The "Canto General," thought by many of Neruda's most prominent critics to be the poet's masterpiece, is the stunning epic of an entire continent and its people.

A young princess overstays her playtime at a neighboring castle. She chooses the shorter path home, which leads her through the Dark Woods. She is captured by a witch and taken to the witch's cottage. She is made to sit on the steps while the witch prepares supper. An owl witnesses her plight and distracts the witch, allowing the princess to escape. The witch pursues the princess, who is led by the owl though the Dark Woods. The King rescues the princess. She learns her lesson and will always be mindful of the time needed for her return trip when she is away.

The modem Brazilian short story begins with the mature work of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), acclaimed almost unanimously as Brazil's greatest writer. Collectively, these nineteen stories are representative of Machado's unique style and world view, and this translation doubles the number of his stories previously available in English.

The stories in this volume reflect Machado's post-1880 emphasis on social satire and experimentation in psychological realism. If he had continued to produce the moralistic love stories and parlor intrigues of his earlier fiction, Machado's legacy would have been an entertaining but inconsequent body of work. However, by 1880 he had begun a devastating satirical assault on society through his fiction. In spite of his ruthlessness, Machado does at times reveal an ironic sympathy for his characters. He is not indifferent to human conflict but uses humor and irony to stress the absurdity of these conflicts, acted out against the backdrop of an indifferent universe. Such a spectacle creates a sense of helplessness that can only inspire wistful amusement.

In his technical mastery of the short story. Machado was decades ahead of his contemporaries and can still be considered more modern than most of the modernists themselves. That his stories elicit such strong and diverse reactions today is a tribute to their richness, complexity, and significance.

Here is a major work by a Chilean poet thought by many to be the most brilliant and important new voice in the Spanish language. In its first American edition, this poetry is presented in Spanish and Enlgish, so that readers of both languages may listed to Zurita's voice.
"Anteparadise" can be read as a creative response, an act of resistance by a young artist to the violence and suffering during and after the 1973 coup that toppled the democratically elected Allende government. Zurita thus follows the example of several Latin American pets such as the Peruvian Cesar Vallejo and Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, sharing their passion and urgency, but his voice is unique.