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The Hector Belascoarán Shayne mysteries of Paco Ignacio Taibo II

An Easy Thing by Paco Ignacio Taibo II. New York. 1990. Viking Press. 0670824623. Translated from the Spanish by William I. Neuman. 230 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Neil Stuart. Jacket illustration by Mark Harrison. 

DESCRIPTION - AN EASY THING marks the English-language debut of Paco lgnacio Taibo II, Mexico's leading detective novelist and a writer world renowned for his atmospheric and highly innovative crime fiction. Set in the chaotic urban heart of Mexico City, a place where the ghosts of Old Mexico constantly eat away at all pretense of modernity, An Easy Thing is distinguished by the vulnerable human presence of its jaded detective hero, Hector Belascoarán Shayne. Already weary from coping with his mother's death and his lover's flight, Hector finds himself reluctantly involved in three perplexing cases: a murder at a capitalist- and corruption-riddled factory; disturbingly violent threats against the innocent teenage daughter of a former porn star; and finally, an attempt to find a rather extraordinary missing person-namely, Emiliano Zapata, archetypal (and, most think, long deceased) hero of the failed Mexican Revolution. Complicated characters; tight and witty dialogue; undercurrents of violence and sex; lots of action; and dazzling streaks of irony, dark comedy, and Latin fabulism combine to create a compelling, original mystery, a mystery that resonates with the bigger mysteries of Mexico's troubled history and of the dark side of human nature. This is mystery writing with a soul-and a funny, wise, warm, and entertaining soul it is, grounded in Paco Taibo's knowledge of modern Hispanic and world literature and history, and by his political and everyday human passions.

Some Clouds by Paco Ignacio Taibo II. New York. 1992. Viking Press. 067083825x. Translated from the Spanish by William I. Neuman. 163 pages. hardcover. JACKET DESIGN BY NEIL STUART. JACKET ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRIS GALL. AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY JERRY BAUER. 

DESCRIPTION - In SOME CLOUDS, master crime writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II serves up another Belascoarán Shayne caper, set once again in the chaotic heart of Mexico City, involving two inexplicable murders and a mysterious fortune worth millions, Before his case is ended, Belascoarán Shayne must negotiate an intricate labyrinth of corruption and cover-up that bears an unsettling resemblance to Mexico City's real-life scandals. Hector Belascoardn Shayne had two exotic last names, a degree in engineering from the National University, and one eye less than most people. He was thirty-five years old, with an ex-wife, an ex-lover, one brother, one sister, a denim suit that made him look more like a social anthropologist than a detective, a 38 automatic in his office in Mexico City, a slight limp from an old bullet wound in his right leg, and a private investigator's license he'd gotten through a correspondence course. He had a marked predilection for soft drinks, lemon. scented aftershave, crab salad, the Bossa Nova, and certain Hemingway novels. His heroes were Justin Playfair, Michael Strogoff, John Reed, Buenaventura Durutti, Capablanca, and Zorro (though he knew he was never going to get very far with a cemetery-full of heroes like that).

No Happy Ending by Paco Ignacio Taibo II. New York. 1993. Mysterious Press. 0892965177. Translated from the Spanish by William I. Neuman. 175 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Jackie Merri Meyer. Jacket illustration by Jose Ortega. 

DESCRIPTION - For the past decade Paco Ignacio Taibo II has been the most popular and talked about author in Latin and South America, his mysteries have drawn comparisons to the work of such diverse writers as Dashiell Hammett and Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and his books have achieved bestselling status in both Eastern and Western Europe. Now Taibo's most acclaimed and bestselling novel is available in its first English edition. A private eye who shares his office with a plumber, an upholsterer, and a sewer engineer, Hector Belascoarán Shayne is a one-eyed anarchist, a man who knows intimately the teeming landscape of modern.day Mexico City-land of pressing poverty, absurdist street theater, and tragic class warfare. For Shayne, it is a world that can draw tears one moment and blood the next-as it does on the hot afternoon when he finds the dead Roman in his office. A threatening letter and a Polaroid snapshot of another corpse let Hector know that he has been targeted for intimidation, taking the identities of the two dead men, he finds out what they had in common: a connection to a dead daredevil named Zorak, whose sinister sideline was training a now disbanded paramilitary group used to put down political demonstrations.

