Signs Preceding the End of the World


Yuri Herrera - 2009
    Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there’s no going back.Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages – one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.

Old Man on a Bike


Simon Gandolfi - 2008
    And why not?His wife may have plenty of reasons why not, but used to the intrepid septuagenarian's determination to complete any plan he comes up with, she shrugs her shoulders and waves him goodbye.At 73 years old, Simon Gandolfi sets off from Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico to embark on a five and a half month journey culminating at 'the end of the world', Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego. For Simon this is a journey of discovery. Leaving behind the safety and sanctuary of friends and family, he is truly alone but along the way he meets and talks with rich and poor, old and young, officials and professionals, agricultural and industrial workers. This expertly written travelogue reveals not only the stories of those he meets, and his own, but also that of Latin America, its attitudes to itself, to the USA and the UK in the aftermath of the Iraq war and the realities of the poverty and endemic corruption throughout much of this continent.But whilst guide books often warn of thieves, corrupt police and border officials, Gandolfi writes of the incredible kindness and generosity he encounters, of hope and joy, understanding and new friendships, and ultimately, an old man's refusal to surrender to his years.'The journey begins tomorrow at 8 a.m with a flight from the UK to Boston. I fly Aer Lingus and have bought and will wear a green shirt and a Clancy Brothers Arran sweater in hope of an upgrade. I will be away from home for many months and I have a long long way to ride. Am I nervous? Yes. Scared? A little.'Simon Gandolfi, 18 April 2006Outrageously irresponsible and undeniably liberating, Gandolfi's travels will fire the imaginations of every traveller, young or old.

All My Goodbyes


Mariana Dimópulos - 2010
    It is translated from the Spanish by Australian translator Alice Whitmore All My Goodbyes is a novel told in overlapping vignettes, which follow the travels of a young Argentinian woman across Europe (Malaga, Madrid, Heidelberg, Berlin) and back to Argentina (Buenos Aires, Patagonia) as she flees from situation to situation, job to job, and relationship to relationship. Within the complexity of the narrator's situation, a backstory emerges about a brutal murder in Patagonia which she may or may not be implicated in, but whether this is the cause of her flight is never entirely clear - she is driven as much by psychological concerns, her relationship with her father, uncertainty about her identity and purpose in life.The novella is, as the title suggests, a catalogue of goodbyes, the result of a decade-long cycle of self-inflicted alienation which the narrator, despite herself, seems fated to perpetuate. In its structure it recalls the rich Argentinian tradition of Cortazar and Borges; its language is by turns stark and elaborate, brutal in its economy and yet poetic in its imagery.

The Arrow Collector


Cristian Perfumo - 2018
    It’s the case of a lifetime for brilliant and headstrong forensic detective Laura Badía. The crime is brutal and baffling. The victim is Julio Ortega, a local heartthrob and an old flame of Laura’s. The apparent motive is the theft of a collection of ancient and mysterious iridescent arrowheads that Ortega had recently acquired. Carved nearly six thousand years ago out of Amazon opal, they are now missing from Ortega’s home, vanishing once again into legend.With the help of a Buenos Aires archeologist, Laura begins to assemble the pieces of a deadly puzzle. It starts in Puerto Deseado with the secrets of Ortega’s friends, enemies, and lovers. Where it leads is the panoramic reach of the Perito Moreno Glacier and far beyond, to the most remote corners of Patagonia. Can they uncover the dark history of the most infamous lithic art collection in the world? Generations have killed and died trying to solve its mystery, and now Laura will risk her career, her life—and her own secrets—to be the one to do it.

Comedy of Marriage and Other Tales


Guy de Maupassant - 2004
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories


Mariana Enríquez - 2009
     Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre: populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her next collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken -- fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history -- with unsettling urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can't let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death by a question of morality they fail to answer correctly.Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with resounding tenderness towards those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, this new collection from one of Argentina's most exciting writers finds Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.

A Little Woman


Franz Kafka - 1924
    It was first published in the Easter supplement of Prager Tagblatt on 20 April 1924. During his final illness Kafka corrected the proofs of the story for the inclusion into collection A Hunger Artist (Ein Hungerkünstler) published by Verlag Die Schmiede after his death.

