“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 an...

Golems and dybbuks and Nazis, oh my! Jacques Fux, Brazil’s answer to Philip Roth, offers a remarkably original and entertaining work of autofiction that is essential reading for those interested in the Jewish experience in Latin America.Winner of Brazil’s prestigious São Paulo Prize, Jacques Fux’s brilliant literary debut novel unveils an outrageously entertaining Portrait of the Artist as a Young Schlemiel. Antitherapies relates the life journey of a youn...

A semi-autobiographical portrait of the original Yentl and "an important contribution to the vastly neglected genre of feminist Yiddish literature" ( Booklist).In this autobiographical novel—originally published in Yiddish as Der Sheydim Tanz in 1936—Esther Kreitman lovingly depicts a world replete with rabbis, yeshiva students, beggars, farmers, gangsters, seamstresses, and socialists as seen through the eyes of the girl who served as Isaac Bashe...

A momentous and diverse anthology of the influences and inspirations of Yiddish voices in America—radical, dangerous, and seductive, but also sweet, generous, and full of life—edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert.Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are based on Holocaust survivors? And how ha...

An inspired and urgent prose retelling of the Maya myth of creation by acclaimed Latin American author and scholar Ilan Stavans, gorgeously illustrated by Salvadoran folk artist Gabriela Larios and introduced by renowned author, diplomat, and environmental activist Homero Aridjis.The archetypal creation story of Latin America, the Popol Vuh began as a Maya oral tradition millennia ago. In the mid-sixteenth century, as indigenous cultures across the contine...

Part of the Jewish Encounter seriesHere is the stirring story of how Hebrew was rescued from the fate of a dead language to become the living tongue of a modern nation. Ilan Stavans’s quest begins with a dream featuring a beautiful woman speaking an unknown language. When the language turns out to be Hebrew, a friend diagnoses “language withdrawal,” and Stavans sets out in search of his own forgotten Hebrew as well as the man who helped revive the language at the e...

Don Quixote of La Mancha has been called the most popular book in history after the Bible and the first modern novel. One might even say that this tragi-comic work is far more than a novel: It is a manual for life, with lessons on how to love, dream, age, and be a friend. It encourages engagement with the essential questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is my responsibility toward others? What is the meaning of being mortal? Furthermore, it is a book about books, about the act—and art—of...

As the heyday of the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s to early 70s fades further into history and as more and more of its important figures pass on so too does knowledge of its significance. Thus Chicano Movement For Beginners is an important attempt to stave off historical amnesia. It seeks to shed light on the multifaceted civil rights struggle known as "El Movimiento" that galvanized the Mexican American community from laborers to student activists giving them not only a political voi...

Ostensibly a biography of the gaucho barbarian Juan Facundo Quiroga, Facundo is also a complex, passionate work of history, sociology, and political commentary, and Latin America's most important essay of the nineteenth century. It 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...

The culmination of New York Times bestselling author Ilan Stavans’s distinguished career as a scholar and translator, Fictional Translations pushes the boundaries of poetry. This extraordinarily original volume includes apocryphal poems by Petrarch, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Anna Akhmatova, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Celan, Fernando Pessoa, Jorge Luis Borges, Eugenio Montale, Pablo Neruda, Yehuda Amichai, and scores of others in their original languages, as well as English ...

Hailed as the greatest novel of the Mexican Revolution,The Underdogsrecounts the story of an illiterate but charismatic Indian peasant farmer’s part in the rebellion against Porfirio Díaz, and his subsequent loss of belief in the cause when the revolutionary alliance becomes factionalized. Azuela’s masterpiece is a timeless, authentic portrayal of peasant life, revolutionary zeal, and political disillusionment.

The New World story of the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca in his own wordsThis riveting true story is the first major narrative detailing the exploration of North America by Spanish conquistadors (1528-1536). The author, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, was a fortune-seeking Spanish nobleman and the treasurer of an expedition sent to claim for Spain a vast area of today's southern United States. In simple, straightforward prose, Cabeza de Vaca chronicl...