Latin American Literature

Hailed in his lifetime as one of Latin America’s greatest writers, Machado de Assis (1839-1908) was a storyteller known for his wholly innovative narrative techniques and uncanny talent for unraveling the social and political milieu of nineteenth-century Brazil. These signature traits are on full display in Quincas Borba, a novel that sees Machado satirize a rapidly changing Rio de Janeiro. Originally published in 1891, the story begins with the death of its titular character, a mad philosopher infamous for spouting pessimistic theories of “Humanitism”.

Pornind de la mottoul tolstoian că „Toate familiile fericite seamănă una cu alta, fiecare familie nefericită este nefericită în felul ei", facem cunoștință rând pe rând cu personaje dintre cele mai pestrițe. O familie nu are nimic de împărțit în afară de singurătate, o mamă vorbește cu ucigașul propriei fiice, o pereche improbabilă își deapănă tinerețea, trei femei se întâlnesc la coșciugul tatălui lor. Toate aceste tablouri și multe altele sunt însoțite de corul mitic care apare între povestiri ca să tragă concluzii dintre cele mai neașteptate și mai crude.

El autor de Tinta Roja y Sobredosis vuelve a Grupo Planeta. Sobredosis es un libro intenso. Su publicación amplió los horizontes de la literatura chilena y esta no volvió a ser la misma. El lenguaje utilizado y las situaciones extremas lo transformaron en un clásico. La pólemica crítica de los primeros años de la democracia lo volvió un objeto de culto. En este conjunto de cuentos, Fuguet escarba en lo más profundo de la sociedad.

Solitario Cisneros thought his life was over long ago. He lost his wife, his family, even his country in the late 1870s when the Rio Grande shifted course, stranding the Mexican town of Olvido on the Texas side of the border. He’d made his brooding peace with retiring his gun and badge, hiding out on his ranch, and communing with horses and ghosts.

Two Colombian expats meet as strangers on the rainy streets of New York City, both burdened with traumatic pasts. In Cuba, a woman discovers her deceased brother’s bones have been stolen, and the love of her life returns from Ecuador for a one-night visit. A cash-strapped couple hustles in Miami, to life-altering ends.

Gustavo Arellano has compiled the best questions about Mexican Americans from readers of his ¡Ask a Mexican!column in California's OC Weekly and uses them to explore the clichés of lowriders, busboys, and housekeepers; drunks and scoundrels; heroes and celebrities; and most important, millions upon millions of law-abiding, patriotic American citizens and their illegal-immigrant cousins who represent some $600 billion in economic power.

"Mansfield Park" is the third novel by Jane Austen, published in 1814. The protagonist of the novel, Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy uncle and aunt Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, as her own parents do not have enough money to support their many children. At Mansfield Park, Fanny grows up with her four older cousins, Tom, Edmund, Maria, and Julia, but is always treated as an unwanted poor relation. Only Edmund shows real kindness and the two develop a friendship that grows as the years progress.

Ramón López nació en la frontera entre los Estados Unidos y México, pero está decidido a salir y abrazar el sueño americano, y no está seguro si su complicada familia es una ayuda o un obstáculo. Hijo de inmigrantes, a medida que Ramón crece, su admiración por su padre emprendedor se agria al ver cómo sus sueños de éxito se marchitan. Su madre se encuentra constantemente preocupada por su hermano menor, quien lucha contra una discapacidad intelectual.

Publicada hace más de veinte años, Estokolmo no pierde su solidez original. La historia narra el secuestro en Montevideo, de una joven adinerada, por Marcelo, Seba y el Chole. Tres jóvenes de distintos orígenes sociales, a los que los une el mundo de la marginalidad. Las alusiones a la música de Charlie García y Los Redondos, así como al fútbol, actúan como una especie de banda sonora dentro de una breve y poderosa historia que también secuestrará al lector desde sus primeras líneas. Estokolmo, con esta edición, se publica por primera vez en Estados Unidos.

When hunter Allan Quatermain invited his old friends over to shoot grouse they started relating stories and anecdotes of their time in Africa. Allan draws his friends in with a tale encompassing a beautiful African warrior princess, the hand of a murdered babe, a treasure and a war. FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of H. Rider Haggard’s tale of action and adventure in darkest Africa.

