No writer alive today exerts the magical appeal of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Now, in the long-awaited first volume of his autobiography, he tells the story of his life from his birth in 1927 to the moment in the 1950s when he proposed to his wife. The result is as spectacular as his finest fiction.
Here is Garcia Marquez's shimmering evocation of his childhood home of Aracataca, the basis of the fictional Macondo. Here are the members of his ebulliently eccentric family. Here are the forces that turned him into a writer. Warm, revealing, abounding in images so vivid that we seem to be remembering them ourselves, Living to Tell the Tale" "is a work of enchantment.

Edith Grossman's acclaimed translations of The Tenth Muse's best known works are offered here with introductory materials and explanatory footnotes, along with related additional works and eight critical essays.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695) was a feminist and a woman ahead of her time. She was very much a public intellectual and her contemporaries called her "the Tenth Muse" and "the Phoenix of Mexico", names that continue to resonate. This self-taught intellectual rose to the height of fame as a writer in Mexico City during the Spanish Golden Age. The volume includes Sor Juana's best-known works, including "First Dream", which showcases her prodigious intellect and range and "Response of the Poet to the Very Eminent Sor Filotea de la Cruz", her epistolary feminist defence of a woman's right to study and to write. Thirty other works are also included.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HAROLD BLOOM. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. Unless you read Spanish, you've never read Don Quixote.

October 1936. Spanish architect Ignacio Abel arrives at Penn Station, the final stop on his journey from war-torn Madrid, where he has left behind his wife and children, abandoning them to uncertainty. Crossing the fragile borders of Europe, he reflects on months of fratricidal conflict in his embattled country, his own transformation from a bricklayer's son to a respected bourgeois husband and professional, and the all-consuming love affair with an American woman that forever alters his life. A rich, panoramic portrait of Spain on the brink of civil war, In the Night of Time details the passions and tragedies of a country tearing itself apart. Compared in scope and importance to War and Peace, Munoz Molina's masterpiece is the great epic of the Spanish Civil War written by one of Spain's most important contemporary novelists.

In Barcelona, an aging Brazilian prostitute trains her dog to weep at the grave she has chosen for herself. In Vienna, a woman parlays her gift for seeing the future into a fortunetelling position with a wealthy family. In Geneva, an ambulance driver and his wife take in the lonely, apparently dying ex-President of a Caribbean country, only to discover that his political ambition is very much intact.
In these twelve masterly stories about the lives of Latin Americans in Europe, Garcia Marquez conveys the peculiar amalgam of melancholy, tenacity, sorrow, and aspiration that is the emigre experience.

"A "New York Times "Notable Book of 2007
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""Splendid, suspenseful, and irresistible . . . A contemporary love story that explores the mores of the urban 1960s--and 70s and 80s."--"The New York Times Book Review
"Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as "Lily" in Lima in 1950, when she flits into his life one summer and disappears again without explanation. He loves her still when she reappears as a revolutionary in 1960s Paris, then later as Mrs. Richardson, the wife of a wealthy Englishman, and again as the mistress of a sinister Japanese businessman in Tokyo. However poorly she treats him, he is doomed to worship her. Charting Ricardo's expatriate life through his romances with this shape-shifting woman, Vargas Llosa has created a beguiling, epic romance about the life-altering power of obsession.

Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece. Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. You haven't experienced Don Quixote in English until you've read this masterful translation.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. Unless you read Spanish, you've never read Don Quixote.

"Though there have been many valuable English translations of Don Quixote, I would commend Edith Grossman's version for the extraordinarily high quality of her prose. The Knight and Sancho are so eloquently rendered by Grossman that the vitality of their characterization is more clearly conveyed than ever before. There is also an astonishing contextualization of Don Quixote and Sancho in Grossman's translation that I believe has not been achieved before. The spiritual atmosphere of a Spain already in steep decline can be felt throughout, thanks to her heightened quality of diction.

Grossman might be called the Glenn Gould of translators, because she, too, articulates every note. Reading her amazing mode of finding equivalents in English for Cervantes's darkening vision is an entrance into a further understanding of why this great book contains within itself all the novels that have followed in its sublime wake."