Return To the Same City by Paco Ignacio Taibo II. New York. 1996. Mysterious Press. 0892965908. The Mexican Detective. Hector Belascoaran Shayne Rises From The Dead. Translated from the Spanish by Laura Dail. 178 pages. hardcover. JACKET DESIGN BY RACHEL McCLAIN JACKET ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSE ORTEGA.

DESCRIPTION - ‘Hector Belascoarán Shayne, detective, was a stranger. A stranger in motion. He couldn't quite recognize himself he couldn't quite love himself And since he neither loved himself nor stopped loving himself he couldn't be too careful. He was absolutely sure that in this story, they were going to kill him.' The last Hector Belascoarán Shayne mystery from Paco Ignacio Taibo II ended with the one-eyed detective lying in the oily rain of Mexico City, his body perforated with bullets. Now the author of this hugely popular, highly political, endlessly inventive series of novels proves that no miracle is beyond his reach. Hector Belascoarán Shayne rises from the dead. He's a gun-carrying argonaut of Mexico City, city of strikes and pollution, ‘cemetery of dreams' He doesn't want to be alive, but he is, and when a woman tells him a sob story about her sister's death at the hands of a handsome rumba dancer in white patent leather shoes named Luke Estrella, Hector agrees to do something about him. In a Mexico City hotel the detective meets a battered, alcoholic gringo who's after the same man. On Acapulco Bay, nearly blinded by bikinied beauties, the detective shadows Estrella, who once owned porn shops in Cuba, cut off the hands of Che Guevara, and now is meeting with CIA operatives and a trafficker of stolen archeological treasures. Before Hector can decide whether he is pursuing Estrella or Estrella is pursuing him, he finds himself on a flight to Tijuana, for a confrontation with a killer . . . From the arms trade to the drug trade, from Nicaragua to the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, Paco lgnacio Taibo II writes a heartrending, hilarious, and haunting story of corruptions venality, and violence, as told by Mexico's finest one-eyed detective. And when the final gunshots stop ringing in Hector's ears, Taibo's remarkable detective must attempt his most daring feat of all: learning to live with himself.
 

Frontera Dreams: A Hector Belascoaran Shayne Detective Novel by Paco Ignacio Taibo II. El Paso. 2002. Cinco Puntos Press. 093831758x. Translated from the Spanish by Bill Verner. 123 pages. paperback. Cover: Luis Jimenez-'Coscolina con Muerto (Flirt with Death)'. 

DESCRIPTION - The sweetheart of Hector Belascoaran Shayne's adolescence - the same one who's become a famous Mexican movie star - has disappeared into the magical reality of the U.S./Mexico border. Hector wanders la frontera looking for her. He falls in and out of love, he talks with the ghost of Pancho Villa, he asks lonely questions about the dirty business of narcotraficantes, and he listens closely to the story of the whores of Zacatecas. They, like his sweetheart, seem to have disappeared forever. Included are two brief essays - ‘Hector's Body' and ‘Hector's Shadow' - which discuss our beleaguered hero and his bullet-riddled body.
  

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - PACO IGNACIO TAIBO II is one of the most popular authors at work today. Born in Asturias, Spain, he has lived in Mexico since 1958. A historian, journalist, and writer of short stories, novels, and works of history, he is one of the founders of the International Association of Crime Writers. His work has been widely translated and published throughout the world; his most recent novel, LEONARDO'S BICYCLE, won the Latin American Dashiell Hammett Award for the best crime novel of the year. He lives in Mexico City with his wife and daughter.

If you have Netflix, you should check out Detective Belascoarán! 

Héctor Belascoarán leaves his corporate job and dull marriage to become an independent detective and tackle shocking criminal cases in 1970s Mexico City.

