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...

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...

DescriptionA canonical, riveting work from the patron saint of Cuban science fiction that is reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odysseyand now available to an English readership for the first time.A morally profound chamber piece, Agustín de Rojas’ A Legend of the Future takes place inside a damaged spaceship following the failure of a mission to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. The journey back to Earth forces the crew members to face their innermost fears. This ...

The cult classic from the godfather of Cuban science fiction, Agustín de Rojas’s The Year 200 is both a visionary sci-fi masterwork and a bold political parable about the perils of state power.Centuries have passed since the Communist Federation defeated the capitalist Empire, but humanity is still divided. A vast artificial-intelligence network, a psychiatric bureaucracy, and a tiny egalitarian council oversee civil affairs and quash “abnormal” attitudes ...

Stories of war and conflict form the backbone of much of the Western literary canon, portraying a certain image of heroism, stoicism, and survival in the face of violence. War and Imagination challenges the canon with essays, short stories, and a wide variety of perspectives.Paying particular attention to the twentieth century and prioritizing the writings of civilians, the works highlighted in War and Imagination offer an opportunity to challenge representations ...

When the Soviet Union invaded Finland in November 1939, they were not expecting the Finns to fight back – much less to prevail. Olivier Norek's riveting, heart-pounding, epic historical thriller is a story of barely imaginable courage, astonishing resilience, and the best sniper the world has ever seen.`Timely, thrilling and deeply affecting … the appeal of this tour de force owes a lot to its intensity, brilliance, and ferocity, but also to a deeply moving portrai...

The Montreal Olympics, 1976. A fourteen-year-old girl steps out onto the floor of the Montreal Forum and into history.Twenty seconds on the uneven bars is it all it takes for Nadia Comaneci, the slight, unsmiling child from Communist Romania, to etch herself into the collective memory. The judges award her an unprecedented perfect ten, the first in Olympic gymnastics.In The Little Communist Who Never Smiled, Lola Lafon weaves an intricate web of truth and fiction a...

**OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD!THE RUNAWAY BESTSELLERFall in love with the inspiring, emotional and feel-good story of one woman’s life-changing journey to happiness. Perfect for fans of Fredrik Backman, Matt Haig and Before the Coffee Gets Cold.**'My therapist told me to buy this book, and she was right. Fantastic.' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'A beautiful wake-up call for me.' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐It's never too late to be h...

A mesmerising and enigmatic collection of short stories, haunted by the horrors of war, and divided into two parts: journeys and flowers. A lone traveller with no endpoint in sight finds himself journeying through villages where the dead walk at solstice, silkworm-like women live in cocoons and a thousand men in gleaming armour play at being soldiers. Reality blurs, shimmers and darkens; unease grows. Stories of invented flowers follow and allow nature to bloom, vivid and intoxicating, to ...

Anthony Whitelands, an English art historian, is invited to Madrid to value an aristocrat's collection. At a welcome lunch he encounters José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder and leader of the Falange, a nationalist party whose antics are bringing the country ever closer to civil war.The paintings turn out to be worthless, but before Whitelands can leave for London the duque's daughter Paquita reveals a secret and genuine treasure, held for years in the cellars of her ancestral hom...