David has a mind that never stops running. He reads Dante and Moby Dick, he sinks into Hemingway and battles with Milton. But on Florida’s Gulf Coast, one can slip into deep water unconsciously; at the age of fourteen, David runs away from home to pursue a girl and, on his journey, tries crack cocaine for the first time. He’s hooked instantly. Over the course of the next decade, he fights his way out of jail and rehab, trying to make sense of the world around him—a sunken world where faith in anything is a privilege.

En la cárcel de Santiago de Compostela, en el verano de 1936, un pintor dibuja el Pórtico de la Gloria con un lápiz de carpintero. Los rostros de los profetas y de los ancianos de la Orquesta del Apocalipsis son los de sus compañeros republicanos de presidio. Un guardián, su futuro asesino, lo observa fascinado... La historia de ese lápiz, conductor de memorias, portador de almas, continuará hasta nuestros días.

El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelo's bodies. The mystery of Rothko's refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrator's husband receives chemotherapy. Alfred de Dreux visits Gericault's workshop; Gustave Courbet's devilish seascapes incite viewers "to have sex, or to eat an apple"; Picasso organizes a cruel banquet in Rousseau's honor.... All of these fascinating episodes in art history interact with the narrator's life in Buenos Aires.

En el Uruguay de 1977, el gobierno militar oprime a los disidentes con una fuerza brutal. En este ambiente opresivo donde los derechos personales están suspendidos, la homosexualidad es una transgresión peligrosa que debe ser castigada. Aun así, Romina, Flaca, Anita “La Venus”, Paz, y Malena - cinco cantoras - se encuentran milagrosamente en Cabo Polonio, un lugar aislado que reclaman como su santuario secreto. Y este despertar se contrapone al telón de fondo político del golpe de estado, la represión y las “desapariciones".

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) was the greatest writer ever to come from Brazil and one of the masters of nineteenth-century fiction. Susan Sontag calls him "the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America", surpassing even Borges. Harold Bloom says that Machado is "the supreme black literary artist to date". And Allen Ginsburg calls him "another Kafka". And The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas is his masterpiece, a dazzling, tragic, and profound novel that belongs next to the greatest works of his contemporaries Melville and Dostoevsky.

Viața lui Dionisio Pinzón e guvernată de hazardul care-l aruncă ba în brațele sărăciei și disperării, ba într-ale abundenței și fericirii: din crainic al satului și muritor de foame, devine cocoșar de succes și jucător de cărți. Din târg în târg, îl însoțește, fără voia ei, La Caponera, frumoasa cântăreață, cu vocea și melodiile ei vrăjite. Sărbătorile și veselia satelor mexicane, libertatea și puterea magnetică a femeilor, dar și corupția și lăcomia, toate acestea se află în Cocoșul de aur.

When Charlotte McKay wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there, all she wants is to go back to the perfect London flat she shares with her husband, and the impressive career she’s worked so hard to build. But something’s not right. Her husband David is at her bedside - but so is a three-year-old girl, and she’s calling Charlotte "Mummy"....

Just before the dawn of the new millennium, a curator at a New Jersey museum of natural history receives an unusual invitation from a celebrated fashion designer. She shares the curator’s fascination with the hidden forms of the animal kingdom - with camouflage and subterfuge - and she proposes that they collaborate on an exhibition, the form of which itself remains largely obscure, even as they enter into a strange relationship marked by evasion and elision.

At the age of seventy, after a gap of twenty years, Jorge Luis Borges returned to writing short stories. In Brodie’s Report, he returned also to the style of his earlier years with its brutal realism, nightmares, and bloodshed. Many of these stories, including “Unworthy” and “The Other Duel,” are set in the macho Argentinean underworld, and even the rivalries between 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, among the best Borges ever wrote.

Una novela emocionante, tremendamente humana y real, que describe las peripecias de un grupo de niños en un barco hasta su llegada a México. La ayuda del presidente General Cárdenas del Río a los niños republicanos. Recuérdame puede parecer una novela de perdedores que tuvieron que dejarlo todo para huir, pero es ante todo un homenaje a los exiliados de todas las guerras y aquellos que han perdido su patria por la barbarie de la guerra.