. . A native of Lima, Peru, Julio Ramon Ribeyro is the author of eight volumes of short stories, as well as novels, plays, and literary criticism. He has lived and written in Europe for the last forty years.
Julio Ramon Ribeyro Zúñiga (August 31, 1929, Lima, Peru - December 4, 1994, Lima, Peru) was a Peruvian writer best known for his short stories. He was also successful in other genres: novel, essay, theater, diary and aphorism. In the year of his death, he was awarded the US$100,000 Premio Juan Rulfo de literatura latinoamericana y del Caribe. His work has been translated into numerous languages, including English. The characters in his stories, often autobiographical and usually written in simple but ironic language, tend to end up with their hopes cruelly dashed. But despite its apparent pessimism, Ribeyro's work is often comic, its humor springing from both the author's sense of irony and the accidents that befall his protagonists. The collective work of his short stories is published under the title La palabra del mudo (The Word of the Mute). Ribeyro studied literature and law in Universidad Catolica in Lima. In 1960 he immigrated to Paris where he worked as a journalist in France Presse and then as cultural advisor and ambassador to UNESCO. He was an avid smoker, as described in his short story ¨Solo para fumadores¨ (Smokers Only) and he died as a result of his addiction. Born in Lima on August 31, 1929. Son Julio Ramon Ribeyro Rabines Bonello and Mercedes Zúñiga, was the first of four children (two boys and two girls). His family was middle class, but in earlier generations had belonged to the upper class, for among his ancestors illustrious figures of Peruvian culture and politics, conservative and civilista.1 In his childhood he lived in Santa Beatriz had a middle-class Lima neighborhood and then moved to Miraflores, residing in the neighborhood of Santa Cruz, adjacent to the huaca Pucllana. His school education was received in the Champagnat College of Miraflores. The death of his father affected him a lot and complicated economic situation of their families. Later, he studied Arts and Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, between 1946 and 1952, where he met Pablo Macera, Alberto Escobar and Luis Felipe Angell 'Sofocleto' among other youth with intellectual and artistic interests. He began his writing career with Grey life story published in the journal Email Bolivarian in 1948. In 1952 he won a journalism fellowship awarded by the Institute of Hispanic Culture, which allowed him to travel to Spain. He traveled by boat to Barcelona and from there went to Madrid, where he spent a year and made studies at the Complutense University in that city. He also wrote some stories and articles. To culminate his fellowship in 1953, traveled to Paris to prepare a thesis on French literature at the Sorbonne University. By then wrote his first book The featherless buzzards, a collection of stories of urban issues, regarded as one of its most successful narrative writing. But dropped out and remained in Europe doing odd jobs, alternating his stay in France with brief periods in Germany and Belgium. Thus it was that between 1954 and 1956 was in Munich, where he wrote his first novel, Chronicle of San Gabriel. He returned to Paris and then traveled to Antwerp in 1957, where he worked in a factory photo products. In 1958, he returned to Germany and spent some time in Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfurt. During his European stay I had to make many trades to survive, and recycler of newspapers, concierge, charger packages on the subway, seller of printed matter, etc.. He returned to Lima in 1958. Worked as a professor at the National University of San Cristobal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, whose request was devoted to the creation of an Institute for Popular Culture, in 1959. In 1960 he published his novel Chronicle of San Gabriel, which earned him the National Novel Prize that year. In 1961, he returned to Paris, where he worked as a journalist for ten years, Agence France Press. He was also cultural attache at the Peruvian Embassy in Paris, also play as a cultural consultant and ambassador of Peru to UNESCO. He married Alida Lamb and they had one child. In 1973, he operated a first lung cancer, caused by their addiction to cigarettes as a result of which he received a long treatment. Inspired by this experience, he wrote a book entitled 'Only for smokers'. In 1983, he received the National Book Award, and ten years later, the National Culture. Generous with his friends and with young writers, Ribeyro never had enemies and was always very appreciated by his contemporaries. After being confirmed as ambassador to Unesco in the late 1980s, had a very rough verbal exchange with his compatriot and friend Mario Vargas Llosa, following unleashed debate in Peru around the proposed nationalization of banks first Garcia government, which divided public opinion in the country. Ribeyro criticized Mario to support the conservative sectors of the country, thus opposed, he said, to the emergence of the popular classes. Vargas Llosa jumped at the opportunity to answer in her memoir A Fish in the Water (1993), pointing out their lack of consistency, which led him to appear subservient to every single shift government to maintain its junior diplomat in Unesco.2 However, apart from this painful episode, Vargas Llosa has consistently praised the literary work of Ribeyro, whom he considers as one of the great storytellers of speaking. The relationship between the two authors, who shared flat in Paris was otherwise complex and full of misterios. His last years were spent traveling between Europe and Peru. In the last year of his life he had decided definitely lie in their homeland in Peru. He died on December 4, 1994, days after getting the Juan Rulfo Prize for Literature. Translator Dianne Douglas is an associate professor of Spanish at Louisiana Tech University.
For more than thirty years Ribeyro has written stories, novels, plays, and literary criticism. Although in all of these genres he has produced admirable texts (and more than one masterpiece), his stories reveal the most characteristic qualities known of his work. Compiled in the three volumes of La palabra del mundo (Lima, 1972 and 1977), his stories comprise seven distinct collections and a total of more than seventy texts. The total corpus places him among the most prolific short story writers in Spanish. . Originally published in Spanish as La palabra del mundo (Lima, 1972 and 1977).
Julio Ramon Ribeyro Zúñiga (August 31, 1929, Lima, Peru - December 4, 1994, Lima, Peru) was a Peruvian writer best known for his short stories. He was also successful in other genres: novel, essay, theater, diary and aphorism. In the year of his death, he was awarded the US$100,000 Premio Juan Rulfo de literatura latinoamericana y del Caribe. His work has been translated into numerous languages, including English. The characters in his stories, often autobiographical and usually written in simple but ironic language, tend to end up with their hopes cruelly dashed. But despite its apparent pessimism, Ribeyro's work is often comic, its humor springing from both the author's sense of irony and the accidents that befall his protagonists. The collective work of his short stories is published under the title La palabra del mudo (The Word of the Mute). Ribeyro studied literature and law in Universidad Catolica in Lima. In 1960 he immigrated to Paris where he worked as a journalist in France Presse and then as cultural advisor and ambassador to UNESCO. He was an avid smoker, as described in his short story ¨Solo para fumadores¨ (Smokers Only) and he died as a result of his addiction. Born in Lima on August 31, 1929. Son Julio Ramon Ribeyro Rabines Bonello and Mercedes Zúñiga, was the first of four children (two boys and two girls). His family was middle class, but in earlier generations had belonged to the upper class, for among his ancestors illustrious figures of Peruvian culture and politics, conservative and civilista.1 In his childhood he lived in Santa Beatriz had a middle-class Lima neighborhood and then moved to Miraflores, residing in the neighborhood of Santa Cruz, adjacent to the huaca Pucllana. His school education was received in the Champagnat College of Miraflores. The death of his father affected him a lot and complicated economic situation of their families. Later, he studied Arts and Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, between 1946 and 1952, where he met Pablo Macera, Alberto Escobar and Luis Felipe Angell 'Sofocleto' among other youth with intellectual and artistic interests. He began his writing career with Grey life story published in the journal Email Bolivarian in 1948. In 1952 he won a journalism fellowship awarded by the Institute of Hispanic Culture, which allowed him to travel to Spain. He traveled by boat to Barcelona and from there went to Madrid, where he spent a year and made studies at the Complutense University in that city. He also wrote some stories and articles. To culminate his fellowship in 1953, traveled to Paris to prepare a thesis on French literature at the Sorbonne University. By then wrote his first book The featherless buzzards, a collection of stories of urban issues, regarded as one of its most successful narrative writing. But dropped out and remained in Europe doing odd jobs, alternating his stay in France with brief periods in Germany and Belgium. Thus it was that between 1954 and 1956 was in Munich, where he wrote his first novel, Chronicle of San Gabriel. He returned to Paris and then traveled to Antwerp in 1957, where he worked in a factory photo products. In 1958, he returned to Germany and spent some time in Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfurt. During his European stay I had to make many trades to survive, and recycler of newspapers, concierge, charger packages on the subway, seller of printed matter, etc.. He returned to Lima in 1958. Worked as a professor at the National University of San Cristobal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, whose request was devoted to the creation of an Institute for Popular Culture, in 1959. In 1960 he published his novel Chronicle of San Gabriel, which earned him the National Novel Prize that year. In 1961, he returned to Paris, where he worked as a journalist for ten years, Agence France Press. He was also cultural attache at the Peruvian Embassy in Paris, also play as a cultural consultant and ambassador of Peru to UNESCO. He married Alida Lamb and they had one child. In 1973, he operated a first lung cancer, caused by their addiction to cigarettes as a result of which he received a long treatment. Inspired by this experience, he wrote a book entitled 'Only for smokers'. In 1983, he received the National Book Award, and ten years later, the National Culture. Generous with his friends and with young writers, Ribeyro never had enemies and was always very appreciated by his contemporaries. After being confirmed as ambassador to Unesco in the late 1980s, had a very rough verbal exchange with his compatriot and friend Mario Vargas Llosa, following unleashed debate in Peru around the proposed nationalization of banks first Garcia government, which divided public opinion in the country. Ribeyro criticized Mario to support the conservative sectors of the country, thus opposed, he said, to the emergence of the popular classes. Vargas Llosa jumped at the opportunity to answer in her memoir A Fish in the Water (1993), pointing out their lack of consistency, which led him to appear subservient to every single shift government to maintain its junior diplomat in Unesco.2 However, apart from this painful episode, Vargas Llosa has consistently praised the literary work of Ribeyro, whom he considers as one of the great storytellers of speaking. The relationship between the two authors, who shared flat in Paris was otherwise complex and full of misterios. His last years were spent traveling between Europe and Peru. In the last year of his life he had decided definitely lie in their homeland in Peru. He died on December 4, 1994, days after getting the Juan Rulfo Prize for Literature.
Available in English for the first time, a collection of deeply humane stories depicting marginalized populations by one of the greatest South American writers of the 20th century. The Peruvian writer Julio Ramon Ribeyro is one of the masters of the short story and a major contributor to the great flourishing of Latin American literature that followed the Second World War. In a letter to an editor, Ribeyro said about his stories, in most of [them] those who are deprived of words in life find expression - the marginalized, the forgotten, those condemned to an existence without harmony and without voice. I have restored to them the breath they've been denied, and I've allowed them to modulate their own longings, outbursts, and distress. This is work of deep humanity, imbued with a disorienting lyricism that is Ribeyro's alone. The Word of the Speechless, edited and translated by Katherine Silver, introduces readers to an indispensable and unforgettable voice of Latin American fiction.
Julio Ramon Ribeyro Zúñiga (August 31, 1929, Lima, Peru - December 4, 1994, Lima, Peru) was a Peruvian writer best known for his short stories. He was also successful in other genres: novel, essay, theater, diary and aphorism. In the year of his death, he was awarded the US$100,000 Premio Juan Rulfo de literatura latinoamericana y del Caribe. His work has been translated into numerous languages, including English. The characters in his stories, often autobiographical and usually written in simple but ironic language, tend to end up with their hopes cruelly dashed. But despite its apparent pessimism, Ribeyro's work is often comic, its humor springing from both the author's sense of irony and the accidents that befall his protagonists. The collective work of his short stories is published under the title La palabra del mudo (The Word of the Mute). Ribeyro studied literature and law in Universidad Catolica in Lima. In 1960 he immigrated to Paris where he worked as a journalist in France Presse and then as cultural advisor and ambassador to UNESCO. He was an avid smoker, as described in his short story ¨Solo para fumadores¨ (Smokers Only) and he died as a result of his addiction. Born in Lima on August 31, 1929. Son Julio Ramon Ribeyro Rabines Bonello and Mercedes Zúñiga, was the first of four children (two boys and two girls). His family was middle class, but in earlier generations had belonged to the upper class, for among his ancestors illustrious figures of Peruvian culture and politics, conservative and civilista.1 In his childhood he lived in Santa Beatriz had a middle-class Lima neighborhood and then moved to Miraflores, residing in the neighborhood of Santa Cruz, adjacent to the huaca Pucllana. His school education was received in the Champagnat College of Miraflores. The death of his father affected him a lot and complicated economic situation of their families. Later, he studied Arts and Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, between 1946 and 1952, where he met Pablo Macera, Alberto Escobar and Luis Felipe Angell 'Sofocleto' among other youth with intellectual and artistic interests. He began his writing career with Grey life story published in the journal Email Bolivarian in 1948. In 1952 he won a journalism fellowship awarded by the Institute of Hispanic Culture, which allowed him to travel to Spain. He traveled by boat to Barcelona and from there went to Madrid, where he spent a year and made studies at the Complutense University in that city. He also wrote some stories and articles. To culminate his fellowship in 1953, traveled to Paris to prepare a thesis on French literature at the Sorbonne University. By then wrote his first book The featherless buzzards, a collection of stories of urban issues, regarded as one of its most successful narrative writing. But dropped out and remained in Europe doing odd jobs, alternating his stay in France with brief periods in Germany and Belgium. Thus it was that between 1954 and 1956 was in Munich, where he wrote his first novel, Chronicle of San Gabriel. He returned to Paris and then traveled to Antwerp in 1957, where he worked in a factory photo products. In 1958, he returned to Germany and spent some time in Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfurt. During his European stay I had to make many trades to survive, and recycler of newspapers, concierge, charger packages on the subway, seller of printed matter, etc.. He returned to Lima in 1958. Worked as a professor at the National University of San Cristobal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, whose request was devoted to the creation of an Institute for Popular Culture, in 1959. In 1960 he published his novel Chronicle of San Gabriel, which earned him the National Novel Prize that year. In 1961, he returned to Paris, where he worked as a journalist for ten years, Agence France Press. He was also cultural attache at the Peruvian Embassy in Paris, also play as a cultural consultant and ambassador of Peru to UNESCO. He married Alida Lamb and they had one child. In 1973, he operated a first lung cancer, caused by their addiction to cigarettes as a result of which he received a long treatment. Inspired by this experience, he wrote a book entitled 'Only for smokers'. In 1983, he received the National Book Award, and ten years later, the National Culture. Generous with his friends and with young writers, Ribeyro never had enemies and was always very appreciated by his contemporaries. After being confirmed as ambassador to Unesco in the late 1980s, had a very rough verbal exchange with his compatriot and friend Mario Vargas Llosa, following unleashed debate in Peru around the proposed nationalization of banks first Garcia government, which divided public opinion in the country. Ribeyro criticized Mario to support the conservative sectors of the country, thus opposed, he said, to the emergence of the popular classes. Vargas Llosa jumped at the opportunity to answer in her memoir A Fish in the Water (1993), pointing out their lack of consistency, which led him to appear subservient to every single shift government to maintain its junior diplomat in Unesco.2 However, apart from this painful episode, Vargas Llosa has consistently praised the literary work of Ribeyro, whom he considers as one of the great storytellers of speaking. The relationship between the two authors, who shared flat in Paris was otherwise complex and full of misterios. His last years were spent traveling between Europe and Peru. In the last year of his life he had decided definitely lie in their homeland in Peru. He died on December 4, 1994, days after getting the Juan Rulfo Prize for Literature. Translator Dianne Douglas is an associate professor of Spanish at Louisiana Tech University.
Julio Ricci, one of Uruguay's most important and prolific writers, lives in the capital of Montevideo where, until his recent retirement, he taught linguistics. This collection, his first volume of work published in English, includes stories from several of his books. His stories portray characters, often social outcasts and misfits, who live at the edges of society in the Uruguayan capital, where the absurd if often a way of life. Ricci views this absurdity with a mixture of black humor and delight. CONTENTS: About Julio Ricci; The Concert; The mantle of Command; The Letter; Mr. Szomogy's Best Friend; The Loser; Old Friends; The Table.
Julio Ricci Torres (Montevideo, 20 January 1920 - ibid., 1995) was a Uruguayan writer, linguist, philologist, translator, and publisher. His career as a linguist and philologist led him to conduct courses at universities in Sweden, Italy, France and the United States. He started writing at the end of the 1960s, after producing several works of translation of Swedish writers to the Spanish, and completed seven volumes of short stories. He was also an editor, through his label Gemini, where he worked with new writers of later prominence like Miguel Angel Campodonico and Tarik Carson. The narratives of Ricci are urban-themed and linked to naturalism and realism. Ricci considered Halldor Laxness to be a major influence in his work, along wiht other Nordic writers and Center European writers.
Biographical novel about Beatriz del Real during the political upheaval of the 1930's in Cuba.
Pepita Riera, also known as "Havana Rose", was a Cuban writer and broadcaster, who had a biweekly show on WMIE during 1963 where she discussed Cuban G-2 agents and informers. WMIE-FM (91.5 MHz) created in 1984, is a non-profit FM radio station licensed to Cocoa, Florida, and serving the Melbourne-Titusville-Cocoa, Florida radio market. The station is currently owned by National Christian Network, Inc.
In this deceptively simple, resonant novel, the narrator recalls from behind a veil of fond memory personal regret, and the passage of time a stirring tale of youthful rebellion that draws an astonishing allegorical portrait of General Augusto Pinochet's Chile of the 1986s. Carmen and her brother are sent to live with relatives after their family breaks apart. Imprisoned in a sprawling house ruled by Grandmother and Aunt Malva - table dictators who strive to maintain absolute control over their domicile - the scene is set for a struggle between the captive teens and their unrelenting keepers. Restless and vibrant, Carmen attempts to overcome the social isolation she and her brother suffer in the iron-fisted grip of the family matriarchs, Her insouciance and budding sexuality create a powerful resistance to the bourgeois values, hypocrisy and social imperatives that repress this uneasy household with its hilariously Kafkaesque cast of characters. Written with mastery searing humor, and remarkable economy and translated into English for the first time on the thirtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Chile's democratically elected Socialist president, Salvador Allende, Carmen Rust tells of one girl's longing for freedom, and stands as an enduring testament to the social and political realities of dictatorship and political violence,
ANA MARIA DEL RIO was born in 1948, She studied literature at the Catholic University of Chile and was a graduate student in Latin American Literature at Rice University and the University of Pittsburgh. Del Rio is the author of numerous novels, short stories, and children's books, She currently lives in Chile. MICHAEL J. LAZZARA (translator, introduction) holds an M.A. in Spanish from Princeton University, where he is currently pursuing his doctorate. DINELA ELTIT (afterword) is the author of six novels and numerous essays. She has held many distinguished visiting professorships throughout the U.S. and Latin America.
A Mexican American woman named Angelica is trapped in a cultural triangle of old-world Mexican customs, barrio street codes, and the rules and regulations of mainstream America. Perverse circumstances and a love/hate relationship with her mother force Angelica to make choices that no 18-year-old girl should feel compelled to make. She tells her story from a jail cell where she is waiting to stand trial for the murder of her mother's ex-boyfriend.
Mi-Chelle L. Rios is a clinical psychologist. She lives in Los Angeles.
In a backwater town in an unnamed Latin American country, a priest, haunted by the church's passivity in the face of the appalling social condition of his parishioners, comes across a mysterious box full of foul shreds of paper. He discovers each piece to be dated. Overwhelmed by the immediacy of the voice of the writer, the priest is morally compelled to reconstruct her experience. What unfolds, for him and for us, is the harrowing diary of a young woman, daughter of a doctor, who has been brutally abducted one day out of the blue by military authorities. She is charged with no crime. She is sexually abused, psychologically and physically tortured as the puzzle of her life -of her relations to her family, friends, the government-is pieced together. To write REQUIEM FOR A WOMAN'S SOUL Omar Rivabella interviewed many women who had themselves undergone political torture. Everything in this book, though in the guise of fiction, is true. Shockingly so.
OMAR RIVABELLA is an Argentinean writer and journalist living in New York. A strong advocate of human rights, he is the author of several essays and short stories published in Latin America. Between 1980 and 1983, he wrote three weekly columns for El Diario in New York City. His articles have also appeared in several American publications, including Penthouse. Mr. Rivabella's first novel, El Cielo EstciSucio, is currently being translated into English. He is currently working, in collaboration, on a biography of the former light heavyweight champion Jose Torres.
IN SPANISH - THE VORTEX - Most experts agree that the accolade, ‘the great South American novel,' belongs unquestionably to this masterpiece, now for the first time translated into English. Literally hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold in its many Spanish editions, and it is easy to understand why it has achieved its great reputation. Every page has color and passion; the scenes vary in a sequence that is highly dramatic - from the cattle plains, where events occur that send a group of men and women into exile, to the dark mystery, the ‘green hell', of the impassable jungle.
Jose Eustasio Rivera Salas (February 19, 1888 - December 1, 1928) was a Colombian lawyer and poet primarily known for his national epic The Vortex. Jose Eustasio Rivera was born on February 19, 1888 in Aguas Calientes, a hamlet of the city of Neiva, later that year the hamlet was incorporated into the newly created municipality of San Mateo, which was later renamed Rivera in honour of Jose Eustasio. His parents were Eustasio Rivera Escobar and Catalina Salas, and he was the first boy and fifth child out of eleven children, out of which eight made into adulthood, Jose Eustasio, Luis Enrique, Margarita, Virginia, Laura, Susana, Julia and Ernestina. In spite of his family's economic situation, he received a catholic education thanks to the help of other relatives and his own efforts. He attended Santa Librada school in Neiva and San Luis Gonzaga in Elías. In 1906 he received a scholarship to study at the normal school in Bogotá. In 1909, after graduating, he moved to Ibague where he worked as a school inspector. In 1912 he enrolled at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of National University, graduating as a lawyer in 1917. After a failed attempt to be elected for the senate, he was appointed Legal Secretary of the Colombo-Venezuelan Border Commission to determine the limits with Venezuela, there he had the opportunity to travel through the Colombian jungles, rivers, and mountains, giving him a first hand experience of the subjects he would later write. Disappointed with the lack of resources offered by his government for his trip, he abandoned the commission and continued travelling on his own. He later rejoined the commission, but before that he went to Brazil, where he became acquainted with the work of important Brazilian writers of his time, particularly Euclides da Cunha. In this venture he became familiar with life in the Colombian plains and with problems related to the extraction of rubber in the Amazon jungle, a matter that would be central in his major work, La vorágine (1924) (translated as The Vortex), now considered one of the most important novels in Latin American literary history. To write this novel he read extensively about the situation of rubber workers in the Amazon basin. After the success of his novel, he was elected, in 1925, as a member for the Investigative Commission for Exterior Relations and Colonization. He also published several articles in newspapers in Colombia. In these pieces, he criticized irregularities in government contracts, and denounced the abandonment of the rubber areas of Colombia and the mistreatment of workers. He also publicly defended his novel, which had been criticized by some Colombian literary critics as being too poetic. This criticism would be largely silenced by the wide praise the novel was receiving everywhere else. Rivera had arrived in New York the last week of April 1928 in the hopes of translating his novel into English, publishing it in the United States, and turning it into a motion picture film with the goal of exporting Colombian culture abroad. His venture, albeit riffled with difficulties, was moving along when on November 27 he suffered an attack of seizures and was taken to the Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital where he remained for four days in a comatose state until his death on December 1, 1928. After his death, his body was transported by ship from New York to Barranquilla on the United Fruit Company's ship the Sixaola. At his arrival on port, his body was transported in procession to the Pro-Cathedral of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino where a requiem mass was given and the body laid in chapelle ardente. The casket then made its way down the Magdalena onto Bogotá on the mail steamship Carbonell González, arriving in Girardot and finishing by train to arrive in Bogotá on January 7, 1929 and was taken directly to the Capitolio Nacional where it was placed lying in state for public viewing. His body was finally laid to rest in the Central Cemetery of Bogotá on January 19.
THE VORTEX - Most experts agree that the accolade, ‘the great South American novel,' belongs unquestionably to this masterpiece, now for the first time translated into English. Literally hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold in its many Spanish editions, and it is easy to understand why it has achieved its great reputation. Every page has color and passion; the scenes vary in a sequence that is highly dramatic - from the cattle plains, where events occur that send a group of men and women into exile, to the dark mystery, the ‘green hell', of the impassable jungle.
(February 19, 1888 - December 1, 1928) was a Colombian lawyer and poet primarily known for his national epic The Vortex. Jose Eustasio Rivera was born on February 19, 1888 in Aguas Calientes, a hamlet of the city of Neiva, later that year the hamlet was incorporated into the newly created municipality of San Mateo, which was later renamed Rivera in honour of Jose Eustasio. His parents were Eustasio Rivera Escobar and Catalina Salas, and he was the first boy and fifth child out of eleven children, out of which eight made into adulthood, Jose Eustasio, Luis Enrique, Margarita, Virginia, Laura, Susana, Julia and Ernestina. In spite of his family's economic situation, he received a catholic education thanks to the help of other relatives and his own efforts. He attended Santa Librada school in Neiva and San Luis Gonzaga in Elías. In 1906 he received a scholarship to study at the normal school in Bogotá. In 1909, after graduating, he moved to Ibague where he worked as a school inspector. In 1912 he enrolled at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of National University, graduating as a lawyer in 1917. After a failed attempt to be elected for the senate, he was appointed Legal Secretary of the Colombo-Venezuelan Border Commission to determine the limits with Venezuela, there he had the opportunity to travel through the Colombian jungles, rivers, and mountains, giving him a first hand experience of the subjects he would later write. Disappointed with the lack of resources offered by his government for his trip, he abandoned the commission and continued travelling on his own. He later rejoined the commission, but before that he went to Brazil, where he became acquainted with the work of important Brazilian writers of his time, particularly Euclides da Cunha. In this venture he became familiar with life in the Colombian plains and with problems related to the extraction of rubber in the Amazon jungle, a matter that would be central in his major work, La vorágine (1924) (translated as The Vortex), now considered one of the most important novels in Latin American literary history. To write this novel he read extensively about the situation of rubber workers in the Amazon basin. After the success of his novel, he was elected, in 1925, as a member for the Investigative Commission for Exterior Relations and Colonization. He also published several articles in newspapers in Colombia. In these pieces, he criticized irregularities in government contracts, and denounced the abandonment of the rubber areas of Colombia and the mistreatment of workers. He also publicly defended his novel, which had been criticized by some Colombian literary critics as being too poetic. This criticism would be largely silenced by the wide praise the novel was receiving everywhere else. Rivera had arrived in New York the last week of April 1928 in the hopes of translating his novel into English, publishing it in the United States, and turning it into a motion picture film with the goal of exporting Colombian culture abroad. His venture, albeit riffled with difficulties, was moving along when on November 27 he suffered an attack of seizures and was taken to the Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital where he remained for four days in a comatose state until his death on December 1, 1928. After his death, his body was transported by ship from New York to Barranquilla on the United Fruit Company's ship the Sixaola. At his arrival on port, his body was transported in procession to the Pro-Cathedral of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino where a requiem mass was given and the body laid in chapelle ardente. The casket then made its way down the Magdalena onto Bogotá on the mail steamship Carbonell González, arriving in Girardot and finishing by train to arrive in Bogotá on January 7, 1929 and was taken directly to the Capitolio Nacional where it was placed lying in state for public viewing. His body was finally laid to rest in the Central Cemetery of Bogotá on January 19.
NO ONE WILL SEE ME CRY received the 1997 Jose Ruben Romero Prize and the 2000 IMPAC-CONARTE-ITESM Prize. This is a vividly imagined historical novel by one of Mexico s new literary stars. Joaquin Buitrago, a photographer in the Castaneda Insane Asylum, believes a patient, Matilda Burgos, is a prostitute he knew years earlier. His obsession leads him to explore the clinic's records, and her tragic history. Joaquin and Matilda begin to tell each other fragmented stories about a past they almost shared, and a future in which they do not believe. Set in 1920's Mexico, this novel is at once an overview of one of the most turbulent times in Mexican history, a love story, and a meditation on the ways in which medical and popular language defined insanity. NO ONE WILL SEE ME CRY is a lyrical and startling visitation with the so-called losers of an era as they try to plumb the meaning of their lives. ‘[This] is one of the most beautiful and perturbing novels ever written in Mexico.' - Carlos Fuentes.
Cristina Rivera-Garza was born in the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, and currently resides in San Diego. She is the author of fiction, poetry, and essays, written in both her mother tongue (Spanish) and her stepmother tongue (English).
When this coming-of-age novel was first published in Rivera's native Dominican Republic, it shocked readers with its frank look at the sometimes tawdry life of a young Dominican woman. Caught between the onslaught of U.S. consumer culture and the evolving Marxist theology that spread through the Caribbean after the Cuban Revolution, the story reflects the loss of any sense of identity as the girl and her best friend move toward adulthood. They look for role models in musicians and writers, but as loss piles on loss-loss of cultural identity, loss of lovers, loss of a child, loss of dreams- they move every closer to knowing that ‘the worst solitude is that which is shared.'
Martha Rivera-Garrido, also credited as Martha Rivera (born January 19, 1961), is a writer from the Dominican Republic. She is part of the Dominican literary cohort named the 80s Generation. Rivera-Garrido was known primarily as a poet prior to the release of her debut novel, He Olvidado tu Nombre (I Have Forgotten Your Name). The novel won the International Novel Prize of the Casa de Teatro in 1996. In 2013, a street in Santo Domingo was named in her honour. Rivera-Garrido was born in Santo Domingo. She is the great-granddaughter of the Dominican poet Gastón Fernando Deligne [es]. She studied Political Science at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo. She has lived for long periods in the United States in New York City and Miami, as well as in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Latin America has seen, time and again, the rise of dictators, Supreme Leaders possessed of the dream of absolute power, who sought to impose their mad visions of Perfect Order on their own peoples. Latin American writers, in turn, have responded with fictional portraits of such figures, and no novel of this genre is as universally esteemed as Augusto Roa Bastos' I THE SUPREME, a book that draws on and re-imagines the career of the man who was ‘elected' Supreme Dictator for Life in Paraguay in 1814. When we meet Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia he is in his last days, after almost thirty years of absolute rule. Never married, having disavowed his own family and whatever friends he once had, he has as his only companion his longtime secretary, Policarpo Patiño. And it is to this much-abused (and possibly treacherous) servant that Francia pours out his deathbed ruminations: about his education at a monastery in Spain (and his expulsion therefrom), about his rivalries with his fellow ‘liberators' Bolivar and San Martin and his uneasy alliances with his Argentine neighbors, about the many-ton meteorite he had chained to his desk as punishment for being a runaway deserter from the cosmos. Roa Bastos counterpoints this ongoing conversation between master and servant by using various devices that enhance (even as they complicate) our vision of Francia: extracts from Francia's private notebook; a running commentary, the official version of the dictator's acts and thoughts, from Patiño's ‘perpetual circular'; and impeccably verifiable footnotes taken from more than 20,000 documents, supplied by an unidentified ‘compiler.' The effect of these shifting, contradictory perspectives is to reveal two Francias, one the intriguingly cunning, minor-league Machiavellian ‘I,' and the other the eerily powerful ‘Supreme,' an almost supernatural being that even Francia himself must refer to in the third person. By turns grotesque, comic, and strangely moving, I THE SUPREME is a profound meditation on the uses and abuses of power-over men, over events, over language itself. Brilliantly rendered by Helen Lane's translation, it is a classic of world literature. . Augusto Roa Bastos, (born Asuncion, June 13, 1917 - died Asuncion, April 26, 2005) is undoubtedly one of the greatest Paraguayan novelists of all time, and indeed among the most important Latin American writers. As a teenager he fought in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia and worked as journalist and a film scriptwriter. He is best known for Yo el Supremo (1974, I, the Supreme). This is one of the foremost Latin American novels to tackle the question of dictators and dictatorships, in the person of Jose Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist and no little eccentricity for 26 years in the early 19th century. His other major work was Hijo de Hombre (1960, ‘Son of Man'). He also wrote numerous other novels and stories. Roa Bastos spent his childhood in Iturbe, a small town some 200 km to the south of the capital Asuncion, where his father managed a sugar refinery. In 1932, with the outbreak of the Chaco War, he dropped out of school and joined the troops as a medical auxiliary; the horrors he experienced during this time set him firmly against violence for the rest of his life. After the war, his first jobs were as a bank clerk and reporter on the Asuncion daily El País; around the same time, he began writing for the theater. During World War II he was invited to London by the British Council; he also served as El País's war correspondent in London and covered the Nuremberg Trials for the paper. In 1947, because of his activities in opposition to President Higinio Morínigo during the Paraguayan Civil War, he was forced to flee the country. He settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he published most of his work. With the arrival of the military dictatorship in 1976, however, he left Argentina for France, where he taught Guaraní and Spanish literature at the University of Toulouse. Roa Bastos did not return to his native Paraguay until 1989, following the downfall of Alfredo Stroessner for whom he professed detestation. That same year, he was awarded the Premio Cervantes (Cervantes Prize), awarded by the Spanish Royal Academy and its correspondent academies in the various American nations, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the Spanish-language novel; he spent the prize money on educational and literary projects in Paraguay.
Augusto Roa Bastos, (born Asuncion, June 13, 1917 - died Asuncion, April 26, 2005) is undoubtedly one of the greatest Paraguayan novelists of all time, and indeed among the most important Latin American writers. As a teenager he fought in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia and worked as journalist and a film scriptwriter. He is best known for Yo el Supremo (1974, I, the Supreme). This is one of the foremost Latin American novels to tackle the question of dictators and dictatorships, in the person of Jose Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist and no little eccentricity for 26 years in the early 19th century. His other major work was Hijo de Hombre (1960, ‘Son of Man'). He also wrote numerous other novels and stories. Roa Bastos spent his childhood in Iturbe, a small town some 200 km to the south of the capital Asuncion, where his father managed a sugar refinery. In 1932, with the outbreak of the Chaco War, he dropped out of school and joined the troops as a medical auxiliary; the horrors he experienced during this time set him firmly against violence for the rest of his life. After the war, his first jobs were as a bank clerk and reporter on the Asuncion daily El País; around the same time, he began writing for the theater. During World War II he was invited to London by the British Council; he also served as El País's war correspondent in London and covered the Nuremberg Trials for the paper. In 1947, because of his activities in opposition to President Higinio Morínigo during the Paraguayan Civil War, he was forced to flee the country. He settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he published most of his work. With the arrival of the military dictatorship in 1976, however, he left Argentina for France, where he taught Guaraní and Spanish literature at the University of Toulouse. Roa Bastos did not return to his native Paraguay until 1989, following the downfall of Alfredo Stroessner for whom he professed detestation. That same year, he was awarded the Premio Cervantes (Cervantes Prize), awarded by the Spanish Royal Academy and its correspondent academies in the various American nations, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the Spanish-language novel; he spent the prize money on educational and literary projects in Paraguay. Originally published in Spanish as Hijo de Hombre, 1961 - Editorial Losada, S.A., Buenos Aires.
SON OF MAN includes nine loosely linked epiodes and a series of protagonists whose lives span most of the history of independeParaguay from the dictatorship of Dr. Francia to the years following the Chaco war. What differentiates SON OF MAN from a social protest novel is its attempt to establish historical continuity by means other than historical records.