From the Introduction by Harold Bloom

Miguel de Cervantes was born on September 29, 1547, in Alcala de Henares, Spain. At twenty-three he enlisted in the Spanish militia and in 1571 fought against the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, where a gunshot wound permanently crippled his left hand. He spent four more years at sea and then another five as a slave after being captured by Barbary pirates. Ransomed by his family, he returned to Madrid but his disability hampered him; it was in debtor's prison that he began to write Don Quixote. Cervantes wrote many other works, including poems and plays, but he remains best known as the author of Don Quixote. He died on April 23, 1616.

Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own. In this 'masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written' (Bookforum), Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit.

Eighteen-year old orphan Andrea moves to battle-scarred Barcelona to take up a scholarship at the university. But staying with relatives in their crumbling apartment, her dreams of independence are dashed among the eccentric collection of misfits who surround her, not least her uncle Roman. As Andrea's university friend, the affluent, elegant Ena, enters into a strange relationship with Roman, Andrea can't help but wonder what future lies ahead for her in such a bizarre and disturbing world. Translated by Edith Grossman 'One of the great classics of contemporary European literature' Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Monterroso's microcuentos defy social and literary categories in this collection of brilliant satires that combine the first English-language versions of Obras completas y otros cuentos (1959) and Movimiento perpetuo (1972). Corral's 'Before and After Augusto Monterroso' and Grossman's competent translations make this volume an excellent introduction to one of Latin America's greatest living writers. Highly recommended for classroom and general use"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Maqroll the Gaviero (the Lookout) is one of the most alluring and memorable characters in the fiction of the last twenty-five years. His extravagant and hopeless undertakings, his brushes with the law and scrapes with death, and his enduring friendships and unlooked-for love affairs make him a Don Quixote for our day, driven from one place to another by a restless and irregular quest for the absolute. Alvaro Mutis's seven dazzling chronicles of the adventures and misadventures of Maqroll have won him numerous honors and a passionately devoted readership throughout the world. Here for the first time in English all these wonderful stories appear in a single volume in Edith Grossman's prize-winning translation.

Sor Juana (1651 1695) was a fiery feminist and a woman ahead of her time. Like Simone de Beauvoir, she was very much a public intellectual. Her contemporaries called her "the Tenth Muse" and "the Phoenix of Mexico," names that continue to resonate. An illegitimate child, self-taught intellectual, and court favorite, she rose to the height of fame as a writer in Mexico City during the Spanish Golden Age.

This volume includes Sor Juana's best-known works: "First Dream," her longest poem and the one that showcases her prodigious intellect and range, and "Response of the Poet to the Very Eminent Sor Filotea de la Cruz," her epistolary feminist defense evocative of Mary Wollstonecraft and Emily Dickinson of a woman's right to study and to write. Thirty other works playful ballads, extraordinary sonnets, intimate poems of love, and a selection from an allegorical play with a distinctive New World flavor are also included."

General Simon Bolivar, “the Liberator” of five South American countries, takes a last melancholy journey down the Magdalena River, revisiting cities along its shores, and reliving the triumphs, passions, and betrayals of his life. Infinitely charming, prodigiously successful in love, war and politics, he still dances with such enthusiasm and skill that his witnesses cannot believe he is ill. Aflame with memories of the power that he commanded and the dream of continental unity that eluded him, he is a moving exemplar of how much can be won—and lost—in a life.

In 1990, fearing extradition to the United States, Pablo Escobar - head of the Medellin drug cartel - kidnapped ten notable Colombians to use as bargaining chips. With the eye of a poet, Garcia Marquez describes the survivors' perilous ordeal and the bizarre drama of the negotiations for their release. He also depicts the keening ache of Colombia after nearly forty years of rebel uprisings, right-wing death squads, currency collapse and narco-democracy. With cinematic intensity, breathtaking language and journalistic rigor, Garcia Marquez evokes the sickness that inflicts his beloved country and how it penetrates every strata of society, from the lowliest peasant to the President himself.