Kiss of the Spider Woman


Manuel Puig - 1976
    In the still darkness of their cell, Molina re-weaves the glittering and fragile stories of the film he loves, and the cynical Valentin listens. Valentin believes in the just cause which makes all suffering bearable; Molina believes in the magic of love which makes all else endurable. Each has always been alone, and always - especially now - in danger of betrayal. But in cell 7 each surrenders to the other something of himself that he has never surrendered before.

The Invention of Morel


Adolfo Bioy Casares - 1940
    Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.Inspired by Bioy Casares’s fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction’s now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Last Year at Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.

Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was


Angélica Gorodischer - 1983
    In eleven chapters, "Kalpa Imperial"'s multiple storytellers relate the story of a fabled nameless empire which has risen and fallen innumerable times. Fairy tales, oral histories and political commentaries are all woven tapestry-style into Kalpa Imperial: beggars become emperors, democracies become dictatorships, and history becomes legends and stories. But this is much more than a simple political allegory or fable. It is also a celebration of the power of storytelling. Gorodischer and translator Ursula K. Le Guin are a well-matched, sly and delightful team of magician-storytellers. Rarely have author and translator been such an effortless pairing. "Kalpa Imperial" is a powerful introduction to the writing of Angelica Gorodischer, a novel which will enthrall readers already familiar with the worlds of Le Guin.Selected for the "New York Times" Summer Reading list.* "The dreamy, ancient voice is not unlike Le Guin's, and this collection should appeal to her fans as well as to those of literary fantasy and Latin American fiction."--"Library Journal" (Starred Review)"There's a very modern undercurrent to the Kalpa empire, with tales focusing on power (in a political sense) rather than generic moral lessons. Her mythology is consistent--wide in scope, yet not overwhelming. The myriad names of places and people can be confusing, almost Tolkeinesque in their linguistic originality. But the stories constantly move and keep the book from becoming overwhelming. Gorodischer has a sizeable body of work to be discovered, with eighteen books yet to reach English readers, and this is an impressive introduction."--"Review of Contemporary Fiction""Borges and Cortazar are alive and well."--"Bridge Magazine""Those looking for offbeat literary fantasy will welcome "Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was, " by Argentinean writer Angelica Gorodischer. Translated from the Spanish by Ursula Le Guin, this is the first appearance in English of this prize-winning South American fantasist."--"Publishers Weekly""It's always difficult to wrap up a rave review without babbling redundant praises. This time I'll simply say "Buy this Book!""--"Locus""The elaborate history of an imaginary country...is Nabokovian in its accretion of strange and rich detail, making the story seem at once scientific and dreamlike."--"Time Out New York""Kalpa Imperial" has been awarded the Prize "Mas Alla" (1984), the Prize "Sigfrido Radaelli" (1985) and also the Prize Poblet (1986). It has had four editions in Spanish: Minotauro (Buenos Aires), Alcor (Barcelona), Gigamesh (Barcelona), and Planeta Emece Editions (Buenos Aires).Praise for the Spanish-language editions of "Kalpa Imperial" "Angelica Gorodischer, both from without and within the novel, accomplishes the indispensable function Salman Rushdie says the storyteller must have: not to let the old tales die out; to constantly renew them. And she well knows, as does that one who met the Great Empress, that storytellers are nothing more and nothing less than free men and women. And even though their freedom might be dangerous, they have to get the total attention of their listeners and, therefore, put the proper value on the art of storytelling, an art that usually gets in the way of those who foster a forceful oblivion and prevent the winds of change."--Carmen Perilli, "La Gaceta," Tucuman"At a time when books are conceived and published to be read quickly, with divided attention in the din of the subway or the car, this novel is to be tasted with relish, in peace, in moderation, chewing slowly each and every one of the stories that make it up, and digesting it equally slowly so as to properly assimilate it all."--Rodolfo Martinez"A vast, cyclical filigree . . . Gorodischer reaches much farther than the common run of stories about huge empires, maybe because she wasn't interested in them to begin with, and enters the realm of fable, legend, and allegory."--Luis G. Prado, "Gigamesh," Barcelona

Die, My Love


Ariana Harwicz - 2012
    Given surprising leeway by her family for her increasingly erratic behaviour, she nevertheless feels ever more stifled and repressed. Motherhood, womanhood, the banality of love, the terrors of desire, the inexplicable brutality of another person carrying your heart forever Die, My Love faces all this with a raw intensity. It's not a question of if a breaking point will be reached, but rather when and how violent a form will it take?

