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Latin American Bibliography #2
2007-06-15 16:09:00
Paradiso by José Lezama Lima First published in Cuba in 1966, where its the publication caused huge controversy. Paradiso was hailed as a masterpiece of contemporary literature. Paradiso is the coming-of-age story of Jose Cemi at the turn of the century Cuba. José Lezama Lima born in Havana, Cuba, on December 19, 1910, is a major Latin-American literary figure. ...
Latin  Latin American 

Latin American Bibliography #1
2007-06-15 15:33:00
Los Arrieros del Agua by Carlos Navarrete. His 1985 novel Los Arrieros del Agua (The Water Carriers) tells the story of Reinaldo, a men with a thousand skills, cruising the plateau that between Chiapas with Guatemala. This novel is often compared to Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo. Carlos Navarrete was born in January 29, 1931 in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, and lives in Mexico since 1952. He was ...
Latin  Latin American 

Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives
2007-06-11 13:19:00
Three new reviews of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. By Adrian Jiménez, Roberto Bolaño’s first full-length novel, The Savage Detectives, begins with the invitation to join a dying group of Mexican poets. First published in Spanish in 1998, the alluring novel has finally been published in English, translated by Natasha Wimmer. Bolaño, who died in 2003 in Spain at the age of fifty, is only ...
Savage 

What's waiting to be translated. Rebecca Milzoff ...
2007-06-11 13:08:00
What's waiting to be translated. Rebecca Milzoff has some suggestions. Special attention to Mexican Daniel Sada’s Porque Parece Mentira la Verdad Nunca Se Sabe, Argentine Marcelo Cohen’s El Fin de lo Mismo and Cuban and Ena Lucía Portela’s Cien Botellas en una Pared. Please visit SPLALit aStore Latin American ...
Translated 

Alberto Manguel - Reading Diary: A Year of Favourite Books
2007-06-11 13:03:00
Jane Sullivan reviews Alberto Manguel's Reading Diary. The essayist and novelist Alberto Manguel is one of those increasingly rare beings who live their lives steeped in books. What is even rarer is that he has the gift of passing on his enthusiasm. A few years ago, he re-read a few of his favourite books and was struck by the way their worlds of the past seemed to reflect the "dismal chaos" of ...
Books  Diary  Favourite 

Edmundo Paz Soldán - Interview
2007-06-06 12:52:00
Los Tiempos interviews Bolivian writer Edmundo Paz Soldán on his new novel Palacio Quemado. Palacio Quemado puede no ser lo que verdaderamente ocurrió en el gobierno de Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, pero es ese el reto, el que al leer la novela uno pueda decir esto pudo haber sido así. Please visit SPLALit aStore Bolivian ...
Interview 

Alejandro Zambra - Interview
2007-06-06 12:31:00
Página/12 interviews Alejandro Zambra, one of the Bogotá 39 writers, about Bonsái, his first novel. Quería escribir un libro que se llamara así porque tenía esa imagen en la cabeza, la de un hombre que se encierra en un cuarto a cuidar un bonsái y se enajena; prefiere cuidar un bonsái a escribir, prefiere cuidar un bonsái a vivir ...
Alejandro  Interview 

Roberto Bolaño - El Secreto del Mal and La Universidad Desconocida
2007-06-06 12:03:00
Rodrigo Fresán reviews Roberto Bolaño's El secreto del mal and La Universidad Desconocida. “La literatura se parece mucho a la pelea de los samuráis, pero un samurái no pelea contra otro samurái: pelea contra un monstruo. Generalmente sabe, además, que va a ser derrotado. Tener el valor, sabiendo previamente que vas a ser derrotado, y salir a pelear: eso es la literatura”, definió Roberto Bolaño ...
Mal  Secreto 

Mario Vargas Llosa - The Temptation of the Impossible
2007-06-05 11:18:00
Diane Scharper reviews Mario Vargas Llosa's essay book The Temptation of the Impossible. Known to Americans primarily as the author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables, Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is considered France's greatest poet and one of its greatest prose writers. Hugo's stature, according to The Temptation of the Impossible by Mario Vargas Llosa, is due mainly to the impact of ...
Impossible  Llosa  Mario Vargas Llosa  Temptation  Vargas 

Mayra Montero - Dancing to 'Almendra'
2007-06-04 15:29:00
Lois D. Atwood reviews Cecilia Samartin's Broken Paradise and Mayra Montero's Dancing to 'Almendra'. In these two novels, life in the tropical paradise of Cuba has fallen apart under either totalitarian or communist rule. Dancing to ‘Almendra’ is set in Batista’s Havana, where gangsters run all the casinos; Broken Paradise on the idyllic island whose society Castro is restructuring. Dancing . . ...
Dancing  Montero 

Mario Vargas Llosa - Touchstones: Essays in Literature, Art and Politics
2007-06-01 12:12:00
Ian Thomson reviews Mario Vargas Llosa's Touchstones: Essays in Literature, Art and Politics. With this marvellous new collection of essays, Touchstones, Vargas Llosa takes his place alongside the Mexican Carlos Fuentes and the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez as a Latin with a civic conscience. The book gathers an impressive array of articles on Latin American politics, European writers and ...
Art  Essays  Literature  Llosa  Mario Vargas Llosa  Politics  Vargas 

