Literature: Spanish and Latin American
New Books from Oxford U Press, 1999

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The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories
Edited by ROBERTO GONZALEZ ECHEVARRIA

"[A] remarkably comprehensive anthology.... An essential and wonder-full book."--Kirkus Reviews

Now, in The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories, editor Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria brings together fifty-three stories that span the history of Latin American literature and represent the most dazzling achievements in the form. These stories exhibit all the inventiveness, the luxuriousness of language, the wild metaphoric leaps and uncanny conjunctions of the ordinary with the fantastic that have given the Latin American short story its distinctive and unforgettable flavor.
Short story lovers will find a wealth of satisfactions here, in terrains both familiar and uncharted. Readers acquainted with only the most popular Latin American writers will be delighted to discover many exciting new voices, including Catalina de Erauso, Ricardo Palma, Ruben Dario, Augusto Roa Bastos, Cristina Peri Rossi, along with Borges, Garcia Marquez, Fuentes, Cortazar, Vargas Llosa, and many others. With a fascinating introduction by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories offers in a single, unprecedented volume a view of one of the most diverse and fertile literary landscapes in the world.

"The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories is a superb collection, brilliantly edited by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria. His introductions are enlightening and informative; the stories themselves, whether Hispanic American or Brazilian, are always of high aesthetic merit, covering the entire range from Borges to Arenas."--Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities, Yale University

496 pp.; 5-5/16 x 8; 0-19-513085-5 1999 $19.95 (03) paper 1997 $35.00 (01) cloth

Don Quixote
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Retold by MICHAEL HARRISON and Illustrated by VICTOR G. AMBRUS

He lived in a small village in a dusty corner of Spain, a bony man of about fifty. He had little to do, and so he read. The flickering candle flame filled the corners of his room with ghostly shadows of giants and of dragons--for the only books he read were about the knights of old who roamed the countryside seeking adventures. The horizon stretched out an invitation. He knew that he too must be a knight, and travel on a quest for adventures. So he found a suit of rusty armor, made himself a visor of cardboard and tin, and he called himself Don Quixote de la Mancha.
In this spirited, lively retelling of the famous Cervantes classic, Michael Harrison's clear and lively style is beautifully complemented by Victor Ambrus's evocative paintings of the landscape of sixteenth-century Spain.

"[Harrison's] language captures the style of the original.... Ambrus's artwork is well suited to the story; he captures the personalities of both knight and squire without reducing them to caricatures."--School Library Journal

"A fast-paced, readable introduction to Cervantes' novel."--Booklist
96 pp.; color illus.; 0-19-274182-9 1999 $12.95 (03) paper

Juan de la Rosa
Memoirs of the Last Soldier of the Independence Movement
NATANIEL AGUIRRE
Translated by SERGIO GABRIEL WAISMAN
Edited with a Foreword by ALBA MARIA PAZ-SOLDÁN

A classic Bolivian novel of repression, rebellion, and the struggle for independence--translated into English for the first time

Long considered a classic in Bolivia, Juan de la Rosa tells the story of a young boy's coming of age during the violent and tumultuous years of Bolivia's struggle for independence. Indeed, in this remarkable novel, Juan's search for his personal identity functions as an allegory of Bolivia's search for its identity as a nation.
Set in the early 1800s, this remarkable novel is narrated by one of the last surviving Bolivian rebels, octogenarian Juan de la Rosa. Juan recreates his childhood in the rebellious town of Cochabamba, and with it a large cast of full bodied, Dickensian characters both heroic and malevolent. The larger cultural dislocations brought about by Bolivia's political upheaval are echoed in those experienced by Juan, whose mother's untimely death sets off a chain of unpredictable events that propel him into the fiery crucible of the South American Independence Movement. Outraged by Juan's outspokenness against Spanish rule and his awakening political consciousness, his loyalist guardians banish him to the countryside, where he witnesses firsthand the Spaniards' violent repression and rebels' valiant resistance that crystallize both his personal destiny and that of his country. In Sergio Gabriel Waisman's fluid translation, English readers have access to Juan de la Rosa for the very first time.

368 pp.; 2 maps; 5-5/16 x 8; 0-19-511328-4 1999 $15.95 (03) paper 1998 $30.00 (02)

Three Major Plays
LOPE
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by GWYNNE EDWARDS, University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Lope de Vega (1562-1635), widely regarded as the architect of the drama of the Spanish Golden Age, created plots and characters notable for their energy, inventiveness, and dramatic power. This unique edition includes his most famous play, Fuente Ovejuna, as well as The Knight from Olmedo and Punishment without Revenge. Presented here in superb translation, these plays embody the very best of Lope's dramatic art.
352 pp.; 0-19-283337-5 1999 $11.95 (03) paper

Torn From the Nest
CLORINDA MATTO DE TURNER
Translated by JOHN POLT
Edited with a Foreword and Chronology by ANTONIO CORNEJO POLAR

This classic novel by a 19th-century Peruvian woman was banned by the Church upon publication and led to the author's excommunication.