Augusto Roa Bastos, (born Asuncion, June 13, 1917 - died Asuncion, April 26, 2005) is undoubtedly one of the greatest Paraguayan novelists of all time, and indeed among the most important Latin American writers. As a teenager he fought in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia and worked as journalist and a film scriptwriter. He is best known for Yo el Supremo (1974, I, the Supreme). This is one of the foremost Latin American novels to tackle the question of dictators and dictatorships, in the person of Jose Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist and no little eccentricity for 26 years in the early 19th century. His other major work was Hijo de Hombre (1960, ‘Son of Man'). He also wrote numerous other novels and stories. Roa Bastos spent his childhood in Iturbe, a small town some 200 km to the south of the capital Asuncion, where his father managed a sugar refinery. In 1932, with the outbreak of the Chaco War, he dropped out of school and joined the troops as a medical auxiliary; the horrors he experienced during this time set him firmly against violence for the rest of his life. After the war, his first jobs were as a bank clerk and reporter on the Asuncion daily El País; around the same time, he began writing for the theater. During World War II he was invited to London by the British Council; he also served as El País's war correspondent in London and covered the Nuremberg Trials for the paper. In 1947, because of his activities in opposition to President Higinio Morínigo during the Paraguayan Civil War, he was forced to flee the country. He settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he published most of his work. With the arrival of the military dictatorship in 1976, however, he left Argentina for France, where he taught Guaraní and Spanish literature at the University of Toulouse. Roa Bastos did not return to his native Paraguay until 1989, following the downfall of Alfredo Stroessner for whom he professed detestation. That same year, he was awarded the Premio Cervantes (Cervantes Prize), awarded by the Spanish Royal Academy and its correspondent academies in the various American nations, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the Spanish-language novel; he spent the prize money on educational and literary projects in Paraguay. Originally published in Spanish as Hijo de Hombre, 1961 - Editorial Losada, S.A., Buenos Aires.
SON OF MAN includes nine loosely linked epiodes and a series of protagonists whose lives span most of the history of independeParaguay from the dictatorship of Dr. Francia to the years following the Chaco war. What differentiates SON OF MAN from a social protest novel is its attempt to establish historical continuity by means other than historical records.
Augusto Roa Bastos, (born Asuncion, June 13, 1917 - died Asuncion, April 26, 2005) is undoubtedly one of the greatest Paraguayan novelists of all time, and indeed among the most important Latin American writers. As a teenager he fought in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia and worked as journalist and a film scriptwriter. He is best known for Yo el Supremo (1974, I, the Supreme). This is one of the foremost Latin American novels to tackle the question of dictators and dictatorships, in the person of Jose Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist and no little eccentricity for 26 years in the early 19th century. His other major work was Hijo de Hombre (1960, ‘Son of Man'). He also wrote numerous other novels and stories. Roa Bastos spent his childhood in Iturbe, a small town some 200 km to the south of the capital Asuncion, where his father managed a sugar refinery. In 1932, with the outbreak of the Chaco War, he dropped out of school and joined the troops as a medical auxiliary; the horrors he experienced during this time set him firmly against violence for the rest of his life. After the war, his first jobs were as a bank clerk and reporter on the Asuncion daily El País; around the same time, he began writing for the theater. During World War II he was invited to London by the British Council; he also served as El País's war correspondent in London and covered the Nuremberg Trials for the paper. In 1947, because of his activities in opposition to President Higinio Morínigo during the Paraguayan Civil War, he was forced to flee the country. He settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he published most of his work. With the arrival of the military dictatorship in 1976, however, he left Argentina for France, where he taught Guaraní and Spanish literature at the University of Toulouse. Roa Bastos did not return to his native Paraguay until 1989, following the downfall of Alfredo Stroessner for whom he professed detestation. That same year, he was awarded the Premio Cervantes (Cervantes Prize), awarded by the Spanish Royal Academy and its correspondent academies in the various American nations, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the Spanish-language novel; he spent the prize money on educational and literary projects in Paraguay. Originally published in Spanish as Hijo de Hombre, 1961 - Editorial Losada, S.A., Buenos Aires.
This book is very important for those who hold an interest in the literature and history of the Mexican Revolution. It presents the long-sought version of Los de abajo, a novel Mariano Azuela wrote while in Chihuahua and El Paso which was close in episode and feeling to the turbulent months of 1915 when the revolutionary troops with whom he served suffered defeat and he was forced into exile. The text is markedly different from Azuela's later revision of Los de abajo and opens the way for a new consideration of the novelist's stylistic technique. Professor Robe has drawn from regional and local histories of western Mexico, the published memoirs of revolutionary figures, newspaper files from the 1914.1915 period, and interviews with participants of the Revolution (many of them now dead). From these sources he puts together the story of Azuela's participation with Francisco Villa's forces and points up the experiences that provided Azuela with those episodes and feelings that found their way into Los de abajo, first published in the columns of the newspaper El Paso del Norte. Mariano Azuela, first in rank of all novelists of the Mexican Revolution and a medical doctor, was born in Lagos, Mexico, in 1873 and died in Mexico City in 1952. His early novels dealt with provincial Mexico and were only moderately successful. Although he produced several novels about the Revolution, Los de abajo was the one that brought him fame as a writer and a social critic.
Stanley L. Robe, a Professor of Spanish at the University of California, Los Angeles, specializes in the folklore and literature of the Mexican state of Jalisco, the setting for Los de abajo.
A fairy tale for adults, this is the story of a centaur, of how he was born and spirited away from his native land, of how he returned and what befell him thereafter.
Antonio Joaquín Robles Soler, better known as Antoniorrobles, is one of the most representative writers of children's literature in Spain. He began his career in children's stories in 1930 with the publication of 26 stories in alphabetical order , followed by numerous publications for children and children's stories. Deserving of a special mention in the National Prize for Literature in 1932 and renovator of children's literature, he introduced superrealistic experimentation in his works, play with the absurd and fantasy, humor and commitment to kindness and love for things, objects and animals. Exiled in Mexico, he held the Chair of Children's Literature at the Normal School.
‘HAGIOGRAPHY OF NARCISA THE BEAUTIFUL is very entertaining and very feminist. Robles has a real gift for satire and the comic, a trait which is relatively rare in Hispanic letters.' - Prof. Jean Franco, Columbia University. . . Playing on the rich Latin American literary tradition of the Saint's Life, Cuban writer Mireya Robles creates a humorous, ultimately horrifying vision of the nuclear family in this innovative novel, set in Cuba's asphyxiating provincial society during the nineteen fifties. The philandering father, the sensitive yet sadistic older brother, the mother living on radio soap operas, the pretty, empty-headed younger sister - all are seen through the eyes of Narcisa, the relentlessly optimistic and ecstatic ugly duckling of her family. Narcisa's imagination both endows and parodies her surroundings with rich comedy and grotesqueness.
MIREYA R0BLES was born in Cuba in 1934. In 1957 she left for the USA to continue her literary studies. Her poetry, fiction and essays have been published in France, Mexico, Spain and in the United States in Spanish. She now teaches Hispanic studies in South Africa. This is her first major work in English.
Isabel Allende is arguably the world's most popular living woman writer. Her major books-THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS, OF LOVE AND SHADOWS, EVA LUNA, THE STORIES OF EVA LUNA, THE INFINITE PLAN, and PAULA-have been translated into nearly thirty languages and have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. The first two novels have been made into successful Hollywood films. A marvelous ability for storytelling, particularly the hidden stories of women's lives, is the secret of Allende's success. In this collection of thirty-four interviews spanning the 1980s and 1990s, she tells her own story in her own words, from her early years as a Chilean TV personality and niece of the late Chilean president Salvador Allende through the major transformations of her adult life, first as a political refugee in Venezuela, then as a United States visitor, permanent California resident, newly remarried wife, and renowned world writer. The interviews spotlight issues in Allende's life, art, and working habits that have consistently fascinated her readers and critics. Five of the interviews have not been published before, and several that originally appeared in Spanish, German, and Dutch are here translated into English for the first time. As a collection, the interviews constitute a sharply focused, intimate short autobiography of Isabel Allende-the first to appear in any language. Family photographs selected by Allende (including some never before published) complement the text.
John Rodden has been a faculty member at the University of Virginia, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Pennsylvania, among other institutions. He has published more than twenty books on topics ranging from British literary criticism and American intellectual history to comparative international education, European communism and post-communism, and the politics of human rights.
A collection of semi-philosophical essays on the protean nature of human personality, which Rodo examines with a marvelous psychological subtlety. Rodo sees human personality not as static, but as fluid in time, constantly renewing itself. His object is to show how this personality may be ordered and guided throughout its renewals and adaptations by what is actually an idealized conception of the will.
Jose Enrique Camilo Rodo Piñeyro (15 July 1871 - 1 May 1917) was a Uruguayan essayist. He called for the youth of Latin America to reject materialism, to revert to Greco-Roman habits of free thought and self enrichment, and to develop and concentrate on their culture. He cultivated an epistolary relationship with important Hispanic pensadores of that time, Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) in Spain, Jose de la Riva-Agüero in Peru, and, most importantly, with RubEn Darío, the most influential Latin American poet to date, the founder of modernismo. As a result of his refined prose style and the modernista ideology he pushed, Rodo is today considered the preeminent theorist of the modernista school of literature. Rodo is best known for his essay Ariel (1900), drawn from The Tempest, in which Ariel represents the positive, and Caliban represents the negative tendencies in human nature, and they debate the future course of history, in what Rodo intended to be a secular sermon to Latin American youth, championing the cause of the classical western tradition. What Rodo was afraid of was the debilitating effect of working individuals' limited existence doing the same work, over and over again, never having time to develop the spirit. Among Uruguayan youth, however, he is best known for Parque Rodo, the Montevideo park named after him. For more than a century now, Ariel has been an extraordinarily influential and enduring essay in Latin American letters and culture due to a combination of specific cultural, literary, and political circumstances, as well as for its adherence to Classical values and its denunciation of utilitarianism and what Rodo called ‘nordomanía.'
First published in 1900 in Uruguay, ARIEL is Latin America's most famous essay on esthetic and philosophical sensibility, as well as its most discussed treatise on hemispheric relations. Though Rodo protested the interpretation, his allegorical conflict between Ariel the lover of beauty and truth, and Caliban, the evil spirit of materialism and positivism, has come to be regarded as a metaphor for the conflicts and cultural differences between Latin America and the United States. Generations of statesmen, intellectuals, and literary figures have been formed by this book, either in championing its teachings or in reacting against them. The esthetic and political issues raised in Ariel continue to be debated in Latin America, where Rodo's book is widely read and known, even among school children. This skillful English translation will help familiarize North American, non-Spanish-speaking readers with a landmark in Latin American letters and help close the gap of comprehension between our two cultures. Prepared especially with teachers and students in mind, this edition contains a reader's guide to names, places, and important movements, as well as notes. It also contains a comprehensive annotated English/Spanish bibliography. A distinguished translator, MARGARET SAYERS PEDEN is professor of Spanish at the University of Missouri, Columbia. ‘The work's centrality in Latin American culture can never be questioned . . . . It is a major text . . . . ‘ - RONALD CHRIST. ‘Irritating, insufferable, admirable, stimulating, disappointing Rodo: . . . you are part of our family quarrels, and must bear with your disrespectful, equally disappointed, intuitive, incomplete nephews, living in a world that you helped define for us, and offered unto our revolt.' - from the Prologue by Carlos Fuentes.
Jose Enrique Camilo Rodo Piñeyro (15 July 1871 - 1 May 1917) was a Uruguayan essayist. He called for the youth of Latin America to reject materialism, to revert to Greco-Roman habits of free thought and self enrichment, and to develop and concentrate on their culture. He cultivated an epistolary relationship with important Hispanic pensadores of that time, Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) in Spain, Jose de la Riva-Agüero in Peru, and, most importantly, with RubEn Darío, the most influential Latin American poet to date, the founder of modernismo. As a result of his refined prose style and the modernista ideology he pushed, Rodo is today considered the preeminent theorist of the modernista school of literature. Rodo is best known for his essay Ariel (1900), drawn from The Tempest, in which Ariel represents the positive, and Caliban represents the negative tendencies in human nature, and they debate the future course of history, in what Rodo intended to be a secular sermon to Latin American youth, championing the cause of the classical western tradition. What Rodo was afraid of was the debilitating effect of working individuals' limited existence doing the same work, over and over again, never having time to develop the spirit. Among Uruguayan youth, however, he is best known for Parque Rodo, the Montevideo park named after him. For more than a century now, Ariel has been an extraordinarily influential and enduring essay in Latin American letters and culture due to a combination of specific cultural, literary, and political circumstances, as well as for its adherence to Classical values and its denunciation of utilitarianism and what Rodo called ‘nordomanía.'
First published in 1900 in Uruguay, ARIEL is Latin America's most famous essay on esthetic and philosophical sensibility, as well as its most discussed treatise on hemispheric relations. Though Rodo protested the interpretation, his allegorical conflict between Ariel the lover of beauty and truth, and Caliban, the evil spirit of materialism and positivism, has come to be regarded as a metaphor for the conflicts and cultural differences between Latin America and the United States. Generations of statesmen, intellectuals, and literary figures have been formed by this book, either in championing its teachings or in reacting against them. The esthetic and political issues raised in Ariel continue to be debated in Latin America, where Rodo's book is widely read and known, even among school children.
Jose Enrique Camilo Rodo Piñeyro (15 July 1871 - 1 May 1917) was a Uruguayan essayist. He called for the youth of Latin America to reject materialism, to revert to Greco-Roman habits of free thought and self enrichment, and to develop and concentrate on their culture. He cultivated an epistolary relationship with important Hispanic pensadores of that time, Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) in Spain, Jose de la Riva-Agüero in Peru, and, most importantly, with RubEn Darío, the most influential Latin American poet to date, the founder of modernismo. As a result of his refined prose style and the modernista ideology he pushed, Rodo is today considered the preeminent theorist of the modernista school of literature. Rodo is best known for his essay Ariel (1900), drawn from The Tempest, in which Ariel represents the positive, and Caliban represents the negative tendencies in human nature, and they debate the future course of history, in what Rodo intended to be a secular sermon to Latin American youth, championing the cause of the classical western tradition. What Rodo was afraid of was the debilitating effect of working individuals' limited existence doing the same work, over and over again, never having time to develop the spirit. Among Uruguayan youth, however, he is best known for Parque Rodo, the Montevideo park named after him. For more than a century now, Ariel has been an extraordinarily influential and enduring essay in Latin American letters and culture due to a combination of specific cultural, literary, and political circumstances, as well as for its adherence to Classical values and its denunciation of utilitarianism and what Rodo called ‘nordomanía.'
First published in 1900 in Uruguay, ARIEL is Latin America's most famous essay on esthetic and philosophical sensibility, as well as its most discussed treatise on hemispheric relations. Though Rodo protested the interpretation, his allegorical conflict between Ariel the lover of beauty and truth, and Caliban, the evil spirit of materialism and positivism, has come to be regarded as a metaphor for the conflicts and cultural differences between Latin America and the United States. Generations of statesmen, intellectuals, and literary figures have been formed by this book, either in championing its teachings or in reacting against them. The esthetic and political issues raised in Ariel continue to be debated in Latin America, where Rodo's book is widely read and known, even among school children.
Jose Enrique Camilo Rodo Piñeyro (15 July 1871 - 1 May 1917) was a Uruguayan essayist. He called for the youth of Latin America to reject materialism, to revert to Greco-Roman habits of free thought and self enrichment, and to develop and concentrate on their culture. He cultivated an epistolary relationship with important Hispanic pensadores of that time, Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) in Spain, Jose de la Riva-Agüero in Peru, and, most importantly, with RubEn Darío, the most influential Latin American poet to date, the founder of modernismo. As a result of his refined prose style and the modernista ideology he pushed, Rodo is today considered the preeminent theorist of the modernista school of literature. Rodo is best known for his essay Ariel (1900), drawn from The Tempest, in which Ariel represents the positive, and Caliban represents the negative tendencies in human nature, and they debate the future course of history, in what Rodo intended to be a secular sermon to Latin American youth, championing the cause of the classical western tradition. What Rodo was afraid of was the debilitating effect of working individuals' limited existence doing the same work, over and over again, never having time to develop the spirit. Among Uruguayan youth, however, he is best known for Parque Rodo, the Montevideo park named after him. For more than a century now, Ariel has been an extraordinarily influential and enduring essay in Latin American letters and culture due to a combination of specific cultural, literary, and political circumstances, as well as for its adherence to Classical values and its denunciation of utilitarianism and what Rodo called ‘nordomanía.'
A collection of 28 stories.
Néstor A. Rodríguez Escudero was a Puerto Rican author (1914-2001). In writing this review, it seems inappropriate to say that he was an author, because even though his work has died, it keeps him alive. Reading the stories that are part of "Tales of the Earth and Tales of the Sea" specifically "An Adventure of Cofresí and The Burial of Cofresí", we feel him alive; narrating us with an abundance of adjectives, with a striking description of nature, specifically of the sea and the vegetation of the Caribbean islands. It was exciting to locate the story of pirates and ghosts that always seem distant to us in time and space right here on the same coasts where our sight delights on the island of Puerto Rico, it was nice to be told that the burial of the Treasury was in Mona Island or that the boat skirted Cabo Rojo. Rodríguez Escudero, genius of the word and of the adventure graduated (paying his studies with much work) in jurisprudence and education, was a recognized and award-winning writer who bequests us works of great value. He was named a member of the Academy of Art and Science of Puerto Rico, and of the American Academy of Political Sciences of the University of Colombia. His work "Litoral" was awarded by the Puerto Rico Institute of Literature and its text is studied at the Public School. He also received the journalism award from the Institute of Literature of Puerto Rico and the history of Spiritism received an honorable mention from the Institute of Literature of Puerto Rico. He was named a member of the Academy of Art and Science of Puerto Rico, and of the American Academy of Political Sciences of the University of Colombia. His work "Litoral" was awarded by the Puerto Rico Institute of Literature and its text is studied at the Public School. He also received the journalism award from the Institute of Literature of Puerto Rico and the history of Spiritism received an honorable mention from the Institute of Literature of Puerto Rico. He was named a member of the Academy of Art and Science of Puerto Rico, and of the American Academy of Political Sciences of the University of Colombia. His work "Litoral" was awarded by the Puerto Rico Institute of Literature and its text is studied at the Public School. He also received the journalism award from the Institute of Literature of Puerto Rico and the history of Spiritism received an honorable mention from the Institute of Literature of Puerto Rico. The two stories read have the main character the pirate Roberto Cofresi, the famous Puerto Rican pirate (1791-1825) who was born in the town of Cabo Rojo. Given that his character existed in real life, it would be necessary to guess which parts of his story are myths and legends and which are real or imagined. In the end it does not matter, because it gives us two fantastic stories, with an exuberant setting of colors and images. In Cofresí's burial, the spirit of El tuerto, Hermenegildo Lopez, a former sailor on the schooner Ana, assassinated fifty years ago by Cofresí, is presented. Who kills him in revenge for the broken honor of his adoptive daughter Adela. As the same author in the introduction to his fourth storybook asserts: "Psychic phenomena are wherever they want, that is why any superstition, any story, any anecdote is valuable" For Nestor Rodríguez Escudero, the writers who write about folklore must Just as science students consider medical discoveries, consider popular beliefs and culture. In this story, the spirit of Cofresí is presented in the form of a bull, frustrating the search for the treasure that, found, is lost again using elements from popular mythology. The richness of the descriptions places us in the story with an abundant setting of details. I will take as an example a few lines about the moment when Frasco Rodríguez and Manuel guided by the spirit approach to unearth the treasure: the silence of the dark tropical night chilled the spirits. The faint light from the oil lanterns did not reach the beach. In the distance the crowing of roosters vibrated, the hubbub of the elytra. The occasional barking of a night owl and the stars looked towards the earth with a thousand luminous eyes . I was fortunate to delight in these tales of adventure and rich narration.
In an era of multicultural awareness, this collection of seven Hispanic short stories will make an impact. The teenagers in Rodriguez's world are not attractive; raised in poverty, they exhibit the problems of the inner city - teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, and petty crime. But more universal traits shine through. In the title story, the narrator , who refuses to salute the American flag because his father has taught him to resent U. S. imperialism in Puerto Rico, learns that adults don't have all the answers and that the world is run on compromises. Nilsa, in No More War Games, is torn between childhood and sexual awareness as much as any middle-class 12-year-old. Gritty street language, phonetic spelling, and graphic descriptions enliven this as a real-life picture of the Bronx and provide the basis for lots of discussion. - SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL.
Abraham Rodriguez Jr. is a Puerto Rican novelist, short story author and musician who writes in English about the experience of Latinos in the United States. Although he has been living in Germany since the mid-90s, Rodriguez continues to set his stories in the South Bronx. He is part of the Nuyorican Movement.
Artwork By Warren Bernard . Keywords: Literature Translated Puerto Rico Caribbean Latin America. ISBN: 1568580576. Translated into English for the first time, acclaimed Puerto Rican novelist Edgardo Rodriguez Julia delivers a masterfully structured and intensely exciting historic novel about issues of class and race in Puerto Rico's colonial past. Presented through a series of lectures interspersed with letters and other historic documents, The Renunciation chronicles a prearranged marriage plotted to pacify the slave population and to save Puerto Rico from certain rebellion. The story of Baltasar Montañez, an eighteenth-century Puerto Rican hero and the son of a slave leader, unfolds deliberately, as the lecturer shares with his audience the details of Montañez's life. In 1753 Montañez renounced his own people and married the daughter of the secretary of state. Her hand was offered by the colonial government, with the backing of the Catholic Church, in an effort to create for the slaves an illusion of freedom and social mobility - and to ease growing tension between the two opposing classes. The plan worked, for a brief period, then backfired. This Caribbean Othello, who had so willingly adopted the social, cultural, and religious mores of colonial Puerto Rico's white society, was unable to sustain the charade. Montañez, whose insane visions increasingly preoccupied him, gave in to his consuming madness, abandoning his marriage and renouncing the position to which the marriage entitled him. As the final lecture draws to a close, the audience learns that this archetypal mad genius sided with neither the government and church, which gave him the power he so wanted, nor the slave revolters, whose bloody uprising in his defense brought the Puerto Rican government to its knees.
Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá (born October 9, 1946) is a Puerto Rican essayist and novelist. Rodríguez Juliá was born in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico. In 1974, he published the first of his eight novels, La renuncia del hEroe Baltasar. In 1986 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Literature. Since 1999 he has been a member of the Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española. In June 2011, he lectured at the University of Guadalajara's "Julio Cortázar" Center for the Study of American Literature. In April 2012 he gave the Raimundo Lira Lecture at Harvard University.
THE MEDICINE MAN, which won first place at the 1955 Cannes film festival, is indeed a masterful and compelling narrative, always surprising the reader with a final, unexpected twist, eloquently illustrates in ‘The Sad Story of Pascola Cenobio' where the protagonist receives a sudden, cruel punishment as he prepares for his expected wedded bliss. ‘Short story lovers will applaud this graceful English translation of one of two collections by a remarkably talented Mexican fiction writer (1904-1951) whose anthropological fieldwork among Indian villages in remote locations was reflected in his intense stories . . . ‘The triumphs and disasters important to otherwise unimportant people are the themes Rojas Gonzalez sympathetically explores. He writes about noble souls, in exquisitely precise prose.' - Booklist. ‘It is Gonzalez's insights into this world that have made this work a minor classic for half a century in Mexico. This slim but fascinating volume sheds a good deal of light, in absorbing detail, on the lives of remote Mexican tribes, many of which are on the verge of extinction.' - Publisher's Weekly.
Francisco Rojas Gonzalez (1904 - 1951) was a Mexican writer, ethnologist and film scriptwriter. In particular he stood out as author of essays, short stories and novels. He was National Prize of Literature in 1944. THE TRANSLATORS: Robert S. Rudder received his Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Minnesota. He has taught Spanish language and literature at several universities and served as consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Gloria Arjona spent most of her life in Mexico, where she attended the National Autonomous University in Mexico City. She has lived in the United States since 1986, teaching writing and working with the Hispanic community.
A stirring and memorable picture of a jewel thief, his devoted family, and especially the youngest of his four sons, Aniceto Hevia. Young Aniceto's vagabond life began at the age of ten with his mother's death and his father's imprisonment. Abandoned by his brothers, curtly dismissed by the police to whom he appealed for aid, he in turn became a tailor's apprentice, tramp, beachcomber, prisoner. Young Aniceto's liberation from prison, penniless and with permanently damaged lungs, and his flight from hunger are portrayed by the author in a poignantly realistic, yet simple and dignified manner. The psychological and moral atmosphere of a family living in a conventional milieu on the income of a professional thief, and the developing philosophy of the young Aniceto, gives an intense dramatic quality to this novel of nomadic existence. Published in Chile under the title, Hijo de Ladron, this work was widely acclaimed in its three editions as one of the greatest novels ever to have emerged from Latin America. Waldo Frank has called the author the Sherwood Anderson of Chile. ‘Deeply human, compassionate and moving rather than cynical . . . has a fine and diffuse poetry about it reminiscent of Kafka and, when most colorful, of Faulkner.' UNESCO Bulletin.
Manuel Rojas Sepúlveda (January 8, 1896 - March 11, 1973) was a Chilean writer and journalist. Rojas was born in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the son of Chilean parents. In 1899 his family returned to Santiago, but in 1903, after the father's death, the mother returned to Buenos Aires again, where he attended school until the age of eleven. In 1912, at the age of sixteen, he decided to return alone to Chile. Once he arrived to the country, he got involved with intellectuals and anarchist groups, while working in many different activities as an unskilled labourer: as house painter, electrician, agricultural worker, railroad handyman, loading ships, tailor's apprentice, cobbler, ship guard, and actor in small-time itinerant groups. Many of the situations and characters he encountered there later became part of his fictional world. He returned to Argentina in 1921 publishing his first poems there. Back in Chile, he worked intensely in his narrative production and at the same time he worked in the National Library and at the Universidad de Chile press. He married María Baeza and had three children. He joined the Los Tiempos and the Las Ultimas Noticias newspapers as a linotype operator first and ultimately worked on Santiago newspapers as a journalist, all the while also working at the Hipodromo Chile (Santiago racetrack). After the death of his wife, he married again and started to travel. He received the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 1957. He toured Europe, South America and the Middle East. He became a university professor of Chilean and American Literature in the US and at the Universidad de Chile. His works have as a central theme the representation of the instability, misery and marginality of the members of the working class. The development of the psychological and existential complexities of his characters established a difference between his work and prior literary movements (criollismo, mundonovismo), that were characterized by a less complex view of individuality. He died in Santiago on March 11, 1973.
This autobiographical novel, dictated at white heat while Romero was Mexican consul in Barcelona, delivers its burden of nostalgia with a clarity peculiar to men in exile and with the stunning imagery that could only come from the pen of a poet. NOTES OF A VILLAGER begins in the dark attics of Romero's memory, where he goes in search of mementos of infancy: the clothes made threadbare by poverty, the damaged miniatures of forgotten women, the paintings cobwebbed by the passage of time. But he can't linger there. There is too much bitterness at his betrayal by comrades of the revolution and his near death before a firing squad. While candid in its view of the movement which brought about the overthrow of the dictator Porfirio Diaz and the assassination of the idealistic Francisco I. Madero, the book does not end on a note of pessimism. On the contrary, NOTES OF A VILLAGER is one of the most powerful affirmations of life, and of the Mexican family, in particular, ever written. . About the Author - Jose Ruben Romero is best known for his picaresque novel Pito Perez, which critics have compared to the classic Lozorillo de Tormes. His effect on Mexican literature has been that of a modern Chaucer, to popularize the vulgate. As a man of letters in the Latin-American tradition, he held many high government posts, including Mexican ambassador to Brazil and Cuba.
Jose RubEn Romero, (born September 25, 1890, Cotija de la Paz, Mex. - died July 4, 1952, Mexico City), Mexican novelist and short-story writer whose vivid depiction of the people and customs of his native state of Michoacán brought him critical acclaim as an outstanding modern costumbrista, or novelist of manners. His character Pito PErez, a lovable rascal, won the hearts of a wide audience. In his youth Romero participated in the rebellion (1910–11) led by Francisco Madero, and his later diplomatic career included service as ambassador to Brazil (1937) and to Cuba (1939). Romero began his literary career as a poet with Fantasías (1908; Fantasies) and La musa heroica (1912; The Heroic Muse). Soon, however, he turned almost exclusively to prose. With broad humour that often masked an underlying bitterness, Romero depicted the post-revolutionary milieu in such novels as Desbandada (1934; Disbandment) and Anticipacion a la muerte (1939; Anticipation of Death). He achieved his greatest popularity, however, with La vida inútil de Pito PErez (1938; The Useless Life of Pito PErez), a picaresque novel chronicling the comic adventures of Pito PErez, who reappeared in Algunas cosillas de Pito PErez (1945; Some Little Things About Pito PErez).
A literary classic through seventeen Spanish language editions, THE FUTILE LIFE OF PITO PEREZ has been Mexico's number one bestselling novel over the past twenty-five years. This is its first complete and unabridged publication in the English language. Spiced with ribaldry and humorous irony, the portrayal of a life of futility is told here with great sensitivity. In the literary tradition of such epic works of pathos and tragedy of Cervantes, Unamuno and Camus, Pito Perez is a sympathetic story of a man's unorthodox attempts to overcome certain inequalities and injustices of his society. In Pito's Last Will and Testament, he declares, To Humanity, I bequeath the entire lot of my bitterness. To the rich, hungry for gold, I leave the excrement of my life. To the poor, because they are so cowardly, I will my contempt. The dramatic style and narrative that transcends this epic literary work serve to focus on man seeking solace in life and finding meaning and truth in death.
Jose RubEn Romero, (born September 25, 1890, Cotija de la Paz, Mex. - died July 4, 1952, Mexico City), Mexican novelist and short-story writer whose vivid depiction of the people and customs of his native state of Michoacán brought him critical acclaim as an outstanding modern costumbrista, or novelist of manners. His character Pito PErez, a lovable rascal, won the hearts of a wide audience. In his youth Romero participated in the rebellion (1910–11) led by Francisco Madero, and his later diplomatic career included service as ambassador to Brazil (1937) and to Cuba (1939). Romero began his literary career as a poet with Fantasías (1908; Fantasies) and La musa heroica (1912; The Heroic Muse). Soon, however, he turned almost exclusively to prose. With broad humour that often masked an underlying bitterness, Romero depicted the post-revolutionary milieu in such novels as Desbandada (1934; Disbandment) and Anticipacion a la muerte (1939; Anticipation of Death). He achieved his greatest popularity, however, with La vida inútil de Pito PErez (1938; The Useless Life of Pito PErez), a picaresque novel chronicling the comic adventures of Pito PErez, who reappeared in Algunas cosillas de Pito PErez (1945; Some Little Things About Pito PErez).
SAGARANA is a cycle of nine related but independent tales set in the backlands of Minas Gerais, the author's native state. All of them are marked by the extraordinary qualities that have made Guimarães Rosa's great reputation in Brazil, France, Germany, and Italy. Those qualities are a wildly individual, creative use of language; a basic and pervading earthiness; a constant sense of the ruthlessness and stolid indifference of nature, including human nature, and a raffish humor: As in his epic The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, regarded by many as one of the great novels of our time, Guimaräes Rosa here places simple country people in wild-swinging adventures amid the animals and the scenes of his homeland. Harriet de Onis, working directly with the author, has produced a first-rate English version of Guimarães Rosa's unique Brazilian Portuguese. In its September 1965 issue, the English magazine Encounter said: ‘Guimarães Rosa plays with time and space, telescopes events and persons, makes the blood run cold and desire, explode - employs, in fact, the most shameless artifices of melodrama - without once slipping into the stale conventions of documentary realism . . . . Guimarães Rosa fuses into a masterly synthesis the component elements of his own huge, chaotic, God - and Devil-ridden Brazilian motherland.' In SAGARANA, the reader will encounter the multifaceted qualities of the Brazilian personality and ethos: the humor, sunny and black, the spirit of compromise and tolerance that has preserved the sprawling republic's unity, the constant reactions to a vast land that can be cruel but is seldom sick or decadent. No one who ignores Guimarães Rosa's fiction can pretend to understand the contemporary literature of Brazil. Reading him may not always be easy (is Joyce's Ulysses?), but it is worth the effort. . Joao Guimarães Rosa was born in Cordisburgo, Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1908. He studied medicine and practiced both as a country doctor in the backlands and as a military doctor, taking part in the civil war of 1932. In 1934 he embarked upon a diplomatic career. From 1938 to 1942 he was Brazilian Consul in Hamburg, Germany; from 1942 to 1944, Secretary of the Brazilian Embassy in Bogota, Colombia; from 1948 to 1951, Embassy Counselor at Paris. At present he heads a service of the Ministry Of Foreign Affairs. Notable among his publications have been Sagarana (1946); Corpo di Baile (1956), and Grande Sertdo: Veredas (The Devil to Pay in the Backlands) (1956). Translations of Guimarães Rosa's books have been published in France, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Sweden; others are to appear in Czechoslovakia, Denmark. Finland, Holland, and Spain. . (original title: Sagarana, 1946).
João Guimarães Rosa (27 June 1908 - 19 November 1967) was a Brazilian novelist, considered by many to be one of the greatest Brazilian novelists born in the 20th century. His best-known work is the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas (translated as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands). Some people consider this to be the Brazilian equivalent of Ulysses. Guimarães Rosa was born in Cordisburgo in the state of Minas Gerais, the first of six children of Florduardo Pinto Rosa (nicknamed 'seu Fulô') and Francisca Guimarães Rosa ('Chiquitinha'). He was self-taught in many areas and from childhood studied many languages, starting with French before he was seven years old, as can be seen in an interview he gave a cousin of his later in life: 'I speak: Portuguese, German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Esperanto, some Russian; I read: Swedish, Dutch, Latin and Greek (but with the dictionary right next to me); I understand some German dialects; I studied the grammar of: Hungarian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Polish, Tupi, Hebrew, Japanese, Czech, Finnish, Danish; I dabbled in others. But all at a very basic level. And I think that studying the spirit and the mechanism of other languages helps a great deal in the deeper understanding of the national language [of Brazil]. In general, however, I studied for pleasure, desire, distraction.' Still a child, he moved to his grandparents' house in Belo Horizonte, where he finished primary school. He began his secondary schooling at the Santo Antônio School in São João del Rei, but soon returned to Belo Horizonte, where he graduated. In 1925, at only 16, he applied for what was then called the College of Medicine of Minas Gerais University. On June 27, 1930, he married Lígia Cabral Penna, a girl of only 16, with whom he had two daughters, Vilma and Agnes. Vilma had a son, João Emílio, who had a daughter, Alice (the only granddaughter of the author). In that same year he graduated and began his medical practice in Itaguara, then in the municipality of Itaúna, in Minas Gerais, where he stayed about two years. It is in this town that he had his first contact with elements from the sertão (semi-arid Brazilian outback), which would serve as reference and inspiration in many of his works. Back in Itaguara, Guimarães Rosa served as a volunteer doctor of the Public Force (Força Pública) in the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, heading to the so-called Tunel sector in Passa-Quatro, Minas Gerais, where he came into contact with the future president Juscelino Kubitschek, at that time the chief doctor of the Blood Hospital. Later he became a civil servant through examination. In 1933, he went to Barbacena in the position of Doctor of the 9th Infantry Battalion (Oficial Medico do 9º Batalhão de Infantaria). Most of his life was spent as a Brazilian diplomat in Europe and Latin America. In 1938 he served as assistant-Consul in Hamburg, Germany, where he met his future second wife, the Righteous Among the Nations Aracy de Carvalho Guimarães Rosa. In 1963, he was chosen by unanimous vote to enter the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters) in his second candidacy. After postponing for 4 years, he finally assumed his position only in 1967: just three days before passing away in the city of Rio de Janeiro, victim of a heart attack. His masterpiece is The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. In this novel, Riobaldo, a jagunço is torn between two loves: Diadorim, another jagunço, and Otacília, an ordinary beauty from the backlands. Following his own existential quest, he contemplates making a deal with Lucifer in order to eliminate Hermogenes, his nemesis. One could say that Sertão (the backlands) represents the whole Universe and the mission of Riobaldo is to pursue its travessia, or crossing, seeking answers for the metaphysical questions faced by mankind. In this sense he is an incarnation of the classical hero in the Brazilian backlands. Guimarães Rosa died at the summit of his diplomatic and literary career, aged 59.
