Of My Real Life I Know Nothing

Ana María Moix is one of the most important names in Spanish fiction today. She is the author of over twenty books that range widely from her prize-winning poetry to her prize-winning fiction. Particularly well-known to English-speaking audiences is her novel Julia, which was translated by Sandra Kingery and was very favorably reviewed.

Of My Real Life I Know Nothing is Moix's most recent work to date. The stories, connected through a complex interweaving of repeated themes, create a shimmering mosaic where readers will encounter the very humorous dynamics of a tour group in Italy; the haunting reality of a man who loses interest in his soccer team; a dead mother whose ghostly apparition wanders the city streets at night; passion, impotence, and tragedy; and so much more from everyday life. Moix's prose is always highly polished, rigorously detailed and intimate. It allows readers a glimpse into strange and very amusing worlds where nothing is taken for granted and everything is open to question.

Moix was born in Barcelona in 1947. She was a very precocious writer (she began writing at age 12), and she was the youngest among the famous Barcelona group of "novísimos" in the late 1960s. She focused on studies of philosophy in the university, and became very involved in the editorial committee for the important journal, Vindicación femenista in the mid-late 1970s. She was already well-recognized as a poet who had her finger on the pulse of the youth by this time (one reviewer called her the "great white hope" of her generation), and she had also already written her first three novels (which caused a sensation at the time), as well as collections of essays and articles. As her career has developed, she has continued to work in the literary field as a writer, translator, travel book writer, journalist, and editor.

The Impostor

A failed history professor hoping to advance his career tries to capitalize on his extensive knowledge of the Mexican Revolution and its leaders in this play, which enjoyed enormously popular success after its 1948 publication and continues to attract contemporary audiences. El gesticulador (The Impostor) is regarded by literary historians as the play that signaled the start of modern Mexican drama. Set in 1930s post-revolutionary Mexico, its basic ingredients are history and myth, honesty and duplicity, truth and falsehood as well as political intrigue, corruption, party politics and the social dynamics of the Mexican family. Considered by some as an ill-disguised attack against Mexican values and traditions and especially against the Revolution and the party in power, the play was rejected and criticized by government officials and labor leaders while still enjoying popularity. Because of its treatment of Mexico’s cultural traits and the universality of its themes, El gesticulador has retained currency and relevance through the years and has been translated into several languages.

The Sharpener and Other Stories

The Sharpener and Other Stories is an outstanding collection of twenty-four short stories. The award-winning title story, "The Sharpener," has appeared in many publications in the United States and abroad. Berger-Kiss' most impressive quality is his clear and tremendously human vision of reality, as seen by scholars and critics alike, whose opinions we summarize. He is viewed as a writer with a well-carved social conscience, the key component of his writing being the multidimensional human being. He portrays the sufferer or the one holding a dream or a hope, and frequently focuses on the common worker, presenting him as the backbone of society, succeeding in writing "a psalm of poverty, a hymn of the oppressed," as one critic pointedly expresses it. The Sharpener and Other Stories is the product of a true literary master.

“Berger-Kiss’s story relates how the magus-like figure of the sharpener awakened the children to the world of the mind, to science, mathematics, history and art, sharpening the conceptual tools with which they would live from then on, and instilling in them a heightened sense of social justice.”
--Professor Jonathan Tittler, Cornell University

"Berger-Kiss’s writings demonstrate a great observational capacity on the part of the author, able to involve the reader and take him to the end. With his novels and short stories he has bestowed an inheritance to the world’s literature - especially Colombian - that sooner or later will be recognized. The characters in his narrative are enchanting, and he has a special grace and profound capacity to have the reader internalize them.”
--Nelson Romero Guzman

“Andrés Berger-Kiss is one of Oregon’s best poets, novelists, and writers of short stories. He is also one of a select breed of literary geniuses.”
--Dan Hays, Literary Reviewer for the Statesman Journal, Salem, OR

Chola

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.

Chronicle of San Gabriel

Chronicle of San Gabriel explores an isolated rural community from the perspective of a city dweller. After his mother’s death, Lucho, a teenager, is sent from Lima to stay with his relatives at the San Gabriel hacienda; there he witnesses the provincial customs of an agrarian community. He is fascinated by his manipulative young cousin with whom he develops a tortuous relationship. The novel is a testimony to the decay of the large Peruvian landed estate. The honesty and freshness of the narrative will come as no surprise to readers familiar with Ribeyro’s stories. For those who have yet to discover the work of this great writer, Chronicle of San Gabriel will make an excellent introduction.