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From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film by Siegfried Kracauer. Princeton. 1947. Princeton University Press. 361 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A landmark, now classic, study of the rich cinematic history of the Weimar Republic, From Caligari to Hitler was first published by Princeton University Press in 1947. Siegfried Kracauer - a prominent German film critic and member of Walter Benjamin's and Theodor Adorno's intellectual circle - broke new ground in exploring the connections between film aesthetics, the prevailing psychological state of Germans in the Weimar era, and the evolving social and political reality of the time. Kracauer's pioneering book, which examines German history from 1921 to 1933 in light of such movies as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, M, Metropolis, and The Blue Angel, has never gone out of print. This volume is a must-have for the film historian, film theorist, or cinema enthusiast. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Siegfried Kracauer (February 8, 1889 – November 26, 1966) was a German writer, journalist, sociologist, cultural critic, and film theorist. He has sometimes been associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. He is notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema.

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The Rest is Silence by Augusto Monterroso. New York. 2025. New York Review Books. 9781681378824. Translated from the Spanish by Aaron Kerner. Introduction by Dustin Illingworth. 153 pages. paperback. Cover design by Katy Homans. Cover image: Julio Larraz, 'Dinner at Negresco’s’, 1974.  

DESCRIPTION - The lone novel by a Latin American author of very short fiction (praised as “the most beautiful stories in the world” by Italo Calvino)—an antic, metafictional send-up of the Mexican literary scene told through the unreliable recollections of an aging critic’s friends, relatives, and attendants. The one and only novel by the renowned Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso—Latin America’s most expansive miniaturist, whose tiny, acid, and bracingly surreal narratives Italo Calvino dubbed “the most beautiful stories in the world”—The Rest Is Silence presents the reader with the kaleidoscopic portrait of a provincial Mexican literary critic, one Eduardo Torres, a sort of Don Quixote of the Sunday supplements, whose colossal misreadings are matched only by the scale of his vanity. Presented in the form of a festschrift for the aging writer, this rollicking metafiction offers up a bouquet of highly unreliable reminiscences by Torres’s friends, relations, and servants (their accounts skewed by envy, ignorance, and sheer malice), along with a generous selection of the savant’s own comically botched attempts at “criticism.” Monterroso’s narrative is a ludicrous dissection of literary self-conceit, a (Groucho) Marxian skewering of the Mexican literary landscape, and perhaps a wry self-portrait by an author who is profoundly sensible of just how high the stakes of the art of criticism really are—and, consequently, of just how far it has to fall. PRAISE FOR AUGUSTO MONTERROSO: “Monterroso was a very real Honduran-Guatemalan short-story writer, his 1978 novel here skilfully translated into English for the first time by Aaron Kerner. Torres was the product of his imagination, a chance to poke fun at the literary establishment and speculate on the legacy afforded to a provincial writer with an output unlikely to stand the test of time.” —Chris Alnutt, The Financial Times. “The reader is warned to approach Monterroso with hands raised—these are dangerous [fictions], whose ostensible lightness is founded upon a clandestine wisdom, a lethal beauty.” —Gabriel García Marquez. “Monterroso is the first truly original philosopher that Latin America has produced.” —José Emilio Pacheco. “Monterroso, who died in 2003, fashions his anti-novel into a sly parody of both the gentleman of letters archetype and a backwater literary scene during the Latin American Boom. Readers will relish this tragic farce.” — Publishers Weekly.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - 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.

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My Green Hills of Jamaica and Five Jamaican Short Stories by Claude McKay. Kingston. 1979. Heinemann. Edited and with an introduction by Mervyn Morris. 162 pages. paperback. Front cover photograph reproduced by courtesy of the Jamaican Tourist Board.