SAGARANA is a cycle of nine related but independent tales set in the backlands of Minas Gerais, the author's native state. All of them are marked by the extraordinary qualities that have made Guimarães Rosa's great reputation in Brazil, France, Germany, and Italy. Those qualities are a wildly individual, creative use of language; a basic and pervading earthiness; a constant sense of the ruthlessness and stolid indifference of nature, including human nature, and a raffish humor: As in his epic The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, regarded by many as one of the great novels of our time, Guimaräes Rosa here places simple country people in wild-swinging adventures amid the animals and the scenes of his homeland. Harriet de Onis, working directly with the author, has produced a first-rate English version of Guimarães Rosa's unique Brazilian Portuguese. In its September 1965 issue, the English magazine Encounter said: ‘Guimarães Rosa plays with time and space, telescopes events and persons, makes the blood run cold and desire, explode - employs, in fact, the most shameless artifices of melodrama - without once slipping into the stale conventions of documentary realism . . . . Guimarães Rosa fuses into a masterly synthesis the component elements of his own huge, chaotic, God - and Devil-ridden Brazilian motherland.' In SAGARANA, the reader will encounter the multifaceted qualities of the Brazilian personality and ethos: the humor, sunny and black, the spirit of compromise and tolerance that has preserved the sprawling republic's unity, the constant reactions to a vast land that can be cruel but is seldom sick or decadent. No one who ignores Guimarães Rosa's fiction can pretend to understand the contemporary literature of Brazil. Reading him may not always be easy (is Joyce's Ulysses?), but it is worth the effort. . Joao Guimarães Rosa was born in Cordisburgo, Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1908. He studied medicine and practiced both as a country doctor in the backlands and as a military doctor, taking part in the civil war of 1932. In 1934 he embarked upon a diplomatic career. From 1938 to 1942 he was Brazilian Consul in Hamburg, Germany; from 1942 to 1944, Secretary of the Brazilian Embassy in Bogota, Colombia; from 1948 to 1951, Embassy Counselor at Paris. At present he heads a service of the Ministry Of Foreign Affairs. Notable among his publications have been Sagarana (1946); Corpo di Baile (1956), and Grande Sertdo: Veredas (The Devil to Pay in the Backlands) (1956). Translations of Guimarães Rosa's books have been published in France, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Sweden; others are to appear in Czechoslovakia, Denmark. Finland, Holland, and Spain. . (original title: Sagarana, 1946).
João Guimarães Rosa (27 June 1908 - 19 November 1967) was a Brazilian novelist, considered by many to be one of the greatest Brazilian novelists born in the 20th century. His best-known work is the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas (translated as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands). Some people consider this to be the Brazilian equivalent of Ulysses. Guimarães Rosa was born in Cordisburgo in the state of Minas Gerais, the first of six children of Florduardo Pinto Rosa (nicknamed 'seu Fulô') and Francisca Guimarães Rosa ('Chiquitinha'). He was self-taught in many areas and from childhood studied many languages, starting with French before he was seven years old, as can be seen in an interview he gave a cousin of his later in life: 'I speak: Portuguese, German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Esperanto, some Russian; I read: Swedish, Dutch, Latin and Greek (but with the dictionary right next to me); I understand some German dialects; I studied the grammar of: Hungarian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Polish, Tupi, Hebrew, Japanese, Czech, Finnish, Danish; I dabbled in others. But all at a very basic level. And I think that studying the spirit and the mechanism of other languages helps a great deal in the deeper understanding of the national language [of Brazil]. In general, however, I studied for pleasure, desire, distraction.' Still a child, he moved to his grandparents' house in Belo Horizonte, where he finished primary school. He began his secondary schooling at the Santo Antônio School in São João del Rei, but soon returned to Belo Horizonte, where he graduated. In 1925, at only 16, he applied for what was then called the College of Medicine of Minas Gerais University. On June 27, 1930, he married Lígia Cabral Penna, a girl of only 16, with whom he had two daughters, Vilma and Agnes. Vilma had a son, João Emílio, who had a daughter, Alice (the only granddaughter of the author). In that same year he graduated and began his medical practice in Itaguara, then in the municipality of Itaúna, in Minas Gerais, where he stayed about two years. It is in this town that he had his first contact with elements from the sertão (semi-arid Brazilian outback), which would serve as reference and inspiration in many of his works. Back in Itaguara, Guimarães Rosa served as a volunteer doctor of the Public Force (Força Pública) in the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, heading to the so-called Tunel sector in Passa-Quatro, Minas Gerais, where he came into contact with the future president Juscelino Kubitschek, at that time the chief doctor of the Blood Hospital. Later he became a civil servant through examination. In 1933, he went to Barbacena in the position of Doctor of the 9th Infantry Battalion (Oficial Medico do 9º Batalhão de Infantaria). Most of his life was spent as a Brazilian diplomat in Europe and Latin America. In 1938 he served as assistant-Consul in Hamburg, Germany, where he met his future second wife, the Righteous Among the Nations Aracy de Carvalho Guimarães Rosa. In 1963, he was chosen by unanimous vote to enter the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters) in his second candidacy. After postponing for 4 years, he finally assumed his position only in 1967: just three days before passing away in the city of Rio de Janeiro, victim of a heart attack. His masterpiece is The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. In this novel, Riobaldo, a jagunço is torn between two loves: Diadorim, another jagunço, and Otacília, an ordinary beauty from the backlands. Following his own existential quest, he contemplates making a deal with Lucifer in order to eliminate Hermogenes, his nemesis. One could say that Sertão (the backlands) represents the whole Universe and the mission of Riobaldo is to pursue its travessia, or crossing, seeking answers for the metaphysical questions faced by mankind. In this sense he is an incarnation of the classical hero in the Brazilian backlands. Guimarães Rosa died at the summit of his diplomatic and literary career, aged 59.
It is with a feeling of pride that we are publishing this rather difficult but great and distinguished novel. As Jorge Amado, the author of Gabriela, says in the introduction which he wrote especially for this edition: ‘The English-speaking public will make the acquaintance of one of the greatest books our literature has produced. brutal, tender, cordial, savage, vast as Brazil itself, the image of Brazil drawn by a writer with a consummate mastery of his craft.' THE DEVIL TO PAY IN THE BACKLANDS is like an enormous mural painting of the sweeping backland country of northern Brazil in which feuding bands of outlaws spring to life. Against this superb backdrop of wildlife - rivers, deserts, mountains, plains, bush, flora, fauna, untamed beasts, and glorious birds - man is pitted against the forces of nature, against other men, and against evil. Brooding behind every page is the problem of evil, for the narrator, now an old man, is still tortured by the question of whether he once signed a pact with the Devil to triumph over a rival. As we absorb his experiences as a jagunco (outlaws who revolted against the transient political situation but more often warred among themselves), we are at once appalled by the violence and the hardship these men endured and enthralled by the pull of this freer, greener, cleaner world. Guimarães Rosa's work has had tremendous impact in Brazil because, in writing of the drama of his people and the land, he gave new forms to the language. His work is being published in France by Editions du Seuil and Albin Michel and in Germany by Kiepenheuer & Witsch - all leading houses. Guimarães Rosa is a distinguished arid important writer. . JOAO GUIMARÃES ROSA was born in Cordisburgo, Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1908. He studied medicine and practiced as a country doctor in the backlands and as a military doctor, taking part in the civil war of 1932. In 1934 he embarked upon a diplomatic career; from 1938 to 1942 he was the Brazilian Consul in Hamburg, Germany; from 1942 to 1944, Secretary of the Embassy in Bogota, Colombia; from 1948 to 1951, Embassy Counselor in Paris; and at present an Ambassador, he is head of the Frontiers Service at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rio de Janeiro. He published in 1946 a collection of stories, SAGARANA, which received great critical attention. Ten years later a volume of short novels, Corpo de Baile, appeared in Rio, as well as the present work, Grande Sertão: Veredas. In this novel, drama and tragedy, poetry and documentary, romantic chivalry and the plot of a Western are all closely intermingled. The story will also seem permeated by a Weltanschauung, a conception of the world which sums up the author's intuitions, experiences, misgivings, and convictions regarding life and death, good and evil, love and fear - in brief, human destiny. . (original title: Grande Sertao: Veredas, 1956 - Livraria Jose Olympio Editora).
João Guimarães Rosa (27 June 1908 - 19 November 1967) was a Brazilian novelist, considered by many to be one of the greatest Brazilian novelists born in the 20th century. His best-known work is the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas (translated as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands). Some people consider this to be the Brazilian equivalent of Ulysses. Guimarães Rosa was born in Cordisburgo in the state of Minas Gerais, the first of six children of Florduardo Pinto Rosa (nicknamed 'seu Fulô') and Francisca Guimarães Rosa ('Chiquitinha'). He was self-taught in many areas and from childhood studied many languages, starting with French before he was seven years old, as can be seen in an interview he gave a cousin of his later in life: 'I speak: Portuguese, German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Esperanto, some Russian; I read: Swedish, Dutch, Latin and Greek (but with the dictionary right next to me); I understand some German dialects; I studied the grammar of: Hungarian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Polish, Tupi, Hebrew, Japanese, Czech, Finnish, Danish; I dabbled in others. But all at a very basic level. And I think that studying the spirit and the mechanism of other languages helps a great deal in the deeper understanding of the national language [of Brazil]. In general, however, I studied for pleasure, desire, distraction.' Still a child, he moved to his grandparents' house in Belo Horizonte, where he finished primary school. He began his secondary schooling at the Santo Antônio School in São João del Rei, but soon returned to Belo Horizonte, where he graduated. In 1925, at only 16, he applied for what was then called the College of Medicine of Minas Gerais University. On June 27, 1930, he married Lígia Cabral Penna, a girl of only 16, with whom he had two daughters, Vilma and Agnes. Vilma had a son, João Emílio, who had a daughter, Alice (the only granddaughter of the author). In that same year he graduated and began his medical practice in Itaguara, then in the municipality of Itaúna, in Minas Gerais, where he stayed about two years. It is in this town that he had his first contact with elements from the sertão (semi-arid Brazilian outback), which would serve as reference and inspiration in many of his works. Back in Itaguara, Guimarães Rosa served as a volunteer doctor of the Public Force (Força Pública) in the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, heading to the so-called Tunel sector in Passa-Quatro, Minas Gerais, where he came into contact with the future president Juscelino Kubitschek, at that time the chief doctor of the Blood Hospital. Later he became a civil servant through examination. In 1933, he went to Barbacena in the position of Doctor of the 9th Infantry Battalion (Oficial Medico do 9º Batalhão de Infantaria). Most of his life was spent as a Brazilian diplomat in Europe and Latin America. In 1938 he served as assistant-Consul in Hamburg, Germany, where he met his future second wife, the Righteous Among the Nations Aracy de Carvalho Guimarães Rosa. In 1963, he was chosen by unanimous vote to enter the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters) in his second candidacy. After postponing for 4 years, he finally assumed his position only in 1967: just three days before passing away in the city of Rio de Janeiro, victim of a heart attack. His masterpiece is The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. In this novel, Riobaldo, a jagunço is torn between two loves: Diadorim, another jagunço, and Otacília, an ordinary beauty from the backlands. Following his own existential quest, he contemplates making a deal with Lucifer in order to eliminate Hermogenes, his nemesis. One could say that Sertão (the backlands) represents the whole Universe and the mission of Riobaldo is to pursue its travessia, or crossing, seeking answers for the metaphysical questions faced by mankind. In this sense he is an incarnation of the classical hero in the Brazilian backlands. Guimarães Rosa died at the summit of his diplomatic and literary career, aged 59.
A collection of 22 stories. Guimarães Rosa's baroque style and popular speech are difficult to render into English. Beginning shortly before the turn of the last century, there was a noticeable trend towards the ambiguous in modern Brazilian literature. Writers such as Machado de Assis and Jorge Amado have both explored the use of the unstated and the forced compromise between extremes that have grown to be so crucial to the modernist movement. No Brazilian author, however, has mastered the compromise quite like João Guimarães Rosa, a man who was once described as not only leading, but preceding the reader "to a place where there is discord and cacophony under which there is a strange harmony…the third bank of the river…the land every soul craves for." In his collection of short stories, Primeiras Estorias (1962), Rosa pays particularly close attention to ambiguity as a main theme in Brazilian backland writing. First translated to English in 1968 under the title First Stories, Primeiras Estorias, and in particular, "The Third Bank of the River," is in many ways the defining work of the Brazilian short story. Includes the stories: THE THIN EDGE OF HAPPINESS; TANTARUM, MY BOSS; SUBSTANCE; MUCH ADO; A WOMAN OF GOOD WORKS; THE ALDACIOUS NAVIGATOR; HONEYMOONS; A YOUNG MAN, GLEAMING, WHITE; THE HORSE THAT DRANK BEER; NOTHING AND THE HUMAN CONDITION; THE MIRROR; CAUSE AND EFFECT; MY FRIEND THE FATALIST; NO MAN, NO WOMAN; HOCUS PSYCHOCUS; THE THIRD BANK OF THE RIVER; THE DAGOBE BROTHERS; THE GIRL FROM BEYOND; SOROCO, HIS MOTHER, HIS DAUGHTER; NOTORIOU; and TREETOPS.
João Guimarães Rosa (27 June 1908 - 19 November 1967) was a Brazilian novelist, considered by many to be one of the greatest Brazilian novelists born in the 20th century. His best-known work is the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas (translated as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands). Some people consider this to be the Brazilian equivalent of Ulysses. Guimarães Rosa was born in Cordisburgo in the state of Minas Gerais, the first of six children of Florduardo Pinto Rosa (nicknamed 'seu Fulô') and Francisca Guimarães Rosa ('Chiquitinha'). He was self-taught in many areas and from childhood studied many languages, starting with French before he was seven years old, as can be seen in an interview he gave a cousin of his later in life: 'I speak: Portuguese, German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Esperanto, some Russian; I read: Swedish, Dutch, Latin and Greek (but with the dictionary right next to me); I understand some German dialects; I studied the grammar of: Hungarian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Polish, Tupi, Hebrew, Japanese, Czech, Finnish, Danish; I dabbled in others. But all at a very basic level. And I think that studying the spirit and the mechanism of other languages helps a great deal in the deeper understanding of the national language [of Brazil]. In general, however, I studied for pleasure, desire, distraction.' Still a child, he moved to his grandparents' house in Belo Horizonte, where he finished primary school. He began his secondary schooling at the Santo Antônio School in São João del Rei, but soon returned to Belo Horizonte, where he graduated. In 1925, at only 16, he applied for what was then called the College of Medicine of Minas Gerais University. On June 27, 1930, he married Lígia Cabral Penna, a girl of only 16, with whom he had two daughters, Vilma and Agnes. Vilma had a son, João Emílio, who had a daughter, Alice (the only granddaughter of the author). In that same year he graduated and began his medical practice in Itaguara, then in the municipality of Itaúna, in Minas Gerais, where he stayed about two years. It is in this town that he had his first contact with elements from the sertão (semi-arid Brazilian outback), which would serve as reference and inspiration in many of his works. Back in Itaguara, Guimarães Rosa served as a volunteer doctor of the Public Force (Força Pública) in the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, heading to the so-called Tunel sector in Passa-Quatro, Minas Gerais, where he came into contact with the future president Juscelino Kubitschek, at that time the chief doctor of the Blood Hospital. Later he became a civil servant through examination. In 1933, he went to Barbacena in the position of Doctor of the 9th Infantry Battalion (Oficial Medico do 9º Batalhão de Infantaria). Most of his life was spent as a Brazilian diplomat in Europe and Latin America. In 1938 he served as assistant-Consul in Hamburg, Germany, where he met his future second wife, the Righteous Among the Nations Aracy de Carvalho Guimarães Rosa. In 1963, he was chosen by unanimous vote to enter the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters) in his second candidacy. After postponing for 4 years, he finally assumed his position only in 1967: just three days before passing away in the city of Rio de Janeiro, victim of a heart attack. His masterpiece is The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. In this novel, Riobaldo, a jagunço is torn between two loves: Diadorim, another jagunço, and Otacília, an ordinary beauty from the backlands. Following his own existential quest, he contemplates making a deal with Lucifer in order to eliminate Hermogenes, his nemesis. One could say that Sertão (the backlands) represents the whole Universe and the mission of Riobaldo is to pursue its travessia, or crossing, seeking answers for the metaphysical questions faced by mankind. In this sense he is an incarnation of the classical hero in the Brazilian backlands. Guimarães Rosa died at the summit of his diplomatic and literary career, aged 59. BARBARA SHELBY, who has been associated with the United States Information Service in São Paulo, Brazil, and Quito, Ecuador, has translated from the Portuguese books by Jorge Amado, Gilberto Freyre, and Joao Guimaraes Rosa.
In this new collection of stories Rodrigo Rey Rosa, one of Guatemala's most talented young writers, hauntingly evokes disturbing events in the lives of ordinary people. Paul Bowles, who was much commended for his translation of the author's previous collection, The Beggar's Knife, writes: ‘The action takes place in Guatemala - not the Guatemala of the news broadcasters, but that of the people whose life continues more or less the same as always, in spite of the violent events which threaten the continuation of that life. The stories are as compact and severe as theorems, eschewing symbol and metaphor, making their point in terse, undecorated statements.'
Rodrigo Rey Rosa (born November 4, 1958) is a Guatemalan writer. Not a lot is known about Rey Rosa's professional life until after he emigrated to New York after finishing his studies in Guatemala. Rey Rosa has based many of his writings and stories on legends and myths that are indigenous to Latin American as well as North Africa. Out of all of his works, there have only been four that have appeared in the English language, which include; The Path Doubles Back, Dust on her Tongue, 'The Pelcari Project,' and The Beggar's Knife. Along with his longer writings, he has also written a number of short stories that have been printed in college-level text books, such as 'Worlds of Fiction, Second edition' By Roberta Rubenstein and Charles R. Larson. A few of these short stories include The Proof, and The Good Cripple. Many of Rey Rosa's works have been translated into seven languages. In the early 1980s, Rey Rosa went to Morocco and became a literary protege of American expatriate writer Paul Bowles, who later translated several of Rey Rosa's works into English. When Bowles died in 1999, Rey Rosa became an executor of his literature works. Along with writing novels and short stories, Rodrigo Rosa has created and directed a number of feature films. His first film was 'What Sebastian Dreamt,' which runs 83 minutes long and was based on his own novel. It premièred at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in 2004 and has also been shown at the Berlin Film Festival. Because of his works in literature and film, Rosa won Guatemala's National Prize in Literature named after Miguel Asturias who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967.
Set in Guatemala, these spare and beautiful tales are linked by themes of magic, violence, and the fragility of existence. Paul Bowles's translation perfectly captures Rey Rosa's stories of the haunted lives of ordinary people in present-day Central America.
Rodrigo Rey Rosa (born November 4, 1958) is a Guatemalan writer. Not a lot is known about Rey Rosa's professional life until after he emigrated to New York after finishing his studies in Guatemala. Rey Rosa has based many of his writings and stories on legends and myths that are indigenous to Latin American as well as North Africa. Out of all of his works, there have only been four that have appeared in the English language, which include; The Path Doubles Back, Dust on her Tongue, 'The Pelcari Project,' and The Beggar's Knife. Along with his longer writings, he has also written a number of short stories that have been printed in college-level text books, such as 'Worlds of Fiction, Second edition' By Roberta Rubenstein and Charles R. Larson. A few of these short stories include The Proof, and The Good Cripple. Many of Rey Rosa's works have been translated into seven languages. In the early 1980s, Rey Rosa went to Morocco and became a literary protege of American expatriate writer Paul Bowles, who later translated several of Rey Rosa's works into English. When Bowles died in 1999, Rey Rosa became an executor of his literature works. Along with writing novels and short stories, Rodrigo Rosa has created and directed a number of feature films. His first film was 'What Sebastian Dreamt,' which runs 83 minutes long and was based on his own novel. It premièred at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in 2004 and has also been shown at the Berlin Film Festival. Because of his works in literature and film, Rosa won Guatemala's National Prize in Literature named after Miguel Asturias who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967.
An unscrupulous government official finds an easy way to amass large sums of money. He has only to round up men not in accord with the regime . . . and deliver them to a very clever female scientist who has perfected a means of transforming these men into mindless slaves. The monstrous project unthinkable in the ‘civilized' world, is all too possible . . . in a land where government wields supreme power and where human life is considered to be without value' - from the Foreword by Paul Bowles . . . THE PELCARI PROJECT is an ingenious and chilling fable by the brilliant young Guatemalan author of THE BEGGAR'S KNIFE And DUST ON HER TONGUE. ‘Genuinely surprising and original . . . his writing has a sharp, almost sadistic edge' - Times Literary Supplement.
Rodrigo Rey Rosa (born November 4, 1958) is a Guatemalan writer. Not a lot is known about Rey Rosa's professional life until after he emigrated to New York after finishing his studies in Guatemala. Rey Rosa has based many of his writings and stories on legends and myths that are indigenous to Latin American as well as North Africa. Out of all of his works, there have only been four that have appeared in the English language, which include; The Path Doubles Back, Dust on her Tongue, 'The Pelcari Project,' and The Beggar's Knife. Along with his longer writings, he has also written a number of short stories that have been printed in college-level text books, such as 'Worlds of Fiction, Second edition' By Roberta Rubenstein and Charles R. Larson. A few of these short stories include The Proof, and The Good Cripple. Many of Rey Rosa's works have been translated into seven languages. In the early 1980s, Rey Rosa went to Morocco and became a literary protege of American expatriate writer Paul Bowles, who later translated several of Rey Rosa's works into English. When Bowles died in 1999, Rey Rosa became an executor of his literature works. Along with writing novels and short stories, Rodrigo Rosa has created and directed a number of feature films. His first film was 'What Sebastian Dreamt,' which runs 83 minutes long and was based on his own novel. It premièred at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in 2004 and has also been shown at the Berlin Film Festival. Because of his works in literature and film, Rosa won Guatemala's National Prize in Literature named after Miguel Asturias who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967.
From one of Guatemala's finest young writers these twenty-six stories - at once brutal and intensely lyrical - are peopled with sorcerers, ghosts, and assassins. Springing from myth and beliefs indigenous to Central America and North Africa, where their action occurs, Rey Rosa's tales give the sense of being dreamed; and at the same time they can be read as metaphors for the terror and oppression of the contemporary scene. In them is inscribed a disquieting odyssey that would go beyond the pain of the human condition. CONTENTS: The Release; The Sign; The Path Doubles Back; Sunrise; The Monastery; The Inheritance; The Widow of Don Juan Manuel; The Sorcerer's Son; A Widespread Belief; The River Bed; Son and Father; The Lost Key; The Beggar's Knife; Reports from Cahabon; The Heart of God; The Book; The Rain and Other Children; A Yellow Cat; Nine Occasions; Recurrent Dreams; A Version of My Death; The Animal; Uncertain Readings; A Prisoner; The Black Room; The Seeing Eye. These stories were originally published in: ‘The Monastery,' EL Imparcial (Guatemala), ‘The Path Doubles Back,' Red Ozier Press (New York), The Rain and Other Children', Frank Magazine (Paris), ‘The Release' & ‘The River Bed,' The Threepenny Review (Berkeley, CA). .
Rodrigo Rey Rosa (born November 4, 1958) is a Guatemalan writer. Not a lot is known about Rey Rosa's professional life until after he emigrated to New York after finishing his studies in Guatemala. Rey Rosa has based many of his writings and stories on legends and myths that are indigenous to Latin American as well as North Africa. Out of all of his works, there have only been four that have appeared in the English language, which include; The Path Doubles Back, Dust on her Tongue, 'The Pelcari Project,' and The Beggar's Knife. Along with his longer writings, he has also written a number of short stories that have been printed in college-level text books, such as 'Worlds of Fiction, Second edition' By Roberta Rubenstein and Charles R. Larson. A few of these short stories include The Proof, and The Good Cripple. Many of Rey Rosa's works have been translated into seven languages. In the early 1980s, Rey Rosa went to Morocco and became a literary protege of American expatriate writer Paul Bowles, who later translated several of Rey Rosa's works into English. When Bowles died in 1999, Rey Rosa became an executor of his literature works. Along with writing novels and short stories, Rodrigo Rosa has created and directed a number of feature films. His first film was 'What Sebastian Dreamt,' which runs 83 minutes long and was based on his own novel. It premièred at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in 2004 and has also been shown at the Berlin Film Festival. Because of his works in literature and film, Rosa won Guatemala's National Prize in Literature named after Miguel Asturias who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967.
Poetic, transporting, and heartbreaking, this debut novel traces the lives of three generations of courageous Dominican women. First there is Graciela; a young girl rebelling against the strictures of her poor, rural life in the Dominican Republic in the early 1900s, she searches for her true destiny evens as it lures her away from her husband and baby daughter. . . .The there is Mercedes, passionately devoted to the Church, who rears herself after the death of her beloved stepfather, eventually marrying and moving with her husband to New York City, where she will bring up her granddaughter. . . . Coming of age in the freewheeling 1990s - and bringing the story full circle - Leila has without a doubt inherited the restless genes of great-grandmother Graciela. . . . The intimate details of life in New York and the Dominican Republic, the broad strokes of history, the subtleties of familial connection amid changing notions of home and obligation - all are rendered with grace and gritty realism in this remarkably accomplished novel.
Nelly Rosario was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Brooklyn, where she now lives. She received a B.A. in engineering from MIT and an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Columbia University. She was named a ‘Writer on the Verge' by the Village Voice Literary Supplement in 2001.
For some Europeans fleeing the gathering Holocaust on the Continent, the bright wash of Cuba's azure skies and sparkling sands offered a last refuge. For Suze, a strong, seductive woman who saved her family from Hitler's Jewish witch-hunt with her Magda Lupescu-an appeal and wile, Havana meant life and freedom after their determined, often desperate, flight across Europe and the Atlantic. But for Claudia, Suze's blond, blue-eyed adolescent daughter, the Latin tempo and allure of upper-class Catholic society are too tempting and draw her away from her parents and their expatriate community and into the friendships and parties of Cuba's pre-Castro gilded set. Her Aryan features and skill at "passing" allow her to recast her identity for the circumstance, and each time deny her own feeling of rootlessness. One evening, at a party at the Havana Yacht Club, she falls in love with a young German, who does not know she is Jewish, and Claudia is caught up in a taboo relationship both frightening and erotic. Claudia's story explores another side of the Holocaust: about Jews who escaped to exotic places only to rediscover their heritage of homelessness; and about both the psychology of self-hate and the inner strength of individuals who survive. Novelist and screenwriter Edmundo Desnoes sums it up this way: "Is love or is history the answer? If you read Passing Through Havana you will discover the price of both."
Felicia Rosshandler is the product of three strikingly different cultures, the German, the French and the Spanish. She was born in Berlin, raised in Antwerp, and grew up in Havana. She landed in the United States at the age of seventeen where she quickly added Anglo optimism to the salad. She has raised three American sons in New York.
In A FORBIDDEN PASSION internationally acclaimed author Cristina Peri Rossi takes a biting - but ultimately tender - look at men and women struggling against destiny: lost travelers, unknown lovers, heroes forgotten by history.
Cristina Peri Rossi (born November 12, 1941) is a Uruguayan novelist, poet, translator, and author of short stories. Considered a leading light of the post-1960s period of prominence of the Latin-American novel, she has written more than 37 works. She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay but was exiled in 1972, and moved to Spain, where she became a citizen in 1975. As of 2005 she lives in Barcelona, where she continues to write fiction and work as a journalist. She studied at the University of the Republic.
‘Only in gambling does nothing depend on nothing.' Dostoevsky's insight into the predicament of the gambler informs this brilliant contemporary novel by one of Spain's most acclaimed authors. For most people, gambling is a legal vice, a brief escape from the monotony of everyday life, a small adventure in tempting fate. But for the gambler, a game of chance if powerfully erotic, even mystical - an enclosed space and time in which he can assume a god's ability to master circumstance. Jorge is just such a gambler. Chance is his passion, his addiction: no woman can match the subtle allure of the gaming tables, the palpable smoothness of dice, the siren song of the slot machine, the husky murmur of the croupier. But his addiction is devouring him, and to kick it he enlists the help of an analyst - Lucia, who is herself a formidably seductive presence. As the two debate, the balance of power begins to shift in a sexually charged battle of wits for the soul of a gambler. Erotic, intelligent, resonant with provocative ideas, DOSTOEVSKY'S LAST NIGHT introduces American readers to a vibrant international voice. . CRISTINA PERI ROSSI was born in Uruguay and has lived in Spain since 1972. DOSTOEVSKY'S LAST NIGHT is her nineteenth published book; her essays, short stories, poems, and novels have been translated into nine languages. She has recently received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation grant for her work.
Cristina Peri Rossi (born November 12, 1941) is a Uruguayan novelist, poet, translator, and author of short stories. Considered a leading light of the post-1960s period of prominence of the Latin-American novel, she has written more than 37 works. She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay but was exiled in 1972, and moved to Spain, where she became a citizen in 1975. As of 2005 she lives in Barcelona, where she continues to write fiction and work as a journalist. She studied at the University of the Republic.
SOLITAIRE OF LOVE, an achingly lyrical novel by acclaimed Latin American novelist and political activist Cristina Pen Rossi, explores thc sense of emotional exile that sexual passion can evoke. Tracing the course of a relationship as it evolves into uncompromising self-destruction, the narrator becomes addicted to his own passion and to the body of his beloved. Erotic, romantic love becomes bewitchment, producing a heightened state where time is measured in the rhythms of a chosen body and pride becomes subservient to obsession. ‘An extraordinary love story by an extraordinary writer, Love as exile and 1ove as words that devour loneliness and reveal it!' - Ariel Dorfman. ‘Cristina Pen Rossi is not only aware of the hells of this world, she understands the lures of paradise. Her exquisite prose projects her readers into a surrealistic realm that is filled with forbidden yet fascinating choices.' -Julio Cortazar. ‘A truly original work. Cristina Pen Rossi masterfully orchestrates an alternate and highly intelligent exploration of erotica. Her fabulous writing wittily imbalances the delicate inner linguistic structure of love. Slowly dissecting sexuality, it offers itself at the end of this inner trip as the only linguistic truth: love is a solitary, organic game!' - Teresa M. Vilaros.
Cristina Peri Rossi (born November 12, 1941) is a Uruguayan novelist, poet, translator, and author of short stories. Considered a leading light of the post-1960s period of prominence of the Latin-American novel, she has written more than 37 works. She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay but was exiled in 1972, and moved to Spain, where she became a citizen in 1975. As of 2005 she lives in Barcelona, where she continues to write fiction and work as a journalist. She studied at the University of the Republic.
After generations of aimlessly drifting about the universe, the Argonos alights on a planet that bears evidence of both a horrible massacre of epic proportions and a highly advanced alien civilization.
Cristina Peri Rossi (born November 12, 1941) is a Uruguayan novelist, poet, translator, and author of short stories. Considered a leading light of the post-1960s period of prominence of the Latin-American novel, she has written more than 37 works. She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay but was exiled in 1972, and moved to Spain, where she became a citizen in 1975. As of 2005 she lives in Barcelona, where she continues to write fiction and work as a journalist. She studied at the University of the Republic.
These strange, beautiful and hallucinatory stories introduce a new Brazilian writer whose work has already received great acclaim from the public and critics alike in Europe as well as Latin America. Many of the stories deal with magic and the magical - animals, dragons, human beings alive and dead appear or disappear, converse, feel, exist in an almost casual yet fantastic realism. Kafkaesque, one might say of these stories, but they belong to another tradition of fantastic literature - South American one. While the author himself suggests that what he and Kafka have in common is the influence of the Old Testament and Greek mythology, the element that most clearly separates him from his Austrian counterpart is a gently pervasive, unmasked sensuality: the prostitute who imprisons Cariba in ‘The City'; the shabby saint in ‘Marina, the Intangible'; the kangaroo who seduces the woman in ‘Teleco, the Rabbit'; and the tragic obsession of ‘The Glass Flower.' .Many of the stories are quite short, but their effect on the reader is startling because they combine a matter- of-factness with the fantastic and their concise style magnifies the strange and bizarre.
Murilo Rubião (June 1, 1916, Carmo de Minas, Minas Gerais, Brazil - September 16, 1991, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil) is a Brazilian writer. He was born in Carmo de Minas city, state of Minas Gerais. After obtaining a law degree, he worked in the Civil Service, served as commercial attache to the Brazilian Embassy in Spain, was a newspaper editor, and later founded, the most widely distributed literary supplement in Brazil. He began writing short fiction in 1947 and continues working in this vein. His work has received great acclaim from the public and critics alike in Europe as well as Latin America and has appeared in Antaeus, Fiction and American Poetry Review. His entire work consists of short stories, all of them dealing with fantastic themes, which is uncommon among Brazilian writers. He was very obsessive about his work, revising it at every new edition, always changing a few details, like character's names and so on.
A CHRONICLE OF THE MARVELOUS - Here is magical realism at its quintessential best: tales that mix the familiar and the exotic with a master storyteller's skill to leave the reader spellbound, breathless, and awed. Rubiao's stories are dreamscapes and brave new worlds, parables and social satires as whimsical as the rabbit who changes himself into a lascivious kangaroo to take a human lover, as terrifying as the sinister traps of twisted time, lost memories, and labyrinths from which there is no escape, and as wonderful as the ex-magician who was not born, so try as he will, he cannot die. Reminiscent of Kafka and firmly rooted in the South American tradition of fantastic literature, these brilliant works of pure imagination shine with truths that reveal, within the bizarre and the macabre, a reality unmistakably ours. ‘Rubiao's stories cast their happenings in a strange, ominous light that veers between the absurd and the disquieting . . . His title story is a jewel, and something of a literary archetype.' - The New Yorker.
Murilo Rubião (1916-1991) is a Brazilian writer. He was born in Carmo de Minas city, state of Minas Gerais. After obtaining a law degree, he worked in the Civil Service, served as commercial attache to the Brazilian Embassy in Spain, was a newspaper editor, and later founded, the most widely distributed literary supplement in Brazil. He began writing short fiction in 1947 and continues working in this vein. His work has received great acclaim from the public and critics alike in Europe as well as Latin America and has appeared in Antaeus, Fiction and American Poetry Review. His entire work consists of short stories, all of them dealing with fantastic themes, which is uncommon among Brazilian writers. He was very obsessive about his work, revising it at every new edition, always changing a few details, like character's names and so on.
A very limited edition of one story by indigentista novelist Rubin. Illustrated.
Illustrated.
‘Octavio Paz has said that Juan Rulfo ‘is the only Mexican novelist who has given us an image - instead of just a description - of our landscape.' By the same token we could that Josephine Sacabo is the only photographer who has given us an image of that most elusive of landscapes conceived by Juan Rulfo - Comala.' - Buenos Aires Herald. ‘The world that Rulfo depicts so allusively is one of a dusty and archaic feudal society with its political and domestic and religious tyrannies, its ineffectual spirituality, its violence and obsession with death. Sacabo has distilled this world and like Juan in the novel has found, as she says, ‘an invisible reality of dreams, memories, and connections.' - Photography Quarterly. DESERTED VILLAGES of rural Mexico, where images and memories of the past linger like unquiet ghosts, haunted the imaginations of two artists- writer Juan Rulfo and photographer Josephine Sacabo. In one such village of the mind, Comala, Rulfo set his classic novel PEDRO PARAMO, a dream-like tale that intertwines a man's quest to find his lost father and reclaim his patrimony with the father's obsessive love for a woman who will not be possessed - Susana San Juan. Recognizing that ‘Rulfo was describing a world I already knew' and feeling ‘a very personal response, particularly to Susana San Juan and her dilemma,' Josephine Sacabo used Rulfo's novel as the starting point for a series of evocative photographs she calls ‘The Unreachable World of Susana San Juan: Homage to Juan Rulfo.' This volume brings together Rulfo's novel and Sacabo's photographs to offer a dual artistic vision of the same unforgettable story. Margaret Sayers Peden's superb translation renders the novel as poetic and mysterious in English as it is in Spanish. Josephine Sacabo's photographs tell, in her words, the story of a woman forced to take refuge in madness as a means of protecting her inner world from the ravages of the forces around her: a cruel and tyrannical patriarchy, a church that offers no redemption, the senseless violence of revolution, death itself.'
