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...

Barcelona, Spring 2022. The morning new recruit Vicente Misfit reports for his first day at "The Organisation", a meeting is called to discuss three mysteries:A man has been found hanged in a room in a hotel on the Rambla San José.An Englishman by the name of Jenkins has disappeared from his luxury yacht in the port.The canning company Conservas Fernández is the only firm in these times of high inflation not to have increased its prices at...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

The powerful true-life story of one of the world's most prolific professional killersJulio Santana grew up in a poor fishing family in Brazil. At the age of 17 he committed his first murder in exchange for food for his family. Santana went on to become a killer for hire on an almost unimaginable scale, murdering more than 490 people.Yet, despite his appalling crimes, he was far from a monster. Santana was a loyal son, a family man and a devout Christian who was tormented by...

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 ...

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...

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...

Police capitaine Noémie Chastain has everything: a coveted position in Paris, a devoted team and a loving partner. In an instant, she loses it all. On a dawn raid in a grimy Parisian banlieue, in an instant, she loses it all. Shot by the drug dealer she was about to arrest, she is left with serious scars on her face and deeper, longer-lasting damage to her psyche.Pushed out of her job in Paris by superiors concerned that her disfigurement would damage team morale, abandoned by her ...

Santiago is trapped. Taken political prisoner in Montevideo after a brutal military coup, he can do nothing but write letters to his family, and try to stay sane.Far away, his nine-year-old daughter Beatrice wonders at the marvels of 1970s Buenos Aires, but her grandpa and mother - Santiago's beautiful, careworn wife, Graciela - struggle to adjust to a life in exile. Graciela fights to retain the fiery passion that suffused her marriage, her politics, her whole life, as day by day ...