When Octavio Paz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990, it was in recognition of the fact that for many years he had been the pre-eminent poet in the Spanish speaking world. His work takes the traditions of Mexican poetry as well as French and Spanish influences, and adds what he himself read of his contemporaries in Mexico, Britain and France, in particular, the Surrealists. But Paz was also a great polemicist and essayist, described by V. S. Naipaul as ‘a kind of Mexican George Orwe...

Nick Caistor has lived for several years in Buenos Aires as well as visiting it often over the past three decades. He has reported on Argentina for the BBC and is a translator as well as the author of several books on Latin America. The architect Le Corbusier once called Buenos Aires the capital of an imaginary empire . From its foundation in the sixteenth century, Argentina's main city has been a place of the imagination as well as the scene of many striking historical events. From foreig...

The Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro is one of the most written-about men in the world today. Most approaches to his life are either glowing hagiographies, or critical rants in which he is portrayed as a dictator who has kept the island of Cuba under his heel. By contrast, Nick Caistor brings together personal details and a discussion of the ideas driving Castro throughout his life; his ultimate aim is to give readers the opportunity to judge for themselves whether or not, as Castro himsel...

Mexico City has always been a seat of empire. In its grandiose pretentions and sheer swagger, it gives the impression of power exercised over great distances. And yet this power has frequently been contested, lending the city a tough, battle-hardened look. At the same time, life in the Mexican capital can be carefree and intoxicating, and it continues to offer any visitor not only glimpses of past grandeur, but a fascinating wealth of the culture of Mexico today. This book explores how the...

"A wise, lonely novel . . . [and an] honest reflection of exile."— The New YorkerIn the tradition of Roberto Bolaño's Savage Detectives, a celebrated classic and heart-wrenching story of a family torn apart by the forces of history, by one of Latin America's most celebrated writersThe late Mario Benedetti's work was often ranked with "such esteemed Latin American writers as Gabriel García Márquez, C...

Julián Ríos's The House of Ulysses is at once a serious literary excavation and a lecture on the great, often imposing, cornerstone of world literature: James Joyce's Ulysses**.**Some say every book is born out of an earlier book. Just as James Joyce's novel unraveled Homer scene by scene, Julián Ríos's The House of Ulysses returns the favor, giving us the story of several bickering chara...

The powerful true-life story of a Brazilian boy who could have been a fisherman but instead became the biggest professional killer known to the world--soon to be a major motion picture.Julio Santana as seen through the eyes of acclaimed investigative reporter Klester Cavalcanti is not a monster--he is a loyal son, a family man, a devout Christian who is tormented by his conscience with every shot. But in a cruel and lawless area of Brazil, where every life has its ...

If I close my eyes now, I can still feel her blood on my fingers. If only I had closed my eyes then, or kept my mouth shut, not told anyone about our discovery by the swimming hole, we could have gone back to dreaming about spaceships.A horrifying discovery by two young boys while playing in a mango plantation marks the end of their childhood. As they finally open their eyes to the adult world, they see a place where storybook heroes don't exist but villains and lies do ...

In Winter Quarters two performers past their prime have come to the provincial town of Colonia Vela, the setting of A Funny Dirty Little War, to open a local festival. Strangers to each other, this worn-out boxer and has-been tango singer become loyal friends -- even unto death.The boxer has been selected to fight the local hero, the army's champ who has national ambitions. It soon becomes clear that the town vigilantes and military toughs don't mean for any troph...

In the two decades since Sergio Ramírez left active politics as a Sandinista leader of one of the great leftist revolutions of the Americas, his output as a writer and the appreciation of his literary achievement have only grown larger, culminating in his winning the Cervantes Prize, the highest literary accolade for a writer in the Hispanic world.These stories dating from early in his writing career and also marking his return to literature after a gap of some years in active poli...

"This fierce little novel tells the story of a political confrontation in a remote village in Argentina. Obscure differences between Peronist supporters and leaders escalate in a crescendo of violence to the final massacre.The characters, who with each event evolve from the comic and grotesque to the tragic, are observed by the author with a cool, dispassionate gaze, though in end we are left with a feeling of bitter pity.This is because, in spite of all their moral and men...

New York, 1923, the Argentine Luis Angel Firpo, called the Wild Bull of the Pampas, knocks out of the ring the American Jack Dempsey, heavyweight champion of the world. In Buenos Aires, the match is transmitted on the radio and Firpo proclaimed world champion. However, the referee does not count the time outside the ring. Dempsey comes back and knocks the challenger out. The Wild Bull of the Pampas will have been world champion for only 17 seconds. Trelew, Patagonia, 1973: to celebrate the...