Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins PDF Author: Carlos Fuentes
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374128863
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Collecting new short fiction by the master Latin American writer, this assortment of tales includes stories of mannequin-swiping youths and a bullfighter at the time of Goya.

Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins PDF Author: Carlos Fuentes
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466840102
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Renowned as a novelist of unsurpassed invention, Carlos Fuentes here presents his second collection of stories to appear in English. Where his first, Burnt Water, published in 1980, had as its underlying theme Mexico City itself, Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins extends its imaginative boundaries out to Savannah, to Cadiz, to Glasgow, to Seville and Madrid, both past and present. This new collection is more mysterious, more magical, too, than its predecessor, and in its five related stories Fuentes comes closer to the registers of language and feeling that he explored so memorably in Aura. It reveals Fuentes at the height of his powers--bold, erudite, enthralling. In the title story, a man discovers his wife's secret complicity with the Russian actor who is their neighbor--a complicity that includes not just a previous life but possibly a previous death as well. He finds himself "a mediator . . . a point between one sorrow and the next, between one hope and the next, between two languages, two memories, two ages, and two deaths." In "La Desdichada," two students steal--and fall in love with--a store-window mannequin. In "The Prisoner of Las Lomas," a wealthy lawyer in possession of a powerful secret is held hostage by the past he has attempted to subvert and keep at bay. The celebrated bullfighter whose fame is the theme of "Viva Mi Fama" steps from the present into a past immortalized by Goya's portrait of the matador Pedro Romero; and the architects who are the "Reasonable People" of that story find themselves drawn into the irrational mysteries not only of religious fervor but of their famous mentor's identity--they discover "there are no empty houses," only a present fraught with the past. Though each of these novella-length stories offers compelling evidence of Fuentes's talent for narrative free rein as well as for containment and closure, they are also brilliantly interwoven. Readers of his earlier work, especially of his acclaimed ribald epic, Christopher Unborn, will recognize with pleasure Fuentes's undiminished mastery of recurrent images and themes, and all readers will delight in the witty and evocative changes he rings on them. For those few readers who do not yet know the work of Mexico's foremost man of letters, these stories offer them the full gift of his imaginative resourcefulness.

Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins PDF Author: Carlos Fuentes
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374128863
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Collecting new short fiction by the master Latin American writer, this assortment of tales includes stories of mannequin-swiping youths and a bullfighter at the time of Goya.

The Aguero Sisters

The Aguero Sisters PDF Author: Cristina García
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345406516
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Reina and Constancia Agüero are Cuban sisters who have been estranged for thirty years. Reina--tall, darkly beautiful, and magnetically sexual--still lives in her homeland. Once a devoted daughter of la revolución, she now basks in the glow of her many admiring suitors, believing only in what she can grasp with her five senses. The pale and very petite Constancia lives in the United States, a beauty expert who sees miracles and portents wherever she looks. After she and her husband retire to Miami, she becomes haunted by the memory of her parents and the unexplained death of her beloved mother so long ago. Told in the stirring voices of their parents, their daughters, and themselves, The Agüero Sisters tells a mesmerizing story about the power of myth to mask, transform, and finally, reveal the truth--as two women move toward an uncertain, long awaited reunion.

The Day They Took My Uncle, and Other Stories

The Day They Took My Uncle, and Other Stories PDF Author: Lionel G. Garcia
Publisher: TCU Press
ISBN: 9780875652351
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
The Day They Took My Uncle and Other Stories is a collection of 15 shorts by novelist Lionel Garcia, dealing mostly with working-class and poor inhabitants of the southwestern U.S. Difficulties encountered by Latinos in America are a recurrent theme.

The Hour of the Star

The Hour of the Star PDF Author: Clarice Lispector
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811211901
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece.