DESCRIPTION - This book brings together Claude McKay's draft of 'My Hills of Jamaica' (an autobiography of his early years) and five short stories which draw directly on that area of experience. McKay had been working on the autobiography when he wrote to Max Eastman in August, 1946: 'My new book is about my childhood in Jamaica which is a source of inexhaustible material.' That inexhaustible material has been mined in Songs of Jamaica and Gonstab Ballads (two collections of dialect poetry, both published in 1912); in the nostalgic poems, many from about 1920, conveniently grouped as 'Songs for Jamaica’ in Selected Poems (1953); in the Jamaican stories reprinted here from Gingertown (1932); in his finest novel, Banana Bottom (1933); and in the 'new book', McKay's second autobiography, drafted only a year or two before he died. In 1953 there was published in Phylon an article called ‘Boyhood in Jamaica', 'by Claude McKay'. A useful sampling of extracts from the draft autobiography, it seems to have been intrusively edited; it introduces phrases, sentences, even whole paragraphs which do not appear in the typescript of ‘My Green Hills' and some of which it is hard to believe McKay (then five years dead) might have written or approved. - FROM THE INTRODUCTION.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Claude McKay was born in Jamaica on 15th September, 1890. He began writing poetry as a schoolboy. He worked as a policeman in Spanish Town and when he was twenty-two had his first volume of poems, SONGS OF JAMAICA (1912) published. In 1912 McKay moved to the United States where he attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and Kansas State University. He continued to write poetry and in 1918 his work was praised by both Frank Harris and Max Eastman. The following year, his poem, ‘If We Must Die,' was published in Eastman's journal, The Liberator. Frank Harris encouraged McKay to obtain writing experience in England. In 1919 McKay travelled to England where he met George Bernard Shaw who introduced him to influential left-wing figures in journalism. This included Sylvia Pankhurst, who recruited him to write for her trade union journal, Workers' Dreadnought. While in London McKay read the works of Karl Marx and becomes a committed socialist. In 1921 McKay returned to New York and became associate editor of The Liberator. Over the next year the journal published articles by McKay such as ‘How Black Sees Green and Red' and ‘He Who Gets Slapped.' He also published his best known volume of verse, HARLEM SHADOWS (1922). In 1922 McKay went to Third International in Moscow where he represented the American Workers Party. He stayed in Europe where he wrote TRIAL BY LYNCHING: STORIES ABOUT NEGRO LIFE IN AMERICA (1925) and HOME TO HARLEM (1928), a novel about a disillusioned black soldier in the US Army who returns from the Western Front to live in a black ghetto. This was followed by other novels such as BANJO (1928), GINGERTOWN (1932) and BANANA BOTTOM (1933). McKay gradually lost faith in communism and returned to the United States in 1934. Employment was difficult to find and for a while he worked for the Federal Writers' Project. McKay's published work during this period included his autobiography, A LONG WAY FROM HOME (1937) and HARLEM: NEGRO METROPOLIS (1940). Unable to make a living from writing, McKay found work in a shipbuilding yard. In 1943 he suffers a stroke and the following year was baptized into the Roman Catholic faith. In 1945 his essay, On Becoming a Roman Catholic, was published. Claude McKay died in Chicago on May 22, 1948.

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The Black Sheep and Other Fables by Augusto Monterroso. Garden City. 1971. Doubleday. Translated from the Spanish by Walter I. Bradbury with the convivial cooperation of the author. 113 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Patricia Saville Voehl.

DESCRIPTION - 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.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - 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).

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The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality by Cheikh Anta Diop. Chicago. [1974]. Lawrence Hill Books. . Edited and translated by Mercer Cook. 317 pages. paperback. Photo cover credit: British Museum.  

