Author: José Donoso Publisher: ISBN: 9780802133687 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 243
Book Description
A Chilean writer named Julio and his wife, Gloria, are at a low point in their lives. Constantly bickering, the pair are beset by worries about money, their writing, and their son (who may or may not be plying the oldest profession in Marrakesh). When Julio's boyhood best friend, now a famous artist, lends the couple his luxurious Madrid apartment for the summer, it is an escape for both - but in particular for Julio, who fantasizes about the garden next door and the erotic life of the lovely young aristocratic woman who inhabits it. But Julio's life - and career - unravel In Madrid: he is rebuffed by a famous literary agent, Nuria Monclus, who detests him and his novel; his son's friend from Marrakesh moves in and causes havoc; and Gloria begins to drink. In the face of pitiless adversity, Julio's talent inexorably begins to fade. The garden next door, however, is also Gloria, who has been doing some creating of her own. It is this twist that transforms Donoso's brilliant satire of the writer's life into something even greater: a carefully crafted and bitteily comic meditation on gardens, deceit, and the nature of a writer's muse.
Author: Ricardo Gutiérrez-Mouat Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press ISBN: 1611176492 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 269
Book Description
An examination of the novels, short story collections, and poetry of the Latin American author In Understanding Roberto Bolaño, Ricardo Gutiérrez-Mouat offers a comprehensive analysis of this critically acclaimed Chilean poet and novelist whose work brought global attention to Latin American literature in the 1960s unseen since the rise of García Márquez and magic realism. Best known for The Savage Detectives, winner of the Rómulo Gallegos Prize; the novella By Night in Chile; and the posthumously published novel 2666, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bolaño died in 2003 just as his reputation was becoming established. After a brief biographical sketch, Gutiérrez-Mouat chronologically contextualizes literary interpretations of Bolaño's work in terms of his life, cultural background, and political ideals. Gutiérrez-Mouat explains Bolaño's work to an English-speaking audience—including his relatively neglected poetry—and conveys a sense of where Bolaño fits in the Latin American tradition. Since his death, eleven of novels, four short story collections, and three poetry collections have been translated into English. The afterword addresses Bolaño's status as a Latin American writer, as the former literary editor of El País claimed, "neither magical realist, nor baroque nor localist, but [creator of] an imaginary, extraterritorial mirror of Latin America, more as a kind of state of mind than a specific place."
Author: Nataniel Aguirre Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199938873 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
Long considered a classic in Bolivia, Juan de la Rosa tells the story of a young boy's coming of age during the violent and tumultuous years of Bolivia's struggle for independence. Indeed, in this remarkable novel, Juan's search for his personal identity functions as an allegory of Bolivia's search for its identity as a nation. Set in the early 1800s, the novel is narrated by one of the last surviving Bolivian rebels, octogenarian Juan de la Rosa. Juan recreates his childhood in the rebellious town of Cochabamba, and with it a large cast of full bodied, Dickensian characters both heroic and malevolent. The larger cultural dislocations brought about by Bolivia's political upheaval are echoed in those experienced by Juan, whose mother's untimely death sets off a chain of unpredictable events that propel him into the fiery crucible of the South American Independence Movement. Outraged by Juan's outspokenness against Spanish rule and his awakening political consciousness, his loyalist guardians banish him to the countryside, where he witnesses firsthand the Spaniards' violent repression and rebels' valiant resistance that crystallize both his personal destiny and that of his country. In Sergio Gabriel Waisman's fluid translation, English readers have access to Juan de la Rosa for the very first time.
Author: Augusto Roa Bastos Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 1984898140 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 450
Book Description
I the Supreme imagines a dialogue between the nineteenth-century Paraguayan dictator known as Dr. Francia and Policarpo Patiño, his secretary and only companion. The opening pages present a sign that they had found nailed to the wall of a cathedral, purportedly written by Dr. Francia himself and ordering the execution of all of his servants upon his death. This sign is quickly revealed to be a forgery, which takes leader and secretary into a larger discussion about the nature of truth: “In the light of what Your Eminence says, even the truth appears to be a lie.” Their conversation broadens into an epic journey of the mind, stretching across the colonial history of their nation, filled with surrealist imagery, labyrinthine turns, and footnotes supplied by a mysterious “compiler.” A towering achievement from a foundational author of modern Latin American literature, I the Supreme is a darkly comic, deeply moving meditation on power and its abuse—and on the role of language in making and unmaking whole worlds.