Thus Were Their Faces


Silvina Ocampo - 1988
    Italo Calvino once said about her, “I don’t know another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don’t show us.” Thus Were Their Faces collects a wide range of Ocampo’s best short fiction and novella-length stories from her whole writing life. Stories about creepy doubles, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks to a girl, a house of sugar that is the site of an eerie possession, children who lock their perverse mothers in a room and burn it, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old woman.Jorge Luis Borges wrote that the cruelty of Ocampo’s stories was the result of her nobility of soul, a judgment as paradoxical as much of her own writing. For her whole life Ocampo avoided the public eye, though since her death in 1993 her reputation has only continued to grow, like a magical forest. Dark, gothic, fantastic, and grotesque, these haunting stories are among the world’s finest.

The Lizard's Tail


Luisa Valenzuela - 1983
    It gives its name to this fictional biography of Lopez Rega, Isabel Peron's minister of social well-being who ruled Argentina through sorcery and witchcraft. A figure of immense power and cruelty, Lopez Rega survives all attempts by politicians and the military to overthrow him. So great is the magic of this power-crazed witch-doctor that the writer / narrator can destroy him only by removing herself: 'By erasing myself from the map, I intend to erase you. Without my biography, it will be as if you never had a life. So long, Sorcerer, felice morte.' In The Lizard's Tail, Luisa Valenzuela re-invents language to convey the political reality of Latin America. A reality in which the writer hangs in the balance.

The Gaucho Martín Fierro


José Hernández - 1872
    For this reason, perhaps, the poem has such universal appeal that it has been translated into nineteen languages, making it available to more than half of the world's people.Hernandez's poem was an attempt to alert the government, and particularly the city dwellers, to the problems faced by the gaucho minority in adjusting to the new, unfamiliar culture imposed on them by the Central Government soon after the fall of the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1852, under the slogan "Politics of Progress." Moreover, the poem supplied a historical link to the gauchos' contribution to the national development of Argentina, for the gaucho had performed a major role in the country's independence from Spain. They had also fought in the civil wars of Argentina and had cleared the pampas of marauding Indian bands that plagued the pastoral development of the region. According to Hernandes they had been by turns abused, neglected, and finally dispersed, ultimately losing their identity as a social group.Those interested in the Martin Fierro as literature, as social protest, as anthropology, or as an example of the annihilation of a minority group--and its very identity--have joined in making it the most widely read, analyzed, and discussed literary work produced in Argentina. Now, after several hundred editions in Spanish and other languages, Martin Fierro is recognized as a masterpiece of world literature.The aim of this English version has been to achieve a line-by-line rendition faithful to the original in substance and tone, but without attempting to recreate Hernandez's meter or rhyme. The translators present it here as a catalyst for enjoyment, provocation, and insight.

The Invented Part


Rodrigo Fresán - 2014
    Scott Fitzgerald, the music of Pink Floyd and The Kinks, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the links between great art and the lives of the artists who create it—Fresán takes us on a whirlwind tour of writers and muses, madness and genius, friendships, broken families, and alternate realities, exploring themes of childhood, loss, memory, aging, and death.Drawing inspiration from the scope of modern classics and the structural pyrotechnics of the postmodern masters, the Argentine once referred to as “a pop Borges” delivers a powerful defense of great literature, a celebration of reading and writing, of the invented parts—the stories we tell ourselves to give shape to our world.Rodrigo Fresán is the author of nine books of fiction that together compose an expansive, interconnected fictional universe—a complex system of storylines, resonances, and self-reference that call to mind the works of David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, and Roberto Bolaño. Will Vanderhyden received fellowships from the NEA and Lannan Foundation to work on The Invented Part.