JUAN RULFO (1918-1986) was one of Mexico's premier authors of the twentieth century and an important precursor of ‘magical realism' in Latin American writing. His other major work is El llano en llamas (THE BURNING PLAIN). Reared in Laredo, Texas, in the Mexican ranchero culture about which Juan Rulfo writes, Josephine Sacabo is a photographer who now lives and works in New Orleans. Her work, which is often inspired by literature, has been exhibited in one-woman shows in Paris, London, Madrid, Toulouse, Lausanne, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Guatemala City, New Orleans, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other world cities.
‘Octavio Paz has said that Juan Rulfo ‘is the only Mexican novelist who has given us an image - instead of just a description - of our landscape.' By the same token we could that Josephine Sacabo is the only photographer who has given us an image of that most elusive of landscapes conceived by Juan Rulfo - Comala.' - Buenos Aires Herald. ‘The world that Rulfo depicts so allusively is one of a dusty and archaic feudal society with its political and domestic and religious tyrannies, its ineffectual spirituality, its violence and obsession with death. Sacabo has distilled this world and like Juan in the novel has found, as she says, ‘an invisible reality of dreams, memories, and connections.' - Photography Quarterly. DESERTED VILLAGES of rural Mexico, where images and memories of the past linger like unquiet ghosts, haunted the imaginations of two artists- writer Juan Rulfo and photographer Josephine Sacabo. In one such village of the mind, Comala, Rulfo set his classic novel PEDRO PARAMO, a dream-like tale that intertwines a man's quest to find his lost father and reclaim his patrimony with the father's obsessive love for a woman who will not be possessed - Susana San Juan. Recognizing that ‘Rulfo was describing a world I already knew' and feeling ‘a very personal response, particularly to Susana San Juan and her dilemma,' Josephine Sacabo used Rulfo's novel as the starting point for a series of evocative photographs she calls ‘The Unreachable World of Susana San Juan: Homage to Juan Rulfo.' This volume brings together Rulfo's novel and Sacabo's photographs to offer a dual artistic vision of the same unforgettable story. Margaret Sayers Peden's superb translation renders the novel as poetic and mysterious in English as it is in Spanish. Josephine Sacabo's photographs tell, in her words, the story of a woman forced to take refuge in madness as a means of protecting her inner world from the ravages of the forces around her: a cruel and tyrannical patriarchy, a church that offers no redemption, the senseless violence of revolution, death itself.'
JUAN RULFO (1918-1986) was one of Mexico's premier authors of the twentieth century and an important precursor of ‘magical realism' in Latin American writing. His other major work is El llano en llamas (THE BURNING PLAIN).
This first novel by a new Mexican writer is unlike anything in contemporary fiction. Juan Rulfo, the author of this book that has already been translated and published in several European languages, is considered in Mexico to be the nation's most promising writer. This story is set in the primitive village life of the harsh, Mexican mountain world. Pedro Paramo is a powerful land owner who dominates the world of Media Luna like a feudal lord, Lascivious, cruel, destructive, he is the incarnation of the most essential forces of life: hate, love, and power. lie evokes the holiness and dark side of life that exalts and destroys his tenants. Paramo tyrannizes the local villagers at will, yet he himself is the victim of an overwhelming love that becomes his torment. Rulfo takes the reader through the normal barriers of existence into a world that is deathless because it is already dead, The life of the village is no longer a dull progression of calendar events, It is an amazing montage of the living and dead: people emerge with the intense and unique quality of the figures that accosted Dante in the Inferno. Through his unique suspension of time, Rulfo creates a new vision of human experience. His mystic quality of intense perception illuminates a people and the land that is part of its bloodstream.
JUAN RULFO (1918-1986) was one of Mexico's premier authors of the twentieth century and an important precursor of ‘magical realism' in Latin American writing. His other major work is El llano en llamas (THE BURNING PLAIN).
A masterpiece of the surreal, this stunning novel from Mexico depicts a man's strange quest for his heritage. Beseeched by his dying mother to locate his father, Pedro Paramo, whom they fled from years ago, Juan Preciado sets out for Comala. Comala is a town alive with whispers and shadows - a place seemingly populated only by memory and hallucinations. Built on the tyranny of the Paramo family, its barren and broken-down streets echo the voices of tormented spirits sharing the secrets of the past. First published to both critical and popular acclaim in 1955, PEDRO PARAMO represented a distinct break with earlier, largely ‘realist' novels from Latin America. Rulfo's entrancing mixture of vivid sensory images, violent passions, and inexplicable sorcery - a style that has come to be known as ‘magical realism' - has exerted a profound influence on subsequent Latin American writers, from Jose Donoso and Carlos Fuentes to Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Juan Rulfo (1918-1986) was born in Sayula, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. His collection of short stories, THE BURNING PLAIN (1953), and PEDRO PARAMO established him as a major literary figure in Latin America. Margaret Sayers Peden is Professor Emerita of Spanish at the University of Missouri. She has translated numerous works from the Spanish to great acclaim, including THE OLD GRINGO by Carlos Fuentes, THE STORIES OF EVA LUNA by Isabel Allende, and ELEMENTAL ODES by Pablo Neruda.
The characters in these starkly powerful stories by Juan Rulfo - from the idiot boy trying to kill frogs to the revolutionary fighting on the Great Plains - are moved by fear, greed, hate, lust, and revenge in a primitive and fatalistic world. They live in an almost mute despair, broken by moments of wild rage or macabre humor. A major figure in the history of post-Revolutionary literature in Mexico, Juan Rulfo has received international acclaim for his brilliant short novel PEDRO PARAMO (1955) and his collection of short stories El llano en llamas (1953), translated as a collection here in English for the first time. In the tradition of Mexican fiction from direct statements of nationalism and social protest to a concentration on cosmopolitanism, the works of Rulfo hold a unique position. In THE BURNING PLAIN he tells of single moments in the lives of the inhabitants of a harsh and isolated area of Mexico, revealing glimpses into their attitudes and thoughts through illuminating shifts in point of view and time sequence and through the essence of their characteristic language. These stories of a rural people caught in the play of natural forces are not, however, simply an interior examination of the phenomena of their world; they are written for the larger purpose of showing the actions of men in broad terms of reality.
JUAN RULFO (1918-1986) was one of Mexico's premier authors of the twentieth century and an important precursor of ‘magical realism' in Latin American writing. His other major work is El llano en llamas (THE BURNING PLAIN).
Villaurrutia Prize for Best Mexican Novel. Set in an imaginary walled city off the coast of Morocco, Mogador traces the days and nights of Fatma, a young woman who finds herself suddenly seized by desire. As she wanders the city's maze of erotic pleasures, she encounters other desiring bodies and the desperate worlds those desires create. Here is a vital fusion of Latin America magical realism with Arabic geometric and mystical imagery, written in a style the author calls a "prose of intensities." "This extremely talented Mexican writer...assumes is own Islamic roots in one of the best-written novels of recent years. He is truly a painter of dreams, who manages to fuse the most unblemished sensuality with the most transparent spirituality." - Luce Lopez Baralt. "Memorable novella about being both untouched and seized - all described in prose that mixes dreamy arabesque with crystalline precision." - Kirkus Review. "Ruy Sanchez balances a double paradox: his novella about female desire, written by a man, criticizes Islamic and Latin-American concepts of male dominance. It's a dazzling philosophical conundrum - a Sphinx-like riddle that only a king or a poet could solve. In any event, the pervasive desire in Mogador is particularized: it's the calling out of one body to another, one spirit to another, one soul to another. . . . This infatuating novella is not about eroticism; it's about love." - William Hollinger, Boston Review.
Alberto Ruy-Sánchez Lacy is a Mexican writer and editor born in Mexico City on 7 December 1951. He is an author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Since 1988 he has been the chief editor and founding publisher of Latin America's leading arts magazine, Artes de Mexico. He has been a visiting professor at several universities including Stanford, Middlebury and La Sorbonne, and has been invited to give lectures in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America and South America. His work has been praised by Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Severo Sarduy, Alberto Manguel and Claude Michel Cluny and has received awards from several international institutions. Ruy-Sánchez's parents, Joaquín Ruy-Sánchez and María Antonieta Lacy, were both born in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. Alberto was the first of five children. For a few years, the family spent almost half the year in Mexico City and the other half in northern Mexico. These relocations included long residence periods in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora and Villa Constitucion in the Sonoran desert of Baja California, where Ruy-Sánchez lived from ages three to five. This experience gave him a unique early experience of the desert. Ruy-Sánchez had forgotten his early childhood experiences until he suddenly recalled them in 1975, visiting the Sahara for the first time. From that involuntary sudden recollection he developed a special creative relationship with the Moroccan desert, especially the walled city of Essaouira (the ancient Mogador), which became a principal setting for most of his novels. As he explains in his essay, 'The nine gifts that Morocco gave me': My first trip to Mogador became a much longer and deeper journey. First came the shock of discovering a place that on spite of being so distant from Mexico provoked a strong impression of recognition, much greater than the one a Mexican receives upon arriving to Spain. A combination of body language, place and objects made me feel that I had ventured into another Mexico.(...) Our legacy derives from five centuries of mixing Indian and Spanish blood, but we must not overlook the Arabic heritage running through our veins, introduced by Spanirds bodies. We must not forget that for eight centuries two-thirds of what is now Spain and Portugal was Arabic: the Andalusí civilization.' - Alberto Ruy-Sánchez. before travelling to Morocco for the first time as a teenager, and later returning as a college student,Ruy-Sánchez received a severe humanistic education from Jesuit schools in Mexico. From these experiences he gained 'a Baroque idea of the world as a complex reality that can only be fully understood and enjoyed with all the senses.' The baroque aim of 'listening with the eyes, looking with the fingers and the ears, tasting with the smell, etc, as an artistic principle' is a common theme in his poetry and prose. Ruy-Sánchez's large Sonoran family finally fully emigrated to Mexico City and held weekly meetings where Ruy-Sánchez learned 'the big pleasure of hearing and telling stories, and it was there that I felt growing inside me the desire of being a writer.' This desire was confirmed when he visited the Djemaa el Fna square in Marrakech in 1975 and 1976, where traditional storytellers are responsible for the square's designation as an UNESCO Oral Human Heritage Site in June 1997. The theme of the search in Sánchez's novels also has its roots in his own life. Specifically, he uses his novels as a means to search for knowledge in the senses of investigating life's mysteries and going beyond observed material reality. Ruy-Sánchez began writing seeking to understand women's desire, through the stories women told him those he witnessed. This first search led to the novel Mogador, the names of the air. This became a series that included En los labios del agua, Los Jardines secretos de Mogador, and Nueve veces el asombro. The full series took almost twenty years to write, as each published novel generated many letters in response, mostly from women telling their own stories of desire. Sánchez would consider those stories, alter them, and create another book, following this ongoing theme of search. Ruy-Sánchez had a number of jobs while living in Paris, but in between he became a tantra student, a tantra instructor, and worked for a sexual therapist. This exploration of tantra contributed to the search through writing both in the sense of literally searching for women's desire and in a more spiritual or religious sense of seeking transcendent experiences. Ruy-Sánchez describes in a statement essay his books as 'material objects, geometrical compositions, that could help people think, feel, understand and improve their lives'. Ruy-Sánchez lived in Paris from 1975 to 1983. He took writing seminars from his thesis director Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière and AndrE Chastel and received a PhD from the University of Paris. He worked as both an editor and a writer, building on his experiences as managing editor of the Mexican magazine Vuelta, edited by Octavio Paz, from 1984 to 1987. Paz called Ruy-Sánchez, 'the strangest of Mexican writers, a true cosmopolitan poet telling stories from a territory wider than just a country because he is the poet from the Skin. That is why his language is the Touch, the sense that implies all the others.' The Cuban writer Severo Sarduy wrote that Ruy-Sánchez, 'invented not only novels but a new way of reading, the way of poetic lightning stroke.' Ruy-Sánchez's books have been translated into several languages - mainly French, but also Portuguese, Italian, German, Arabic, Serbian and Turkish. Only one of his books has been published in English, however. They remain in print in Spanish as cult favorites, unusual for poetry. His first work came out in 1987, when he was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, the most prestigious literary recognition in Mexico. The University of New Mexico awarded him as Literary Essayist in 1991 and he was also a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In February 2000 he was decorated by the French Government as Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The Governor of Kentucky awarded him as 'Kentucky Colonel', the highest distinction given in that state, where he also is Honnorary Citizen of Louisville. Between 1999 and 2003 he was appointed Chairman of the Creative Non-Fiction Summer Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. In November 2006 The Editor's Guild of Mexico awarded him with the Premio Juan Pablos al MErito Editorial, a lifetime achievement recognition for 26 years of working as an editor and mainly for his work in creating the publishing house Artes de MExico, a leading cultural project in the Americas. ruy-Sánchez currently lives in Mexico City with his wife, historian Margarita De Orellana, coeditor of Artes de MExico, and their children Andrea (born 1984) and Santiago (born 1987). He continues to speak internationally and travel within Mexico as a researcher of diverse Mexican cultures. Mark Schafer has translated works by Virgilio Piniera and, with Cedric Belfrage, and The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano.
Sprawling, baroque, and brilliant, this majestic, unsettling novel is both fiction and essay, an author's apocalyptic attempt to exorcise the ghosts and the heroes of his characters' and his country's past. Set in the Argentina of Peron's first years, it has been acknowledged worldwide as one of the most ambitious and impressive works of a major Latin American writer - and perhaps of an entire continent. Published in Spanish in 1961, it was promptly translated into French, Italian, and German. Its absence in English until now is astounding; it is here published in a superb translation by Helen Lane. To summarize the plot is to trivialize the text. Suffice it to say that this is a novel of power, sweep, and narrative intricacy. There are at least two time schemes, combining reminiscence and premonition, flashback and prescience; boundaries vanish, time shifts and blurs, dissolves, solidifies, and shifts again. Sábato's famous ‘Report on the Blind,' a terrifying novel-within-a-novel that has been singled out for particular praise, is a metaphor for the entire work - a desperate search for an antidote to a despair born of political repression and historical precedent that holds the individual in such a pitiless grasp that free will seems frozen and fate fixed and inexorable. Its hallucinatory images and complex texture are alive with black humor, existential reflection, and a profound psychological and mythical symbolism which combine to lift this extraordinary novel to the level of masterpiece. Often compared to the works of Hesse, LautrEamont, Dostoevsky, and Borges, ON HEROES AND TOMBS is the last major work of the Latin American ‘boom' of the sixties to be translated into English. . Ernesto Sabato was born in Buenos Aires in 1911. After completing his Ph.D. in physics in 1938, he worked at the Curie Laboratory in Paris, where he first came in contact with AndrE Breton and other Surrealists. He soon abandoned science and dedicated himself wholly to writing. His first novel, El Tunel (THE OUTSIDER), published in 1948, was enthusiastically praised Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, and Graham Greene. Sobre Heroes y Tumbas - ON HEROES AND TOMBS) followed in 1961. A third novel, Abaddon el Exterminador won him the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, awarded to such writers as Solzhenitsyn, Boll, Grass, Musil, Singer, and Márquez. Sábato's works have been translated into twenty-one languages. Involved actively in Communism in his youth, his opposition to Stalin led Sábato to reject the movement. Since then, he has fought all forms of oppression, from the left as well as the right, supporting his principle of ‘social justice and liberty.' During the worst years of Argentine dictatorship, he refused to emigrate, even under the threat of death, and continued to denounce both terrorism and repression. He currently lives in a suburb of Buenos Aires, where, reluctant to participate in societies and congresses of writers, he holds his characteristic position of ‘sniper.' . One of America's foremost translators, Helen R. Lane received the National Book Award in 1974 for her English rendition of Octavio Paz's ALTERNATING CURRENTS. Her sixty published works in translation have won much praise and many prizes.
Ernesto Sabato (June 24, 1911 - April 30, 2011) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America". Upon his death El País dubbed him the "last classic writer in Argentine literature". Sabato was distinguished by his bald pate and brush moustache and wore tinted spectacles and open-necked shirts. He was born in Rojas, a small town in Buenos Aires Province. Sabato began his studies at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. He then studied physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he earned a PhD. He then attended the Sorbonne in Paris and worked at the Curie Institute. After World War II, he lost interest in science and started writing. Sabato's oeuvre includes three novels: El Túnel (1948), Sobre hEroes y tumbas (1961) and Abaddon el exterminador (1974). The first of these received critical acclaim upon its publication from, among others, fellow writers Albert Camus and Thomas Mann. The second is regarded as his masterpiece, though he nearly burnt it like many of his other works. Sabato's essays cover topics as diverse as metaphysics, politics and tango. His writings led him to receive many international prizes, including the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (Spain), the Legion of Honour (France), the Jerusalem Prize (Israel), and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France). At the request of President Raúl Alfonsín, he presided over the CONADEP Commission that investigated the fate of those who suffered forced disappearance during the Dirty War of the 1970s. The result of these findings was published in 1984, bearing the title Nunca Más (Never Again).
In the teeming, corrupt, endlessly fascinating city of Buenos Aires, in the watershed year of 1973, an idealistic, innocent, tenderly raised young man is tortured to death by a government goon squad for the crime of political hope. Far across the immensity of the Argentine capital, a drunken outcast named Loco sees a vision of a seven-headed dragon breathing fire across the night sky - a portent of the apocalypse revealed to him alone. In a shabby apartment littered with defaced pictures of famous writers, a fanatical youth named Nacho suffers the tortures of the damned because his beloved sister has betrayed him and his hero writer - Sabato - has sold out to the middle class. What thread unwinds through the labyrinth of Buenos Aires to connect these three seemingly insignificant human dramas? How do they fit into a vast, intricate tapestry composed of swinish German refugees and mysterious Hungarian aristocrats, of seances in darkened cellars and scintillating Hollywood gossip spouted in elegant drawing rooms, of political subterfuge and literary betrayal, of desperate passion and grinding poverty? What, above all, do these nightmarish events have to do with the life and work of Sabato, the tortured, uncompromising physicist-turned-writer who is both the author of The Angel of Darkness and its central character? In tracing the hidden links between these apparently random people and events, Sabato - the character and the creator of this book-brings to light a subterranean network of evil that steals through the city like a secret plague, a network in which torture, fanaticism, and sheer inhuman blindness conspire to engulf society. As piece after piece of this immense puzzle falls into place, we are caught up in a riveting drama of the endless, ferocious struggle between good and evil.
Ernesto Sabato (June 24, 1911 - April 30, 2011) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America". Upon his death El País dubbed him the "last classic writer in Argentine literature". Sabato was distinguished by his bald pate and brush moustache and wore tinted spectacles and open-necked shirts. He was born in Rojas, a small town in Buenos Aires Province. Sabato began his studies at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. He then studied physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he earned a PhD. He then attended the Sorbonne in Paris and worked at the Curie Institute. After World War II, he lost interest in science and started writing. Sabato's oeuvre includes three novels: El Túnel (1948), Sobre hEroes y tumbas (1961) and Abaddon el exterminador (1974). The first of these received critical acclaim upon its publication from, among others, fellow writers Albert Camus and Thomas Mann. The second is regarded as his masterpiece, though he nearly burnt it like many of his other works. Sabato's essays cover topics as diverse as metaphysics, politics and tango. His writings led him to receive many international prizes, including the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (Spain), the Legion of Honour (France), the Jerusalem Prize (Israel), and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France). At the request of President Raúl Alfonsín, he presided over the CONADEP Commission that investigated the fate of those who suffered forced disappearance during the Dirty War of the 1970s. The result of these findings was published in 1984, bearing the title Nunca Más (Never Again).
‘I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed Maria Iribarne. Everybody knows that I killed Maria . . . . But nobody knows how I became acquainted with her, just what the relations between us were, and how I developed the idea of killing her. I shall try to tell everything impartially.' So begins this compact, explosive short novel by a new star in the literary galaxy. The rest of the book is the pell-mell, at times breathless explanation of how Castel first saw Maria, how he searched the streets, buildings, and byways until he found her again, how she became his mistress, how he was involved with her cousin and the blind scholar to whom she was married - and how and why he had, at last, to kill her. Albert Camus recommended to his French publishers that they bring out this extraordinary piece of psychological yarn-spinning by a young Argentine. We are proud to bring it to the attention of American readers. A book of genuine literary distinction, The Outsider is also a real spellbinder.
Ernesto Sabato (June 24, 1911 - April 30, 2011) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America". Upon his death El País dubbed him the "last classic writer in Argentine literature". Sabato was distinguished by his bald pate and brush moustache and wore tinted spectacles and open-necked shirts. He was born in Rojas, a small town in Buenos Aires Province. Sabato began his studies at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. He then studied physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he earned a PhD. He then attended the Sorbonne in Paris and worked at the Curie Institute. After World War II, he lost interest in science and started writing. Sabato's oeuvre includes three novels: El Túnel (1948), Sobre hEroes y tumbas (1961) and Abaddon el exterminador (1974). The first of these received critical acclaim upon its publication from, among others, fellow writers Albert Camus and Thomas Mann. The second is regarded as his masterpiece, though he nearly burnt it like many of his other works. Sabato's essays cover topics as diverse as metaphysics, politics and tango. His writings led him to receive many international prizes, including the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (Spain), the Legion of Honour (France), the Jerusalem Prize (Israel), and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France). At the request of President Raúl Alfonsín, he presided over the CONADEP Commission that investigated the fate of those who suffered forced disappearance during the Dirty War of the 1970s. The result of these findings was published in 1984, bearing the title Nunca Más (Never Again).
THE TUNNEL is one of the most highly regarded short novels of the twentieth century. Admired by such writers as Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, and Graham Greene on its first publication in 1948, it has been translated into most of the major languages of the world, but has been long out of print in English for several decades. Now is a fresh and compelling translation by Margaret Sayers Peden, it is available for a new readership.
Ernesto Sabato (June 24, 1911 - April 30, 2011) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America". Upon his death El País dubbed him the "last classic writer in Argentine literature". Sabato was distinguished by his bald pate and brush moustache and wore tinted spectacles and open-necked shirts. He was born in Rojas, a small town in Buenos Aires Province. Sabato began his studies at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. He then studied physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he earned a PhD. He then attended the Sorbonne in Paris and worked at the Curie Institute. After World War II, he lost interest in science and started writing. Sabato's oeuvre includes three novels: El Túnel (1948), Sobre hEroes y tumbas (1961) and Abaddon el exterminador (1974). The first of these received critical acclaim upon its publication from, among others, fellow writers Albert Camus and Thomas Mann. The second is regarded as his masterpiece, though he nearly burnt it like many of his other works. Sabato's essays cover topics as diverse as metaphysics, politics and tango. His writings led him to receive many international prizes, including the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (Spain), the Legion of Honour (France), the Jerusalem Prize (Israel), and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France). At the request of President Raúl Alfonsín, he presided over the CONADEP Commission that investigated the fate of those who suffered forced disappearance during the Dirty War of the 1970s. The result of these findings was published in 1984, bearing the title Nunca Más (Never Again).
THE TUNNEL is one of the most highly regarded short novels of the twentieth century. Admired by such writers as Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, and Graham Greene on its first publication in 1948, it has been translated into most of the major languages of the world, but has been long out of print in English for several decades. Now is a fresh and compelling translation by Margaret Sayers Peden, it is available for a new readership. An example of existential fiction from Latin America. Originally published in Spanish as El Tunel, 1945.
Ernesto Sabato (June 24, 1911 - April 30, 2011) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America". Upon his death El País dubbed him the "last classic writer in Argentine literature". Sabato was distinguished by his bald pate and brush moustache and wore tinted spectacles and open-necked shirts. He was born in Rojas, a small town in Buenos Aires Province. Sabato began his studies at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. He then studied physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he earned a PhD. He then attended the Sorbonne in Paris and worked at the Curie Institute. After World War II, he lost interest in science and started writing. Sabato's oeuvre includes three novels: El Túnel (1948), Sobre hEroes y tumbas (1961) and Abaddon el exterminador (1974). The first of these received critical acclaim upon its publication from, among others, fellow writers Albert Camus and Thomas Mann. The second is regarded as his masterpiece, though he nearly burnt it like many of his other works. Sabato's essays cover topics as diverse as metaphysics, politics and tango. His writings led him to receive many international prizes, including the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (Spain), the Legion of Honour (France), the Jerusalem Prize (Israel), and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France). At the request of President Raúl Alfonsín, he presided over the CONADEP Commission that investigated the fate of those who suffered forced disappearance during the Dirty War of the 1970s. The result of these findings was published in 1984, bearing the title Nunca Más (Never Again).
An unforgettable psychological novel of obsessive love, The Tunnel was championed by Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, and Graham Greene upon its publication in 1948 and went on to become an international bestseller. At its center is an artist named Juan Pablo Castel, who recounts from his prison cell his murder of a woman named María Iribarne. Obsessed from the moment he sees her examining one of his paintings, Castel fantasizes for months about how they might meet again. When he happens upon her one day, a relationship develops that convinces him of their mutual love. But Castel's growing paranoia leads him to destroy the one thing he truly cares about.
Ernesto Sabato (June 24, 1911 - April 30, 2011) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America". Upon his death El País dubbed him the "last classic writer in Argentine literature". Sabato was distinguished by his bald pate and brush moustache and wore tinted spectacles and open-necked shirts. He was born in Rojas, a small town in Buenos Aires Province. Sabato began his studies at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. He then studied physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he earned a PhD. He then attended the Sorbonne in Paris and worked at the Curie Institute. After World War II, he lost interest in science and started writing. Sabato's oeuvre includes three novels: El Túnel (1948), Sobre hEroes y tumbas (1961) and Abaddon el exterminador (1974). The first of these received critical acclaim upon its publication from, among others, fellow writers Albert Camus and Thomas Mann. The second is regarded as his masterpiece, though he nearly burnt it like many of his other works. Sabato's essays cover topics as diverse as metaphysics, politics and tango. His writings led him to receive many international prizes, including the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (Spain), the Legion of Honour (France), the Jerusalem Prize (Israel), and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France). At the request of President Raúl Alfonsín, he presided over the CONADEP Commission that investigated the fate of those who suffered forced disappearance during the Dirty War of the 1970s. The result of these findings was published in 1984, bearing the title Nunca Más (Never Again).
Written over the last half-century, Ernesto Sabato's brilliant essays predict and interpret the catastrophic changes erupting in the world around us during this closing decade of the presesnt millennium. This is Sabato's ‘spiritual autobiography', a passionate plea for magic, myth, and art, and especially for the novel as the one medium in which mankind, sundered and dehumanized by science and secularism, is made whole again. Not since Carl Jung has a major thinker written so intelligently on the importance of myth and art for the survival of mankind. ERNESTO SABATO, of Argentina, is a physicist, civil libertarian and author of fourteen books, including the acclaimed novel. THE TUNNEL. .
Ernesto Sabato (June 24, 1911 - April 30, 2011) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America". Upon his death El País dubbed him the "last classic writer in Argentine literature". Sabato was distinguished by his bald pate and brush moustache and wore tinted spectacles and open-necked shirts. He was born in Rojas, a small town in Buenos Aires Province. Sabato began his studies at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. He then studied physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he earned a PhD. He then attended the Sorbonne in Paris and worked at the Curie Institute. After World War II, he lost interest in science and started writing. Sabato's oeuvre includes three novels: El Túnel (1948), Sobre hEroes y tumbas (1961) and Abaddon el exterminador (1974). The first of these received critical acclaim upon its publication from, among others, fellow writers Albert Camus and Thomas Mann. The second is regarded as his masterpiece, though he nearly burnt it like many of his other works. Sabato's essays cover topics as diverse as metaphysics, politics and tango. His writings led him to receive many international prizes, including the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (Spain), the Legion of Honour (France), the Jerusalem Prize (Israel), and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France). At the request of President Raúl Alfonsín, he presided over the CONADEP Commission that investigated the fate of those who suffered forced disappearance during the Dirty War of the 1970s. The result of these findings was published in 1984, bearing the title Nunca Más (Never Again).
Fernando Sabino is one of the leading Brazilian novelists with a reputation for a rich and imaginative talent. Here he explores Eduardo's desperate search to find himself and the reason for his existence. Eduardo, a young Brazilian writer, is an intelligent, precocious boy but his literary promise and ambition remain unfulfilled as he moves from childhood through to marriage. His entanglement in literary circles and the brutalities and emptiness of sexual and social circles are vividly told in a story of fleeting pleasures in the tropical atmosphere of Rio de Janeiro. Eduardo sees his marriage break-up and cannot prevent it. He recognizes how meaningless was the suicide of a friend and when he becomes involved in a second suicide he is forced to accept that suicide is not a solution. In this story of a man maturing in an unruly world Fernando Sabino catches the confusion of a whole generation of Brazilian youth. His characters are alive and convincing and they reveal the symptoms and problems of Brazilian life. A TIME TO MEET made the same impact in Brazil that Catcher in the Rye made in America. It has been reprinted eight times. The German and Spanish translations have been highly successful.
Fernando Tavares Sabino (October 12, 1923 - October 11, 2004) was a Brazilian writer and journalist. Sabino was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, the son of Dominic Sabino, and D. Odette Tavares Sabino, where he lived until he was twenty, when he moved to Rio de Janeiro. Sabino was the author of 50 books, as well as many short stories and essays. His first book was published in 1941, when he was just 18 years old. Sabino vaulted to national and international fame in 1956 with the novel A Time to Meet, the tale of three friends in the inland city of Belo Horizonte. The book was inspired by Sabino's life history. Sabino also enjoyed commercial success with The Great Insane and The Naked Man, which were made into films. Sabino considered friendship to be one of the most important things in life. His circle of friends included HElio Pellegrino, Otto Lara Resende, Paulo Mendes Campos, Rubem Braga, Clarice Lispector, Vinicius de Moraes, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Mário de Andrade, and Manuel Bandeira. In the last ten years of his life, Sabino was distant from the media. Many of his close friends died before him. Two years before his death, Sabino was diagnosed with cancer. Following a prolonged illness, he died one day before his 81st birthday in his Rio de Janeiro home.
Winner of the 2013 Dashiell Hammett Prize and Recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Award. "Through a skillful weaving of characters and plotlines, coming together like a completed puzzle, Saccomanno has crafted a monumental novel where individual stories unnerve us while building to the unexpected and explosive finale." - El Mundo. Like True Detective through the lenses of William Faulkner and John Dos Passos, Gesell Dome is a mosaic of misery, a page-turner that will keep you enthralled right until its shocking end. Opening with reports of a child abuse scandal at an elementary school, then weaving its way through dozens of sordid storylines and characters - including various murders, corrupt politicians and real-estate moguls, and the Nazi past of the city - Gesell Dome chronicles the dark underbelly of a popular resort town tensely awaiting the return of the tourist season. Two-time winner of the Dashiell Hammett Prize, Guillermo Saccomanno is Argentina's foremost noir writer, crafting incisive, unflinching books that reveal the inequities of contemporary life.
Guillermo Saccomanno is the author of numerous novels and story collections, including El buen dolor, winner of the Premio Nacional de Literatura, and 77 and Gesell Dome, both of which won the Dashiell Hammett Prize. He also received Seix Barral's Premio Biblioteca Breve de Novela for El oficinista and the Rodolfo Walsh Prize for nonfiction for Un maestro. Andrea G. Labinger is the translator of more than a dozen works from the Spanish, including books by Ana María Shua, Liliana Heker, Luisa Valenzuela, and Alicia Steimberg, among others.
A cerebral explorer of the problems of narrative in the wake of Joyce and Woolf, of Borges, of Rulfo and Arlt, Saer is also a stunning poet of place. - The Nation. Saer's final novel, La Grande, is the grand culmination of his life's work, bringing together themes and characters explored throughout his career, yet presenting them in a way that is beautifully unique, and a wonderful entry-point to his literary world. Moving between past and present, La Grande centers around two related stories: that of Gutierrez, his sudden departure from Argentina 30 years before, and his equally mysterious return; and that of precisionism, a literary movement founded by a rather dangerous fraud. Dozens of characters populate these storylines, including Nula, the wine salesman, ladies' man, and part-time philosopher; Lucía, the woman he's lusted after for years; and Tomatis, a journalist whom Saer fans have encountered many times before. Written in Saer's trademark style, this lyrically gorgeous book - which touches on politics, artistic beliefs, illicit love affairs, and everything else that makes up life - ends with one of the greatest lines in all of literature: With the rain came the fall, and with the fall, the time of the wine."
Juan Jose Saer (June 28, 1937 - June 11, 2005) was one of the most important Argentine novelists of the last fifty years. Born to Syrian immigrants in Serodino, a small town in the Santa Fe Province, he studied law and philosophy at the National University of the Litoral, where he taught History of Cinematography. Thanks to a scholarship, he moved to Paris in 1968. He had recently retired from his position as a lecturer at the University of Rennes, and had almost finished his final novel, La Grande (2005), which has since been published posthumously, along with a series of critical articles on Latin American and European writers, Trabajos (2006). In year 2012, a first installment of his previously unpublished working notebooks has been edited and published as 'Papeles de trabajo' by Seix Barral in Argentina. A second volume followed, the result of five years of editing work by a team coordinated by Julio Premat, who writes the introduction of the first volume. These notebooks allow the reader a privileged insight into the creative processes of Saer. As critics point out, the books of Juan Jose Saer may be taken as a single 'oeuvre', set in his 'La Zona', a fluvial region around the Argentinian city of Santa Fe, populated by characters who are developed and become referential from novel to novel. Saer's novels frequently thematize the situation of the self-exiled writer through the figures of two twin brothers, one of whom remained in Argentina during the dictatorship, while the other, like Saer himself, moved to Paris; several of his novels trace their separate and intertwining fates, along with those of a host of other characters who alternate between foreground and background from work to work. Like several of his contemporaries (Ricardo Piglia, Cesar Aira, Roberto Bolaño), Saer's work often builds on particular and highly codified genres, such as detective fiction (The Investigation), colonial encounters (The Witness), travelogues (El río sin orillas), or canonical modern writers (e.g. Proust, in La mayor and Joyce, in 'Sombras sobre vidrio esmerilado'). His novel La ocasion won the Nadal Prize in 1987. He developed lung cancer, and died in Paris in 2005, at age 67. Several of his stories were turned into movies by his students, including Palo y hueso (Stick and Bone, 1968) directed by Nicolás Sarquís, Cicatrices (Scars) directed by Patricio Coll and Nadie Nada Nunca (No, No, Never, 1998) directed by Raúl Beceyro.
In modern-day Paris, Pichon Garay receives a computer disk containing a manuscript - which might be fictional, or could be a memoir - by Doctor Real, a nineteenth-century physician tasked with leading a group of five mental patients on a trip to a recently constructed asylum. Their trip, which ends in disaster and fire, is a brilliant tragicomedy thanks to the various insanities of the patients, among whom is a delusional man who greatly over-estimates his own importance and a nymphomaniac nun who tricks everyone - even the other patients - into sleeping with her. Fascinating as a faux historical novel and written in Saer's typically gorgeous, Proustian style, The Clouds can be read as a metaphor for exile - a huge theme for Saer and a lot of Argentine writers - as well as an examination of madness.
Juan Jose Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event. Five of his novels are available from Open Letter Books. Hilary Vaughn Dobel has an MFA in poetry and translation from Columbia University. She is the author of two manuscripts and, in addition to Saer, she has translated work by Carlos Pintado.
A narrative: In sixteenth-century Spain, a cabin boy sets sail on a ship bound for the New World. An inland expedition ends in disaster when it is attacked by Indians. A reflection on memory, on the role of objects in the construction of our world, on the relationship between existence and description, on foreignness, cultural identity and The Other. A prose poem in the purest, most sensory language that remembers the forgotten contribution made by Indians to the creation of Latin America. And the magnificent whole created by the author is far, far greater than the sum of its parts. . Born in Santa Fe in 1937, Juan Jose Saer is the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. In 1968, he moved to Paris where he now lives. He is the winner of the 1988 Nadal Prize in Spain and in the same year THE WITNESS won the Nantes prize for the best book published in translation in France. This is the first translation in English of a writer whose work is a scintillating reflection on the central themes of twentieth-century fiction and philosophy.
