Widely acknowledged as the first Chilean novel, Martin Rivas (1862) by Alberto Blest Gana (1830-1920) is at once a passionate love story and an optimistic representation of Chilean nationhood. Written shortly after a decade of civil conflict, it is an indispensable source for understanding politics and society in nineteenth-century Chile. The hero of the story is Martin Rivas, an impoverished but ambitious youngster from the northern mining region of Chile, who is entrusted by his...

Widely acknowledged as the first Chilean novel, Martin Rivas (1862) by Alberto Blest Gana (1830-1920) is at once a passionate love story and an optimistic representation of Chilean nationhood. Written shortly after a decade of civil conflict, it is an indispensable source for understanding politics and society in nineteenth-century Chile. The hero of the story is Martin Rivas, an impoverished but ambitious youngster from the northern mining region of Chile, who is entrusted by his...

A "wonderfully twisted meditation on identity and individuality" from a Nobel Prize–winning author who pushes fiction to its very limits ( The Boston Globe).As this novel by the author of Blindness and All the Names begins, Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is a divorced, depressed history teacher. To lift his spirits, a colleague suggests he rent a certain video. Tertuliano watches the film, unimpressed. But during the night, when he is awakened ...

In this gorgeously imagined novel, a journalist interviews those who knew—or thought they knew—Alejandro Bevilacqua, a brilliant, infuriatingly elusive South American writer and author of the masterpiece In Praise of Lying. But the accounts of those in his circle of friends, lovers, and enemies become increasingly contradictory, murky, and suspect. Is everyone lying, or just telling their own subjective version of the truth? As the literary investigation unfolds and a chorus of Bevilacqua'...

In eighteenth-century Peru, a historic bridge connecting the cities of Cuzco and Lima collapsed, plunging five people to their deaths. A Franciscan monk, Brother Juniper, witnesses the tragedy and embarks on a spiritual quest to reconcile free will versus fate and the existence of God in the victims’ lives: “Why did this happen to those five?” This thought-provoking, Pulitzer Prizewinning second novel by American writer Thornton Wilder was called “a masterpiece” by The New York Times when ...

From the Nobel Prize-winning author: "A capacious, funny, threatening novel" of wandering souls and political upheaval in 1930s Portugal ( The New York Times Book Review) .The year is 1936, and the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar is establishing himself in Portugal, edging his country toward civil war. At the same time, Dr. Ricardo Reis has returned home to Lisbon after a long sojou...

**"One of the wittiest, most playful, and . . . most alive and ageless books ever written." --Dave Eggers, The New YorkerA revelatory new translation of the playful, incomparable masterpiece of one of the greatest Black authors in the AmericasA Penguin Classic**The mixed-race grandson of ex-slaves, Machado de Assis is not only Brazil's most celebrated writer but also a writer of world stature, who has been championed by the likes of Philip Roth, Susan Sonta...

In Death in the Afternoon, American literary icon Ernest Hemingway, a true bullfighting aficionado, takes an in-depth look at the history of Spanish bullfighting, its ceremony, and the dangerous rituals that govern the lives of the matadors. Hemingway's passion turns the act of bullfighting into a magnificent and artistic production as Death in the Afternoon contemplates the nature of courage and cowardice in the bullring.Best known for novels like The Sun Als...

In "Death in the Afternoon," Ernest Hemingway masterfully explores the intricate relationship between life, death, and the art of bullfighting. Written in a concise, yet evocative prose style characteristic of Hemingway's work, this non-fiction volume delves into the cultural significance and existential themes surrounding the Spanish tradition of bullfighting. Engaging the reader with vivid descriptions, Hemingway employs his distinctive iceberg theory, suggesting deeper meanings beneath ...

New York Times bestselling author Maria Dueñas returns with The Vineyard, a magnificent story “destined to become a classic” (Armando Lucas Correa, bestselling author of The German Girl) about ambition, heartbreak, and desire set in Mexico, Cuba, and Spain in the 1860s—perfect for fans of Kate Morton and Kristin Hannah.Mauro Larrea’s fortune, the result of years of hardship and toil, comes crashing down on the heels of a calamitous event....

Infamous for the murder of Maria Iribarne, the artist Juan Pablo Castel is now writing a detailed account of his relationship with the victim from his prison cell: obsessed from the first moment he saw her examining one of his paintings, Castel had become fixated on her over the next months and fantasized over how they might meet again. When he happened upon her one day, a relationship was formed which swiftly convinced him of their mutual love. But Castel's growing paranoia would lead him...

"A palm tree, seeing me troubled and divining the cause, murmured in its branches that there was nothing wrong with fifteen-year old boys getting into corners with girls of fourteen; quite the contrary, youths of that age have no other function, and corners were made for that very purpose. It was an old palm-tree, and I believed in old palm-trees even more than in old books. Birds, butterflies, a cricket trying out its summer song, all the living things of the air were of the same opinion....