Horacio Castellanos Moya

Katherine Silver

Shocked by the in-home murder of her best friend, Laura Rivera vows to track down the unknown killer, an effort set against a backdrop of post-civil war San Salvador that challenges her notions about justice and truth. By a PEN-winning translator and the author of Senselessness. Original.

The She-Devil in the Mirror

César Aira

New in the New Directions Pearls series: an extremely rich mad scientist attempts to clone a leading genius in a bid to take over the world. César is a translator who’s fallen on very hard times due to the global economic downturn; he is also an author, and a mad scientist hell-bent on world domination. On a visit to the beach he intuitively solves an ancient riddle, finds a pirate’s treasure, and becomes a very wealthy man. Even so, César’s bid for world domination comes first and so he attends a literary conference to be near the man whose clone he hopes will lead an army to victory: the world-renowned Mexican author, Carlos Fuentes. A comic science fiction fantasy of the first order, The Literary Conference is the perfect vehicle for César Aira’s take over of literature in the 21st century.

The Literary Conference (New Directions Pearls)

Short fiction about a doctor who has a gift for making miracles and who is not deterred by his archenemy, Dr. Actyn, who is constantly trying to prove he is a charlatan.

The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira

With pitch-perfect, pitch-black humor, this saga refracts through one family's struggles a whole country's nightmare. The tyrant of the book is the actual pro-Nazi mystic Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, known as the Warlock, who came to power in El Salvador in 1932. An attempted coup in April of 1944 failed, but a general strike in May finally forced him out of office. The book takes place during that tumultuous month between the coup and the strike. With her husband a political prisoner and her son fleeing for his life, wealthy Haydée Aragon takes matters into her own hands. Events ricochet from one near-disaster to the next.--Publisher's description.

Tyrant Memory

Martín Adán

An award-winning translator presents the Peruvian poet's first novel, an avant-garde narrative of a young man's experiences told in a series of images, flashes, moods and scenes originally published in 1928. Original.

The Cardboard House

Cesar Aira

A cerebral and wildly funny story revolving around the incongruity of a gold Rolex watch spotted on a lowly goatherd s wrist"

The Conversations

José Emilio Pacheco

Intense, despairing accounts of life in Mexico City.

Battles in the Desert & Other Stories

Traverse Chile's diverse literary and geographic landscape with its best contemporary writers. Arranged geographically, these 20 stories-many of which appear in English for the first time-guide the reader through Chile's unique regions. Let Ariel Dorfman take you to Santiago with a prodigal son, discovering his own country for the first time; travel to the remote south with Enrique Valdes; and enjoy the charms of Valparaiso with Pablo Neruda, one of Chile's two Nobel Prize winners. With the return of democracy to Chile, large numbers of Americans and Chilean expatriates are rediscovering the rich cultural allure of Chile, as well as the draw of its unrivaled ecodiversity. Chile is an excellent literary guide for globetrotters and armchair travelers alike-for those new to Chile as well as those familiar with its charms. Katherine Silver is a freelance translator, editor, teacher and writer who has lived in Chile frequently and for prolonged periods from 1979 to the present. She has translated the Il Postino by Antonio Skarmeta, as well as the works of Elena Poniatowska, Jose Emilio Pacheco and Martin Adan. She is currently translating Pedro Lemebel's I Tremble Toreador for Grove/Atlantic Press.

A Traveler's Literary Companion

Chile

Echo Under Story unfolds within a pristine land- and seascape of Northern California, where a woman struggles to restore her family home. The story weaves together three strands: her mother's recently discovered journals, the daughter's re-encounter with the village and the landscape of her childhood, and Proust's In Search of Lost Time. There are echoes of another three-stranded braid: writing, reading, and finally, translation--of Proust, of memory, of the world that demands observation. The three activities become virtually indistinguishable in the sparse, often lyrical, prose: writing calls for reading, which in turn calls for more writing. And along this circular route are innumerable bifurcating paths that deviate, only to rejoin the main circle further along: rereading, quotation, translation.

Katherine Silver

Books

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