In 1954, during the height of the Cold War, the CIA carried out a coup to overthrow the first democratically-elected president in Guatemala. In the months leading up to the coup, the CIA Station Chief in Guatemala City was Grossinger’s grandfather. Dying long before Grossinger was born, his presence still loomed like a mythological creature throughout much of her childhood. Serpent Tongue explores Guatemalan history through the lenses of power, identity and memory.

In My Eyes, You Are Beautiful is a coming-of-age novel, that narrates the life of an Indigenous young woman. It depicts the transformation of Olivia Padilla Xuc, an illiterate six-year-old picking coffee in the Guatemalan countryside as she becomes a liberated, powerful woman working in Mexico City. Through Olivia’s deeply moving narrative, we explore the possibility of change and growth of an indigenous woman as she delve into issues of racism, economic opportunity and self-worth – the vital themes that first nation people confront globally while they try to better themselves in societies convinced of their worthlessness. Against an historical period of armed conflict, turmoil and conflict, Olivia Padilla is funny, intense, imaginative, alternately serious and playful. Her courage allows her to explore her sexuality in Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and Italy as she builds a satisfying, independent life few people could have considered possible.

The Mayans have long fascinated modern readers with their complex written language, sophisticated mathematics, and advanced astronomy. In Guatemala in 1558, a young Mayan K'iche' man transcribed what he called a sacred book that "we can no longer see." This was the Popul Vuh, the Mayans' written account of the creation of the universe, the gods and demi-gods who occupied that universe, and the story of how man was created by them. Furthermore, it traced, generation by generation, the lineage of the Mayan lords down to their imprisonment and torture by the Spanish invaders. Considered the Mayan bible, the Popol Vuh appears here in an authoritative, gorgeously illustrated version by noted Maya anthropologist Victor Montejo, who has captured all the drama and excitement of one of the world's great creation stories.

Antipoems: New and Selected, a fresh bilingual gathering as well as retrospective of the work of Chile's foremost poet, reintroduces him to North American readers after thirteen years. Though he has been hardly unproductive, the politics of his homeland have channeled his inventiveness into new modes of expression, which remind us of the sometimes sly hermeticism of Italian writers, Eugenio Montale and Elio Vittorini among them, during the Fascist regime. As Frank MacShane makes clear in his introduction, Parra has not tried to escape repression, but by "using his wit and his humor, he has shown how the artist can still speak the truth in troubled times." Since much of Parra's early work is now out of print, editor David Unger has included many of the poems which influenced North American poets such as Ferlinghetti and Merton in the '50s and '60s, some in new or revised translations. Of Parra's more recent work, there are generous selections from Artifacts (1972), Sermons and Preachings of the Christ of Elqui (1977), New Sermons and Preachings of the Christ of Elqui(1979), Jokes to Mislead the Police (1983), Ecopoems (1983), Recent Sermons(1983), and a section of "Uncollected Poems" (1984). Antipoems: New and Selected is edited by David Unger, who contributed many of the translations to Enrique Lihn's The Dark Room and Other Poems (New Directions, 1978). Professor Frank MacShane of Columbia University, in his critical introduction, gives a full evaluation of a poet who is "unquestionably one of the most influential and accomplished in Latin America today, heir to the position long held by his countryman, Pablo Neruda."

Set in strife-torn Guatemala City in the early 1980s, this sophisticated, quasi-comedic tale depicts the decline and near-fall of a prominent Guatemalan Jewish family. In the face of military rule, terrorism, and sabotage, Marcos learns the truth about his brother Aaron, only to find that sibling secrets can be every bit as dangerous as civil unrest.