DESCRIPTION - Laymen and scholars alike will welcome the. publication of this one-volume translation of the major sections of C. A. Diop’s two books, Nations negres et culture and Anteriorite des civilizations negres, which have profoundly influenced thinking about Africa around the world. It was largely because of these works that, at the World Festival of the Arts held in Dakar in 1965, Dr. Diop shared with the late W. E. B. Du Bois as award as the writer who had exerted the greatest influence on Black thought in the 20th century. THE AFRICAN ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION: MYTH OR REALITY, edited and translated by Mercer Cook and prepared with the author’s cooperation, presents Dr. Diop’s main n thesis – that historical, archeological and anthropological evidence supports the theory that the civilization of ancient Egypt, the first that history records, was actually Negroid in origin. The present volume contains over fifty illustrations, many of them newly selected for this book, which further document Dr. Diop’s theories. The author has written a new preface and conclusion for this edition, which also includes a preface by Mercer Cook, an index, bibliography, biographical notes on the authors and authorities citied, and a glossary of archeological terms used in the book.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Cheikh Anta Diop (29 December 1923 – 7 February 1986) was a Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. Diop's work is considered foundational to the theory of Afrocentricity, though he himself never described himself as an Afrocentrist. The questions he posed about cultural bias in scientific research contributed greatly to the postcolonial turn in the study of African civilizations. Diop argued that there was a shared cultural continuity across African people that was more important than the varied development of different ethnic groups shown by differences among languages and cultures over time.[6] Some of his ideas have been criticized as based upon outdated sources and an outdated conception of race. Other scholars have defended his work from what they see as widespread misrepresentation.Cheikh Anta Diop University (formerly known as the University of Dakar), in Dakar, Senegal, is named after him.

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Bruna and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City by Alicia Yanez Cossio. Evanston. 1999. Northwestern University Press. 0810114089. Translated from the Spanish by Kenneth J. A. Wishnia. 228 pages. hardcover. Jacket image: Linda S. Wingerter, White Dog in the Piazza. Jacket design: Toni Ellis.

DESCRIPTION - BRUNA AND HER SISTERS IN THE SLEEPING CITY is the first novel by Ecuador's foremost woman writer, Alicia Yánez Cossio. Available in English for the first time, this magical novel chronicles the history of Bruna and her wealthy, eccentric family. A family with a centuries-long history in northern Ecuador, Bruna's ancestors lived in ‘the sleeping city,' a somnolent hamlet tucked into the place in the mountains where the winds change directions and create the sleep-inducing mountain ‘sickness' called soroche. Bruna's past is dominated by her deceased ancestors, by the ghosts and scandals that linger in the old family home. Her living relatives spend most of their waking hours reassembling the family tree, appropriating and casting off relatives at will, with impoverished Indian ancestors changed to royalty and back again in the space of a single conversation. As she pieces together her family history through a number of colorful characters, including her beautiful and wealthy Indian grandmother Maria Illacatu, the wild and flighty Aunt Camelia the Tearful, and Uncle Alvarito, the adult child-genius who devoted his life to weaving a carpet for the pope intended to stretch from the sleeping city to Rome, Bruna begins to create her own identity, emerging from the shadow of history and coming to grips with the struggles of her family and nation to achieve a balance between the best of the old and the new. At first glance a rollicking tale full of the outrageous adventures of Bruna's relatives, Bruna and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City is much more. Tracing the complete history of Ecuador from the Conquest through the 1970s, it is a seriocomic examination of the tensions and conflicts inherent in a world that wavers between tradition and change, between an oppressive colonial past and a modern society obsessed with material gain.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ALICIA YANEZ COSSIO was born December 10, 1928 and is considered to be one of Ecuador's principal novelists. Bruna and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City is the first of her novels to be translated into English. KENNETH J. A. WISHNIA is a novelist who has taught at SUNY at Stony Brook and Queens College CUNY.

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The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Petra Molnar. New York. 2024. New Press. With a foreword by E. Tendayi Achiume. 240 pages. hardcover.  Jacket design by Oliver Munday. 

