Book picks similar to
Desolation of the Chimera by Luis Cernuda


poetry
classics
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less-than-1-000-reviews

The Iliac Crest


Cristina Rivera Garza - 2002
    The increasingly frantic protagonist fails to defend his supposed masculinity and eventually finds himself in a sanatorium. A Gothic tale of destabilized male-female binaries and subverted literary tropes, this is the book's first English publication.

Crown Noble


Bianca Phipps - 2020
    Phipps ruminates on the ways we are shaped as humans. Is it nature or nurture? Is it fate or a happen chance? What teaches us to love our generational inheritance, no matter how harmful? Phipps takes us to the most intimate parts of family matters in hopes of underantdatning conflict as a means of overcoming.

The Xenophobe's Guide to the Spanish


Drew Launay - 1995
    Frank, irreverent, funny--almost guaranteed to cure Xenophobia.

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies


Bartolomé de las Casas
    An early traveller to the Americas who sailed on one of Columbus's voyages, Las Casas was so horrified by the wholesale massacre he witnessed that he dedicated his life to protecting the Indian community. He wrote A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1542, a shocking catalogue of mass slaughter, torture and slavery, which showed that the evangelizing vision of Columbus had descended under later conquistadors into genocide. Dedicated to Philip II to alert the Castilian Crown to these atrocities and demand that the Indians be entitled to the basic rights of humankind, this passionate work of documentary vividness outraged Europe and contributed to the idea of the Spanish 'Black Legend' that would last for centuries.

The Thief's Journal


Jean Genet - 1949
    Writing in the intensely lyrical prose style that is his trademark, the man, Jean Cocteau, dubbed France's "Black Prince of Letters" here reconstructs his early adult years - time he spent as a petty criminal and vagabond, traveling through Spain and Antwerp, occasionally border hopping across to the rest of Europe, always trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities.

The Long Voyage


Jorge Semprún - 1963
    During the seemingly endless journey, he has conversations that range from his childhood to speculations about the death camps. When at last the fantastic, Wagnerian gates to Buchenwald come into sight, the young Spaniard is left alone to face the camp.

Double Shadow: Poems


Carl Phillips - 2011
    Spare, haunted, and haunting, yet not without hope, Double Shadow argues for life as a wilderness through which there’s only the questing forward—with no regrets and no looking back.

White Storm: The Story of Real Madrid


Phil Ball - 2002
    They include twenty-nine league titles, nine European Cups, seventeen Spanish Cups, two UEFA Cups and three World Club Championship titles.The story of Real Madrid is, however, much more than the mere sum of its achievements. The club has always attracted the biggest names in the game - the type of player more recently referred to by Los Merengues as 'galáctico'. And for every Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo or Beckham, there is a legend from the past.White Storm charts the history of the club from its foundations to the golden period of Di Stéfano and Puskas, through the 'hippy years' to the modern embodiment of Madridismo - Raúl. It ends with an analysis of the Beckham impact, the disintegration of the Florentino Pérez regime and a look at what the future might hold for the world's most famous club.

Rumi, Day by Day


Maryam Mafi - 2014
    These poems have been selected on the basis of the poignancy of their message and their relevance to contemporary life.This is timeless wisdom translated for modern readers. It is a guide for meditation and a light switch that you can turn on to make your daily connection with spirit. Use these words as tools to better your life each day, to draw continued guidance, inspiration and spiritual wealth.

Vertical Poetry: Recent Poems


Roberto Juarroz - 1974
    Winner of the Colorado Book Award for Translation upon its release, this book brings to English-speaking audiences new work by this brilliant Argentine poet of whom Octavio Paz says, "Each of Juarroz's poems is a surprising verbal crystallization: language reduced to a drop of light." In Juarroz's work we encounter the vertical depths of language, the inner wells.

Martín Fierro


José Hernández - 1872
    An adaptation of the ballad singing culture of the gaucho minority that saw its way of life threatened by social and political changes of the 19th century.