“Written in elegant and ironic prose, Chronicle of San Gabriel recreates a feudal society with great subtlety and humor. A magnificent novel.”
--Mario Vargas Llosa

Memories of Underdevelopment

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 remains behind. Caught in the grip of the Cuban Missile Crisis, 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.

Beer Cans in the Río de la Plata

Beer Cans in the Río de la Plata is the first English translation of Stamadiano's work. Having received first place for best novel from the prestigious Argentine publishing house Editorial Emec*, Beer Cans in the Río de la Plata was praised by reviewers throughout South America. Its protagonist, Ulysses, is an anti-hero of a very peculiar and not very far-reaching odyssey. An eternal adolescent from a lower middle-class, Buenos Aires neighborhood, Ulysses had only one desire: to escape. In his comical attempts to do so, he appears as an archetype of a growing fringe of Argentine society, part of a generation that has been denied opportunity and forced to struggle with mere survival.

"...Stamadianos has written an impressive first novel (originally published in Spanish in 1995) characterized by laconic yet expressive prose, taut structure, and fascinating characters who both repel and attract the reader...For collections of Spanish literature in translation, all levels."
--Choice

"Stamadianos, an Argentine of Greek heritage, has written a satirical adventure of a man without a country. The engaging saga is at times humorous and often, caveat lector, rather salacious. Recommended."
--Library Journal

Clara

Clara is a free spirited young woman, a prostitute in Buenos Aires. She is full of vague plans and dreams, and tries to shield herself from an ominous world. Clara is brought to life by Latin American master novelist Luisa Valenzuela, who has created her as a flesh-and-blood character. Clara, answering to her own laws, reacts with inner strength and autonomy. And she may even save herself from certain death. "Valenzuelaâs reputation as one of Latin American's foremost authors will be enhanced by the U.S. publication of her latest novel."
--Booklist

"This crisp translation of the first major novel of Argentine writer Valenzuela, published in 1966 in Spanish, and in an English edition (now out of print) by Harcourt in 1976, is raw, sensuous and stylish as a tango...A writer renown for her lyrical, expressionistic exploration of male-dominated Argentine society, Valenzuela here chronicles the bizarre, brutal existence of characters on the fringes, building to a hair-raising climax."
--Publisher's Weekly

The Cuban Mile

"The Cuban Mile, winner of the 1996 National Youn Cuban Writers Award for Best Novel, could be described as Alejandro Hernandez Diaz's memorial for the unknown rafters who leave Cuba hoping to get to the United States, where all their broken dreams will be mended and finally come true."
--Lucrecia Artalejo, Northern Illinois University

The Island of Cundeamor

"Exiles from Cuba populate the imaginary island of Cundeamor: the Cuban American illusion of the perfect Cuba...[T]he denizenz populating DÃŒaz's ambitious, allegorical novel obsess about their homelands, sex, wealth, and political and romantic fidelity.... Díazäs writing is lucid and infused with parody and sarcasm..."
--Publisher's Weekly

"This bracingly bitter novel is set in [an] eponymous fictional territory...where Cuban emigrants fall in and out of love and trouble...[The] briskly sketched characters...provide many lively moments, and make this bubbly little anatomy of engendered machismo, feminine revolt, and measured degrees of freedom an irreverent and thought-provoking delight."
--Kirkus Reviews

The Medicine Man

"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 of otherwise unimportant people are the themes Rojas Gonz?lez 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 facinating 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

Musicians and Watchmakers

Humor told from an adolescent girl's perspective, Musicians and Watchmakers is a deceptively intuitive account of a Jewish family living in Buenos Aires in the 1940s. Author Alicia Steimberg captures the quirky insights of a teenager in a flawlessly rendered colloquial style and in doing so, proves herself a master novelist. On this novel, she has commented that in her descriptions of this young woman's experience, there lies a fictionalized autobiography that combines her own recollections with those of others who have shared similar experiences.

"This episodic autobiographical novel, first published in 1971, describes in deliciously wry comic accents the experience of an Argentinian Jewish girl (named 'Alicia Stromberg') growing up in Buenos Aires in the 1940s...A delightful book."
-Kirkus Reviews

The Song of the Distant Root

A novel akin to the celebrated Mexican author Jaun Rulfo's work in its search for the meaning of one's existence; The novel recounts the search by Satustio, the protagonist, for a place where a sense of community and solidarity can be achieved. The day after dreaming of such a place, named Tapihue, he sets out in search of it, finally settling on a spot with a cluster of oak trees and myrtle bushes. Although it is not certain whether he imagines the place or actually finds it, it is the journey towards the realization of his goal that takes precedence.