DESCRIPTION - A chilling exposé of the inhumane and lucrative sharpening of borders around the globe through experimental surveillance technology. Finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it was training “robot dogs” to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border against migrants. Four-legged machines equipped with cameras and sensors would join a network of drones and automated surveillance towers—nicknamed the “smart wall.” This is part of a worldwide trend: as more people are displaced by war, economic instability, and a warming planet, more countries are turning to AI-driven technology to “manage” the influx. Based on years of researching borderlands across the world, lawyer and anthropologist Petra Molnar’s The Walls Have Eyes is a truly global story—a dystopian vision turned reality, where your body is your passport and matters of life and death are determined by algorithm. Examining how technology is being deployed by governments on the world’s most vulnerable with little regulation, Molnar also shows us how borders are now big business, with defense contractors and tech start-ups alike scrambling to capture this highly profitable market. With a foreword by former UN Special Rapporteur E. Tendayi Achiume, The Walls Have Eyes reveals the profound human stakes of the sharpening of borders around the globe, foregrounding the stories of people on the move and the daring forms of resistance that have emerged against the hubris and cruelty of those seeking to use technology to turn human beings into problems to be solved.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Petra Molnar is a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in migration and human rights. She co-runs the Refugee Law Lab at York University and is a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Petra has crossed many borders and worked all over the world including Jordan, Turkey, the Philippines, Kenya, Colombia, Canada, and various parts of Europe. Petra’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Al Jazeera, Wired, The Guardian, and many other outlets. The author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, she splits her time between Toronto, New York, and Athens.

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Complete Works and Other Stories by Augusto Monterroso. Austin. 1995. University of Texas Press. 0292751834. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. Texas Pan American series. 152 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - Augusto Monterroso is widely known for short stories characterized by brilliant satire and wit. Yet behind scathing allusions to the weaknesses and defects of the artistic and intellectual worlds, they show his generous and expansive sense of compassion. This book brings together for the first time in English the volumes Complete Works (and Other Stories) (Obras completas [y otros cuentos] 1959) and Perpetual Motion (Movimiento perpetuo 1972). Together, they reveal Monterroso as a foundational author of the new Latin American narrative. ‘Monterroso is certainly the leading living Guatemalan writer. . . . His microcuentos are finely honed, highly ironic, sophisticated pieces which are both very good literature and excellent pedagogical devices. I would liken his short stories to some of Borges' more accessible ones, with the added dimension of political commitment.’ ~Cynthia Steele, author of Politics, Gender, and the Mexican Novel, 1968-1988: Beyond the Pyramid. ‘Sophisticated wit and playful surrealist fantasy dominate these ingenious and gently mocking tales, by a Guatemalan-born soul mate to the late Jorge Luis Borges. This first English translation of Monterroso’s work offers the contents of his two published collections, Complete Works and Other Stories (1959) and Perpetual Motion (1972). They’re a monument, if that isn’t the wrong word, to this entertaining author’s trademark ‘concision and wit.’ ~Kirkus Reviews.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - 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).  Edith Grossman is an award-winning translator of contemporary Latin American literature. Her recent publications include Strange Pilgrims and Of Love and Other Demons, by Gabriel García Márquez, and Maqroll and The Adventures of Maqroll, by Alvaro Mutis.

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Alexanderplatz Berlin, 2 Volumes by Alfred Döblin. New York. 1931. Viking Press. Translated from the German by Eugene Jolas. 290 pages (volume 1), 334 pages (volume 2). hardcover. 

