Showing results by author "Alfred MacAdam (translator)" in All Categories

Lifetime friends become bitter enemies when the father of one family is killed by militants - one of whom is a son from the other family. Told in short sections highlighting a rich multiplicity of characters from all walks of life, Homeland brilliantly unfolds in nonlinear fashion as it traces the moral dilemmas faced by the families of murder victim and perpetrator alike. Aramburu alludes only obliquely to the historical context while he focuses on the psychological complexity of his characters and builds nearly unbearable suspense.

As the novel opens, Artemio Cruz, the all-powerful newspaper magnate and land baron, lies confined to his bed and, in dreamlike flashes, recalls the pivotal episodes of his life. Carlos Fuentes manipulates the ensuing kaleidoscope of images with dazzling inventiveness, layering memory upon memory, from Cruz’s heroic campaigns during the Mexican Revolution, through his relentless climb from poverty to wealth, to his uneasy death. Perhaps Fuentes’ masterpiece, The Death of Artemio Cruz is a haunting voyage into the soul of modern Mexico.

Horizontal Vertigo: The title refers to the fear of ever-impending earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather than upward. With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flâneur, Juan Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among them.

From Mexico’s preeminent man of letters, "a Balzacian novel in nine masterly stories" (Vanity Fair) that explores the "uneven and painful meshing of two North American cultures" (Washington Post Book World). A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Translated by Alfred Mac Adam.

The Years with Laura Diaz is Carlos Fuentes' most important novel in several decades. Like his masterpiece The Death of Artemio Cruz, the action begins in the state of Veracruz and moves to Mexico City - tracing a migration during the Revolution and its aftermath that was a feature of Mexico's demographic history and that is a significant element in Fuentes' fictional world. Now the principle figure is not Artemio Cruz (who, however, makes a brief appearance) but Fuentes' first major female protagonist, the extraordinary Laura Diaz.

In the five novellas that comprise The Orange Tree, Carlos Fuentes continues the passionate and imaginative reconstruction of past and present history that has distinguished Terra Nostra and The Campaign. From the story of Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean, to the fate of Hernan Cortes's two sons, to the destruction of the Spanish city of Numantia by the Romans and the annihilation of Hollywood by Acapulco, Fuentues couples the epic grandeur of the spiritual and the historical with the many pleasures of the flesh.

In The Campaign, a witty and enthralling saga of revolutionary South America, Carlos Fuentes explores the period of profound upheaval he calls "the romantic time". His hero, Baltasar Bustos, the son of a wealthy landowner, kidnaps the baby of a prominent judge, replacing it with the black baby of a prostitute. When he catches sight of the baby's mother, though, he falls instantly in love with her and sets off on an anguished journey to repent his act and win her love.