American Kleptocracy

American Kleptocracy PDF Author: Casey Michel
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250274532
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
A remarkable debut by one of America's premier young reporters on financial corruption, Casey Michel's American Kleptocracy offers an explosive investigation into how the United States of America built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known. "An indefatigable young American journalist who has virtually cornered the international kleptocracy beat on the US end of the black aquifer." —The Los Angeles Review of Books For years, one country has acted as the greatest offshore haven in the world, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit finance tied directly to corrupt regimes, extremist networks, and the worst the world has to offer. But it hasn’t been the sand-splattered Caribbean islands, or even traditional financial secrecy havens like Switzerland or Panama, that have come to dominate the offshoring world. Instead, the country profiting the most also happens to be the one that still claims to be the moral leader of the free world, and the one that claims to be leading the fight against the crooked and the corrupt: the USA. American Kleptocracy examines just how the United States’ implosion into a center of global offshoring took place: how states like Delaware and Nevada perfected the art of the anonymous shell company, and how post-9/11 reformers watched their success usher in a new flood of illicit finance directly into the U.S.; how African despots and post-Soviet oligarchs came to dominate American coastlines, American industries, and entire cities and small towns across the American Midwest; how Nazi-era lobbyists birthed an entire industry of spin-men whitewashing trans-national crooks and despots, and how dirty money has now begun infiltrating America's universities and think tanks and cultural centers; and how those on the front-line are trying to restore America's legacy of anti-corruption leadership—and finally end this reign of American kleptocracy.

The Campaign

The Campaign PDF Author: Carlos Fuentes
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374118280
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
An inflamed revolutionary democrat and the son of a wealthy Argentine ranch owner, Baltasar Bustos, kidnaps the child of the Marquise de Cabra in 19th century South America.

The Death of the Heart

The Death of the Heart PDF Author: Elizabeth Bowen
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1984899988
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations. In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London.There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and her fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal--and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.

Istanbul Passage

Istanbul Passage PDF Author: Joseph Kanon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439164827
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
In the bestselling tradition of espionage novels by John LeCarre and Alan Furst, Istanbul Passage brilliantly illustrates why Edgar Award–winning author Joseph Kanon has been hailed as "the heir apparent to Graham Greene" (The Boston Globe). Istanbul survived the Second World War as a magnet for refugees and spies. Even expatriate American Leon Bauer was drawn into this shadow world, doing undercover odd jobs in support of the Allied war effort. Now as the espionage community begins to pack up and an apprehensive city prepares for the grim realities of postwar life, Leon is given one last routine assignment. But when the job goes fatally wrong—an exchange of gunfire, a body left in the street, and a potential war criminal on his hands—Leon is trapped in a tangle of shifting loyalties and moral uncertainty. Played out against the bazaars and mosques and faded mansions of this knowing, ancient Ottoman city, Istanbul Passage is the unforgettable story of a man swept up in the dawn of the Cold War, of an unexpected love affair, and of a city as deceptive as the calm surface waters of the Bosphorus that divides it.

This I Believe

This I Believe PDF Author: Carlos Fuentes
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307432793
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
In this masterly, deeply personal, and provocative book, the internationally renowned Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, whose work has been called “a combination of Poe, Baudelaire, and Isak Dinesen” (Newsweek), steps back to survey the wellsprings of art and ideology, the events that have shaped our time, and his extraordinary life and fiercest passions. Arranged alphabetically from “Amore” to “Zurich,” This I Believe takes us on a marvelous inner journey with a great writer. Fuentes ranges wide, from contradictions inherent in Latin American culture and politics to his long friendship with director Luis Buñuel. Along the way, we find reflection on the mixed curse and blessing of globalization; memories of a sexual initiation in Zurich; a fond tracing of a family tree heavy with poets, dreamers, and diplomats; evocations of the streets, cafés, and bedrooms of Washington, Paris, Santiago de Chile, Cambridge, Oaxaca, and New York; and a celebration of literary heroes including Balzac, Cervantes, Faulkner, Kafka, and Shakespeare. Throughout, Fuentes captivates with the power of his intellect and his prose. Here, too, are vivid, often heartbreaking glimpses into his personal life. “Silvia” is a powerful love letter to his beloved wife. In “Children,” Fuentes recalls the births of his daughters and the tragic death of his son; in “Cinema” he relives the magic of films such as Citizen Kane and The Wizard of Oz. Further extending his reach, he examines the collision between history and contemporary life in “Civil Society,” “Left,” and “Revolution.” And he poignantly addresses the experiences we all hold in common as he grapples with beauty, death, freedom, God, and sex. By turns provocative and intimate, partisan and universal, this book is a brilliant summation of an international literary career. Revisiting the influences, commitments, readings, and insights of a lifetime, Fuentes has fashioned a magnificently coherent statement of his view of the world, reminding us once again why reading Fuentes is “like standing beneath the dome of the Sistine Chapel. . . . The breadth and enormity of this accomplishment is breathtaking” (The Denver Post).