DESCRIPTION - Alfred Döblin (August 10, 1878 - June 26, 1957) was a German expressionist novelist, best known for Berlin Alexanderplatz. He was born in Stettin, Pomerania, now Szczecin in Poland, the son of a Jewish merchant. The family moved to Berlin in 1898, where Döblin studied medicine, first at the University of Berlin, then at Freiburg University. During his student years, he became interested in German philosophy, especially that of Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. After graduating, he worked as a journalist in Regensburg and Berlin, before actually beginning a psychiatric practice in the working class neighborhood of Alexanderplatz. During this time, he wrote several novels, but none of them were published until 1915, when Die Drei Sprünge des Wang-Lung was published. It tells the story of political upheaval in 18th century China. He won the Fontane Prize for it. He was garnering popularity through several expressionist short stories in the magazine Der Sturm. Eventually he dropped out of the Expressionist Movement, but many of his Sturm stories were published in 1913 in a collection called Die Ermordung einer Butterblume. During World War I, Döblin served as a doctor with the German Army, but continued his writing. His historical novel, Wallenstein, set during the Thirty Years' War, was written during this period. In 1920 Döblin joined the Association of German Writers (Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller), and in 1924 he became its president. He reviewed plays for the Prager Tageblatt for several years, and was a member of the Group 1925 with Bertolt Brecht. In 1924 he published Berge, Meere und Giganten, a dystopic view of a future in which technology confronts man and nature. In 1929, Berlin Alexanderplatz was published. Partly written in colloquial German, with many viewpoint characters and a narrative style reminiscent of John Dos Passos and James Joyce, it tells the story of a criminal who is drawn deeper and deeper into an underworld he cannot rise out of. When the Nazis took power in Germany, Döblin fled to Switzerland and then the United States, working for MGM in Hollywood. His novel Das Land Ohne Tod (The Land without Death), set in South America, was published in 1937. In 1941, Döblin converted to Roman Catholicism, citing Søren Kierkegaard and Baruch Spinoza as influences. Döblin returned to Europe in 1945, working for the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs. He returned to Germany, settling in Baden-Baden, where he worked as an education officer and a magazine publisher, but, unhappy with the political environment in his native country, he settled in France (he had become a French citizen in 1936). His two outstanding contributions from this period are a historical novel, November 1918, and Hamlet, an expression of his hopes for the future of Europe. As he had Parkinson, in 1956 Döblin entered a sanitarium in Freiburg im Breisgau. He remained mostly paralyzed for the rest of his life, dying in Emmendingen the following year. .

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Alfred Döblin (August 10, 1878 - June 26, 1957) was a German expressionist novelist, best known for Berlin Alexanderplatz. He was born in Stettin, Pomerania, now Szczecin in Poland, the son of a Jewish merchant. The family moved to Berlin in 1898, where Döblin studied medicine, first at the University of Berlin, then at Freiburg University. During his student years, he became interested in German philosophy, especially that of Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. After graduating, he worked as a journalist in Regensburg and Berlin, before actually beginning a psychiatric practice in the working class neighborhood of Alexanderplatz. During this time, he wrote several novels, but none of them were published until 1915, when Die Drei Sprünge des Wang-Lung was published. It tells the story of political upheaval in 18th century China. He won the Fontane Prize for it. He was garnering popularity through several expressionist short stories in the magazine Der Sturm. Eventually he dropped out of the Expressionist Movement, but many of his Sturm stories were published in 1913 in a collection called Die Ermordung einer Butterblume. During World War I, Döblin served as a doctor with the German Army, but continued his writing. His historical novel, Wallenstein, set during the Thirty Years' War, was written during this period. In 1920 Döblin joined the Association of German Writers (Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller), and in 1924 he became its president. He reviewed plays for the Prager Tageblatt for several years, and was a member of the Group 1925 with Bertolt Brecht. In 1924 he published Berge, Meere und Giganten, a dystopic view of a future in which technology confronts man and nature. In 1929, Berlin Alexanderplatz was published. Partly written in colloquial German, with many viewpoint characters and a narrative style reminiscent of John Dos Passos and James Joyce, it tells the story of a criminal who is drawn deeper and deeper into an underworld he cannot rise out of. When the Nazis took power in Germany, Döblin fled to Switzerland and then the United States, working for MGM in Hollywood. His novel Das Land Ohne Tod (The Land without Death), set in South America, was published in 1937. In 1941, Döblin converted to Roman Catholicism, citing Søren Kierkegaard and Baruch Spinoza as influences. Döblin returned to Europe in 1945, working for the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs. He returned to Germany, settling in Baden-Baden, where he worked as an education officer and a magazine publisher, but, unhappy with the political environment in his native country, he settled in France (he had become a French citizen in 1936). His two outstanding contributions from this period are a historical novel, November 1918, and Hamlet, an expression of his hopes for the future of Europe. As he had Parkinson, in 1956 Döblin entered a sanitarium in Freiburg im Breisgau. He remained mostly paralyzed for the rest of his life, dying in Emmendingen the following year.

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