Juan Jose Saer (June 28, 1937 - June 11, 2005) was one of the most important Argentine novelists of the last fifty years. Born to Syrian immigrants in Serodino, a small town in the Santa Fe Province, he studied law and philosophy at the National University of the Litoral, where he taught History of Cinematography. Thanks to a scholarship, he moved to Paris in 1968. He had recently retired from his position as a lecturer at the University of Rennes, and had almost finished his final novel, La Grande (2005), which has since been published posthumously, along with a series of critical articles on Latin American and European writers, Trabajos (2006). In year 2012, a first installment of his previously unpublished working notebooks has been edited and published as 'Papeles de trabajo' by Seix Barral in Argentina. A second volume followed, the result of five years of editing work by a team coordinated by Julio Premat, who writes the introduction of the first volume. These notebooks allow the reader a privileged insight into the creative processes of Saer. As critics point out, the books of Juan Jose Saer may be taken as a single 'oeuvre', set in his 'La Zona', a fluvial region around the Argentinian city of Santa Fe, populated by characters who are developed and become referential from novel to novel. Saer's novels frequently thematize the situation of the self-exiled writer through the figures of two twin brothers, one of whom remained in Argentina during the dictatorship, while the other, like Saer himself, moved to Paris; several of his novels trace their separate and intertwining fates, along with those of a host of other characters who alternate between foreground and background from work to work. Like several of his contemporaries (Ricardo Piglia, Cesar Aira, Roberto Bolaño), Saer's work often builds on particular and highly codified genres, such as detective fiction (The Investigation), colonial encounters (The Witness), travelogues (El río sin orillas), or canonical modern writers (e.g. Proust, in La mayor and Joyce, in 'Sombras sobre vidrio esmerilado'). His novel La ocasion won the Nadal Prize in 1987. He developed lung cancer, and died in Paris in 2005, at age 67. Several of his stories were turned into movies by his students, including Palo y hueso (Stick and Bone, 1968) directed by Nicolás Sarquís, Cicatrices (Scars) directed by Patricio Coll and Nadie Nada Nunca (No, No, Never, 1998) directed by Raúl Beceyro.
A haunting, prize-winning Latin American novel about a guilt-wracked mother and her inquisitive daughter, both coming to terms with an unspeakable past. With the harrowing power of Ariel Dorfman's DEATH AND THE MAIDEN comes a remarkable work of fiction. Winner of the prestigious Premio La Nacion Prize for Fiction in 2000, A Secret for Julia brilliantly depicts the lasting psychological attacks of Argentina's reign of repression and terror on a. new, seemingly innocent generation. Set mainly in 1990s London, interlaced with vivid flashbacks to Buenos Aires, Patricia Sagastizabal's novel tells the emotionally wrenching story of Mercedes Beecher, an Argentinian writer living in self-imposed exile in London with her teenaged daughter, Julia. When a mysterious figure appears from her past, Mercedes must endure a new round of psychological terror and reveal herself to her inquisitive but embittered daughter in a way that she never believed possible. A dramatic story of retribution and conscience, A Secret for Julia touches on many compelling themes: the politics of institutionalized and sanctioned cruelty; the wistfulness of a life lived in exile; the bonds of family, justice, and redemption. Much of A SECRET FOR JULIA reads like a personal diary, yet Sagastizábal propels it forward with elements of astonishing intrigue, drama, and terror. The savage murders and tortures that came to decimate an entire generation of Argentinian students and activists in the 1970s may remain - even twenty-five years later - so vivid and searing that they can be expressed only through the palette of fiction. In this way, Sagastizabal's novel represents the voice of the fallout from Argentina's so-called ‘dirty war,' the voice of the next generation - Julia's generation. A Secret for Julia is a testament to the changing of the guard - an unforgettable, astounding novel for one simple reason: the reader is left with the lingering notion that it might be frighteningly close to the truth.
PATRICIA SAGASTIZABAL was born in Buenos Aires in 1953. She entered law school in 1972 but became disillusioned with the study of law, which was a contradiction in terms under the Argentinian dictatorship, and began studying acting, playwriting, and directing. Throughout much of the 1970s, she personally witnessed the destruction of an entire generation of students and activists. Her first novel was entitled En Nombre de Dios. This novel, her second, was awarded the Premio La Nacion by a panel of three judges consisting of Maria Esther de Miguel, Jorge Edwards, and Tomás Eloy Martinez. ASA ZATZ was born in Manhattan, where he has lived most of his life. He has translated the works of many authors including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa. He has taught translation workshops at the City University of New York and New York University.
Tender, funny and sexy: the story of the seduction of a young girl. ‘Excruciatingly real. The truth is shocking to the older generation because they find it convenient not to remember what they themselves were like.' - KANSAS CITY STAR. In the very mod world of today's Mexico City, young Menelao has broken with his family to live on his own and concentrate on his seduction, of innocent, timid Gisela. The unembarrassed account of their explorations stirs up the ingenuous erotic climate of this bright, youthful novel. ‘Several bright kids, caught in the sexual generator. . . . A bri1liant celebration of the comedy of life.' - N.Y. TIMES BOOK REVIEW. ‘A mine of honest adolescent experience. . . poetic and nicely erotic at times.' - PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY.
Gustavo Sainz (born July 13, 1940) is a Spanish language author from Mexico. Born in Mexico City, the son of journalist Jose Luis Sainz, Gustavo Sainz learned how to read at the age of three from his paternal grandmother, and started publishing his work in the city newspapers at the age of ten. When he was in primary school, Sainz founded several school magazines, which he continued to do until college. At the age of eighteen, Sainz left home to work as a journalist in the magazine Vision. In 1960, he entered the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de MExico, where he began studying law, but ultimately changed to study literature. Sainz's first novel, Gazapo, was published when he was twenty-five and has been translated into fourteen languages. This novel marked the beginning of the literary movement ‘la Onda', of which other Mexican writers, such as Jose Agustín and Parmenides García Saldaña, formed part. In 1968, Sainz travelled to the University of Iowa to participate in the International Writing Program, where he started and completed his second novel, Obsesivos días circulares. Sainz's longest novel, A la salud de la serpiente, relates his adventures of this period in Iowa. Upon his return to Mexico, he wrote La princesa del Palacio de Hierro, which won the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia in 1974. It was translated into English by Andrew Hurley and published as ‘The Princess of the Iron Palace' by Grove Press in 1987. In 2003, he published A troche y moche, which won the prize for the best novel of the year written in Mexico, and its translation intro French won the award for best novel in Quebec. His work includes eighteen published novels, countless articles, and various children's books. Sainz is currently the editor of the magazine Transgresiones. He lives in the United States with his two sons, Claudio and Marcio Sainz, and is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
GAZAPO. 1. Young rabbit. 2. Sly, astute man (colloquial). 3. A big lie, a whopper.4. Something cacophonous or indecent or vulgar. . . If it were not for its setting (vividly Mexico City), GAZAPO might be the work of an intellectual young-blood of London, New York, or Rome, for Gustavo Saints first novel reflects his belief that the Beatles, Godard, love, and Borges are some of what matters most. Sainz lives in Mexico City, however, and Gazapo has quickly established him as the most exceptional Mexican writer to appear since Carlos Fuentes. Using the detritus of a single ordinary week - diaries, letters, recorded tapes, elaborations of one incident gone into by various characters, telephone conversations - Sainz constructs his celebration of the intermingled lives and dreams of a band of teenagers. His heroes and heroines are clever, enthusiastic, restless. They aspire to the sexual bravura of young animals; they live mainly on air and imagination. Not without irony, not without sympathy and affection, Sainz shows the daydream that is their own closed world, Over its entrance is a sign: ‘No Adults Allowed,' At the center of this world is Menelao, half-boy, half-man, who has broken with his family to live on his own and concentrate on his seduction of innocent, timid Gisela. The unembarrassed account of their explorations stirs up the ingenuous erotic climate that permeates GAZAPO. In the cafEs, apartments, and streets of Mexico City, Menelao, Gisela, and their crowd confirm the value they place on friendship, glimpse the secrets of love, and find reassurance that the world their elders make is hateful and tiresome. They will be recognized and understood by young, and formerly young, people anywhere.
Gustavo Sainz (born July 13, 1940) is a Spanish language author from Mexico. Born in Mexico City, the son of journalist Jose Luis Sainz, Gustavo Sainz learned how to read at the age of three from his paternal grandmother, and started publishing his work in the city newspapers at the age of ten. When he was in primary school, Sainz founded several school magazines, which he continued to do until college. At the age of eighteen, Sainz left home to work as a journalist in the magazine Vision. In 1960, he entered the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de MExico, where he began studying law, but ultimately changed to study literature. Sainz's first novel, Gazapo, was published when he was twenty-five and has been translated into fourteen languages. This novel marked the beginning of the literary movement ‘la Onda', of which other Mexican writers, such as Jose Agustín and Parmenides García Saldaña, formed part. In 1968, Sainz travelled to the University of Iowa to participate in the International Writing Program, where he started and completed his second novel, Obsesivos días circulares. Sainz's longest novel, A la salud de la serpiente, relates his adventures of this period in Iowa. Upon his return to Mexico, he wrote La princesa del Palacio de Hierro, which won the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia in 1974. It was translated into English by Andrew Hurley and published as ‘The Princess of the Iron Palace' by Grove Press in 1987. In 2003, he published A troche y moche, which won the prize for the best novel of the year written in Mexico, and its translation intro French won the award for best novel in Quebec. His work includes eighteen published novels, countless articles, and various children's books. Sainz is currently the editor of the magazine Transgresiones. He lives in the United States with his two sons, Claudio and Marcio Sainz, and is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
The Princess is a sales girl in Mexico City's largest department store, and the world she inhabits has been turned into an altogether irresistible, hilarious novel that became a sensational bestseller in Mexico and has already attained a notable position among the best works of new Latin American writing. Gustavo Sainz's heroine is one of the happiest creations of recent fiction. Funny and warm, wacky, contradictory, graceful, and poignant, she talks her way into our hearts with an outrageous voice that speaks in the universal idiom of adolescence. Like the rest of the world, she is on the make, and becoming a model is the first step on the ladder. A modern-day Scheherazade, she regales us with stories of escapades that involve family, friends, lovers, and enemies. This book is a world in miniature, and a marvelous assortment of colorful characters people its pages: Carmelita Longlegs, Handsome to the Maximum, Loco Valdiosera, and Dressed Like a Man. The monologue of the Princess brings gossip, memories, pop icons, anecdotes, and digressions into a dizzying labyrinth of liaisons, intrigues, couplings, births, and deaths. Tuning in to the magic of her talk, we come to share the gritty essentials of her young existence-her laughter, her exhilarations, her dreams, and her heartbreak. This novel's territory is the wide-open arena of teenage female fantasy, where the underworld's gigolos, call girls, drug addicts, and pickpockets meet the errant jet-setting youth of the prosperous middle class. THE PRINCESS OF THE IRON PALACE is a dazzling achievement which, deep down, beneath the laughter, mirrors with startling familiarity the interior longings of a new generation.
Gustavo Sainz (born July 13, 1940) is a Spanish language author from Mexico. Born in Mexico City, the son of journalist Jose Luis Sainz, Gustavo Sainz learned how to read at the age of three from his paternal grandmother, and started publishing his work in the city newspapers at the age of ten. When he was in primary school, Sainz founded several school magazines, which he continued to do until college. At the age of eighteen, Sainz left home to work as a journalist in the magazine Vision. In 1960, he entered the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de MExico, where he began studying law, but ultimately changed to study literature. Sainz's first novel, Gazapo, was published when he was twenty-five and has been translated into fourteen languages. This novel marked the beginning of the literary movement ‘la Onda', of which other Mexican writers, such as Jose Agustín and Parmenides García Saldaña, formed part. In 1968, Sainz travelled to the University of Iowa to participate in the International Writing Program, where he started and completed his second novel, Obsesivos días circulares. Sainz's longest novel, A la salud de la serpiente, relates his adventures of this period in Iowa. Upon his return to Mexico, he wrote La princesa del Palacio de Hierro, which won the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia in 1974. It was translated into English by Andrew Hurley and published as ‘The Princess of the Iron Palace' by Grove Press in 1987. In 2003, he published A troche y moche, which won the prize for the best novel of the year written in Mexico, and its translation intro French won the award for best novel in Quebec. His work includes eighteen published novels, countless articles, and various children's books. Sainz is currently the editor of the magazine Transgresiones. He lives in the United States with his two sons, Claudio and Marcio Sainz, and is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
An unusually skillful novel reminiscent of the works of Francoise Sagan. In this very modem novel, written with enviable economy and elegance, the author recreates and explores the dolce vita of Peruvian society-a sensitive, basically human portrayal that probes with depth and perception the complex fabric of the life it depicts. This is a fashionable, indolent world where anything goes as long as the mold in which it is set remains undisturbed - a world of Beautiful People, charming and pleasure-seeking, who drift lazily without goal or commitment on a cloud of ennui. The story revolves around four characters. Beneath their veneer of sophistication they are entangled in a curious and intriguing relationship which, as it develops, brings to light their unexpressed conflicts and tensions, their unpredictable inner moods. The final sequence of events moves with the stately measure of a pavane toward a startling, if inevitable, climax, revealing passions which have been building with primeval intensity. A highly sensual work, LA RIFA (The Raffle, in English) is written in an impressionistic, almost cinematic style, with marked taste and rare insight.
KATIA SAKS was born in Lima, Peru. After attending French and American schools there, she spent a year at Chatham College in Pittsburgh. She is married to an American doctor and lives in New York City. They have one child, a daughter. Between the years of sixteen and twenty, Miss Saks wrote four novels, published in Peru, which received considerable attention from the Latin American critics and public. LA RIFA is her first work written in English.
In this collection of short stories, the first of his books to be translated into English, Herberto Sales retells some of the extraordinary myths found in Brazil's Indian folklore. Witty, charming, and sad, the stories are concerned with love and superstition and are reminiscent of our own fairy-tales. Sales' incisive style has been retained in this translation from the Portuguese by Richard Goddard.
Herberto Sales (September 21, 1917, Andaraí - August 13, 1999, Rio de Janeiro), journalist and writer, was born in Brazil in 1917, was one of his country's best known novelists. He was director of the National Institute for Books and was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. His novels include Cascalho and O Fruto do Vosso Ventre.
In WRITING IN CUBA SINCE THE REVOLUTION Andrew Salkey follows up his much acclaimed Havana Journal with a carefully chosen selection of poetry and prose which illustrates the manner in which writers in Cuba carry out their responsibility as intellectuals within the revolution. Andrew Salkey introduces the anthology with a brief historical account of writing in Cuba, and establishes the context within which the selection of writings is to be read. He states ‘what has remained after many years of cultural invasions and counter-actions, nationalist visions and reverses, is the essential Cuban genius for adaptation, assimilation, innovation and consequent development. . . . In this selection of poems, short stories and essays., I have tried to show the new evidence of those elements at work, and I have also attempted to indicate the Revolutionary purpose of creative writing in Cuba today: to rid the individual of alienation, through inventiveness and experimentation and conflict, and to attain the uphill road towards a better cultural life.' The rich collection of poems, short stories and essays points to that revolutionary purpose. Ambrosia Fornet, essayist and literary critic, in an essay on the intellectual in the revolution, sums up the spirit of the writing in the anthology when he says: ‘It's because we have assumed our responsibilities, and are ready to answer for our actions, that the intellectuals of a country in revolution demand concrete, responsible cooperation from the other members of the society. . We are obliged to serve as links between our work and our public. The poet understands that he must become, among other things, a master-communicator and a cultural duty officer, so that the poem he writes in silence, today, will be repeated by the people in the streets tomorrow.' In making this anthology available to us, Andrew Salkey has made a helpful and radical statement about the role of the committed intellectual not only in a revolutionary situation but also in a post colonial society: an issue which will continue to preoccupy us in the African and Caribbean struggle, as well as in the struggle of Black people living in the metropolitan centres of the West. CONTENTS: POEMS - NICOLAS GUILLEN - Land in the Sierra and Below; Che Comandante; NANCY MOREJON - Poem; Central Park, Some People, 3: 00 p.m.; DOMINGO ALFONSO - Madrigal written in the Year of the space rocket, Mariner IV; A Little Biography; People like me; Senor Julio Osorio; Poem; PEDRO PEREZ SARDUY - Che; The Rebellion of the Warrior; ROBERTO FERNANDEZ RETAMAR - How lucky they are, the normal people; The Last Station of the Ruins; No word does you justice; For an instant; To whom it may concern; FAYAD JAMIS - For this liberty; Poem in Minas del Frio; The Victory of Playa Giron; MIGUEL BARNET - My Country; Che; Revolution; GUILLERMO RODRIGUEZ RIVERA - Working Hours; BELKIS CUZA MALE - I haven't forgotten you; Photogenic People; FELIX PITA RODRIGUEZ - The Guerrillas arrive; Rifle Number 5767; Poetry with a Purpose; ALBERTO ROCASOLANO - Revolution is not simply a word; VICTOR CASAUS - Moon-9; We are; EDUARDO LOLO - Anna; if you get up some morning; CESAR LOPEZ - Who can be certain?; ORLANDO ALOMA - The Militant Angel; LUIS SUARDIAZ - Witness for the Prosecution; ANTON ARRUFAT - Playa Giron; MANUEL DIAZ MARTINEZ - Bread; SHORT STORIES - FELIX PITA RODRIGUEZ - The Seed; VIRGILIO PINERA - The Philanthropist; SAMUEL FEIJOO - Soldier Eloy; VICTOR AGOSTINI - Pepe; LUIS AGUERO - A certain Friday 13th; ARNALDO CORREA - The Chief; ESSAYS - EDMUNDO DESNOES - The Secret Weapons; AMBROSIO FORNET - The intellectual in the Revolution; ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA - The Cultural Vanguard; ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA - ‘El Patojo'; FIDEL CASTRO - On Che's Assassination; FIDEL CASTRO - On intellectual Property; Biographical Notes; Acknowledgements. . .
Andrew Salkey (30 January 1928 - 28 April 1995) was a novelist, poet, children's books writer and journalist of Jamaican and Haitian origin. He was born in Panama but raised in Jamaica, moving to Britain in the 1950s to pursue university education. A prolific writer and editor, he was the author of more than 30 books in the course of his career, including novels for adults and for children, poetry collections, anthologies, travelogues and essays. He died in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he had been teaching since the 1970s, holding a lifetime position as Writer-In-Residence at Hampshire College. He was born as Felix Andrew Alexander Salkey in Colon, Panama, to Jamaican parents, Andrew Alexander Salkey, a businessman, and Linda Marshall Salkey. When two years old, Salkey was sent to Jamaica, where he was raised by his grandmother and his mother, who worked there as a teacher, while his father continued to work in Panama. Salkey was educated at St George's College, in Kingston, and at Munro College, in St. Elizabeth, before going to England in the early 1950s to attend the University of London. According to Stuart Hall, Salkey 'quickly took his place at the centre of a small but outstanding circle of Caribbean writers and intellectuals. For a critical period he was the key figure, the main presenter and writer-in-residence in the Caribbean section of the BBC World Service at Bush House, London, and his programmes became a glittering showcase for a generation of writers, including Sam Selvon and George Lamming, who had made London their second home. Established and aspiring authors were chivvied, cajoled, gently chastised, inspired and schooled to produce new work for radio on the Caribbean Voices programme over which Andrew Salkey often presided.' After reading V. S. Naipaul's his first story Salkey encouraged him to continue writing. At the BBC, he also helped write the production My People and Your People with D. G. Bridson, a radio play about a love affair between a West Indian migrant and a Scottish skiffle player. Salkey was a part of the West Indian Students Union (WISU), which provided an effective forum for Caribbean students to express their ideas and provided voluntary support to the 'harassed' working-class Caribbean immigrant community, during the 1960s, '70s and '80s. The association also included Gerry Burton, Arif Ali, Chris LeMaitre, John La Rose and Horace Lashley. In the mid-1950s Salkey taught English at Walworth Secondary School (also known as Mina Road school), an early comprehensive just off the Old Kent Road in South-east London. His first novel, A Quality of Violence - set around 1900 in a remote area of Jamaica, and narrated in a Jamaican patois - was published in 1959, and his second, Escape to An Autumn Pavement, in 1960. That same year Salkey edited one of the first anthologies of Caribbean short stories, West Indian Stories, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of folklore and popular culture. His novels that followed were The Late Emancipation of Jerry Stover (1968), The Adventures of Catullus Kelly (1969) and Come Home, Malcolm Heartland (1976). He was a prolific writer and subsequently published several books for children, poetry, travelogues, books that drew on folk traditions, including Anancy's Score (1973), as well as editing anthologies including Breaklight (1971). In 1966 he co-founded with John La Rose and Kamau Brathwaite the Caribbean Artists Movement, as a platform for Caribbean artists, writers, actors and musicians. In the latter part of his life he was a professor of creative writing at Hampshire College in Amherst, where he went in 1976. Salkey was good friends with Austin Clarke, and the two had a long written correspondence, a great deal of which is available in Clarke's files at the McMaster University Archives in Hamilton, Ontario. 'I was headed nowhere like a hundred million others: I had escaped a malformed Jamaican middle class; I had attained my autumn pavement; I had done more than my fair share of hurting, rejecting, and condemning; and I had created another kind of failure, and this time, in another country.' (From Escape To An Autumn Pavement). Salkey was a director and constant supporter of the London-based publishing company Bogle-L'Ouverture founded by Guyanese-born Jessica Huntley, who (together with a committee comprising Louis James, John La Rose, Marc Matthews, Mervyn Morris, Jason Salkey, Anne Walmsley and Ronald Warwick) organised on 19–20 June 1992 a two-day symposium and celebration called 'Salkey's Score'. Held at the Commonwealth Institute, it paid tribute to Salkey in respect of his work in London in the 1960s and 1970s with the Caribbean Artists Movement; his journalism on the BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices; his contributions to developing the teaching of Caribbean writing in schools; the importance he gave to the relationship of Africa to personal and communal Caribbean identity; his work in Cuba; and his prolific output of novels, poetry and other writings.
Representative Plays of Florencio Sanchez is the seventh English translation in the Latin American Classics Series. Sponsored by UNESCO and the Organization of American States, the publication of the series is undertaken to introduce and spread knowledge of representative works of Latin American literature among English and French-speaking peoples. The books included are all ‘classics,' which are held to be books that remain landmarks in the cultural history of mankind. The program was initiated in 1946 by UNESCO under a broader plan to promote understanding and peace among nations through the creation of a community of culture in which the peoples of all nations may participate.' After three years of organizing, discussion, and revision, the project was adopted by the UNESCO General Conference in Paris. Later the Organization of American States entered into the project as co-sponsor, agreeing to provide the original Spanish texts and be responsible for arranging for the publication of their English translations. Direct responsibility for carrying out the program is shared by the Department of Cultural Activities of UNESCO and the Division of Philosophy and Letters of the Pan American Union. Thus far, ten titles have already been brought out in French and seven in English. In addition to the present book, the latter are: The Cross and the Sword (Enriquillo), by Manuel de Jesus Galván; TabarE, an Indian Legend of Uruguay, by Juan Zorrilla de San Martin; Anthology of Mexican Poetry, edited by Octavio Paz; The Devil's Pit and Other Stories, by Baldomero Lillo; Memoirs of a Militia Sergeant, by Manuel Antonio de Almeida; and Mama Blanca's Souvenirs, by Teresa de la Parra. Travels, by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, will be published shortly. Works to appear in the future include the Royal Commentaries of the Inca Garcilaso de Ia Vega and an Anthology of Chroniclers of Pre-Columbian Cultures, compiled by Nicolau D'Olwer.
Florencio Sánchez (January 17, 1875 - November 7, 1910) was a Uruguayan playwright, journalist and political figure. He is considered one of the founding fathers of theater in the River Plate region of Argentina and Uruguay. Sanchez was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1875. Though he had little formal schooling, he read widely and began writing early. Later he established himself as a capable, often satirical, journalistic chronicler. His interest in social problems motivated his affiliation with the Centro Internacional de Estudios Sociales. Among the activities of this group was the production of plays of social protest in Spanish and Italian, which afforded Sanchez an occasion for practical theatrical experience. Eventually fixing his residence in Buenos Aires, he led a disorganized, bohemian life, eking out a meagre living as a journalist and clerk, his health progressively undermined by tuberculosis. In a desperate attempt to recover his health, Sanchez undertook a trip to Europe, only to die in Milan, Italy, in 1910, barely a year after his departure from Buenos Aires. During a six-year period in Buenos Aires, Florencio Sanchez created the dramatic works which have assured him immortality. From 1903 to 1909 he wrote some twenty plays, which may be broadly divided into rural and urban dramas. The first category, which includes the author's best works, began with M'hijo el dotor (1903). The theme is the conflict between two generations, represented by the noble, conservative old gaucho, and his book-educated son. In La grin ga, the dramatic conflict is between the progressive foreigner, or grin go, and the tradition-bound criollo, whose self- reliant virtues no longer blind Sanchez to the fact that his kind is doomed to extinction. Barranca abajo, the most skillfully constructed of Sanchez's plays, is a stark rural tragedy depicting the decadence of a gaucho family. The year 1905 saw the first performance of this drama and marked a turning point in the author's creative activity. Thenceforth Sanchez turned his attention toward the spectacle of urban life in Buenos Aires (El desalojo, La tigra, Moneda falsa, etc.). The native idealistic bent of Sanchez's character and his experience in life combined to infuse a reforming and sociological quality into his dramatic output. He deals repeatedly with the deterioration of the gaucho, the latter's conflict with the immigrant, family problems, the social evils of poverty and alcoholism, never losing sight of the imperative need for tolerance on all sides. He captures his scenes with a photographic realism which is particularly apparent in an astonishingly accurate reproduction of popular speech. Naturally sympathetic toward his fellow man, and especially so in regard to the poor and oppressed, Sanchez absorbed the literary techniques of the day -notably those of Ibsen and Naturalism - and applied them to the panorama of life in the River Plate. In doing this, he became not only the founder of the modern Argentine theatre but the first Latin American dramatist of unmistakable originality.
Autobiographical novel written in the San Lucas prison (Costa Rica) and based on 17 years of being an inmate there. Describes the brutal conditions of the prison during the first part of this century, and reflects the strong desire for life and freedom of the prisoner-author.
Jose Leon Sánchez Alvarado is a Costa Rican novelist born on April 19 1929, and best known for his works Isla de los hombres solos ("Island of Lonely Men") and Tenochtitlan. He was born in Cucaracho del Río Cuarto, Puntarenas. A movie adaptation of his novel, Isla de los hombres solos was made and released by a Mexican producer.
A pop tune springs to life in Puerto Rico. Multiplied to infinity by the blare of radios, televisions, and record players, its refrain, ‘Life is a phenomenal thing, frontwards or backwards, however you swing;' captures the island. Its beat captures us too, and propels us through San Juan, touching down on a single family-a pro-American senator caught in a gargantuan traffic am on his way to an assignation with his black mistress; his aristocratic wife who, waiting for him, spends her time on an analyst's couch; his right-wing terrorist son quite literally in love with his Ferrari; and the mistress, who inhabits another, poorer world with her idiot child, her three cousins (Huey, Dewey, and Louie), and her friend Doña Chon. Luis Rafael Sanchez has composed a lethal melody in neon prose; a portrait of an Americanized island dominated by the language of advertising, comic books, TV, and fanzines; a devastating parody of the way words invade lives and obscure realities, Using this contaminated language, Sanchez captures in a funny mirror of crazed humor, sex, frustration, and despair an elusive image of Puerto Rico and all of colonized Latin America, His startling humor and musical style lend themselves to the critical thrust of Macho Camacho's Beat, a novel where life is definitely not phenomenally wonderful.
Dr. Luis Rafael Sánchez a.k.a. ‘Wico' (born 1936) is considered by many to be the greatest Puerto Rican playwright of modern times. Sánchez was born and raised by his parents in the city of Humacao, Puerto Rico , which is located in the lower eastern part of Puerto Rico. There he received his primary education. His family moved to San Juan where Sánchez continued to receive his secondary and higher education. He enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico in 1955 after graduating from high school, earning a Bachelors of Arts degree. It was during his days as a student at the university that he became interested in acting. His interest in literature led him to enroll at the City University of New York where in 1959 he earned his Masters Degree in dramatic arts. He eventually went to Madrid, Spain and earned his Doctorate in Literature in 1975 from the Complutense University of Madrid. Sánchez's first play was ‘La Pasion Según Antigona Perez' (The Passion According to Antigona Perez) a tragedy acted out in the present day Puerto Rico. The character of ‘Antigona' was based on the life of Olga Viscal Garriga (1926-1995). Her life was rooted in politics and her 3 children. She was a member of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and an accomplished speaker who spent time in jail for her political beliefs yet, she saw herself as a simple woman with simple needs. ‘La Guaracha del Macho Camacho' (Macho Camacho's Beat) was published in 1976. This novel moves to a guaracha, a latin rhythm, with no audible beat. It is left to the imagination of the reader to come up with this beat. IT has been suggested that the song itself is the real protagonist of the tale. The ‘Americanization' of Puerto Rico is explored in this work. As well as the Puerto Rican political subject and the political situation of the island as a colony; one aspect of this examination can be seen as a critique of the Puerto Rican who would give up his culture to assimilate into the American culture against the Puerto Rican who refuses to let go of his cultural identity. The book was translated into English by Geegory Rabassa. In the ‘La guagua aerea' or ‘The Flying Bus', Sánchez explores the concept of a bi-polar culture, the question of assimilation and the opposition to the U.S. anglo culture. He also authored ‘En Cuerpo de Camisa'. Luis Rafael Sánchez is now a professor emeritus at the University of Puerto Rico and the City University of New York. He also travels to Europe and Latin-America where he has been involved in the teachings and works of theater. Among his other works are the following - Los Ángeles se han fatigado (1960); Farsa del amor compradito (1960); La hiel nuestra de cada día (1960); Sol 13, interior (1961); O casi el alma (1965); La importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos (1988).
‘LIFE ISA PHENOMENAL THING . . . ‘ A pop tune springs to life in Puerto Rico. Multiplied to infinity by the blare of radios, television, and record players, its refrain, ‘Life is a phenomenal thing, frontwards or backwards, however you swing,' captures the island. Its beat captures us too, and propels us through the island, touching down on a single family - a pro-American senator caught in a gargantuan traffic jam on his way to an assignation with his black mistress; his aristocratic wife who, waiting for him, spends her time on an analyst's couch; his right-wing terrorist son quite literally in love with his Ferrari; and the mistress who inhabits another, poorer world with her idiot child, her three cousins (Huey, Dewey, and Louie), and her friend Dona Chon. ‘A riproaring, joyous story.' - St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Dr. Luis Rafael Sánchez a.k.a. ‘Wico' (born 1936) is considered by many to be the greatest Puerto Rican playwright of modern times. Sánchez was born and raised by his parents in the city of Humacao, Puerto Rico , which is located in the lower eastern part of Puerto Rico. There he received his primary education. His family moved to San Juan where Sánchez continued to receive his secondary and higher education. He enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico in 1955 after graduating from high school, earning a Bachelors of Arts degree. It was during his days as a student at the university that he became interested in acting. His interest in literature led him to enroll at the City University of New York where in 1959 he earned his Masters Degree in dramatic arts. He eventually went to Madrid, Spain and earned his Doctorate in Literature in 1975 from the Complutense University of Madrid. Sánchez's first play was ‘La Pasion Según Antigona PErez' (The Passion According to Antigona Perez) a tragedy acted out in the present day Puerto Rico. The character of ‘Antigona' was based on the life of Olga Viscal Garriga (1926-1995). Her life was rooted in politics and her 3 children. She was a member of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and an accomplished speaker who spent time in jail for her political beliefs yet, she saw herself as a simple woman with simple needs. ‘La Guaracha del Macho Camacho' (Macho Camacho's Beat) was published in 1976. This novel moves to a guaracha, a latin rhythm, with no audible beat. It is left to the imagination of the reader to come up with this beat. IT has been suggested that the song itself is the real protagonist of the tale. The ‘Americanization' of Puerto Rico is explored in this work. As well as the Puerto Rican political subject and the political situation of the island as a colony; one aspect of this examination can be seen as a critique of the Puerto Rican who would give up his culture to assimilate into the American culture against the Puerto Rican who refuses to let go of his cultural identity. The book was translated into English by Gregory Rabassa. In the ‘La guagua aErea' or ‘The Flying Bus', Sánchez explores the concept of a bi-polar culture, the question of assimilation and the opposition to the U.S. anglo culture. He also authored ‘En Cuerpo de Camisa'. Luis Rafael Sánchez is now a professor emeritus at the University of Puerto Rico and the City University of New York. He also travels to Europe and Latin-America where he has been involved in the teachings and works of theater. Among his other works are the following - Los Ángeles se han fatigado (1960); Farsa del amor compradito (1960); La hiel nuestra de cada día (1960); Sol 13, interior (1961); O casi el alma (1965); La importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos (1988).
‘Mami, I've been discovered!'. . . ‘Discovered doing what?' - Thus goes the running dialogue between an ambitious, headstrong, but sheltered Puerto Rican teenager and her powerful mother in this brilliant and touching memoir. From a three-room apartment in Brooklyn occupied by ten family members, Esmeralda Santiago begins a journey that is both a triumphant struggle for identity and independence, and a mother's worst nightmare. Challenged by language barriers, cultural stereotypes, and the fiercely protective Mami, Santiago continues the rollicking ascent she began in When I Was Puerto Rican. By day she perfects the role of Cleopatra at Performing Arts High School and interprets for the family at city welfare offices. At night she accompanies her mother and sisters to Latin dance halls, but on such a strict leash that she has her first date at the age of twenty. Undaunted, she makes up for lost time in a romantic apprenticeship at once hilarious and heartbreaking. With rambunctious humor and an unerring eye for detail, Santiago's story is both universal and personal: the quintessential immigrant coming of age and a mother/daughter struggle of heroic dimensions. ESMERALDA SANTIAGO came to the United States from Puerto Rico at age thirteen, attended junior high school in Brooklyn, and Performing Arts High School in New York City. After the extraordinary years described in this book, she graduated from Harvard University and received a Master's degree from Sarah Lawrence College. Santiago is the author of When I Was Puerto Rican, America's Dream, and is coeditor, with Joie Davidow, of Las Christmas. Favorite Latino Authors Share Their Holiday Memories. Santiago lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband and two children. Jacket design by Suzanne Heiser. Jacket photograph by A. L. Rios/PR Photographic. Author photograph by Frank Cantor . .
Esmeralda Santiago (born May 17, 1948) is a Puerto Rican author and former actress known for her novels and memoirs.
America Gonzalez is a hotel housekeeper on an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, cleaning up after wealthy foreigners who don't look her in the eye. Her alcoholic mother resents her, her married boyfriend, Correa, beats her, and their fourteen-year-old daughter thinks life would be better anywhere bbut with America. So when America is offered the chance to work as a live-in housekeeper and nanny for a family in Westchester County, New York, she takes it as a sign that a door to escape has been opened. Life in Westchester seems strange, though, to someone who has never left the tropical island where she was born. America quickly learns from the other housekeepers in her neighborhood that the superficial perfection of life in the suburbs is easily scratched. And even as America revels in the comparative luxury of her new life, daring to care about a man other than Correa, she fights to resist the feeling resist that no matter what she does, she can't get away from her past. From critically acclaimed author Esmeralda Santiago, this is the story of a woman balancing on the edge between her old life and a new one she struggles to make for herself. Passionate and lushly descriptive. AMERICA'S DREAM will draw readers into a world that has never been so poignantly and compellingly revealed.
Esmeralda Santiago (born May 17, 1948) is a Puerto Rican author and former actress known for her novels and memoirs.
