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 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...

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...

Like other great nineteenth century novels--The Scarlet Letter, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary--Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro explores the themes of marriage and adultery. But what distinguishes Machado's novel and what makes it such a delightful discovery for English-speaking readers, is its eccentric and wildly unpredictable narrative style. As he recounts the events of his life from the vantage of a lonely old age, the narrator Bento continually interrupts his story to reflect on the wr...

"The first English translation of the major work of a privileged, unconventional, and somewhat neglected Cuban author." — ChoiceEleven years before Uncle Tom's Cabin fanned the fires of abolition in North America, an aristocratic Cuban woman told an impassioned story of the fatal love of a mulatto slave for his white owner's daughter. So controversial was Sab's theme of miscegenation and its parallel between the powerlessness and enslavement of bl...

In this "beautifully wrought" novel set in Franco-era Spain, a university student stumbles into a decades-old mystery ( New York magazine).It's the late sixties, the last dark years of Franco's dictatorship. Minaya, a university student in Madrid, is caught up in the student protests and the police are after him. He moves to his uncle Manuel's country estate in the small town of Mágina to write his thesis on an old friend of his uncle, an obscure republican...

Praise for the Carlos Tejada Alonso y León series:“Rebecca Pawel [has] set the mystery world agog.”—Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post Book World“The best new mystery author to come around in a long time . . . an astonishing achievement in writing and psychological development . . . she knows how to make a reader care. Her books are intense, the writing impeccable. She propels the plot at a riveting pace. What a pleasure it is to find Ms. Pawel—a major new voice...

This rich and unforgettable story of sexual intrigue and political scheming, written by the Spanish feminist and intellectual Emilia Pardo Bazan, deserves recognition as one of the great nineteenth-century novels.The House of Ulloa follows pure and pious Father Julián Alvarez, who is sent to a remote country estate to put the affairs of the marquis, an irresponsible libertine, in order. When he discovers moral decadence, cruelty and corruption at his new home, Julián's wel...