The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto


Mario Vargas Llosa - 1997
    The pair separated following a sexual encounter between Lucrecia and Alfonso, Rigoberto's son. To compensate for her absence, Rigoberto fills his notebooks with memories, fantasies and unsent letters. Meanwhile, Alfonso visits Lucrecia, determined to win her love.In The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, Mario Vargas Llosa keeps the reader guessing which episodes are real and which issue from Rigoberto's imagination. The novel, a wonderful mix of reality and fantasy, is sexy, funny, disquieting, and unfailingly compelling.If you enjoyed The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, you might also like Mario Vargas Llosa's In Praise of the Stepmother.

My Last Sigh


Luis Buñuel - 1982
    This long out-of-paint autobiography provides insight into the genesis of Bunuel's films and conveys his frank opinions on dwarves, Catholicism, the Marquis de Sade, food, and smoking, not to mention his recipe for a good dry martini!

Cronopios and Famas


Julio Cortázar - 1962
    "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator's family, including the lodging of a tiger-just one tiger- "for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity." Finally, the "Cronopios and Famas" section delightfully characterizes, in the words of Carlos Fuentes, "those enemies of pomposity, academic rigor mortis and cardboard celebrity-a band of literary Marx Brothers."

Cervantes Street


Jaime Manrique - 2012
    Manrique's pen, the world of renaissance Spain and the Mediterranean is made vivid, its surface cracking with sudden violence and cruelty...This novel can be read as a generous salute across the centuries from one writer to another, as a sympathetic homage and recommendation...Cervantes Street brings to life the real world behind the fantastic exploits of the knight of La Mancha. The comic mishaps are funnier for being based in fact. The romantic adventures are more affecting. Cervantes Street has sent me back to Don Quixote.-- The Wall Street Journal "Manrique adopts a florid, epic style for his tale of 16th-century Spain, one with the quality of a tale told by a troubadour rather than written on the page. He ably captures the human qualities of the legendary writer, as well as his swashbuckling."-- Publishers Weekly "Manrique has penned a well-written, well-researched, fast-paced narrative ... An entertaining book ... and a superb retlling of Cervantes's life."-- Library Journal "Cervantes Street is historical fiction at its best. Compact and intense... The characters are wonderfully draw, the environments are detailed and colorful and the feeling is genuine... a gripping, adventuresome novel with profound insight into the ways in which we choose our destiny."-- New York Journal of Books “The novel is exciting, paced well, interesting and with a literary mystery to boot.”-- Seattle Post-Intelligencer "Hold onto your hats because Manrique has crafted a brilliant pastiche... This fun, diverting, swift odyssey into Cervantes' travels... puts tall tales where they belong, in capable fiction... Cervantes Street should be in your hands."--La Bloga"A sprawling vivacious big-hearted novel. Manrique is fantastically talented and this is perhaps his masterpiece."--Junot DíazThe actual facts of Miguel de Cervantes's life seem to be snatched from an epic tale: an impoverished and talented young poet nearly kills a man in a duel and is forced into exile; later, he distinguishes himself in battle and is severely wounded, losing the use of his left hand; on his way back to Spain his ship is captured by pirates and he is sold into slavery in Algiers; after prolonged imprisonment and failed escape attempts, he makes his way back home, eventually settling in a remote village in La Mancha to create his masterpiece, the first modern novel in Western literature: Don Quixote.Taking the bare bones of Cervantes' life, Jaime Manrique has accomplished a singular feat: an engaging and highly accessible take on a brilliant, enigmatic man and his epoch. This is an archetypal tale of rivalry and revenge—featuring Cervantes's antagonistic relationship with the man who would go on to write his own sequel to Don Quixote—that is sure to garner comparisons to Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, and, with its extraordinary recreation of the life and times of Cervantes, to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.Jaime Manrique is a novelist, essayist, and poet. His critically acclaimed novels include Latin Moon in Manhattan and Our Lives Are the Rivers. He is a Distinguished Lecturer in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at the City College of New York.