On January 24, 1897, an event took place that would change Cuban culture forever: the first moving pictures were shown in Havana. A couple of weeks later, on February 7, the first movie was filmed on the island. Since then, cinematography and Cuba have shared peculiar and innate connections, as their beginnings roughly coincide and Cubans are living in both the age of independence and revolution and the age of film. This work is a filmography of every Cuban film (including documentaries, shorts and cartoons) released from 1897, the first year films were shown and made in Cuba, through 2001. Each entry gives the original title of the film, the English translation of it, director, production company or companies, year of release, black and white or color, total running time, writing credits if the film is based on a story or novel, animation credits if the film is a cartoon, music credits if music has been written specifically for the film, cast credits, and a synopsis and short critical evaluation. The work also provides comments on the relationship between Cuban film and history, and the changes that have taken place over the years in themes, topics, methods, and other aspects of filmmaking in Cuba.

This book brings together the work of several scholars to shed light on the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges' complex relationship with language and reality. A critical assumption driving the work is that there is, as Jaime Alazraki has put it, 'a genuine effort to overcome the narrowness that Western tradition has imposed as a master and measure of reality' in Borges' writing. That narrowness is in large measure a consequence of the chronic influence of positivist approaches to reality that rely on empirical evidence for any authentication of what is 'real'. This study shows that, in opposition to such restrictions, Borges saw in fiction, in literature, the most viable means of discussing reality in a pragmatic manner. Moreover, by scrutinising several of the author's works, it establishes signposts for considering the truly complicated relationship that Borges had with reality, one that intimately associates the 'real' with human perception, insight and language.

The beginning of the golden age of Spanish literature and the particular socio-political circumstances of early sixteenth century Spain made prime the opportunity for the emergence of the picaresque novel, an early form of the first-person narrative novel relating the adventures of a rogue or lowborn traveler (Spanish picaro) as he drifts through the Spanish countryside from one social milieu to another in an effort to survive. Influenced largely by the medieval tradition of the fabliaux and by the early Italian Renaissance, and structured upon a foundation of anecdotes, proverbs, popular beliefs, and folk tales, the picaro's discourse becomes a satirical survey of the hypocrisies and corruptions of society. The picaresque novel is exemplified by the prototypical and anonymously written Lazarillo de Tormes, published in 1554, in which the poor boy Lazaro describes his services under seven successive lay and clerical masters, each of whom hides a dubious character beneath a mask of hypocrisy. The choice of characters and the backdrop for Lazarillo de Tormes focuses the reader's gaze upon the heart of Spain's national dilemma after the crucial socio-political events of the 1520s. Because of the novel's deliberate social criticisms, irreverent wit, anticlerical attitude and string of mischievous misadventures, Lazarillo was both included in the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559 and, nevertheless, one of the most widely read books of its time. This dual-language, annotated critical edition of Lazarillo de Tormes presents the complete text of the first picaresque novel in both English and Spanish. The translation attempts to capture in modern English not only the meaning of the historical text, but also the genuine qualities of its original style.