An expatriate professor, Vega, returns from exile in Canada to El Salvador for his mother's funeral. A sensitive idealist and an aggrieved motor mouth, he sits at a bar with the author, Castellanos Moya, from five to seven in the evening, telling his tale and ranting against everything his country has to offer. Written in a single paragraph and alive with a fury as astringent as the wrath of Thomas Bernhard, Revulsion was first published in 1997 and earned its author death threats. Roberto Bolano called Revulsion Castellanos Moya's darkest book and perhaps his best: "A parody of certain works by Bernhard and the kind of book that makes you laugh out loud."

High-octane paranoia deranges a writer and fuels a dangerous plan to return home at the tail end of El Salvador's long civil war. Is the plan a dream or a nightmare? Is he courageous, foolhardy, or just plain dumb? Is the bubbling brew of horrors and threats actual or imagined? After he seeks relief for liver pain through hypnosis (while drinking more than ever, despite the treatments), his few impulse-control mechanisms rapidly dissolve, and reality only rarely intrudes on his cogitations. Harebrained murder plots, half-mad arguments, hysterical rants: the narrative escalates at a maniacal pace, infused with Horacio Castellanos Moya's uniquely outlandish and acerbic sense of humor.

A boozing, sex-obsessed writer finds himself employed by the Catholic Church (an institution he loathes) to proofread a 1,100 page report on the army's massacre and torture of thousands of indigenous villagers a decade earlier, including the testimonies of the survivors. The writer's job is to tidy it up: he rants, "that was what my work was all about, cleaning up and giving a manicure to the Catholic hands that were piously getting ready to squeeze the balls of the military tiger." Mesmerized by the strange Vallejo-like poetry of the Indians' phrases ("the houses they were sad because no people were inside them"), the increasingly agitated and frightened writer is endangered twice over: by the spell the strangely beautiful heart-rending voices exert over his tenuous sanity, and by real danger after all, the murderers are the very generals who still run this unnamed Latin American country."

The tyrant of Horacio Castellanos Moya's ambitious new novel is the actual pro-Nazi mystic Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez - known as the Warlock - who came to power in El Salvador in 1932. An attempted coup in April, 1944, failed, but a general strike in May finally forced him out of office. Tyrant Memory takes place during the month between the coup and the strike. Its protagonist, Haydee Aragon, is a well-off woman, whose husband is a political prisoner and whose son, Clemente, after prematurely announcing the dictator's death over national radio during the failed coup, is forced to flee when the very much alive Warlock starts to ruthlessly hunt down his enemies. The novel moves between Haydee's political awakening in diary entries and Clemente's frantic and often hysterically comic efforts to escape capture. Tyrant Memory - sharp, grotesque, moving, and often hilariously funny - is an unforgettable incarnation of a coun- try's history in the destiny of one family.

Sin pensarlo dos veces, y sin prever hasta que punto esa decision cambiara su vida, el protagonista de Insensatez acepta un comprometido encargo de su amigo Erick: revisar la version final de un informe que consigna el genocidio padecido por los pueblos indigenas de un pais centroamericano. Asi, instalado en una exigua habitacion del arzobispado de la ciudad, el protagonista se enfrenta a mas de mil cuartillas que reproducen denuncias de supervivientes y testigos. Atisba entonces un horror que lo fascina y abruma, pues en los textos que va leyendo encuentra metaforas, giros y dislocaciones de lenguaje que recrean vividamente, masacres y actos de crueldad que, de otro modo, serian inexpresables. Al margen de esa ingente tarea, sin embargo, transcurre la realidad cotidiana del protagonista, una realidad a veces frivola y promiscua que contrasta con la sensacion de acoso y peligro que lo invade y con su obsesion por una violencia que podria convertirse en su infierno.

From London, Madrid, and Berlin to Seoul, New York, and Mexico City, this anthology describes the feeling of first arriving in 11 international cities from the perspective of 11 different Latin American writers. Although today anyone can virtually be anywhere in the world at the click of a button, this book attests that nothing compares to physically being in a city, being scared and delighted at the same time, and absorbing everything the place has to offer as well as all that it can hide. With grace and imagination, these fresh voices explain why they love--and sometimes hate--these cities. ""Desde Londres, Madrid y Berlin hasta Seul, Nueva York y la Ciudad de Mexico, esta antologia describe el sentimiento de llegar por primera vez a 11 ciudades internacionales desde la perspectiva de 11 escritores latinoamericanos diferentes. Aunque hoy el que sea puede estar en cualquier lugar del mundo a un clic de raton, este libro expone que nada puede comparar con estar fisicamente en una ciudad, estar asustado y encantado a la vez y absorber todo lo que puede ofrecer el lugar asi como todo lo que puede ocultar. Con gracia e imaginacion, estas voces frescas explican por que aman--y a veces odian--estas ciudades.""