Author: Rory O'Bryen Publisher: Tamesis Books ISBN: Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
Memory and mourning in Colombia. This book provides the first in-depth examination of a representative range of contemporary Colombian cultural engagements with the conflicts known simply as La Violencia that began in Colombia in the late 1940s. These include Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazábal's now classic revision of the 'novela de la Violencia', the autobiographical cycle of acclaimed author Fernando Vallejo, versions of the testimonio by Alfredo Molano and internationally renowned novelist Laura Restrepo, as well as cinematic works by Carlos Mayolo and Luis Ospina. These cultural icons, many of whom are remarkably understudied, show how the heterogeneity of social and cultural processes condensed in La Violencia demands a deconstruction of 'violence' in Colombian culture. This argument is developed in dialogue with European and Latin American cultural theory and contributes to theoretical debates surrounding issues of memory and mourning developed in other Latin American contexts. The narratives explored in this book provide alternatives to abstract historicism and show us how to imagine ways out of deeply rooted cycles of violence. Yet their insistence on haunting and spectres signals the problems besetting the task of mourning in Colombia, positing history rather than psychology as a remainder that troubles efforts to forge collective memories and enact social reconciliation. RORY O'BRYEN lectures in Latin American literature and culture at the University of Cambridge.
Author: Cynthia Duncan Publisher: Temple University Press ISBN: 1439902429 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
"Unraveling the Real is a very readable, succinct introduction to the topic of the fantastic and its primary critics. Duncan presents a review of the texts on the fantastic and applies this trace to individual authors and film directors, narrative strategies, psychological processes, and gender issues. Her introduction is effective in establishing the borders and transgressions of the fantastic, and she is not afraid of moving from the literature of and on the fantastic to the questioning of cultural constructs. Her objective to emphasize the analysis of social criticism is an effective approach."--Enrique Sacerio-Gari, Dorothy Nepper Marshall Professor of Hispanic and Hispanic-American Studies, Bryn Mawr College.
Author: Michael Cronin Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0415608597 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 175
Book Description
Translation is living through a period of revolutionary upheaval. The effects of digital technology and the internet on translation are continuous, widespread and profound. From automatic online translation services to the rise of crowdsourced translation and the proliferation of translation Apps for smartphones, the translation revolution is everywhere. The implications for human languages, cultures and society of this revolution are radical and far-reaching. In the Information Age that is the Translation Age, new ways of talking and thinking about translation which take full account of the dramatic changes in the digital sphere are urgently required. Michael Cronin examines the role of translation with regard to the debates around emerging digital technologies and analyses their social, cultural and political consequences, guiding readers through the beginnings of translation's engagement with technology, and through to the key issues that exist today. With links to many areas of study, Translation in the Digital Age is a vital read for students of modern languages, translation studies, cultural studies and applied linguistics.
Author: Angel Rama Publisher: Duke University Press ISBN: 0822352931 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 266
Book Description
Ángel Rama was one of twentieth-century Latin America's most distinguished men of letters. Writing across Cultures is his comprehensive analysis of the varied sources of Latin American literature. Originally published in 1982, the book links Rama's work on Spanish American modernism with his arguments about the innovative nature of regionalist literature, and it foregrounds his thinking about the close relationship between literary movements, such as modernism or regionalism, and global trends in social and economic development. In Writing across Cultures, Rama extends the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz's theory of transculturation far beyond Cuba, bringing it to bear on regional cultures across Latin America, where new cultural arrangements have been forming among indigenous, African, and European societies for the better part of five centuries. Rama applies this concept to the work of the Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist José María Arguedas, whose writing drew on both Spanish and Quechua, Peru's two major languages and, by extension, cultures. Rama considered Arguedas's novel Los ríos profundos (Deep Rivers) to be the most accomplished example of narrative transculturation in Latin America. Writing across Cultures is the second of Rama's books to be translated into English.
Author: Simon Collier Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre ISBN: 0822976420 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 369
Book Description
In the first biography in English of the great Argentinian tango singer Carlos Gardel (1890-1935), Collier traces his rise from very modest beginnings to become the first genuine "superstar" of twentieth-century Latin America. In his late teens, Gardel won local fame in the barrios of Buenos Aires singing in cafes and political clubs. By the 1920s, after he switched to tango singing, the songs he wrote and sang enjoyed instant popularity and have become classics of the genre. He began making movies in the 1930s, quickly establishing himself as the most popular star of the Spanish-language cinema, and at the time of his death Paramount was planning to launch his Hollywood career.Collier's biography focuses on Gardel's artistic career and achievements but also sets his life story within the context of the tango tradition, of early twentieth-century Argentina, and of the history of popular entertainment.
Author: José Donoso
Author: Patricia Hart
Author: Ricardo Gutiérrez-Mouat
Author: Nataniel Aguirre
Author: Augusto Roa Bastos
Author: Rory O'Bryen
Author: Cynthia Duncan
Author: Michael Cronin
Author: Angel Rama
Author: Simon Collier