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...

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 ...

MORE THAN 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDETHE RUNAWAY BESTSELLER!The feel-good #1 bestselling novel about a woman whose mission to cure her "routine-itis" leads her to lasting joy and true fulfilment. Perfect for fans of The Alchemist and Before the Coffee Gets Cold.'My therapist told me to buy this book, and she was right' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'This book made me realise I have a second chan...

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...

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...

Snared between two cultures and two loves, one man is forced to choose...1564, the Kingdom of Granada. After years of Christian oppression, the Moors take arms and daub the white houses of Sierra Nevada with the blood of their victims.Amidst the conflict is young Hernando , the son of an Arab woman and the Christian priest who raped her. He is despised and regularly beaten by his own step-father for his 'tainted' heritage.Fuelled with the love of the ...

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 ...

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...

A school assistant in Buenos Aires' most prestigious state school, Maria Teresa Cornejo's job is to keep the students in line. Suspecting that some of them are smoking in the school toilets, Maria Teresa takes to spying on them urinate - an activity she gets pleasure from listening to. Found out by her supervisor Senor Biasutto, she is not fired but forced into sexual collusion with him.In this society all appears fair and liberal but within there is brutal repression and the teach...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The House of the Spirits, this epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a place to call home.“One of the most richly imagined portrayals of the Spanish Civil War to date, and one of the strongest and most affecting works in [Isabel Allende’s] long career.”—The New York Times Book Review

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 ...