Clorinda Matto de Turner was the first Peruvian novelist to command an international reputation and the first to dramatize the exploitation of indigenous Latin American people. In this tragic tale, she explores the relationship between the landed gentry and the indigenous peoples of the Andean mountain communities. While unfolding as a love story rife with secrets and dashed hopes, Torn from the Nest in fact reveals a deep and destructive class disparity, and criticizes the Catholic clergy for blatant corruption.
Lucia and Don Fernando Marin settle in the small hamlet of Killac, where they meet with violent opposition from the priest and gentry when they become advocates for the exploited local Indians. As a romance blossoms between a member of the gentry and the peasant girl that Lucia and Don Fernando have adopted, a dreadful secret prevents their marriage and brings to a climax the novel's exposure of degradation: they share the same father, a parish priest.
Torn from the Nest was first published in Peru in 1889 amidst much enthusiasm and outrage. This fresh translation--the first since 1904-- preserves one of Peru's most distinctive and compelling voices.

"[A] new and engaging translation."--^The New York Times Book Review

224 pp.; 5-5/16 x 8; 0-19-511006-4 1999 $13.95 (03) paper 1998 $30.00 (02) cloth

The Memoirs of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier
FRAY SERVANDO TERESA DE MIER
Translated by HELEN LANE
Edited by SUSANA ROTKER, Rutgers University

The story of Fray Servando's life in exile is a vivid account of the adventures of one of the most original ideologues of Latin American independence. On December 12, 1794, Fray Servando preached a sermon in Mexico City claiming that the Indies had been converted by St. Thomas long before the Spaniards arrived. This was a subversive and controversial notion because it took away the rationale for the Spanish conquest of the New World -- the conversion of the heathen. Colonial authorities arrested him and he was exiled to Spain where he was imprisoned by his own Dominican order. Servando escaped and spent 10 years in exile traveling throughout Europe disguised as a French priest, issuing revolutionary manifestos and sermons. He returned to Mexico after Independence and served the new government before his death. This is the only available English translation of The Memoirs of Servando Teresa de Mier.

304 pp.; 5-5/16 x 8; 0-19-510674-1 1998 $15.95 (03) paper 1998 $30.00 (02) cloth





Fall 1999
Don Quixote de la Mancha
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA
Translated by CHARLES JARVIS
With an introduction by MILAN KUNDERA

Beautifully produced original format hardback World's Classics novel introduced by Milan Kundera

The father of the modern novel and a comic masterpiece, Don Quixote has acquired mythic status and remains as fresh today as when it first appeard nearly 400 years ago. This celebrated translation by Charles Jarvis conveys the flavour of the original Spanish, and the new introduction and notes provide essential background information.
1126 pp.; 0-19-210032-7 1999 $20.00 (02)

Literary Memoirs
JOSE VICTORINO LASTARRIA
Translated by R. KELLY WASHBOURNE
Edited by FREDERICK M. NUNN

an essential work for understanding the nineteenth-century Chilean mind

Jose Victorino Lastarria was of the first rank of Chilean and Spanish American intellectual and political figures of the nineteenth century. Statesman, novelist, scholar, activist, and a leading figure of Chile's Generation of 1842, a significant intellectual movement of the last century so named for the founding of the National University, he was at the center of all the intellectual struggles of his times.
Recuerdos Literarios, or Literary Memoirs, opens a window on the nineteenth-century Chilean mind. At once a chronicle, a narrative, an analysis and critique of literature, and a deeply personal memoir, Literary Memoirs is one man's testament to the process of cultural nation-building. In its pages, which range from a detailed study of conditions that encouraged the launching of the Generation of 1842, to a record of the intellectual debates of mid-nineteenth-century Chile, readers have found the genesis of Chilean literature and historiography. For this new edition of Literary Memoirs, Frederick Nunn's introduction provides informative historical background, and R. Kelly Washbourne's translation preserves intact the essence of Lastarria's form and content.

448 pp.; 5-1/2 x 8-1/4; 0-19-511685-2 January 2000 $30.00 (01) Tentative cloth
January 2000 $19.95 (03) paper

Martin Rivas
ALBERTO BLEST GANA
Translated by TESS O'DWYER
Edited by JAIME CONCHO, University of California at San Diego

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 late father to the household of a wealthy and influential member of the Santiago elite. While living there, he falls in love with his guardian's daughter. The tale of their tortuous but ultimately successful love affair represents the author's desire for reconciliation between Chile's antagonistic regional and class interests. Indeed, many critics have interpreted Martin Rivas as a blueprint for national unity that emphasizes consensus over conflict.
In addition to providing commentary about the mores of Chilean society, Blest Gana documents the enormous gap that existed between the rich and poor classes. An invaluable text for its portrayal of contemporary social, political, and class conditions, Martin Rivas illustrates the enriching influence that romanticism had on nineteenth-century Chilean literature.
448 pp.; 5-1/2 x 8-1/4; 0-19-510713-6 January 2000 $30.00 (01) cloth
January 2000 $18.95 (03) paper

© LEA Book Distributors 1999