Tomás Eloy Martínez tells the story of the public...
2007-05-30 13:12:00
Tomás Eloy Martínez tells the story of the publication of Gabriel García Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude. Agosto de 1967 fue el mes que cambió la vida de Gabriel García Márquez. Había cumplido 40 años el 6 de marzo de ese año, y en septiembre anterior había puesto punto final a Cien años de soledad, su novela de gloria. Todavía no tenía editor. Lo más probable era que terminara ...
Story 

Reading Others
2007-05-29 12:52:00
Reading impressions on Alberto Manguel's A Reading Diary at Entertaining Research. A book certainly worth checking out; you might even buy yourself a copy, hunt down the books that Manguel notes in the diary, read them, and compare your reactions with that of his (provided you have enough time and inclination). Please ...

Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta, author of the nov...
2007-05-28 12:42:00
Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta, author of the novels El cartero de Pablo Neruda (The Postman), La boda del poeta (The Poet’s Wedding) and La chica de trombon (The Girl with the Trobone), just presented a new book Borges y otras historias de amor in Rome. Please visit SPLALit aStore Chilean Literature ...
Author 

Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives
2007-05-25 12:32:00
Andrew Riemer reviews Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. I spent a good bit of time googling the names of some of the hundreds of Latin American poets who snake their way through this preposterous but strangely appealing novel. Setting aside one or two world-famous figures like Octavio Paz, the results were almost always zilch - or links to various sites concerning Bolano's book. I began to ...
Savage 

Roberto Bolaño - Last Evenings on Earth
2007-05-24 10:41:00
Miranda France reviews Roberto Bolaño's Last Evenings on Earth. Visiting Chile in the mid-1990s, I was amazed by the ubiquity of poets. They loitered on the streets, wearing tweed jackets and caps in imitation of their icon, Pablo Neruda, and for a few coins they would sell you a poem, or write one to order. Poets also abound in the fiction of the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, but here they are ...
Earth 

Alejandro Dolina - Crónicas del Ángel Gris
2007-05-21 15:38:00
A review of Alejandro Dolina's Crónicas del Ángel Gris ("Chronicles of the Gray Angel"). “Crónicas del Ángel Gris” es el primer libro que escribió “El negro” Dolina. A mi modo de ver es uno de los grandes libros argentinos del siglo XX que une popularidad con calidad y entretenimiento. No solo ha vendido una gran cantidad de ejemplares, lo que lo ha convertido en un best-seller sino que ha ...
Alejandro 

Javier Cercas - The Speed of Light
2007-05-21 12:24:00
Mauro Javier Cardenas reviews Javier Cercas' The Speed of Light. In Javier Cercas' previous novel, the affecting and widely honored "Soldiers of Salamis," a narrator named Javier Cercas chronicles his attempt to write a true story about a small episode in the Spanish Civil War. Through the recollections of an ensemble of Spaniards, Cercas returns to this episode often, wondering why a soldier of ...
Javier 

Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives
2007-05-21 12:22:00
Phil Brown reviews Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. There's a real Beat Generation feel to this picaresque novel with its myriad weird and colourful characters, its agitated restlessness, its lack of restraint and the inherent idea that literature constitutes a sort of existentialist political ideology. For Bolano poetry is the purest, most political literary form and his narrative is ...
Savage 

Ser sincero es decir lo que piensas. La vida sería...
2007-05-18 13:18:00
Ser sincero es decir lo que piensas. La vida sería invivible si uno dijera siempre lo que piensa. Ser veraz significa que lo que digas sea verdad. Aquí interviene el silencio, lo que uno calla para hacer la vida vivible. An interview with Spanish author Manuel Vicent. Please visit SPLALit aStore Spanish Literature ...

An interview from Mexican newspaper Vanguardia wit...
2007-05-18 12:52:00
An interview from Mexican newspaper Vanguardia with Mexican journalist and author Elena Poniatowska, who completes 75 years tomorrow. Please visit SPLALit aStore Mexican Literature ...
Interview  Newspaper 

Colombian writers Gabriel García Márquez and Santi...
2007-05-18 12:27:00
Colombian writers Gabriel García Márquez and Santiago Gamboa will be homaged today in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo within the "Feira do Livro do Colégio Miguel de Cervantes" (Miguel de Cervantes School Book Fair). Please visit SPLALit aStore Colombian Literature ...
Colombian  Gabriel  Writers 

Daniel Alarcón - Lost City Radio
2007-05-18 11:18:00
Boyd Tonkin reviews Daniel Alarcón's Lost City Radio. This is a formidably accomplished first novel. Alarcón's nameless country feels as intensely real as the riotous flora of its rainforests or the reeking slums of its cities. Yet its location beyond any map allows him to synthesise the ordeals of many places into a fable of loss and longing that decodes the "indecipherable text" of every murky ...
City  Radio 

Bogota39
2007-04-27 12:37:00
Bogotá, this year's World Book Capital, and the Hay Festival presented a list of the new generation of Latin American Novelists. This selection was made by a jury composed three Colombian novelists Piedad Bonnet, Oscar Collazos y Héctor Abad Faciolince, from the suggestions made by readers, editors and literary agents in the Hay Festival web site. Here's the Bogotá39 list of 39 Latin American ...