Strange Forces

Originally published in 1906, the fantastic tales of Strange Forces make up a significant contribution to the gas-light era fiction being written at the time. That era's fascination with the occult and scientific invention (along the lines of Poe and H.G. Wells) is what propels these twelve stories and the curious final essay on cosmogony.

"There can be no doubt that Lugones was one of a handful of literary figures who helped shape Latin American literature as it is today."
--Merlin H. Forster

Sultry Moon

Topping Argentina's bestseller list for twenty-seven weeks, winner of Mexico's National Book Award and translated into eight languages, Sultry Moon is a gripping novel reminiscent of both Crime and Punishment as well as Lolita. This fast-paced thriller takes off with the introduction of its protagonist who has just returned to his hometown in Argentina from studies in France. With the prospect of a brilliant career ahead of him, he is welcomed back with open arms. However, within the span of a few hours during a dinner party on a torrid evening, this unsuspected over-achiever becomes a ruthless, violent aggressor living out the paranoid psychology of a criminal on the run.

The Tenth Circle

In this masterful novel, Mempo Giardinelli offers an intense narrative, which proves both horrible and dazzling. It's a work presenting reality as brutal as well as poetic. This poetry of cruelty places fiction between the limits of passion and horror while pervading a suffocating and totally black atmosphere, spiraling erotically against the background of an escape through the north of Argentina where two diabolic lovers invent the tenth circle of hell.

This Eye That Looks At Me

This riveting mosaic of vignettes begins with Lori as a newborn, being hidden from her violent grandfather, and concludes with her liberating escape to the United States. This richly-textured memoir explores the religious hypocrisy of mid-20th century Puerto Rico, its subjugation to the U.S., and the value of an education in a world dominated by a cruel and sexually predatory patriarchy.

"Silva's writing is imbued with a style that is visually engaging, defiant, and which is brimming with a multiplicity of voices."
--Lady Rojas Trempe

To Die In Berlin

"Cerda brilliantly juxtaposes the experiences and emotions of several uprooted Latin Americans thrown together in a tightly controlled Chilean ghetto supervised by a coldly pragmatic ÎBureau.â...The image of Wagnerâs The Flying Dutchman resonates throughout their stories as a powerful emblem of their common displacement and disorientation. A very fine novel."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Cerda combines persuasively intimate abstractions about love, politics, and life on earth with authentically three-dimensional characters...[He] has elegantly portrayed the spiritual conflicts of people exiled from the sustenance of their native land."
--Publisher's Weekly

FYI: Cerda lived in exile in East Germany for more than a decade. His novel Una casa vacia won three prestigious awards in Chile in 1996.

UL: Four Mapuche Poets

Co-published with Americas Society, these two titles feature poetry by contemporary Peruvian and Chilean poets who write in Quechua and Mapudunôn, respectively. Each book focuses on one language group and is published in trilingual format (the indigenous language, Spanish, and English). The poems in each volume were selected, introduced, and translated by specialists in the field of Latin American/indigenous literature.

The poetry in Indigenous Languages series offers readers a rare opportunity to sample contemporary poetry from vital cultures in Latin America whose literary expression remains largely unknown in the US.

Yo-Yo Boing!

"Written in a mesh and flow of Spanish and English, Yo-Yo Boing! by Giannina Braschi is a symphony of dramatic dialogues; a poetâs personal testimony to being alive in a global metropolis at the turn of the 21st century."
--Feminist Bookstore News

"Dispensing with a traditional story line, [Yo-Yo Boing!] takes the form of an exhuberant discussion involving an indeterminate number of speakers....[T]hese interlocutors are indicated only by a dash, not by name, while they yo-yo between languages and from subject to subject:writers, films, sex, childhood, family and, ultimately, Puerto Rican artistic expression in New York City....Braschiâs melange of prose and poetry, English and Spanish, is admirable for its energy, its experimental format and its insistence on Spanglish as a literary language."
--Publisher's Weekly

"A fractious comic novel by Braschi, a highly praised Puerto Rican-born poet, dramatizes cultural strife between New York City's American and Latin American populations in a linguistic hybrid of English mixed with untranslated Spanish....[I]t bristles with lively...literary conversation [and] in-your-face assertion of the vitality of Latino culture..."
--Kirkus Reviews