An epic novel of love, discovery, and adventure by the author of the best-selling memoir When I Was Puerto Rican. As a young girl growing up in Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas is powerfully drawn to Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de Leon. And in handsome twin brothers Ramon and Inocente - both in love with Ana - she finds a way to get there. She marries Ramon, and in 1844, just eighteen, she travels across the ocean to a remote sugar plantation the brothers have inherited on the island. Ana faces unrelenting heat, disease and isolation, and the dangers of the untamed countryside even as she relishes the challenge of running Hacienda los Gemelos. But when the Civil War breaks out in the United States, Ana finds her livelihood, and perhaps even her life, threatened by the very people on whose backs her wealth has been built: the hacienda's slaves, whose richly drawn stories unfold alongside her own. And when at last Ana falls for a man who may be her destiny - a once-forbidden love - she will sacrifice nearly everything to keep hold of the land that has become her true home. This is a sensual, riveting tale, set in a place where human passions and cruelties collide: thrilling history that has never before been brought so vividly and unforgettably to life.
Esmeralda Santiago (born May 17, 1948) is a Puerto Rican author and former actress known for her novels and memoirs.
Esmeralda Santiago's story is as vivid and evocative as her name. The oldest of eleven children, she began life in a rippled zinc shack in rural Puerto Rico, where tree frogs sang at night in mango groves. At the age of thirteen, she left this magical landscape when her mother gathered her huge family and set off for New York with dreams of a better life. In a decaying Brooklyn tenement, forbidden to go outside near the dreaded ‘projects,' Esmeralda kept her brothers and sisters enthralled with stories while her determined mother supported them all by working in a bra factory. The chance (a long shot) that would eventually lead to Harvard and a career comes at an audition for the High School of Performing Arts, delivering a dramatic monologue of which neither she nor the judges can understand one word. Esmeralda Santiago's Puerto Rican childhood is one of sorcery, smoldering war between the sexes, and high comedy (particularly devastating when nutrition authorities from the Estados Unidos invade her barrio to promote dental hygiene and the Four Food Groups). Hers is a portrait of a harsh but enchanted world that can never be reclaimed.
Esmeralda Santiago (born May 17, 1948) is a Puerto Rican author and former actress known for her novels and memoirs.
Set in New York City in the 1950s, VALENTINO'S HAIR is a highly poetic and imaginative novel about a Puerto Rican barber, Facundo Nieves, and his Lame son Lupe. In a succession of confessions, the barber tells about the consequences of a life-changing day in 1926 when, m an exclusive Manhattan hotel, he cut Rudolph Valentino's hair. When the screen idol dies a month later Facundo at first feels guilty. He is sure that he has contributed in some mysterious way to the great Valentino's premature death. But after visiting a bruja, a neighborhood witch, he discovers something even more frightening: Valentino's hair is a powerful aphrodisiac. Facundo decides to use the hair clippings he has secreted away to seduce a young American woman who does not love him but who becomes helplessly drawn to Facundo through his use of the magical hair. The outcome of this unnatural relationship borders on horror. Sapia lovingly explores Lupe's relationship with his aged father and his discovery of his father's secret practice of sympathetic magic. The environment of the barber's unique world - the various mythologies associated with hair, and Puerto Rican family and culture - is beautifully evoked. The barbers voice serves as a narrative anchor through which we learn that innocence can be lost in both the real and the mystical worlds and that we are all by some means morally corruptible and subject to temptation.
Yvonne V. Sapia was born in New York City. Her family originally me from Puerto Rico. Sapia has been the recipient of an NEA fellowship, fellowships from the Florida Arts council, and the prestigious Morse Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, and she has published two collections of poetry: THE FERTILE CRESCENT (Anhinga Press) and VALENTINO'S HAIR (Northeastern University Press). Sapia lives in rural north Florida.
A collection of brief essays and the last book by the Cuban-born writer who died in 1993 of AIDS. In these essays Sarduy explores a number of topics, including - his own body and mind, impressions of places (Cafe de Flore, Benares) and people (Roland Barthes, Italo Calvino). In ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead,' Sarduy recounts the changes in his address book as death threatens to turn it into a ‘novel, or biographical fiction.' But, facing his own death, Sarduy refuses to remove the name of a dead friend because ‘it would be like eradicating him all over again, as if I were an accomplice of the void, subjecting him to another death within death.'
Severo Sarduy (Camagüey, Cuba; February 25, 1937 - Paris; June 8, 1993) was a Cuban poet, author, playwright, and critic of Cuban literature and art. Sarduy went to the equivalent of high school in Camagüey and in 1956 moved to Havana, where he began a study of medicine. With the triumph of the Cuban revolution he collaborated with the Diario libre and Lunes de revolucion, pro-marxist papers. In 1960 he traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole du Louvre. There he was connected to the group of intellectuals who produced the magazine Tel Quel, particularly to philosopher Francois Wahl, with whom he was openly involved. Sarduy worked as a reader for Editions du Seuil and as editor and producer of the Radiodiffusion-TElEvision Française. In 1972 his novel COBRA won him the Medici Prize. He was among the most brilliant essayists writing in Spanish and ‘a powerful baroque narrator, full of surprising resources.' As a poet, he was considered one of the greatest of his time. He was also a more or less secret painter; a major retrospective of his work was held at the Reina Sofía Museum of Madrid after his death. He died due to complications from AIDS just after finishing his autobiographical work Los pájaros de la playa. Along with Jose Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, and Reinaldo Arenas, Sarduy is one of the most famous Cuban writers of the twentieth century; some of his works deal explicitly with male homosexuality and transvestism.
As it was for James Joyce, language is the true hero of this remarkable novel. A literary tour de force that can be read and enjoyed on many levels, COBRA is the story of a transvestite named Cobra whose obsession is to transform his/her body. She is assisted in her efforts at metamorphoses by the Madam and Pup, Cobra's dwarfish double. They too change shape, as does the text itself in a brilliant series of scene shifts that range from The Lyrical Theater of the Dolls, where Cobra performs, through the violent ceremonies of a motorcycle gang, into a sect of Tibetan lamas seeking to revive Tantric Buddhism, finally to ‘the pause that refreshes' in modern India. Playful, humorous, wildly imaginative, Cobra, winner of the Prix MEdicis in France, is indeed a literary event.
Severo Sarduy (Camagüey, Cuba; February 25, 1937 - Paris; June 8, 1993) was a Cuban poet, author, playwright, and critic of Cuban literature and art. Sarduy went to the equivalent of high school in Camagüey and in 1956 moved to Havana, where he began a study of medicine. With the triumph of the Cuban revolution he collaborated with the Diario libre and Lunes de revolucion, pro-marxist papers. In 1960 he traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole du Louvre. There he was connected to the group of intellectuals who produced the magazine Tel Quel, particularly to philosopher Francois Wahl, with whom he was openly involved. Sarduy worked as a reader for Editions du Seuil and as editor and producer of the Radiodiffusion-TElEvision Française. In 1972 his novel COBRA won him the Medici Prize. He was among the most brilliant essayists writing in Spanish and ‘a powerful baroque narrator, full of surprising resources.' As a poet, he was considered one of the greatest of his time. He was also a more or less secret painter; a major retrospective of his work was held at the Reina Sofía Museum of Madrid after his death. He died due to complications from AIDS just after finishing his autobiographical work Los pájaros de la playa. Along with Jose Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, and Reinaldo Arenas, Sarduy is one of the most famous Cuban writers of the twentieth century; some of his works deal explicitly with male homosexuality and transvestism.
Available for the first time in English, Firefly is Sarduy's most autobiographical work. The story follows the coming-of-age of a precocious and exuberant boy with an oversized head and underdeveloped sense of direction, who views the world as a threatening conspiracy. Told in breathless and lyrical prose, the vel is a loving rendition of a long-lost home, a meditation on exile and an allegory of Cuba's isolation in the world. Firefly responds to the questions of the 'Boom' generation, pushing the conventions of authors like Vargas Llosa or Garcia Marquez.
Severo Sarduy (Camagüey, Cuba; February 25, 1937 - Paris; June 8, 1993) was a Cuban poet, author, playwright, and critic of Cuban literature and art. Sarduy went to the equivalent of high school in Camagüey and in 1956 moved to Havana, where he began a study of medicine. With the triumph of the Cuban revolution he collaborated with the Diario libre and Lunes de revolucion, pro-marxist papers. In 1960 he traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole du Louvre. There he was connected to the group of intellectuals who produced the magazine Tel Quel, particularly to philosopher Francois Wahl, with whom he was openly involved. Sarduy worked as a reader for Editions du Seuil and as editor and producer of the Radiodiffusion-TElEvision Française. In 1972 his novel COBRA won him the Medici Prize. He was among the most brilliant essayists writing in Spanish and ‘a powerful baroque narrator, full of surprising resources.' As a poet, he was considered one of the greatest of his time. He was also a more or less secret painter; a major retrospective of his work was held at the Reina Sofía Museum of Madrid after his death. He died due to complications from AIDS just after finishing his autobiographical work Los pájaros de la playa. Along with Jose Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, and Reinaldo Arenas, Sarduy is one of the most famous Cuban writers of the twentieth century; some of his works deal explicitly with male homosexuality and transvestism.
In Sarduy's work there is what I would call the good fortune of Spanish, the foundations of an other culture. A culture which could assume its linguistic past (the baroque), its transplantation (America, the opening of the free space of America), and its confrontation with the most rigorous elements of the European avant-garde. His is an unprecedented, exciting situation.' - Philippe Sollers . . . Severo Sarduy inhabits language in a felicitous manner: his love of words is not a mania (he is never verbose), but an affection. Hence a paradoxical effect: the futility he dramatizes shines with the pleasure of writing, and our, or at least my own, way of listening is won over by this confidence. Thus I accept the modernity of this text without fear, without the fear of not understanding, of being bored or intimidated. I hear in him an inhabitual way of dealing with words, without irony and yet without credulity. Is this smile, this manner of speaking to others without violence and without posturing, perhaps an art which we have lost? Or, on the contrary, an art of the future?' - Roland Barthes. . (Originally published as Para la voz, editorial Fundamentos, 1978). .
Severo Sarduy (Camagüey, Cuba; February 25, 1937 - Paris; June 8, 1993) was a Cuban poet, author, playwright, and critic of Cuban literature and art. Sarduy went to the equivalent of high school in Camagüey and in 1956 moved to Havana, where he began a study of medicine. With the triumph of the Cuban revolution he collaborated with the Diario libre and Lunes de revolucion, pro-marxist papers. In 1960 he traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole du Louvre. There he was connected to the group of intellectuals who produced the magazine Tel Quel, particularly to philosopher Francois Wahl, with whom he was openly involved. Sarduy worked as a reader for Editions du Seuil and as editor and producer of the Radiodiffusion-TElEvision Française. In 1972 his novel COBRA won him the Medici Prize. He was among the most brilliant essayists writing in Spanish and ‘a powerful baroque narrator, full of surprising resources.' As a poet, he was considered one of the greatest of his time. He was also a more or less secret painter; a major retrospective of his work was held at the Reina Sofía Museum of Madrid after his death. He died due to complications from AIDS just after finishing his autobiographical work Los pájaros de la playa. Along with Jose Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, and Reinaldo Arenas, Sarduy is one of the most famous Cuban writers of the twentieth century; some of his works deal explicitly with male homosexuality and transvestism.
At the core of this exuberantly sensual and wide-reaching novel is a humble subject: Luis Leng, a Cuban Chinese cook, who becomes a reincarnation of Buddha. Through Leng, Sarduy traces the metamorphosis of two hitherto incomparable societies. Tibet at the moment of the Chinese invasion, and Cuba at the moment of revolution. In the deepest sense a novel of exile, MAITREYA is rich in political and historical suggestions even as it plays the game of the Chinese boxes with its spatial and temporal superimpositions under the sign of multiple personalities and transvestism. MAITREYA, with its opulent, erotic, baroque style, confirms Sarduy as the undisputed master of avant-garde prose in Latin America.
Severo Sarduy (Camagüey, Cuba; February 25, 1937 - Paris; June 8, 1993) was a Cuban poet, author, playwright, and critic of Cuban literature and art. Sarduy went to the equivalent of high school in Camagüey and in 1956 moved to Havana, where he began a study of medicine. With the triumph of the Cuban revolution he collaborated with the Diario libre and Lunes de revolucion, pro-marxist papers. In 1960 he traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole du Louvre. There he was connected to the group of intellectuals who produced the magazine Tel Quel, particularly to philosopher Francois Wahl, with whom he was openly involved. Sarduy worked as a reader for Editions du Seuil and as editor and producer of the Radiodiffusion-TElEvision Française. In 1972 his novel COBRA won him the Medici Prize. He was among the most brilliant essayists writing in Spanish and ‘a powerful baroque narrator, full of surprising resources.' As a poet, he was considered one of the greatest of his time. He was also a more or less secret painter; a major retrospective of his work was held at the Reina Sofía Museum of Madrid after his death. He died due to complications from AIDS just after finishing his autobiographical work Los pájaros de la playa. Along with Jose Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, and Reinaldo Arenas, Sarduy is one of the most famous Cuban writers of the twentieth century; some of his works deal explicitly with male homosexuality and transvestism.
Sarduy is not only one of the most original writers in Latin America today, he is also one of the most daring critics. WRITTEN ON A BODY is at once a serious critical performance based on the theories of Barthes, Lacan, and Derrida, and a parody of them. CONTENTS: Eroticisms; From to Yang; A Pearl Grey Cashmere Fetish; Writing/Transvestism; The (Textual) Adventure of a Collector of (Human) Skins; Horror of the Void; Gongora: Squaring Metaphor; Dispersion (False Notes/Homage to Lezama); Primary Structures; Toward an Urban Art; Cubes; Free Texts and Plane Texts; Pwin the Painting of Objects to Objects that Paint; Simulation; Copy/Simulacrum; Anamorphosis; Trompe-l'oeil; Painted on a Body; Toward a Hypertelic Art; Notes.
Severo Sarduy (Camagüey, Cuba; February 25, 1937 - Paris; June 8, 1993) was a Cuban poet, author, playwright, and critic of Cuban literature and art. Sarduy went to the equivalent of high school in Camagüey and in 1956 moved to Havana, where he began a study of medicine. With the triumph of the Cuban revolution he collaborated with the Diario libre and Lunes de revolucion, pro-marxist papers. In 1960 he traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole du Louvre. There he was connected to the group of intellectuals who produced the magazine Tel Quel, particularly to philosopher Francois Wahl, with whom he was openly involved. Sarduy worked as a reader for Editions du Seuil and as editor and producer of the Radiodiffusion-TElEvision Française. In 1972 his novel COBRA won him the Medici Prize. He was among the most brilliant essayists writing in Spanish and ‘a powerful baroque narrator, full of surprising resources.' As a poet, he was considered one of the greatest of his time. He was also a more or less secret painter; a major retrospective of his work was held at the Reina Sofía Museum of Madrid after his death. He died due to complications from AIDS just after finishing his autobiographical work Los pájaros de la playa. Along with Jose Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, and Reinaldo Arenas, Sarduy is one of the most famous Cuban writers of the twentieth century; some of his works deal explicitly with male homosexuality and transvestism.
Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism (original Spanish title: Facundo: Civilizacion i Barbarie) is a book written in 1845 by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a writer and journalist who became the seventh president of Argentina. It is a cornerstone of Latin American literature: a work of creative non-fiction that helped to define the parameters for thinking about the region's development, modernization, power, and culture. Subtitled Civilization and Barbarism, Facundo contrasts civilization and barbarism as seen in early 19th-century Argentina. Literary critic Roberto González Echevarría calls the work "the most important book written by a Latin American in any discipline or genre". Facundo describes the life of Juan Facundo Quiroga, a gaucho who had terrorized provincial Argentina in the 1820s and 1830s. Kathleen Ross, one of Facundo's English translators, points out that the author also published Facundo to "denounce the tyranny of the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas". Juan Manuel de Rosas ruled Argentina from 1829 to 1832 and again from 1835 to 1852; it was because of Rosas that Sarmiento was in exile in Chile, where he wrote the book. Sarmiento sees Rosas as heir to Facundo: both are caudillos and representatives of a barbarism that derives from the nature of the Argentine countryside. As Ross explains, Sarmiento's book is therefore engaged in describing the "Argentine national character, explaining the effects of Argentina's geographical conditions on personality, the 'barbaric' nature of the countryside versus the 'civilizing' influence of the city, and the great future awaiting Argentina when it opened its doors wide to European immigration". Throughout the text, Sarmiento explores the dichotomy between civilization and barbarism. As Kimberly Ball observes, "civilization is identified with northern Europe, North America, cities, Unitarians, Paz, and Rivadavia", while "barbarism is identified with Latin America, Spain, Asia, the Middle East, the countryside, Federalists, Facundo, and Rosas". It is in the way that Facundo articulates this opposition that Sarmiento's book has had such a profound influence. In the words of González Echevarría: "in proposing the dialectic between civilization and barbarism as the central conflict in Latin American culture Facundo gave shape to a polemic that began in the colonial period and continues to the present day". The first edition of Facundo was published in instalments in 1845. Sarmiento removed the last two chapters of the second edition (1851), but restored them in the 1874 edition, deciding that they were important to the book's development. The first translation into English, by Mary Mann, was published in 1868. A modern and complete translation by Kathleen Ross appeared in 2003 from the University of California Press.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (February 15, 1811 - September 11, 1888) was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. He was a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the Generation of 1837, who had a great influence on nineteenth-century Argentina. He was particularly concerned with educational issues and was also an important influence on the region's literature. Sarmiento grew up in a poor but politically active family that paved the way for much of his future accomplishments. Between 1843 and 1850 he was frequently in exile, and wrote in both Chile and in Argentina. His greatest literary achievement was Facundo, a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento wrote while working for the newspaper El Progreso during his exile in Chile. The book brought him far more than just literary recognition; he expended his efforts and energy on the war against dictatorships, specifically that of Rosas, and contrasted enlightened Europe - a world where, in his eyes, democracy, social services, and intelligent thought were valued - with the barbarism of the gaucho and especially the caudillo, the ruthless strongmen of nineteenth-century Argentina. While president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento championed intelligent thought - including education for children and women - and democracy for Latin America. He also took advantage of the opportunity to modernize and develop train systems, a postal system, and a comprehensive education system. He spent many years in ministerial roles on the federal and state levels where he travelled abroad and examined other education systems. Sarmiento died in Asuncion, Paraguay, at the age of 77 from a heart attack. He was buried in Buenos Aires. Today, he is respected as a political innovator and writer.
The wide interests and commensurate achievements of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, 19th century Latin American, have made him known as the ‘South American Benjamin Franklin.' A leader in political thought and action, Sarmiento also made outstanding contributions in literature, education, diplomacy, and sociology. As cabinet minister in education, he established a great public school system; as president of Argentina, he culminated a life- long championship of the progressive forces in Argentina; as leader of the Romantic school of writing, he produced outstanding prose. Sarmiento is more than a man in a given time and place representing a key to the understanding of a phase of history and of a particular country. The life and works of this Argentine genius offer sources of insight and enjoyment to all. This anthology contains selections from Sarmiento's most important writings. It includes parts of' Provincial Recollections' and excerpts revealing his thoughts on journalism, education, and politics. Especially delightful are his observations based on his travels in the United States. Here too are the salient features of the book for which Sarmiento was especially famous - FACUNDO: CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM, THE LIFE OF FACUNDO QUIROGA, generally considered the most important book written by a Latin American.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (February 15, 1811 - September 11, 1888) was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. He was a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the Generation of 1837, who had a great influence on nineteenth-century Argentina. He was particularly concerned with educational issues and was also an important influence on the region's literature. Sarmiento grew up in a poor but politically active family that paved the way for much of his future accomplishments. Between 1843 and 1850 he was frequently in exile, and wrote in both Chile and in Argentina. His greatest literary achievement was Facundo, a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento wrote while working for the newspaper El Progreso during his exile in Chile. The book brought him far more than just literary recognition; he expended his efforts and energy on the war against dictatorships, specifically that of Rosas, and contrasted enlightened Europe - a world where, in his eyes, democracy, social services, and intelligent thought were valued - with the barbarism of the gaucho and especially the caudillo, the ruthless strongmen of nineteenth-century Argentina. While president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento championed intelligent thought - including education for children and women - and democracy for Latin America. He also took advantage of the opportunity to modernize and develop train systems, a postal system, and a comprehensive education system. He spent many years in ministerial roles on the federal and state levels where he travelled abroad and examined other education systems. Sarmiento died in Asuncion, Paraguay, at the age of 77 from a heart attack. He was buried in Buenos Aires. Today, he is respected as a political innovator and writer.
A classic work of Latin American literature, Domingo Sarmiento's Facundo has become an integral part of the history, politics, and culture of Latin America since its first publication in 1845. Partially translated into English when it was first published, this foundational text appears here for the first time in its entirety. An educator and writer, Sarmiento was President of Argentina from 1868 to 1874. His Facundo is a study of the Argentine character, a prescription for the modernization of Latin America, and a protest against the tyranny of the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1835-1852). The book brings nineteenth-century Latin American history to life even as it raises questions still being debated today-questions regarding the ‘civilized' city versus the ‘barbaric' countryside, the treatment of indigenous and African populations, and the classically liberal plan of modernization. Facundo's celebrated and frequently anthologized portraits of the caudillo Juan Facundo Quiroga and other colorful characters give readers an exhilarating sense of Argentine culture in the making. Kathleen Ross's translation renders Sarmiento's passionate prose into English with all its richness intact, allowing the English-language reader the full experience of Facundo's intensity and historical reach.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (February 15, 1811 - September 11, 1888) was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. He was a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the Generation of 1837, who had a great influence on nineteenth-century Argentina. He was particularly concerned with educational issues and was also an important influence on the region's literature. Sarmiento grew up in a poor but politically active family that paved the way for much of his future accomplishments. Between 1843 and 1850 he was frequently in exile, and wrote in both Chile and in Argentina. His greatest literary achievement was Facundo, a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento wrote while working for the newspaper El Progreso during his exile in Chile. The book brought him far more than just literary recognition; he expended his efforts and energy on the war against dictatorships, specifically that of Rosas, and contrasted enlightened Europe - a world where, in his eyes, democracy, social services, and intelligent thought were valued - with the barbarism of the gaucho and especially the caudillo, the ruthless strongmen of nineteenth-century Argentina. While president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento championed intelligent thought - including education for children and women - and democracy for Latin America. He also took advantage of the opportunity to modernize and develop train systems, a postal system, and a comprehensive education system. He spent many years in ministerial roles on the federal and state levels where he travelled abroad and examined other education systems. Sarmiento died in Asuncion, Paraguay, at the age of 77 from a heart attack. He was buried in Buenos Aires. Today, he is respected as a political innovator and writer.
A classic work of Latin American literature, Domingo Sarmiento's Facundo has become an integral part of the history, politics, and culture of Latin America since its first publication in 1845. Partially translated into English when it was first published, this foundational text appears here for the first time in its entirety. An educator and writer, Sarmiento was President of Argentina from 1868 to 1874. His Facundo is a study of the Argentine character, a prescription for the modernization of Latin America, and a protest against the tyranny of the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1835-1852). The book brings nineteenth-century Latin American history to life even as it raises questions still being debated today-questions regarding the ‘civilized' city versus the ‘barbaric' countryside, the treatment of indigenous and African populations, and the classically liberal plan of modernization. Facundo's celebrated and frequently anthologized portraits of the caudillo Juan Facundo Quiroga and other colorful characters give readers an exhilarating sense of Argentine culture in the making. Kathleen Ross's translation renders Sarmiento's passionate prose into English with all its richness intact, allowing the English-language reader the full experience of Facundo's intensity and historical reach.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (February 15, 1811 - September 11, 1888) was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. He was a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the Generation of 1837, who had a great influence on nineteenth-century Argentina. He was particularly concerned with educational issues and was also an important influence on the region's literature. Sarmiento grew up in a poor but politically active family that paved the way for much of his future accomplishments. Between 1843 and 1850 he was frequently in exile, and wrote in both Chile and in Argentina. His greatest literary achievement was Facundo, a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento wrote while working for the newspaper El Progreso during his exile in Chile. The book brought him far more than just literary recognition; he expended his efforts and energy on the war against dictatorships, specifically that of Rosas, and contrasted enlightened Europe - a world where, in his eyes, democracy, social services, and intelligent thought were valued - with the barbarism of the gaucho and especially the caudillo, the ruthless strongmen of nineteenth-century Argentina. While president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento championed intelligent thought - including education for children and women - and democracy for Latin America. He also took advantage of the opportunity to modernize and develop train systems, a postal system, and a comprehensive education system. He spent many years in ministerial roles on the federal and state levels where he travelled abroad and examined other education systems. Sarmiento died in Asuncion, Paraguay, at the age of 77 from a heart attack. He was buried in Buenos Aires. Today, he is respected as a political innovator and writer.
Reprint. Originally published 1868. Fasc. ed. A classic work of Latin American literature, Domingo Sarmiento's Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants, or Civilization and Barbarism has become an integral part of the history, politics, and culture of Latin America since its first publication in 1845.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (February 15, 1811 - September 11, 1888) was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. He was a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the Generation of 1837, who had a great influence on nineteenth-century Argentina. He was particularly concerned with educational issues and was also an important influence on the region's literature. Sarmiento grew up in a poor but politically active family that paved the way for much of his future accomplishments. Between 1843 and 1850 he was frequently in exile, and wrote in both Chile and in Argentina. His greatest literary achievement was Facundo, a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento wrote while working for the newspaper El Progreso during his exile in Chile. The book brought him far more than just literary recognition; he expended his efforts and energy on the war against dictatorships, specifically that of Rosas, and contrasted enlightened Europe - a world where, in his eyes, democracy, social services, and intelligent thought were valued - with the barbarism of the gaucho and especially the caudillo, the ruthless strongmen of nineteenth-century Argentina. While president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento championed intelligent thought - including education for children and women - and democracy for Latin America. He also took advantage of the opportunity to modernize and develop train systems, a postal system, and a comprehensive education system. He spent many years in ministerial roles on the federal and state levels where he travelled abroad and examined other education systems. Sarmiento died in Asuncion, Paraguay, at the age of 77 from a heart attack. He was buried in Buenos Aires. Today, he is respected as a political innovator and writer.
Classic essay which establishes the theme of 'Civilization vs. Barbarism' in Latin American letters. Juan Facundo Quiroga was one of dictator Rosas' caudillos. Book includes some excellent descriptive passages of the pampa. (reprint New York: Hafner, 1960. xxxv, 400 p. paper; (reprint New York: Macmillan, 1961. 288 p. paper).
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (February 15, 1811 - September 11, 1888) was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. He was a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the Generation of 1837, who had a great influence on nineteenth-century Argentina. He was particularly concerned with educational issues and was also an important influence on the region's literature. Sarmiento grew up in a poor but politically active family that paved the way for much of his future accomplishments. Between 1843 and 1850 he was frequently in exile, and wrote in both Chile and in Argentina. His greatest literary achievement was Facundo, a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento wrote while working for the newspaper El Progreso during his exile in Chile. The book brought him far more than just literary recognition; he expended his efforts and energy on the war against dictatorships, specifically that of Rosas, and contrasted enlightened Europe - a world where, in his eyes, democracy, social services, and intelligent thought were valued - with the barbarism of the gaucho and especially the caudillo, the ruthless strongmen of nineteenth-century Argentina. While president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento championed intelligent thought - including education for children and women - and democracy for Latin America. He also took advantage of the opportunity to modernize and develop train systems, a postal system, and a comprehensive education system. He spent many years in ministerial roles on the federal and state levels where he travelled abroad and examined other education systems. Sarmiento died in Asuncion, Paraguay, at the age of 77 from a heart attack. He was buried in Buenos Aires. Today, he is respected as a political innovator and writer.
A detailed account of Sarmiento's first visit to the United States, which reveals an admiration for American culture and government amidst many acute observations. Plates.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (February 15, 1811 - September 11, 1888) was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. He was a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the Generation of 1837, who had a great influence on nineteenth-century Argentina. He was particularly concerned with educational issues and was also an important influence on the region's literature. Sarmiento grew up in a poor but politically active family that paved the way for much of his future accomplishments. Between 1843 and 1850 he was frequently in exile, and wrote in both Chile and in Argentina. His greatest literary achievement was Facundo, a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento wrote while working for the newspaper El Progreso during his exile in Chile. The book brought him far more than just literary recognition; he expended his efforts and energy on the war against dictatorships, specifically that of Rosas, and contrasted enlightened Europe - a world where, in his eyes, democracy, social services, and intelligent thought were valued - with the barbarism of the gaucho and especially the caudillo, the ruthless strongmen of nineteenth-century Argentina. While president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento championed intelligent thought - including education for children and women - and democracy for Latin America. He also took advantage of the opportunity to modernize and develop train systems, a postal system, and a comprehensive education system. He spent many years in ministerial roles on the federal and state levels where he travelled abroad and examined other education systems. Sarmiento died in Asuncion, Paraguay, at the age of 77 from a heart attack. He was buried in Buenos Aires. Today, he is respected as a political innovator and writer.
A detailed account of Sarmiento's first visit to the United States, which reveals an admiration for American culture and government amidst many acute observations. Plates.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (February 15, 1811 - September 11, 1888) was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. He was a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the Generation of 1837, who had a great influence on nineteenth-century Argentina. He was particularly concerned with educational issues and was also an important influence on the region's literature. Sarmiento grew up in a poor but politically active family that paved the way for much of his future accomplishments. Between 1843 and 1850 he was frequently in exile, and wrote in both Chile and in Argentina. His greatest literary achievement was Facundo, a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento wrote while working for the newspaper El Progreso during his exile in Chile. The book brought him far more than just literary recognition; he expended his efforts and energy on the war against dictatorships, specifically that of Rosas, and contrasted enlightened Europe - a world where, in his eyes, democracy, social services, and intelligent thought were valued - with the barbarism of the gaucho and especially the caudillo, the ruthless strongmen of nineteenth-century Argentina. While president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento championed intelligent thought - including education for children and women - and democracy for Latin America. He also took advantage of the opportunity to modernize and develop train systems, a postal system, and a comprehensive education system. He spent many years in ministerial roles on the federal and state levels where he travelled abroad and examined other education systems. Sarmiento died in Asuncion, Paraguay, at the age of 77 from a heart attack. He was buried in Buenos Aires. Today, he is respected as a political innovator and writer.
This is a selection of travel writing from Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Argentine statesman, educator, and author, president of the republic (1868-74). An opponent of Juan Manuel de Rosas, he spent years of exile in Chile, becoming known as a journalist and an educational reformer. He toured Europe and North America and was impressed by the school system and the political organization of the United States. He helped Urquiza to overthrow Rosas in 1852 and became active in politics. In Oct., 1868, he succeeded Bartolome Mitre as president. His administration was marked by the conclusion of the War of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay, by material progress, and, especially, by the organization of schools and the reform of educational methods. Sarmiento was succeeded by Nicolás Avellaneda. His essays on education and politics, historical studies, and critical works are distinguished by crisp style. Best known is Facundo, o Civilizacion i barbarie (1845; tr. Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants, new ed. 1961), nominally a biography of Juan Facundo Quiroga, but actually an in-depth study of caudillismo, personalism in politics.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (February 15, 1811 - September 11, 1888) was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. He was a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the Generation of 1837, who had a great influence on nineteenth-century Argentina. He was particularly concerned with educational issues and was also an important influence on the region's literature. Sarmiento grew up in a poor but politically active family that paved the way for much of his future accomplishments. Between 1843 and 1850 he was frequently in exile, and wrote in both Chile and in Argentina. His greatest literary achievement was Facundo, a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento wrote while working for the newspaper El Progreso during his exile in Chile. The book brought him far more than just literary recognition; he expended his efforts and energy on the war against dictatorships, specifically that of Rosas, and contrasted enlightened Europe - a world where, in his eyes, democracy, social services, and intelligent thought were valued - with the barbarism of the gaucho and especially the caudillo, the ruthless strongmen of nineteenth-century Argentina. While president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento championed intelligent thought - including education for children and women - and democracy for Latin America. He also took advantage of the opportunity to modernize and develop train systems, a postal system, and a comprehensive education system. He spent many years in ministerial roles on the federal and state levels where he travelled abroad and examined other education systems. Sarmiento died in Asuncion, Paraguay, at the age of 77 from a heart attack. He was buried in Buenos Aires. Today, he is respected as a political innovator and writer.
Aboard his boat the Chita Verde, Captain Cristorio passes his life sailing among archipelagos of islands and the immensity of the open waters, searching for his beloved dragged off in his youth by ocean monsters. Along the way he encounters ghost ships and mysterious sea creatures, shipwrecked sailors and abandoned islands. From Cristorio's bastism at sea in a hurricane as a child to his end fleeing the jaws of a shark, MASTER OF THE SEA mixes legend and reality in a story of haunting beauty. ‘In the writing of Jose Sarney I have discovered the knowledge, the language full of imagery, and above all the deeply human quality of the Brazilian people. MASTER OF THE SEA is a monumental work.' - Claude Levi-Strauss . . . ‘MASTER OF THE SEA is a magnificent, powerful novel. Sarney has come to join Brazil's finest fiction writers.' - Jorge Amado . . . ‘A heightened magical realism and lyricism that stands on equal footing with the best of García Márquez's work.' - Alfredo Fressia, El País Cultural (Spain).
Jose Sarney de Araújo Costa (born 24 April 1930) is a Brazilian politician, lawyer, and writer who was President of Brazil from 15 March 1985 to 15 March 1990. Sarney ascended in the politics of his home state of Maranhão as part of the 'Bossa Nova Generation' of UDN politicians in the 1950s, young idealists seeking to reorganize public administration and rid the government of corruption and old deleterious practices. During the Brazilian military dictatorship, which imposed a two-party system, Sarney affiliated himself with the government party, ARENA, becoming the president of the party in 1979. As the regime fell, however, ARENA split over the appointment of Paulo Maluf as Presidential candidate. Sarney joined the dissenters, being instrumental in the creation of the Liberal Front Party. He agreed to run for Vice-President on the ticket of Tancredo Neves, of PMDB, formerly the opposition party to the military government. Neves won the Presidential elections, but fell ill and died before taking office, and Sarney became President. He started out his term with great popularity, but public opinion shifted with the Brazilian debt crisis and the failure of Plano Cruzado to abate chronic inflation. Over time, Sarney and his family acquired enormous clout over Maranhão's public life, and he is today regarded as the foremost of Brazil's oligarchs. Sarney owns the most important newspapers and TV stations in Maranhão, and remains influential there, even though he is now a senator for the smaller state of Amapá. Sarney has also faced multiple allegations of nepotism and corruption in his career. In 2009, the British weekly The Economist called his election as President of the Senate 'a victory for semi-feudalism' and 'a throwback to an era of semi-feudal politics that still prevails in corners of Brazil and holds the rest of it back.' Veja columnist Roberto Pompeu de Toledo deemed him 'the perfect oligarch'. Sarney is currently the longest-standing member of the Brazilian Congress, and has held public office since 1958 almost without interruption. Sarney is also an accomplished writer, and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
The territory between the Oiapoque and Araguari Rivers, today the Brazilian state of Amapa, is an immense region of unknown and mysterious forests, with waterfalls along great rivers that run south to the Amazon or east to the Atlantic Ocean. When gold was discovered in the legendary Calsoene River at the end of the nineteenth century, prospectors, swindlers, heroes and drifters rushed to the region. That vacant wilderness came to be a bloody frontier of violence and passion where territory, claims, wealth and women were fought over. In this world lived Saraminda, who became an unquenchable desire for the men that encountered her. ‘How I loved this beautiful novel, Saraminda. . . Sarney revives the gold prospectors of Amapa with a sharp sensibility for ethnographic realism permeated by a powerful lyricism.' ~ Claude Levi-Strauss. Novelist, poet and essayist, Jose Sarney (Maranhao, Brazil, 1930) is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters; his first novel, O Dono do Mar (MASTER OF THE SEA), has been translated into English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Greek and Romanian. Sarney was president of Brazil from 1985-1990 and is currently a member of the Brazilian senate. The New York Times has called Gregory Rabassa ‘one of the best translators who ever drew a breath.' His translations of modern Latin American literature include Gabriel Garcia Marquez's ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, Julio Cortazar's HOPSCOTCH, and Jose Sarney's MASTER OF THE SEA. .