One of the most important literary works of post-Civil War Spain, "Nada" is the semiautobiographical story of an orphaned young woman who leaves her small town to attend university in war-ravaged Barcelona. Edith Grossman's vital new translation captures Carmen Laforet's feverish energy, powerful imagery, and subtle humor. "Nada," which includes an illuminating Introduction by Mario Vargas Llosa, is one of the great novels of twentieth-century Europe.
"Laforet vividly conveys the strangeness of Barcelona in the 1940s, a city that has survived civil war only to find itself muted by Franco's dictatorship...The spirit of sly resistance that Laforet's novel expresses, its heroine's determination to escape provincial poverty and to immerse herself in 'lights, noises, the entire tide of life, ' has lost none of its power of persuasion." -- "The New York Times Book Review
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"That this complex, mature and wise novel was written by someone in her early 20s is extraordinary....But after six decades, this first novel has lost none of its power and originality, and we are fortunate to have it in this fine translation."-- "The Washington Post, chosen as a Washington Post Best Book of the Year
""Nada does indeeed recall Sartre and Camus, but it is fresher and more vibrant than either, and with its call to intuition and feelings rather than intellect, it cuts deeper....[A] mesmerizing new translation....a beautiful evocation of the tidal wave of late adolescent feeling....[Laforet] wrote Nada when she was only 23, yet the book resonates with frightening maturity, sadness and depth...a work of genius." -- "Los Angeles Times
""A brilliantly subtle book whose power lies in what goesunsaid..."Nada" is a skillfully written, multifaceted novel, and its eerie relevance to today's political climate and social attitudes is difficult to ignore." -- "The San Francisco Chronicle"
"Laforet's moody and sepulchral debut novel...has been given new life by acclaimed translator Grossman....Andrea's narration is gorgeously expressive, rippling with emotion and meaning...fans of European lit will welcome this Spanish Gothic to the States with open arms and a half-exasperated, "What took you so long?"-"Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
""This Modern Library edition should be a keeper." -- "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
""Carmen Laforet finds new life with this beautiful translation...dazzling in its approach...Laforet's talent in addressing complex familial and social issues us nothing short of amazing...her wiser-than-thou nature and clever handling of bitter dialogue [are] the mark of a truly gifted writer.....a timeless work of art." -- "The Fredericksburg Free Lance Star"
"Nada is neither moralist, nor prolix, unlike most other Spanish literature of the time and before. This is a modern voice, philosophically and stylistically, talking to us in freedom from the darkest hours of the victory of fascism....remarkably sophisticated." -- "The Independent"
"[A] remarkable achievement...Nada's work is sui generis, a gothic horror story which deserves the widest possible readership." -- "The Sunday Herald
""Edith Grossman's translation makes the rich, dense descriptions....sound perfectly natural in English; not a beat is missed, not an adjective misplaced. Let us hope that her fine, readable version will enable "Nada "to achieve, in the English-reading world, the perennial popularity of a great twentieth-century novel." -- "TLS
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A "New York Times" Notable Book
On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit-he has purchased hundreds of women-he asks a madam for her assistance. The fourteen-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with this sleeping beauty at his side, it is he who awakens to a romance he has never known.
Tender, knowing, and slyly comic, "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is an exquisite addition to the master's work.

An epic masterpiece of world literature, in a magnificent new translation by one if the most acclaimed translators of our time. A towering figure of the Renaissance, Luis de Gongora pioneered poetic forms so radically different from the dominant aesthetic of his time that he was derided as "the Prince of Darkness." The Solitudes, his magnum opus, is an intoxicatingly lush novel-in-verse that follows the wanderings of a shipwrecked man who has been spurned by his lover. Wrenched from civilization and its attendant madness, the desolate hero is transported into a natural world that is at once menacing and sublime. In this stunning edition Edith Grossman captures the breathtaking beauty of a work that represents one of the high points of poetic achievement in any language. Luis de Gongora (1561-1627) is among the most prominent figures of the Spanish Golden Age. Edith Grossman is the acclaimed translator of Don Quixote, as well as books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes. She is the recipient of the inaugural Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize, the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, and a Guggenheim fellowship. Alberto Manguel is the bestselling author of dozens of books, including A History of Reading and The Dictionary of Imaginary Places.

A painstakingly researched and lively novel about a neglected human rights pioneer by the Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa In 1916, the Irish nationalist Roger Casement was hanged by the British government for treason. Casement had dedicated his life to improving the plight of oppressed peoples around the world. But when he dared to draw a parallel between the injustices he witnessed in African and American colonies and those committed by the British in Northern Ireland, he became involved in a cause that led to his imprisonment and execution. Ultimately, the scandals surrounding Casement's trial and eventual hanging marred his image to such a degree that his pioneering human rights work wasn't fully reexamined until the 1960s. "Dream of the Celt" is a fascinating fictional account of an extraordinary man in the original and dynamic style of Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa.
Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman