"San Juan: Memoir of a City" conducts readers through Puerto Rico's capital, guided by one of its most graceful and reflective writers, Edgardo Rodriguez Julia. No mere sightseeing tour, this is culture through immersion, a circuit of San Juan's historical and intellectual vistas as well as its architecture.
In the allusive cityscape he recreates, Rodriguez Julia invokes the ghosts of his childhood, of San Juan's elder literati, and of characters from his own novels. On the most tangible level, the city is a place of cabarets and cockfighting clubs, flaneurs and beach bums, smoke-filled...

        "San Juan: Memoir of a City" conducts readers through Puerto Rico's capital, guided by one of its most graceful and reflective writers, Edgardo Rodrí guez Juliá . No mere sightseeing tour, this is culture through immersion, a circuit of San Juan's historical and intellectual vistas as well as its architecture.           
        In the allusive cityscape he recreates, Rodrí guez Juliá invokes the ghosts of his childhood, of San Juan's elder literati, and of characters from his own...

Edgar Bonjour, at middle age and after rising to a suburban family life, starts drug-trafficking with a motorcycle gang from his old South Bronx neighborhood and ends up dead. The published news of his murder sets the stage for introspection among other Bonjours, even those who did not know him, who interpret his returning to the past by way of a young woman gang member as the work of their family curse.
Descended from three French brothers who settled in Puerto Rico, Bonjours now belong to extended branches, some settled in New York City. Removed in varying degrees, all remain connected...

Todo el paisaje de mi infancia ha desaparecido . . . Edgardo Rodriguez Julia is an expert and lyrical guide to the history, inhabitants, and culture of his native city of San Juan, recalling scenes from his childhood while chonicling the social and physical changes in the city. Though superhighways have replaced the winding lanes and Puerto Ricans remain socially and politically divided, Rodriguez Julia also evokes picturesque imagery and the melancholy sweetness of remembrance as he leads readers through his Ciudad Sonada, his city of dreams.

In these short, bilingual stories set in Buenos Aires (with each piece appearing in Spanish and English on facing pages), Alicia Borinsky provides unique glimpses into the lives of the city's inhabitants: its businessmen and tango dancers, politicians and torturers, triumphant divas and discarded children a gallery of characters from a broad spectrum of contemporary Argentine society. She portrays a world of violence, corruption, love, and betrayal. The brevity of the pieces suggests a breathlessness and ephemeral quality, the fast-paced rhythm of the present. Yet within these small moments...

After decades of violence of all kinds, what remains are the stories. History is revised and debated, its protagonists bear witness, its writers ensure that all the suffering has not been in vain. These stories from Colombia contain pain and love, and sometimes even humor, allowing us to see an utterly vibrant and pulsating country amidst so much death and loss. We encounter townspeople overcome by fear, a man begging unsuccessfully for his life, an execution delayed for Christmas, the sounds and smells of burning coffee plantations, and other glimpses of daily life.
This anthology...

What if, as David William Foster poses in his introduction to Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar s novel, the Germans did choose to invade the Americas in the second World War? What if the Luftwaffe did plan to bomb American cities? Wartime residents of Brazil s populous urban areas where Scliar himself grew up in the 1940s surely asked themselves those same questions. And immigrant Jews, clustered in the Bom Fim neighborhood of Brazil s third-largest city, had reason to wonder even more than others. With playful irony, homage to the Jewish folktale, a touch of magical realism, and keen insight...

"The sordid, thrilling, and comic story of two young lovers--affluent Lala and impoverished Guayi; examines the economic and social circumstances of Argentina and Paraguay to make sense of the characters' past choices and present misfortunes. Translated by David William Foster"--Provided by publisher.

Silence is a tradition among the women of Rita s family, so it is no wonder that she must interpret for herself what her mother has left unsaid about the horrors of the Terezin concentration camp. But Rita faces a silence of her own: a Peronist militant in 1980s Argentina, she has been incarcerated and abused in Buenos Aires s infamous Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada (ESMA) detention center. In an imagined dialogue between mother and daughter, Rita recreates Tinkeleh s unarticulated story, interweaving it with memories of her own childhood. Breaking with the tradition of women as silent...