Jose Sarney de Araújo Costa (born 24 April 1930) is a Brazilian politician, lawyer, and writer who was President of Brazil from 15 March 1985 to 15 March 1990. Sarney ascended in the politics of his home state of Maranhão as part of the 'Bossa Nova Generation' of UDN politicians in the 1950s, young idealists seeking to reorganize public administration and rid the government of corruption and old deleterious practices. During the Brazilian military dictatorship, which imposed a two-party system, Sarney affiliated himself with the government party, ARENA, becoming the president of the party in 1979. As the regime fell, however, ARENA split over the appointment of Paulo Maluf as Presidential candidate. Sarney joined the dissenters, being instrumental in the creation of the Liberal Front Party. He agreed to run for Vice-President on the ticket of Tancredo Neves, of PMDB, formerly the opposition party to the military government. Neves won the Presidential elections, but fell ill and died before taking office, and Sarney became President. He started out his term with great popularity, but public opinion shifted with the Brazilian debt crisis and the failure of Plano Cruzado to abate chronic inflation. Over time, Sarney and his family acquired enormous clout over Maranhão's public life, and he is today regarded as the foremost of Brazil's oligarchs. Sarney owns the most important newspapers and TV stations in Maranhão, and remains influential there, even though he is now a senator for the smaller state of Amapá. Sarney has also faced multiple allegations of nepotism and corruption in his career. In 2009, the British weekly The Economist called his election as President of the Senate 'a victory for semi-feudalism' and 'a throwback to an era of semi-feudal politics that still prevails in corners of Brazil and holds the rest of it back.' Veja columnist Roberto Pompeu de Toledo deemed him 'the perfect oligarch'. Sarney is currently the longest-standing member of the Brazilian Congress, and has held public office since 1958 almost without interruption. Sarney is also an accomplished writer, and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
Of the nine tales in this volume, by the Brazilian author Jose Sarney, seven are from North of the Waters (1969) and two are part of Brejal dos Guajas (1985). The selection was made by Antonio Olinto, the Brazilian poet and novelist, who also contributes an introduction to the book. Sarney's tales are violent and at the same time full of humour. Alvaro Pacheco, the Brazilian poet who is also Sarney's publisher, has written that the characters in Sarney's tales show ‘the soul and the blood of Brazil's Northeast', a region whose reality is full of poetry and drama. There is a primitiveness in these tales which goes beyond the bounds of languages. They are stories of universal scope and are based on fundamentals like food, birth, the lust for sex, rain, sunlight, earth, water - and thus show the violence of things essential. Jose Sarney is also, without undue exaggeration, a nationalistic author. He is a man of Northeastern Brazil, a writer of Northeastern Brazil. He uses new words lavishly. His words are mainly Portuguese words, but with derivations from all the indigenous languages of Maranhào. A Brazilian dictionary could be noticeably enlarged with the addition of the new words that Jose Sarney uses in his tales. New words used by him are largely the new words of the mixed races and languages of his part of Brazil. These words can be a handicap for any translator. What he writes, he writes in Portuguese, but Portuguese readers too may need explanations and footnotes to entirely understand his tales. . The translator of Tales of Rain and Sunlight, Vera Hallam, has made thorough research of the indigenous languages of Maranháo, in order to convey the power of Sarney's tales into English. . .
Jose Sarney de Araújo Costa (born 24 April 1930) is a Brazilian politician, lawyer, and writer who was President of Brazil from 15 March 1985 to 15 March 1990. Sarney ascended in the politics of his home state of Maranhão as part of the 'Bossa Nova Generation' of UDN politicians in the 1950s, young idealists seeking to reorganize public administration and rid the government of corruption and old deleterious practices. During the Brazilian military dictatorship, which imposed a two-party system, Sarney affiliated himself with the government party, ARENA, becoming the president of the party in 1979. As the regime fell, however, ARENA split over the appointment of Paulo Maluf as Presidential candidate. Sarney joined the dissenters, being instrumental in the creation of the Liberal Front Party. He agreed to run for Vice-President on the ticket of Tancredo Neves, of PMDB, formerly the opposition party to the military government. Neves won the Presidential elections, but fell ill and died before taking office, and Sarney became President. He started out his term with great popularity, but public opinion shifted with the Brazilian debt crisis and the failure of Plano Cruzado to abate chronic inflation. Over time, Sarney and his family acquired enormous clout over Maranhão's public life, and he is today regarded as the foremost of Brazil's oligarchs. Sarney owns the most important newspapers and TV stations in Maranhão, and remains influential there, even though he is now a senator for the smaller state of Amapá. Sarney has also faced multiple allegations of nepotism and corruption in his career. In 2009, the British weekly The Economist called his election as President of the Senate 'a victory for semi-feudalism' and 'a throwback to an era of semi-feudal politics that still prevails in corners of Brazil and holds the rest of it back.' Veja columnist Roberto Pompeu de Toledo deemed him 'the perfect oligarch'. Sarney is currently the longest-standing member of the Brazilian Congress, and has held public office since 1958 almost without interruption. Sarney is also an accomplished writer, and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
In the tradition of his Latin American peers, Márquez, Borges, and Fuentes, Mario Satz uses the form of the novel-along with a strong lyrical voice-to create a fantasy, a counter-reality, another world to rival the chaotic real world of South America. Although SOL is set in many places around the globe, its real locale is always the brilliant mind of the author/narrator. The book opens with a striking dream vision on the heights of Machu Picchu; from there the narrator, Mario, unfolds his tale of passion and sacrifice, reconstructing the kaleidoscope of his quixotic life. It is the story of the search that an enigmatic, a schizophrenic, Peruvian pythoness-figure with whom Mario has fallen in love forces upon him: a quest for the meaning of the death of her strange, unbalanced brother who has perhaps died at the hands of a secret, mysterious, anti-Jewish Christian sect. In SOL, Mario recreates his beloved, Shahar, ultimately reducing his obsessive love for her to its proper perspective: For all its searing intensity, it is, after all, only one small heartbeat of the universe.
Mario Satz was born in Buenos Aires in 1944, and was educated there. He has spent time in New York, Paris, Jerusalem, and Barcelona, all locations that figure in SOL. In 1970-74, he lived in Jerusalem and studied Hebrew, history, archaeology, and anthropology. He completed SOL in 1973, and it is the first of a trilogy of novels; the second is to be called Luna and the third Tierra. Helen R. Lane is one of America's foremost translators. She is the translator of THE THREE MARIAS, and was awarded the National Book Award in 1974 for her rendition into English of Octavio Paz's ALTERNATING CURRENTS. Her sixty published works in translation have won her many other prizes and distinctions.
A fictionalized biography of Mary and the Holy Family.
A MASTER ON THE PERIPHERY OF CAPITALISM is a translation (from the original Portuguese) of Roberto Schwarz's renowned study of the work of Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis (1839–1908). A leading Brazilian theorist and author of the highly influential notion of ‘misplaced ideas,' Schwarz focuses his literary and cultural analysis on Machado's THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRÁS CUBAS, which was published in 1880. Writing in the Marxist tradition, Schwarz investigates in particular how social structure gets internalized as literary form, arguing that Machado's style replicates and reveals the deeply embedded class divisions of nineteenth-century Brazil. Widely acknowledged as the most important novelist to have written in Latin America before 1940, Machado had a surprisingly modern style. Schwarz notes that the unprecedented wit, sarcasm, structural inventiveness, and mercurial changes of tone and subject matter found in THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRÁS CUBAS marked a crucial moment in the history of Latin American literature. He argues that Machado's vanguard narrative reflects the Brazilian owner class and its peculiar status in both national and international contexts, and shows why this novel's success was no accident. The author was able to confront some of the most prestigious ideologies of the nineteenth century with some uncomfortable truths, not the least of which was that slavery remained the basis of the Brazilian economy. A MASTER ON THE PERIPHERY OF CAPITALISM will appeal to those with interests in Latin American literature, nineteenth century history, and Marxist literary theory.
Roberto Schwarz, one of Brazil's foremost literary and cultural critics, is the author of MISPLACED IDEAS: ESSAYS ON BRAZILIAN CULTURE and DUAS MENINAS. John Gledson is Emeritus Professor of Brazilian Studies at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of two books about Machado de Assis and was the translator of MISPLACED IDEAS, the only other English translation of a work by Schwarz.
The remarkable short fiction of Moacyr Scliar was introduced to English-speaking readers in THE CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS. This new collection contains a novella, ‘The Short-Story Writers,' as well as nine short stories, including the title story about Jews who, in leaving their native Russia, discover the new world of Brazil to be a strange land indeed. Moacyr Scliar in an Wonder.- interview said, ‘My family arrived in Rio Grande do Sul at the turn of the century. They were Russian Jews who soon found that their God had to share His authority with the other gods who were there before Him. Brazil, as my great-grandparents soon found out, is a crazy mingling of people-African, Portuguese, Indian, Asian. And all those different traditions make up our literature. No one god is at the helm.' From these traditions has come a remarkable body of work: the novels, THE CENTAUR IN THE GARDEN, THE ONE-MAN ARMY, THE GODS OF RAQUEL, and the recent THE STRANGE WORLD OF RAFAEL MENDES. . Moacyr Scliar (Mwa seer Skleer) was born in 1937 in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, and has been a practicing physician in public health since 1969. Douglas Day has said of his unique prose, ‘I am tempted to sound facile and say that Scliar is like a Kafka with charm and buoyancy. Kafka's world looks like Piranesi's prisons; Scliar's like illuminated medieval bestiaries.' This collection appeared first in Brazil in 1976. . (originally published in Portuguese in 1976).
Moacyr Jaime Scliar (March 23, 1937 - February 27, 2011) was a Brazilian writer and physician. Most of his writing centers on issues of Jewish identity in the Diaspora and particularly on being Jewish in Brazil. Scliar is best known outside Brazil for his 1981 novel Max and the Cats (Max e os Felinos), the story of a young German man who flees Berlin after he comes to the attention of the Nazis for having had an affair with a married woman. Making his way to Brazil, his ship sinks, and he finds himself alone in a dinghy with a jaguar who had been travelling in the hold. Scliar was born in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, into a Jewish family that immigrated to Brazil from Bessarabia in 1919. He graduated in medicine in 1962, majoring in public health. He worked for a time at the Jewish Hospital for the Elderly in Porto Alegre but then went into public health, mainly in the area of tuberculosis. A prolific writer, Scliar published over 100 books in Portuguese, covering various literary genres: short stories; novels; young adult fiction; children's books; and essays. In 1962, his first book Stories of a Doctor in Training was published, although later on he regretted having published it so young. His second book The Carnival of the Animals was published in 1968. In a recent autobiographical piece, Scliar discusses his membership of the Jewish, medical, Gaucho, and Brazilian tribes. His novel The Centaur in the Garden was included among the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by The National Yiddish Book Center. In an interview with Judith Bolton-Fasman published in The Jewish Reader, August 2003, Scliar commented on his use of the centaur as a metaphor: 'The centaur is a symbol of the double identity, characteristic of Jews in a country like Brazil. At home, you speak Yiddish, eat gefilte fish, and celebrate Shabbat. But in the streets, you have soccer, samba, and Portuguese. After a while you feel like a centaur.'
Some of the animals are human in Moacyr Scliar's rich collection of very short stories. For example, there is Billy Batson, also known as Captain Marvel; a youthful James Cagney, who learns a few lessons from a gang of patrons in a Brazilian movie house; and Dr. Shylock, whose extraordinary career is revealed in a story of five paragraphs. (You could check out the stories by reading Dr. Shylock's story the last of the book.) The large and the small - some barking, some meowing, some mooing-crawl, swim, and walk across these pages. Moacyr Scliar became known to English-language readers in the Available Press translation of THE CENTAUR IN THE GARDEN. His work was described by Alberto Manguel as ‘so powerful, so enchanting, that it succeeds in imposing its own magic on skeptical readers, convincing us that his centaur's world is ours, unfathomable and overwhelming.' Jack Dann called the publication ‘a brilliant debut. It is a comedic novella regionalist novel, a bawdy erotic novel, a fantastical phantasmagorical novel - a weaving of the common and the mythic, a mating of contrasts and opposites.' Moacyr Scliar (Mwa seer Skleer) practices medicine in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil.This is his first collection of stories to be published in English and appears simultaneously with his first novel, THE ONE-MAN ARMY . .
Moacyr Jaime Scliar (March 23, 1937 - February 27, 2011) was a Brazilian writer and physician. Most of his writing centers on issues of Jewish identity in the Diaspora and particularly on being Jewish in Brazil. Scliar is best known outside Brazil for his 1981 novel Max and the Cats (Max e os Felinos), the story of a young German man who flees Berlin after he comes to the attention of the Nazis for having had an affair with a married woman. Making his way to Brazil, his ship sinks, and he finds himself alone in a dinghy with a jaguar who had been travelling in the hold. Scliar was born in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, into a Jewish family that immigrated to Brazil from Bessarabia in 1919. He graduated in medicine in 1962, majoring in public health. He worked for a time at the Jewish Hospital for the Elderly in Porto Alegre but then went into public health, mainly in the area of tuberculosis. A prolific writer, Scliar published over 100 books in Portuguese, covering various literary genres: short stories; novels; young adult fiction; children's books; and essays. In 1962, his first book Stories of a Doctor in Training was published, although later on he regretted having published it so young. His second book The Carnival of the Animals was published in 1968. In a recent autobiographical piece, Scliar discusses his membership of the Jewish, medical, Gaucho, and Brazilian tribes. His novel The Centaur in the Garden was included among the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by The National Yiddish Book Center. In an interview with Judith Bolton-Fasman published in The Jewish Reader, August 2003, Scliar commented on his use of the centaur as a metaphor: 'The centaur is a symbol of the double identity, characteristic of Jews in a country like Brazil. At home, you speak Yiddish, eat gefilte fish, and celebrate Shabbat. But in the streets, you have soccer, samba, and Portuguese. After a while you feel like a centaur.'
A fantasy might fade in description. Thus, it doubtless is folly to discuss the story of one who describes with increasing color and motion his family's flight from Russia to settle in Brazil at the century's turn and his own birth in 1935 as a centaur who will be reared as a Jew. The half-horse, half-human child grows in favor, despite sibling rivalry from his unhooved brother. In time, through bris and bar mitzvah, he grows into adulthood, and he experiences more adventures than ordinary creatures can enjoy. If, as the Greeks maintained, the centaurs were instructors of philosophy, what might we learn from Moacyr Scliar's remarkable creation? MOACYR SCLIAR lives in Pôrto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where he has been a practicing physician in public health since 1969. He was born in Pôrto Alegre in 1937 and took his degree in 1962 at the Faculty of Medicine there. His early schooling was at Pôrto Alegre's ‘Yiddish' College, the School of Education and Culture. His secondary studies were in a Catholic school. The spirit of his writing, though, lies in his early background. In an interview he said, ‘As much as possible I live in peace with my Jewishness. I have extracted from it what it has of the best: fantasy, ethical substance, and above all, humor. I know no humor like Jewish humor: melancholy, bittersweet, the humor of the persecuted fighting against desi3eration. It's the old story of the rabbi, who, fleeing the Nazis, wanders from country to country, until they arrange a passport to Australia for him. It's very far, they warn him. Far ? - the rabbi asks-far from what? That's just it-we're very far, but far from what?' Moacyr Scliar (Mwa seer Skleer) began his literary career in 1968 with the publication of the story collection THE CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS. Since then he has published ten novels, including this work in 1980, and many volumes of stories. His books have won numerous literary prizes. . .
Moacyr Jaime Scliar (March 23, 1937 - February 27, 2011) was a Brazilian writer and physician. Most of his writing centers on issues of Jewish identity in the Diaspora and particularly on being Jewish in Brazil. Scliar is best known outside Brazil for his 1981 novel Max and the Cats (Max e os Felinos), the story of a young German man who flees Berlin after he comes to the attention of the Nazis for having had an affair with a married woman. Making his way to Brazil, his ship sinks, and he finds himself alone in a dinghy with a jaguar who had been travelling in the hold. Scliar was born in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, into a Jewish family that immigrated to Brazil from Bessarabia in 1919. He graduated in medicine in 1962, majoring in public health. He worked for a time at the Jewish Hospital for the Elderly in Porto Alegre but then went into public health, mainly in the area of tuberculosis. A prolific writer, Scliar published over 100 books in Portuguese, covering various literary genres: short stories; novels; young adult fiction; children's books; and essays. In 1962, his first book Stories of a Doctor in Training was published, although later on he regretted having published it so young. His second book The Carnival of the Animals was published in 1968. In a recent autobiographical piece, Scliar discusses his membership of the Jewish, medical, Gaucho, and Brazilian tribes. His novel The Centaur in the Garden was included among the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by The National Yiddish Book Center. In an interview with Judith Bolton-Fasman published in The Jewish Reader, August 2003, Scliar commented on his use of the centaur as a metaphor: 'The centaur is a symbol of the double identity, characteristic of Jews in a country like Brazil. At home, you speak Yiddish, eat gefilte fish, and celebrate Shabbat. But in the streets, you have soccer, samba, and Portuguese. After a while you feel like a centaur.'
Here are the shortest of all of Moacyr Scliar's short stories, over two dozen gems such as ‘Root Canal Treatment,' ‘Atlas,' ‘A Brief History of Capitalism,' ‘Peace and War' ‘Life and Death of a Terrorist,' and ‘Genesis: ' Why not sample Scliar now? Open to any story and read it as you stand here in the book- store. You will have entered the magical country of one of the world's premier storytellers. And after you've read all of THE ENIGMATIC EYE, you'll be able to read the other collections, THE CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS and THE BALLAD OF THE FALSE MESSIAH. On publication of THE STRANGE NATION OF RAFAEL MENDES, Alan Ryan noted Scliar's unique character, ‘Scliar's voice is a fresh one, his artistic roots as firmly fixed in Jewish tradition and mythology as they are in Brazil's literary history. . . . Given the breadth and depth of Brazilian artistic life, it is not at all surprising that her latest literary invention - original, fascinating, powerful, compelling and everything good that can be said about a novel - comes from the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants:'
Moacyr Jaime Scliar (March 23, 1937 - February 27, 2011) was a Brazilian writer and physician. Most of his writing centers on issues of Jewish identity in the Diaspora and particularly on being Jewish in Brazil. Scliar is best known outside Brazil for his 1981 novel Max and the Cats (Max e os Felinos), the story of a young German man who flees Berlin after he comes to the attention of the Nazis for having had an affair with a married woman. Making his way to Brazil, his ship sinks, and he finds himself alone in a dinghy with a jaguar who had been travelling in the hold. Scliar was born in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, into a Jewish family that immigrated to Brazil from Bessarabia in 1919. He graduated in medicine in 1962, majoring in public health. He worked for a time at the Jewish Hospital for the Elderly in Porto Alegre but then went into public health, mainly in the area of tuberculosis. A prolific writer, Scliar published over 100 books in Portuguese, covering various literary genres: short stories; novels; young adult fiction; children's books; and essays. In 1962, his first book Stories of a Doctor in Training was published, although later on he regretted having published it so young. His second book The Carnival of the Animals was published in 1968. In a recent autobiographical piece, Scliar discusses his membership of the Jewish, medical, Gaucho, and Brazilian tribes. His novel The Centaur in the Garden was included among the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by The National Yiddish Book Center. In an interview with Judith Bolton-Fasman published in The Jewish Reader, August 2003, Scliar commented on his use of the centaur as a metaphor: 'The centaur is a symbol of the double identity, characteristic of Jews in a country like Brazil. At home, you speak Yiddish, eat gefilte fish, and celebrate Shabbat. But in the streets, you have soccer, samba, and Portuguese. After a while you feel like a centaur.'
‘I am he whose real name ought not to be spoken. I do, however, permit myself to be called Jehovah. The sun that scorches the roofs of the raw houses is my eye.' So speaks the presence in the form of a beam of light that caresses the body of the woman in the bed. Her name can be spoken. Her name is Raquel. So begins a dialogue that will continue throughout the adventurous life of Raquel, daughter of Brazil and Hungarian-Jewish parentage, prize student of a convent school, lover of Miguel, an older man and Raquel's guide in her ecstatic apotheosis, where she is finally united with her gods. Moacyr Scliar became known to English-language readers in the Available Press translation of THE CENTAUR IN THE GARDEN. His work was described by Alberto Manguel as ‘so powerful, so enchanting, that it succeeds in imposing its own magic on skeptical readers, convincing us that his centaur's world is ours, unfathomable and overwhelming.' THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE said, ‘Scliar's Jewish ancestry has allowed him to mix the fantasticalness of the Latin American imagination with the quick humor of Jewish parable for an irresistible mix . . . Scliar may be the best writer to introduce us to the wonderful world of Latin American fiction, and the price is right]' Moacyr Scliar (Mwa seer Skleer) practices medicine in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil. He is also the author of a short story collection, THE CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS, and another novel, THE ONE-MAN ARMY, both published by The Available Press in translations by Eloah P. Giacomelli.
Moacyr Jaime Scliar (March 23, 1937 - February 27, 2011) was a Brazilian writer and physician. Most of his writing centers on issues of Jewish identity in the Diaspora and particularly on being Jewish in Brazil. Scliar is best known outside Brazil for his 1981 novel Max and the Cats (Max e os Felinos), the story of a young German man who flees Berlin after he comes to the attention of the Nazis for having had an affair with a married woman. Making his way to Brazil, his ship sinks, and he finds himself alone in a dinghy with a jaguar who had been travelling in the hold. Scliar was born in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, into a Jewish family that immigrated to Brazil from Bessarabia in 1919. He graduated in medicine in 1962, majoring in public health. He worked for a time at the Jewish Hospital for the Elderly in Porto Alegre but then went into public health, mainly in the area of tuberculosis. A prolific writer, Scliar published over 100 books in Portuguese, covering various literary genres: short stories; novels; young adult fiction; children's books; and essays. In 1962, his first book Stories of a Doctor in Training was published, although later on he regretted having published it so young. His second book The Carnival of the Animals was published in 1968. In a recent autobiographical piece, Scliar discusses his membership of the Jewish, medical, Gaucho, and Brazilian tribes. His novel The Centaur in the Garden was included among the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by The National Yiddish Book Center. In an interview with Judith Bolton-Fasman published in The Jewish Reader, August 2003, Scliar commented on his use of the centaur as a metaphor: 'The centaur is a symbol of the double identity, characteristic of Jews in a country like Brazil. At home, you speak Yiddish, eat gefilte fish, and celebrate Shabbat. But in the streets, you have soccer, samba, and Portuguese. After a while you feel like a centaur.'
We meet Mayer Guinzberg in 1970 as he dies. By page 3 we are back in 1928, ready to embark with him on his youthful quest for a life of his own: ‘Mayer Guinzberg is full of ideas. They'll start a collective farm-LEia, Jose Goldman and he. It will be located some distance from Pôrto Alegre, but not too distant, of course, because that's where the Great March will start someday. There will be a flagpole with the flag of New Birobidjan fluttering in the wind.' We know there is little as satisfying as a dream of youth, because those who dream are always alive. Moacyr Scliar became known to English-language readers in the Available Press translation of THE CENTAUR IN THE GARDEN. His work was described by Alberto Manguel as ‘so powerful, so enchanting, that it succeeds in imposing its own magic on skeptical readers, convincing us that his centaur's world is ours, unfathomable and overwhelming.' Jack Dann called the publication ‘a brilliant debut. It is a comedic novel, a regionalist novel, a bawdy erotic noveL a fantastical phantasmagorical novel-a weaving of the common and the mythic, a mating of contrasts and opposites.' Moacyr Scliar (Mwa seer Skleer) practices medicine in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil. This, his first novel, was published in Brazil in 1974.
Moacyr Jaime Scliar (March 23, 1937 - February 27, 2011) was a Brazilian writer and physician. Most of his writing centers on issues of Jewish identity in the Diaspora and particularly on being Jewish in Brazil. Scliar is best known outside Brazil for his 1981 novel Max and the Cats (Max e os Felinos), the story of a young German man who flees Berlin after he comes to the attention of the Nazis for having had an affair with a married woman. Making his way to Brazil, his ship sinks, and he finds himself alone in a dinghy with a jaguar who had been travelling in the hold. Scliar was born in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, into a Jewish family that immigrated to Brazil from Bessarabia in 1919. He graduated in medicine in 1962, majoring in public health. He worked for a time at the Jewish Hospital for the Elderly in Porto Alegre but then went into public health, mainly in the area of tuberculosis. A prolific writer, Scliar published over 100 books in Portuguese, covering various literary genres: short stories; novels; young adult fiction; children's books; and essays. In 1962, his first book Stories of a Doctor in Training was published, although later on he regretted having published it so young. His second book The Carnival of the Animals was published in 1968. In a recent autobiographical piece, Scliar discusses his membership of the Jewish, medical, Gaucho, and Brazilian tribes. His novel The Centaur in the Garden was included among the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by The National Yiddish Book Center. In an interview with Judith Bolton-Fasman published in The Jewish Reader, August 2003, Scliar commented on his use of the centaur as a metaphor: 'The centaur is a symbol of the double identity, characteristic of Jews in a country like Brazil. At home, you speak Yiddish, eat gefilte fish, and celebrate Shabbat. But in the streets, you have soccer, samba, and Portuguese. After a while you feel like a centaur.'
Best-selling Brazilian novelist Moacyr Scliar makes his U.S. hardcover debut in this exuberant, brilliantly imagined novel. Blending history, fantasy, and modern-world realism, The Strange Nation of Rafael Mendes details one catastrophic day in the life of Brazilian businessman Rafael Mendes. This is the day Rafael Mendes's comfortable world crumbles around him: his company collapses, he learns that his daughter is having an affair with his best friend, and his mistress has him arrested and imprisoned. It's enough to make a man wonder why he was ever born. In the midst of this chaos, two genealogical notebooks appear on his doorstep and during the course of the day Rafael Mendes is drawn into the fantastic tales about his ancestors that they contain. There is the story of the prophet Jonah, his first known ancestor, who was indeed swallowed by a whale-and seduced by a beautiful priestess inside its belly. There are several generations of Rafael Mendeses living in Portugal, and after the Inquisition drives them to South America, a long line of Brazilian Rafael Mendeses, farmers, soldiers, actors, dreamers. Through their stories a rich and little-known swath of history unfolds. And through it all Rafael Mendes learns that from the days of the prophets to the present day, his ancestors have been as perplexed by the times they lived in as he is by his own world. The stories reveal to Rafael Mendes that he is Jewish, a fact that has been concealed from him all his life. And, strangely, they help him confront his day of crisis with new strength by showing him the ways in which the past both enriches and shackles the present. THE STRANGE NATION OF RAFAEL MENDES is a powerful and mysterious novel that will bring Moacyr Scliar's ‘fabulous vision' (Village Voice) to a huge new audience. . MOACYR SCLIAR is one of Brazil's best-known writers. He is the author of THE CENTAUR IN THE GARDEN, THE CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS, THE ONE-MAN ARMY, and THE GODS OF RAQUEL. He practices medicine in Porto Alegra, Brazil. . Eloah F. Giacomelli has translated four books by Moacyr Scliar into English. . Originally published in Portuguese as A estranha nacao de Rafael Mendes, 1986.
Moacyr Jaime Scliar (March 23, 1937 - February 27, 2011) was a Brazilian writer and physician. Most of his writing centers on issues of Jewish identity in the Diaspora and particularly on being Jewish in Brazil. Scliar is best known outside Brazil for his 1981 novel Max and the Cats (Max e os Felinos), the story of a young German man who flees Berlin after he comes to the attention of the Nazis for having had an affair with a married woman. Making his way to Brazil, his ship sinks, and he finds himself alone in a dinghy with a jaguar who had been travelling in the hold. Scliar was born in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, into a Jewish family that immigrated to Brazil from Bessarabia in 1919. He graduated in medicine in 1962, majoring in public health. He worked for a time at the Jewish Hospital for the Elderly in Porto Alegre but then went into public health, mainly in the area of tuberculosis. A prolific writer, Scliar published over 100 books in Portuguese, covering various literary genres: short stories; novels; young adult fiction; children's books; and essays. In 1962, his first book Stories of a Doctor in Training was published, although later on he regretted having published it so young. His second book The Carnival of the Animals was published in 1968. In a recent autobiographical piece, Scliar discusses his membership of the Jewish, medical, Gaucho, and Brazilian tribes. His novel The Centaur in the Garden was included among the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by The National Yiddish Book Center. In an interview with Judith Bolton-Fasman published in The Jewish Reader, August 2003, Scliar commented on his use of the centaur as a metaphor: 'The centaur is a symbol of the double identity, characteristic of Jews in a country like Brazil. At home, you speak Yiddish, eat gefilte fish, and celebrate Shabbat. But in the streets, you have soccer, samba, and Portuguese. After a while you feel like a centaur.'
‘I think now it can be told, the story of this voyage. The people involved are no longer here; also, what else is there to do in life besides telling stories?' Thus begins Moacyr Scliar's rollicking tall tale of a collection of misfits fighting for their survival, even as they labor furiously toward each other's destruction in the good ship Voluntários. Set Sail. MOACYR SCLIAR, since the first English language publication of his work in 1984, has become established as one of South America's foremost writers and one of the world's great fantasists. His technique, according to The Washington Post, is ‘to integrate the magical and the fantastical into the real world.'
Moacyr Jaime Scliar (March 23, 1937 - February 27, 2011) was a Brazilian writer and physician. Most of his writing centers on issues of Jewish identity in the Diaspora and particularly on being Jewish in Brazil. Scliar is best known outside Brazil for his 1981 novel Max and the Cats (Max e os Felinos), the story of a young German man who flees Berlin after he comes to the attention of the Nazis for having had an affair with a married woman. Making his way to Brazil, his ship sinks, and he finds himself alone in a dinghy with a jaguar who had been travelling in the hold. Scliar was born in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, into a Jewish family that immigrated to Brazil from Bessarabia in 1919. He graduated in medicine in 1962, majoring in public health. He worked for a time at the Jewish Hospital for the Elderly in Porto Alegre but then went into public health, mainly in the area of tuberculosis. A prolific writer, Scliar published over 100 books in Portuguese, covering various literary genres: short stories; novels; young adult fiction; children's books; and essays. In 1962, his first book Stories of a Doctor in Training was published, although later on he regretted having published it so young. His second book The Carnival of the Animals was published in 1968. In a recent autobiographical piece, Scliar discusses his membership of the Jewish, medical, Gaucho, and Brazilian tribes. His novel The Centaur in the Garden was included among the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by The National Yiddish Book Center. In an interview with Judith Bolton-Fasman published in The Jewish Reader, August 2003, Scliar commented on his use of the centaur as a metaphor: 'The centaur is a symbol of the double identity, characteristic of Jews in a country like Brazil. At home, you speak Yiddish, eat gefilte fish, and celebrate Shabbat. But in the streets, you have soccer, samba, and Portuguese. After a while you feel like a centaur.'
What if, as David William Foster poses in his introduction to Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar's novel, the Germans did choose to invade the Americas in the second World War? What if the Luftwaffe did plan to bomb American cities? Wartime residents of Brazil's populous urban areas - where Scliar himself grew up in the 1940s - surely asked themselves those same questions. And immigrant Jews, clustered in the Bom Fim neighborhood of Brazil's third-largest city, had reason to wonder even more than others. With playful irony, homage to the Jewish folktale, a touch of magical realism, and keen insight into the customs and characters of this Yiddish-speaking melting pot, Scliar spins a fable of an imaginary war waged by the youngsters of Bom Fim. Brothers Nathan and Joel and their gang defend their quarter against a pretend German military invasion, while their parents deal with the quarrels and worries of the adult world. But which is more real? In Scliar's richly layered fantasy Carnival and Pesach, Nazi and Jew, the consumer and the consumed, the grotesque and the quotidian intermingle unexpectedly amid the kitchens and alleys of Bom Fim. At last available to English-language readers, students, and teachers, this first novel of a master storyteller brilliantly portrays a little-appreciated segment of Latin American, and Jewish, culture.
Moacyr Jaime Scliar (March 23, 1937 - February 27, 2011) was a Brazilian writer and physician. Most of his writing centers on issues of Jewish identity in the Diaspora and particularly on being Jewish in Brazil. Scliar is best known outside Brazil for his 1981 novel Max and the Cats (Max e os Felinos), the story of a young German man who flees Berlin after he comes to the attention of the Nazis for having had an affair with a married woman. Making his way to Brazil, his ship sinks, and he finds himself alone in a dinghy with a jaguar who had been travelling in the hold. Scliar was born in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, into a Jewish family that immigrated to Brazil from Bessarabia in 1919. He graduated in medicine in 1962, majoring in public health. He worked for a time at the Jewish Hospital for the Elderly in Porto Alegre but then went into public health, mainly in the area of tuberculosis. A prolific writer, Scliar published over 100 books in Portuguese, covering various literary genres: short stories; novels; young adult fiction; children's books; and essays. In 1962, his first book Stories of a Doctor in Training was published, although later on he regretted having published it so young. His second book The Carnival of the Animals was published in 1968. In a recent autobiographical piece, Scliar discusses his membership of the Jewish, medical, Gaucho, and Brazilian tribes. His novel The Centaur in the Garden was included among the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by The National Yiddish Book Center. In an interview with Judith Bolton-Fasman published in The Jewish Reader, August 2003, Scliar commented on his use of the centaur as a metaphor: 'The centaur is a symbol of the double identity, characteristic of Jews in a country like Brazil. At home, you speak Yiddish, eat gefilte fish, and celebrate Shabbat. But in the streets, you have soccer, samba, and Portuguese. After a while you feel like a centaur.'
This is a novel of accusation, of outcry, of a silent war, of endless fears. It is a novel based on horrible fact-the exploitation and brutalization of a Peruvian Indian community in the high Andes by an international corporation, by landlords, by the military and police and government officials. Explosive, revolutionary and epic, it has been critically acclaimed in France, Italy, Spain and Latin America. Tragic, ironic, passionate and lyrical, DRUMS FOR RANCAS is an extraordinary chronicle filled with people of simple truth and dignity in a landscape of cruelty that would seem almost mythical were it not real. . MANUEL SCORZA was born in Lima in 1928. Actively involved in the social struggles in Peru, he was imprisoned and then exiled in 1948. For seven years he wandered all over Latin America working in a variety of jobs. In 1961 he participated in the protest movement against the peasant massacres in the Central Andes of Peru and this experience formed the basis for a series of novels, the first of which is DRUMS FOR RANCAS. Manuel Scorza now lives in Paris and teaches Latin American literature at the Ecole Normale SupErieure de Saint Cloud. He is also the author of several volumes of poetry. ‘An indictment of man's inhumanity to man . . . strong, searing, true, tragic.' - Publishers Weekly. ‘Lit by flashes of Swiftian humor, this dark thundercloud of a novel hovers over a surrealist landscape, bloodstained and terrible.'- Kirkus Reviews. ‘Horrible and mysterious, dreamlike and shocking, these are the two levels on which this incomparable novel is developed. One finishes reading it enriched by its imagery and power. Exciting and impassioned, Drums for Rancas is a true epic, the work of a great poet and seeker of justice.' - Le Point (Paris). ‘This terrible chronicle, so full of the greatness of truth, is permeated with a lyricism that makes it a first class literary document.' - El Noticiero Universal (Barcelona). ‘One of the most beautiful and most cruel Latin American novels.' - Clarin (Buenos Aires). ‘The value of this book is found in the exceptional balance between its real and magic elements, between tragedy and irony.' - La Stampa (Turin). ‘A huge Goya-style fresco that gives a new dimension to Latin American literature.' - El Tiempo (Bogota).
Manuel Scorza (September 9, 1928 - November 27, 1983) was an important Peruvian novelist, poet, and political activist, exiled under the regime of Manuel Odría. He was born in Lima. He is best known for the series of five novels, known collectively as ‘The Silent War,' that began with Redoble por Rancas (1970). All five have been translated into more than forty languages, including English. He died when his plane, Avianca Flight 011, crashed on approach to Madrid's Barajas Airport after striking a series of hilltops. The crash killed 181 passengers, including Uruguayan literary critic Ángel Rama and Mexican writer Jorge Ibargüengoitia.
This is a novel of accusation, of outcry, of a silent war, of endless fears. It is a novel based on horrible fact-the exploitation and brutalization of a Peruvian Indian community in the high Andes by an international corporation, by landlords, by the military and police and government officials. Explosive, revolutionary and epic, it has been critically acclaimed in France, Italy, Spain and Latin America. Tragic, ironic, passionate and lyrical, DRUMS FOR RANCAS is an extraordinary chronicle filled with people of simple truth and dignity in a landscape of cruelty that would seem almost mythical were it not real. . MANUEL SCORZA was born in Lima in 1928. Actively involved in the social struggles in Peru, he was imprisoned and then exiled in 1948. For seven years he wandered all over Latin America working in a variety of jobs. In 1961 he participated in the protest movement against the peasant massacres in the Central Andes of Peru and this experience formed the basis for a series of novels, the first of which is DRUMS FOR RANCAS. Manuel Scorza now lives in Paris and teaches Latin American literature at the Ecole Normale SupErieure de Saint Cloud. He is also the author of several volumes of poetry. ‘An indictment of man's inhumanity to man . . . strong, searing, true, tragic.' - Publihers Weekly. ‘Lit by flashes of Swiftian humor, this dark thundercloud of a novel hovers over a surrealist landscape, bloodstained and terrible.'-Kirkus Reviews. ‘Horrible and mysterious, dreamlike and shocking, these are the two levels on which this incomparable novel is developed. One finishes reading it enriched by its imagery and power. Exciting and impassioned, Drums for Rancas is a true epic, the work of a great poet and seeker of justice.' - Le Point (Paris). ‘This terrible chronicle, so full of the greatness of truth, is permeated with a lyricism that makes it a first class literary document.' - El Noticiero Universal (Barcelona). ‘One of the most beautiful and most cruel Latin American novels.' - Clarin (Buenos Aires). ‘The value of this book is found in the exceptional balance between its real and magic elements, between tragedy and irony.' - La Stampa (Turin). ‘A huge Goya-style fresco that gives a new dimension to Latin American literature.' - El Tiempo (Bogota). . (original title: Redoble por Rancas, 1970 - Editorial Planeta, Barcelona).
Manuel Scorza (September 9, 1928 - November 27, 1983) was an important Peruvian novelist, poet, and political activist, exiled under the regime of Manuel Odría. He was born in Lima. He is best known for the series of five novels, known collectively as ‘The Silent War,' that began with Redoble por Rancas (1970). All five have been translated into more than forty languages, including English. He died when his plane, Avianca Flight 011, crashed on approach to Madrid's Barajas Airport after striking a series of hilltops. The crash killed 181 passengers, including Uruguayan literary critic Ángel Rama and Mexican writer Jorge Ibargüengoitia.
The present book is the first sampling of Jorge de Sena's short fiction to be made available in English, and the translation problems it represents are formidable. Unlike the classical simplicity of much of Sena's poetry, his fiction typically utilizes a rich and copious style, with innumerable embedded clauses creating a web of unusual density. The first five stories in this volume originally appeared in Sena's 1960 collection Andanças do Demonio [Wanderings of the Devil]. In his preface to that volume Sena describes these stories as varied, containing a bit of everything, unified only in that all reveal ‘demoniacal perambulations,' but declines to identify in them ‘the undesired traveller.' Explaining his conception of the short story, Sena states that, unlike the novella, it is a momentary narrative, a suspension in time; and, unlike the novel, it is less an animated meditation on life than a dreamy contemplation of it. The last six stories translated here appeared in the 1966 volume Novas Andanças do Demonio [Further Wanderings of the Devil]. Again Sena added what he called ‘one of my inevitable prefaces,' written in 1964, this time to excoriate the complete decadence, servility, and totalitarianism of the Portuguese critical establishment and its support of a purely conventional realism. Yet Sena's larger aim in writing prefaces was, he stated, to explain his work to the public, not to the critics, and he therefore proceeds to distinguish these new wanderings of the devil from the earlier volume: a fantastic realism or imaginary historicism predominates in the new stories, with a corresponding decrease in autobiographical stories or those dealing with current or conventional reality. The stories represent two decades of work, and some of them, as the dates Sena placed at the end of each text indicate, were finished or revised many years after they were begun. To stories focusing on historical figures (e.g., ‘Sea of Stones,' about the Venerable Bede, and especially the title story, about Luis de Camoes - himself for a time an involuntary exile, as the story recounts - and the composition of one of his most famous poems), Sena appended long bio-bibliographical notes. Sena's notes on the stories provide us with further information as to his sources and intents. These comments are of particular interest for an understanding of Sena's own view of his work, but they are not indispensable, for the stories, though sometimes difficult, are accessible. The range of themes and treatments in these stories is great, but almost all are, in one way or another, character studies, and the loving accumulation of detail finally conveys to the reader images of startling intensity and depth. Some of the stories are satirical in intent, though a considerable distance separates the gentle humor of ‘Kama and the Genie' (1964), with its theme of the transmigration of souls, from the biting portrayal in ‘The Commemoration' (1946) of Portugal's colonial administrators ever living in the shadow of their African reminiscences. Sena, whose maternal grandparents had emigrated to Angola in the nineteenth century, tells us that this story, originally published in a journal in 1947, was one of the first literary denunciations of the Portuguese colonial adventure, as well as a satire on the fad for commemorations endemic to Salazar's ‘Estado Novo.' The scathing exposE of the Nazi mentality in ‘Defense and Justification of a Former War Criminal,' written in 1961, reveals Sena's lifelong hatred of fascism in all its forms, and his particular disdain for the intellectual pretensions of Nazism. Stories such as ‘The Great Secret,' ‘A Night of Nativity,' and ‘Sea of Stones,' reveal his fascination for things related to saintliness and early Christianity. Sena's attraction to surrealism is apparent in ‘The Russian Campaign,' conceived in 1946, revised in 1960, which he described, shortly before his death, as one of the final pieces of his immense multi-volume novel Monte Cativo (of which only the first book, Sinais de Fogo, published in 1979, was completed). Though differing in the worlds they evoke, many of the stories-for example, ‘The Story of the Duck-Fish' (1959) and ‘The Corner Window' (1950-1960)- explore the theme of isolation and relation. ‘The Duck-Fish' began life when Sena's young children, feeling excluded from his writing, requested that he compose a story for them, What emerged, however, was far from the children's tale Sena sat down to write. And several of the stories deal with the process of composition itself ‘A Very Brief Tale' (1961) does so in a lucid mode, ‘By the Rivers of Babylon' (‘964) in a somber one. But even this title story, for all its sobriety and painful exploration, has its small comic moments. Twice exiled, forever estranged-in but never of whatever country he inhabited-Jorge de Sena was quick to see the touches of absurdity in the most painful or serious situation, quick to probe the tender core of human fragility hiding in the crassest incident. His stories, scathing and ardent, fantastic and mundane, move delicately from the world to the word-and back again. CONTENTS: Editor's Preface; The Story of the Duck-Fish; Sea of Stones; The Corner Window; The Commemoration; The Russian Campaign; Kama and the Genie; A Night of Nativity; The Great Secret; A Very Brief Tale; Defense and Justification of a Former War Criminal; By the Rivers of Babylon. . .
Jorge (Cândido) de Sena (November 2, 1919 - June 4, 1978) was a Portuguese poet, critic, essayist, novelist, dramatist, translator and university professor. Jorge Candido de Sena was the only child of Augusto Raposo de Sena, from Ponta Delgada in the Azores, a merchant marine captain, and Maria da Luz Tellez Grilo de Sena, from Covilhã. Both families belonged to the middle class, the mother's originally well-to-do but nothing much remained of it by time her child was born; the father's family hailed from military and political offices, the mother's from merchants. Jorge was born in Lisbon. He received his degree in civil engineering, but published his first poems at age 18. His interests were wide-ranging, including literature, intellectual history, politics, and other areas of the cultural spectrum. His liberal yet strongly independent convictions regarding Portuguese politics during the Salazar dictatorship led eventually to his exile in Brazil in 1959, and subsequently, after the military coup in Brail in 1964, to the United States, in 1965. He became a professor of literature in Brazil, which also afforded him the opportunity to complete his doctorate, and that was his profession in the U.S. until he died. He died in Santa Barbara, California in 1978. His remains were moved to the CemitErio dos Prazeres in Lisbon on September 11, 2009. Jorge de Sena is undeniably one of the most relevant Portuguese intellectuals of the twentieth century. His output in fiction, drama, essays, and poetry is vast. He considered himself primarily a poet. The autobiographical novel Sinais de Fogo, which was adapted to film in 1995 by Luís Filipe Rocha, who is also the author of a documentary about Jorge de Sena.
The fascination that England held for Jorge de Sena was generously revealed in criticism, essays, translations, lectures - even in poems, throughout his entire life. Jorge de Sena made two relatively long visits to England in 1952 and 1957 - both in Autumn and related to his position as Civil Engineer. In 1973 - and now as Professor in the United States - he visited more than a dozen British universities at the time of the Camoens commemorative activities. In fact, having left Portugal in voluntary exile in 1959, and later returning to Europe almost annually from 1969 on, he never missed the chance to visit England (his country of choice) and where he always experienced the same enchantment. Only Spain held a similar fascination for him. As a result of this enchantment he felt on his first visit to England, he wrote a volume of poems - Metamorfoses (Metamorphoses) - which represents his attempt to penetrate the works of art that most impressed him with a poetic language. Approximately half of these poems refer to works of art he had seen in London museums at the time of his first visit. During his visits to England, Jorge de Sena met Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot, and was a friend of Dame Edith Sitwell and Jonathan Griffin (who translated him). Along with being translator of these poets, he also translated many other English poets among whom I shall mention here at random: Byron, Blake, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, Hardy, Spender, D. H. Lawrence, Yeats and John Clare. He also introduced many of these poets to the Portuguese reading public as well as English essayists and prose writers for whom he wrote studies to accompany his rigorous translations: authentic aesthetic recreations of the works in the Portuguese language. The present volume contains two lectures that took place at the British Institute in Oporto at the invitation of the Luso-British Association, in 1953 and 1957 respectively. They mark his return from England after the two extended visits he made referred to above. The lecture of 1953, which begins this volume, is the enthusiastic summary of his first visit to England where he had been six months before. During that visit he had given the six ‘Letters from London' at the BBC and which are included here between the two lectures. . (original title: Inglaterra Revisitado, 1986 - Edicoes 70, Lisbon).
Jorge (Cândido) de Sena (November 2, 1919 - June 4, 1978) was a Portuguese poet, critic, essayist, novelist, dramatist, translator and university professor. Jorge Candido de Sena was the only child of Augusto Raposo de Sena, from Ponta Delgada in the Azores, a merchant marine captain, and Maria da Luz Tellez Grilo de Sena, from Covilhã. Both families belonged to the middle class, the mother's originally well-to-do but nothing much remained of it by time her child was born; the father's family hailed from military and political offices, the mother's from merchants. Jorge was born in Lisbon. He received his degree in civil engineering, but published his first poems at age 18. His interests were wide-ranging, including literature, intellectual history, politics, and other areas of the cultural spectrum. His liberal yet strongly independent convictions regarding Portuguese politics during the Salazar dictatorship led eventually to his exile in Brazil in 1959, and subsequently, after the military coup in Brail in 1964, to the United States, in 1965. He became a professor of literature in Brazil, which also afforded him the opportunity to complete his doctorate, and that was his profession in the U.S. until he died. He died in Santa Barbara, California in 1978. His remains were moved to the CemitErio dos Prazeres in Lisbon on September 11, 2009. Jorge de Sena is undeniably one of the most relevant Portuguese intellectuals of the twentieth century. His output in fiction, drama, essays, and poetry is vast. He considered himself primarily a poet. The autobiographical novel Sinais de Fogo, which was adapted to film in 1995 by Luís Filipe Rocha, who is also the author of a documentary about Jorge de Sena.
In 1976, The Menard Press published CAMOES: SOME POEMS, translated by Jonathan griffin. The book also contained major essays on Camoes by Jorge de Sena and Helder Macedo. The publication marked Jonathan Griffin's 70th birthday. The second impression of that book went out of print in 1980, the 400th anniversary of Camoes' death. Rather than reprint it, the publisher felt that a new book would be appropriate, especially due to death in 1978 of Jorge de Sean. The centerpiece of the book is an extraordinary profound and complex text (extracted from a long unpublished essay) by Jorge de Sena on the first of the two Camoes sonnets included here together with translations by Jonathan Griffin (the first to be reprinted from SOME POEMS). The text was devotedly translated by Jorge's daughter, Isabel, in whose debt we all remain. Thanks are also due to Mecia de Sena and to Eugenio Lisboa (Cultural Counsellor at the Portuguese Embassy in London) who contributed the valuable statement preceding Sena's text. Next come a poem by Jorge de Sena which attrated much attention when it first appeared in MenCards Series One. The book concludes with fine poems about Camoes by Jonathan Griffin and Keith Bosley, and Keith Bosley's translation of an extract from the Lusiads done especially for the anniversary. CONTENTS: EUGENI0 LISBOA - Jorge de Sena; CAMOES - Two Sonnets; ‘Alma minha gentil' (Gentle spirit, my own); ‘Quando de minhas mágoas' (To Dynamene); JORGE DE SENA - ‘Gentle Spirit'; ‘What to say'; JONATHAN GRIFFIN - Camöes Dying; KEITH BOSLEY - ‘Luis de Camôes'; CAMOES - from The Lusiads, translation of Canto 7, stanzas 1-10. . LUIS DE CAMOES (1524?-1580). Sir Richard Fanshawe's complete translation of The Lusiads (1655) is of great interest. On Camoes, see Jorge de Sena's article in Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the essays by de Sena and Helder Macedo in Camöes: Some Poems (Menard, 1976). JORGE DE SENA (1919-1978). Jorge de Sena was born in Lisbon. He lived in Brazil from 1959 to 1965, and in America from 1965, where he was Professor of Portuguese and Comparative Literature, and Chairman of both the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Comparative Literature Programme at the University of California, Santa Barbara. See in this book Eugenio Lisboa's text, and the note on de Sena in Camôes: Some Poems. JONATHAN GRIFFIN was born in Sussex 1906. His latest books of poems are The Fact of Music, The Menard Press, 1980 and Outsing the Howling, Permanent Press, 1979. His translations include books of Pessoa, Char, Jorge de Sena (Mudborn Press), Jean Mambrino and Rimbaud. KEITH BOSLEY was born in Berkshire in 1937. His latest books of poems are Dark Summer, The Menard Press, 1976 and Stations, Anvil Press, 1979. His translations include books of Jouve, MallarmE, Eino Leino, and Jerzy Ficowski (forthcoming from the Menard Press). He edited The Elek Book of Oriental Verse. EUGENIO LISBOA was born in Mozambique in 1930. He has lectured in various universities in Portuguese literature. He has published several books of essays, including The Second Modernism of Portugal, 1977; and poetry. He is at present Cultural Counsellor in the Portuguese Embassy, London. ANTHONY RUDOLF was born in London in 1942. Founder and publisher, The Menard Press. His own work includes translations of French and Russian poets. . .
Jorge (Cândido) de Sena (November 2, 1919 - June 4, 1978) was a Portuguese poet, critic, essayist, novelist, dramatist, translator and university professor. Jorge Candido de Sena was the only child of Augusto Raposo de Sena, from Ponta Delgada in the Azores, a merchant marine captain, and Maria da Luz Tellez Grilo de Sena, from Covilhã. Both families belonged to the middle class, the mother's originally well-to-do but nothing much remained of it by time her child was born; the father's family hailed from military and political offices, the mother's from merchants. Jorge was born in Lisbon. He received his degree in civil engineering, but published his first poems at age 18. His interests were wide-ranging, including literature, intellectual history, politics, and other areas of the cultural spectrum. His liberal yet strongly independent convictions regarding Portuguese politics during the Salazar dictatorship led eventually to his exile in Brazil in 1959, and subsequently, after the military coup in Brail in 1964, to the United States, in 1965. He became a professor of literature in Brazil, which also afforded him the opportunity to complete his doctorate, and that was his profession in the U.S. until he died. He died in Santa Barbara, California in 1978. His remains were moved to the CemitErio dos Prazeres in Lisbon on September 11, 2009. Jorge de Sena is undeniably one of the most relevant Portuguese intellectuals of the twentieth century. His output in fiction, drama, essays, and poetry is vast. He considered himself primarily a poet. The autobiographical novel Sinais de Fogo, which was adapted to film in 1995 by Luís Filipe Rocha, who is also the author of a documentary about Jorge de Sena.
Protected from death by a pact with the Devil, the Wondrous Physician is part doctor, part magician. Travelling as an adventurous knight, with a cap that can make him invisible, he performs cures with his own blood and has power to raise the dead. In a remarkable and highly original novella, Jorge de Sena skilfully blends romance, myth and chivalry, as well as political satire and powerful eroticism, to tell a story of rich fantasy with an appeal that transcends time and place. THE WONDROUS PHYSICIAN is one of Jorge de Sena's best-known works and has been translated into several languages. It is here published in English for the first time.
Jorge (Cândido) de Sena (November 2, 1919 - June 4, 1978) was a Portuguese poet, critic, essayist, novelist, dramatist, translator and university professor. Jorge Candido de Sena was the only child of Augusto Raposo de Sena, from Ponta Delgada in the Azores, a merchant marine captain, and Maria da Luz Tellez Grilo de Sena, from Covilhã. Both families belonged to the middle class, the mother's originally well-to-do but nothing much remained of it by time her child was born; the father's family hailed from military and political offices, the mother's from merchants. Jorge was born in Lisbon. He received his degree in civil engineering, but published his first poems at age 18. His interests were wide-ranging, including literature, intellectual history, politics, and other areas of the cultural spectrum. His liberal yet strongly independent convictions regarding Portuguese politics during the Salazar dictatorship led eventually to his exile in Brazil in 1959, and subsequently, after the military coup in Brail in 1964, to the United States, in 1965. He became a professor of literature in Brazil, which also afforded him the opportunity to complete his doctorate, and that was his profession in the U.S. until he died. He died in Santa Barbara, California in 1978. His remains were moved to the CemitErio dos Prazeres in Lisbon on September 11, 2009. Jorge de Sena is undeniably one of the most relevant Portuguese intellectuals of the twentieth century. His output in fiction, drama, essays, and poetry is vast. He considered himself primarily a poet. The autobiographical novel Sinais de Fogo, which was adapted to film in 1995 by Luís Filipe Rocha, who is also the author of a documentary about Jorge de Sena.
This vivid expose of corruption and political tyranny in the Dominican Republic rango so true to the reality that the President of that country went on TV to denounce the book. THEY FORGED THE SIGNATURE OF GOD went on to become the best-selling book in the history of the Dominican Republic. Sencion's novel follows the lives of three seminary students who suffer from church-state oppression. The book also gives a chilling portrait of Dr. Ramos, a sinister autocrat, who manages to survive six terms as president of his country through manipulation and tyranny. This finely textured novel (Winner of the Dominican Republic's National book Award for Fiction in 1993) gives a vivid picture of the internal politics of The Dominican Republic. ‘Viriato Sencion's THEY FORGED THE SIGNATURE OF GOD is, simply put, the most important novel to come out of the Dominican Republic in decades. A fabulous sancocho (stew) of realism and allegory, gallows humor and terror, sexuality and religious fanaticism, this thinly disguised historical novel ranks alongside Garcia Marquez's THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH as a portrait of political power gone awry.' - David Unger, CCNY.
VIRIATO SENCION was born in San Jose de Ocoa, Dominican Republic in 1941. He lived in New York City until his death in 2012.
Josefa Ferrer, a famous Chilean singer and star, awakens one morning to read in the Santiago newspaper that her best friend, Violeta, has been involved in a brutal act 0f violence. Overwhelmed with regret and plagued with guilt for not having foreseen the tragedy, Josefa feels compelled to tell Violeta's life story - one marked by lost ideals, disillusionment, and grief - which is ultimately Josefa's story, too. Through the interwoven lives 0f these two women, Marcela Serrano explores how the demands 0f a woman s role as mother, wife, lover, and friend are frequently at odds with her own dreams and aspirations, and how easily the fragile bonds of friendship and family can be strained to the breaking point. For Josefa and Violeta, it is only in Antigua, under the watchful eyes 0f ‘the others' - a chorus of female ancestral spirits who testify to the women's defining moments of strength and courage-that Josefa and Violeta will discover that even in the aftermath of violence and betrayal they have control over their destinies and their redemption. Exquisitely crafted and written in beautiful, lyrical prose, Marcela Serrano's unforgettable novel about friendship, forgiveness, and second chances speaks to every woman who has experienced the wrenching divide between professional ambition and family responsibility, who has been torn between the excitement of illicit passion and the security of marriage, who has craved the thrill of success while yearning for solitude in an often chaotic, invasive world. ‘Her novels are wise and brilliantly feminine. To read Marcela Serrano is to peer into the eyes of every woman in the world.' - ARTURO PEREZ-REVERTE.
MARCELA SERRANO was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1951. In 1994, her first novel won the Literary Prize in Santiago, and her second book won the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz prize, awarded to the best Hispano-American novel written by a woman. She now teaches at the University 0f Vicente Perez Rosales in Mexico City. MARGARET SAYERS PEDEN is an award-winning translator and has worked closely with numerous illustrious Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Isabel Allende, and Octavio Paz.
A kind of fictionalized philosophy or philosophical prose. (reprint London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973)
Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández, better known as Miguel Serrano (10 September 1917 - 28 February 2009), was a Chilean diplomat, writer, occultist, and fascist activist. A Nazi sympathiser in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he later became a prominent figure in the neo-Nazi movement as an exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism. Born to a wealthy Chilean family of European descent, Serrano was orphaned as a child and raised by his grandmother. After an education at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, he developed an interest in writing and far-right politics, allying himself with the Chilean Nazi movement. During the Second World War, in which Chile remained neutral, Serrano campaigned in support of Nazi Germany and promoted anti-semitic conspiracy theories through his own fortnightly publication, La Nueva Edad. In 1942 he joined an occult order founded by a German migrant which combined pro-Nazi sentiment with ceremonial magic and kundalini yoga. It presented the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler as a spiritual adept who had incarnated to Earth as a savior of the Aryan race and who would lead humanity out of a dark age known as the Kali Yuga. Serrano became convinced that Hitler had not died in 1945 but had secretly survived and was living in Antarctica. After visiting Antarctica, Serrano travelled to Germany and then Switzerland, where he met the novelist Hermann Hesse and psychoanalyst Carl Jung; in 1965 he published a reminiscence of his time with the pair. In 1953 Serrano joined the Chilean diplomatic corps and was stationed in India until 1963, where he took a keen interest in Hinduism and wrote several books. He was later made ambassador to Yugoslavia and then Austria, and while in Europe made contacts with various former Nazis and other far-rightists living on the continent. Following Chile's election of a Marxist President, Salvador Allende, Serrano was dismissed from the diplomatic service in 1970. After Allende was ousted in a coup and Augusto Pinochet took power, Serrano returned to Chile in 1973. He became a prominent organiser in the Chilean neo-Nazi movement, holding annual celebrations of Hitler's birthday, organising a neo-Nazi rally in Santiago, and producing a neo-Nazi political manifesto. He wrote a trilogy of books on Hitler in which he outlined his view of the Nazi leader as an avatar. He remained in contact with neo-Nazis elsewhere in the world and gave interviews to various foreign far-right publications. In 2008 Serrano was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (Premio a la Trayectoria) from the Universidad Mayor of Santiago. After Savitri Devi, he has been considered the most prominent exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism within the neo-Nazi movement. In that movement, he gained respect for his devotion to the cause even among neo-Nazis who regarded his ideas as far-fetched.
The American edition has several sections deleted. Philosophical reflections based on the author's visit to India. A spiritual pilgrimage. (Revised edition New York: Harper and Row, 1972. 184 p.).
Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández, better known as Miguel Serrano (10 September 1917 - 28 February 2009), was a Chilean diplomat, writer, occultist, and fascist activist. A Nazi sympathiser in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he later became a prominent figure in the neo-Nazi movement as an exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism. Born to a wealthy Chilean family of European descent, Serrano was orphaned as a child and raised by his grandmother. After an education at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, he developed an interest in writing and far-right politics, allying himself with the Chilean Nazi movement. During the Second World War, in which Chile remained neutral, Serrano campaigned in support of Nazi Germany and promoted anti-semitic conspiracy theories through his own fortnightly publication, La Nueva Edad. In 1942 he joined an occult order founded by a German migrant which combined pro-Nazi sentiment with ceremonial magic and kundalini yoga. It presented the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler as a spiritual adept who had incarnated to Earth as a savior of the Aryan race and who would lead humanity out of a dark age known as the Kali Yuga. Serrano became convinced that Hitler had not died in 1945 but had secretly survived and was living in Antarctica. After visiting Antarctica, Serrano travelled to Germany and then Switzerland, where he met the novelist Hermann Hesse and psychoanalyst Carl Jung; in 1965 he published a reminiscence of his time with the pair. In 1953 Serrano joined the Chilean diplomatic corps and was stationed in India until 1963, where he took a keen interest in Hinduism and wrote several books. He was later made ambassador to Yugoslavia and then Austria, and while in Europe made contacts with various former Nazis and other far-rightists living on the continent. Following Chile's election of a Marxist President, Salvador Allende, Serrano was dismissed from the diplomatic service in 1970. After Allende was ousted in a coup and Augusto Pinochet took power, Serrano returned to Chile in 1973. He became a prominent organiser in the Chilean neo-Nazi movement, holding annual celebrations of Hitler's birthday, organising a neo-Nazi rally in Santiago, and producing a neo-Nazi political manifesto. He wrote a trilogy of books on Hitler in which he outlined his view of the Nazi leader as an avatar. He remained in contact with neo-Nazis elsewhere in the world and gave interviews to various foreign far-right publications. In 2008 Serrano was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (Premio a la Trayectoria) from the Universidad Mayor of Santiago. After Savitri Devi, he has been considered the most prominent exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism within the neo-Nazi movement. In that movement, he gained respect for his devotion to the cause even among neo-Nazis who regarded his ideas as far-fetched.
Fictionalized account of religious experience.Illustrated. (reprint New York: Schocken Books, 1970. vi, 97 p. illus.).
Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández, better known as Miguel Serrano (10 September 1917 - 28 February 2009), was a Chilean diplomat, writer, occultist, and fascist activist. A Nazi sympathiser in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he later became a prominent figure in the neo-Nazi movement as an exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism. Born to a wealthy Chilean family of European descent, Serrano was orphaned as a child and raised by his grandmother. After an education at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, he developed an interest in writing and far-right politics, allying himself with the Chilean Nazi movement. During the Second World War, in which Chile remained neutral, Serrano campaigned in support of Nazi Germany and promoted anti-semitic conspiracy theories through his own fortnightly publication, La Nueva Edad. In 1942 he joined an occult order founded by a German migrant which combined pro-Nazi sentiment with ceremonial magic and kundalini yoga. It presented the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler as a spiritual adept who had incarnated to Earth as a savior of the Aryan race and who would lead humanity out of a dark age known as the Kali Yuga. Serrano became convinced that Hitler had not died in 1945 but had secretly survived and was living in Antarctica. After visiting Antarctica, Serrano travelled to Germany and then Switzerland, where he met the novelist Hermann Hesse and psychoanalyst Carl Jung; in 1965 he published a reminiscence of his time with the pair. In 1953 Serrano joined the Chilean diplomatic corps and was stationed in India until 1963, where he took a keen interest in Hinduism and wrote several books. He was later made ambassador to Yugoslavia and then Austria, and while in Europe made contacts with various former Nazis and other far-rightists living on the continent. Following Chile's election of a Marxist President, Salvador Allende, Serrano was dismissed from the diplomatic service in 1970. After Allende was ousted in a coup and Augusto Pinochet took power, Serrano returned to Chile in 1973. He became a prominent organiser in the Chilean neo-Nazi movement, holding annual celebrations of Hitler's birthday, organising a neo-Nazi rally in Santiago, and producing a neo-Nazi political manifesto. He wrote a trilogy of books on Hitler in which he outlined his view of the Nazi leader as an avatar. He remained in contact with neo-Nazis elsewhere in the world and gave interviews to various foreign far-right publications. In 2008 Serrano was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (Premio a la Trayectoria) from the Universidad Mayor of Santiago. After Savitri Devi, he has been considered the most prominent exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism within the neo-Nazi movement. In that movement, he gained respect for his devotion to the cause even among neo-Nazis who regarded his ideas as far-fetched.
Poetic revelation of the unconscious, of archetypes. Contains 16 poetic, philosophical essays. Illustrated. (London: Asia Publishing House, 1961: 2nd edition London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972. xi, 61 p. illus.).
Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández, better known as Miguel Serrano (10 September 1917 - 28 February 2009), was a Chilean diplomat, writer, occultist, and fascist activist. A Nazi sympathiser in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he later became a prominent figure in the neo-Nazi movement as an exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism. Born to a wealthy Chilean family of European descent, Serrano was orphaned as a child and raised by his grandmother. After an education at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, he developed an interest in writing and far-right politics, allying himself with the Chilean Nazi movement. During the Second World War, in which Chile remained neutral, Serrano campaigned in support of Nazi Germany and promoted anti-semitic conspiracy theories through his own fortnightly publication, La Nueva Edad. In 1942 he joined an occult order founded by a German migrant which combined pro-Nazi sentiment with ceremonial magic and kundalini yoga. It presented the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler as a spiritual adept who had incarnated to Earth as a savior of the Aryan race and who would lead humanity out of a dark age known as the Kali Yuga. Serrano became convinced that Hitler had not died in 1945 but had secretly survived and was living in Antarctica. After visiting Antarctica, Serrano travelled to Germany and then Switzerland, where he met the novelist Hermann Hesse and psychoanalyst Carl Jung; in 1965 he published a reminiscence of his time with the pair. In 1953 Serrano joined the Chilean diplomatic corps and was stationed in India until 1963, where he took a keen interest in Hinduism and wrote several books. He was later made ambassador to Yugoslavia and then Austria, and while in Europe made contacts with various former Nazis and other far-rightists living on the continent. Following Chile's election of a Marxist President, Salvador Allende, Serrano was dismissed from the diplomatic service in 1970. After Allende was ousted in a coup and Augusto Pinochet took power, Serrano returned to Chile in 1973. He became a prominent organiser in the Chilean neo-Nazi movement, holding annual celebrations of Hitler's birthday, organising a neo-Nazi rally in Santiago, and producing a neo-Nazi political manifesto. He wrote a trilogy of books on Hitler in which he outlined his view of the Nazi leader as an avatar. He remained in contact with neo-Nazis elsewhere in the world and gave interviews to various foreign far-right publications. In 2008 Serrano was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (Premio a la Trayectoria) from the Universidad Mayor of Santiago. After Savitri Devi, he has been considered the most prominent exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism within the neo-Nazi movement. In that movement, he gained respect for his devotion to the cause even among neo-Nazis who regarded his ideas as far-fetched.
Against the resplendent brilliance of the court at Rio de Janeiro are unfolded the vivid lives of Domitila, the mistress who almost became an empress; Leopoldina, daughter of Franz Leopold of Austria, the sorrowful, neglected wife of Dom Pedro; and finally Dom Pedro, impetuous and daring, oblivious to the world in his consuming passion for his paramour. When DOMITILA was first published in Brazil it attained an unparalleled success and now its author ranks as the most popular modern writer in his native land. Although the book is written in fiction form it is really history - for every minute incident and letter are absolutely authentic.
Paulo de Oliveira Leite Setúbal (January 1, 1893 - May 4, 1937) was a Brazilian writer, lawyer, journalist, essayist and poet. He occupied the 31st chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1934 until his death in 1937.
A piercing, evocative novel, FORDLANDIA unfurls its story with stinging grace to reveal at its core, nestled in crisp, cool layers of masterful narrative, a tiny nugget of fact: in 1929 Henry Ford, aged but still presiding with divine authority over his automobile empire, has grown tired of the British monopoly on rubber and so has decided to produce his own. Certain of the infallibility of his own mechanical genius, Ford sets about colonizing the Amazon in the name of rubber, investing millions and founding an entire town around his plantation. The name of the town is Fordlandia. While Ford dreams of the jungle from docile, mechanized Detroit, Horacio, a man who has come to Fordlandia to escape his past, is charged with the task of recruiting labor from the surrounding native villages. The rubber plantation is run by ineffectual, disgraced Ford executives, whose impossible mission is to impose the industrialist's will on the resilient, menacing Amazon. Doomed to follow Ford's flawed plan, Horacio attempts to stave off the jungle's ultimate victory and comes face-to-face with the true futility at the heart of man's struggle for mastery over nature. Eduardo Sguiglia's exquisitely imagined Fordlandia is a town of characters by turns engaging and enigmatic, who will draw the reader into their various worlds so effortlessly and ingenuously that their dreams, discoveries, and downfalls begin to seem as immediate and piercing as one's own. Just as the jungle's exotic essence snares Henry Ford and lures him into its muddy, dreadful heart, Sguiglia's fresh prose and elegant storytelling beckon us, disorient us, and leave us bewildered and full of wonder.
Eduardo Sguiglia (born 30 April 1952) is an Argentine economist, writer and essayist. Exiled in Mexico during the last coup d'etat in Argentina, he lives in Buenos Aires since the early eighties. He is Master in social sciences and he was a professor and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires. Sguiglia published short stories and novels - Fordlandia (1997), Do not trust me, if your heart fails you (1999) and A handful of glory (2003), Black Eyes (2010) - which were translated into Portuguese, English, Italian and German, and were finalists in the Dublin International Literary Award and Grinzane-Cavour. Fordlandia was selected one of the four best works of fiction by The Washington Post (2000). The New York Times finds his work "reminiscent of the work of Conrad or Kafka, in which, faced with the extremes of an indifferent universe, human beings must come to terms with their own capricious inner landscapes(...)". His latest novel is titled Los cuerpos y las sombras (Edhasa, 2014). Sguiglia was narrative jury in Casa de las Americas (Cuba) and Casa del Teatro (Dominican Republic). On 2016 he was one of the seven latinamerican creators who received the Fundacion Jumex and Rockefeller Foundation prize. Moreover, he wrote several articles and essays on the economy and society of Argentina. Among others, "Agustín Tosco" (1984), "The Club of the Powerful" (1991), "Infrastructure and Competitiveness" (1997) and "Ideologies of economic power" (2006). In this field he has been awarded two national awards (Arcor Foundation 1993, Roggio Foundation, 1998), and for his work in foreign affairs he was honoured by the governments of Bolivia, Chile and Brazil. He served in the public sector as president of the regulator of airports, undersecretary of Latin American policy and as first Argentine ambassador to Angola. PATRICIA J. DUNCAN translates Spanish and Italian. Most recently she translated David Toscana's novel TULA STATION. She lives in San Francisco.
What happened in Spanish American fiction after the Boom? Can we define the Post-Boom? What are its characteristics? How does it relate to the Boom itself? Is Post-Boom the same as Postmodernism or something quite different? Shaw traces the emergence of a different kind of writing which began to dis