Latin Magical Realism

When he arrives in Cuba at the close of the eighteenth century, Victor Hugues, a merchant sailor from Marseille, brings with him not only the idealism of the French Revolution but also its ambition and bloodlust. Landing at the Havana doorstep of a trio of wealthy, eccentric Creole orphans, he sweeps them across the Caribbean Sea to Guadeloupe, whose enslaved Africans he frees only then to exploit them in his fight against the British for colonial sovereignty. What ensues in Alejo Carpentier’s magical realist masterpiece is an explosive clash between the New World and the Old World.

Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens to find herself in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Empty vehicles litter the road. Everyone has disappeared - or almost everyone. Calliope, heavy-bellied with the twins she carries inside her, must make her way across this dangerous landscape with a group of fellow survivors in search of answers. Long-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles and splits, and monsters come to ominous life. Calliope will be forced to reconcile the geological record with the heritage she once denied.

This magical realist short tale was inspired by the Latin American myth of El Sombrerón, the nighttime guardian of peace and justice. El Sombrerón arrives in a sleepy town to find that a young girl has stolen a golden necklace. El Sombrerón must convince the girl to return the necklace so she can avoid El Sombrerón’s justice…and before the sun rises.

Anaïs Echeverría left Peru, the country where she grew up, many years ago. She has built a new life for herself in London: engaged and pregnant, she dares to believe that she has left the ghosts of her family's past behind. But now she must return to Lima to sell her ancestral home, the notorious yellow house that looms over the sprawling city below. Concealed within its walls are spectres from the past that demand her attention, remnants of the injustices on which both her country and her house were built.

In Tome, a small, seemingly sleepy New Mexico hamlet, Sofia and her four fated daughters reveal a world of marvels where the comic and horrific, past and present, real and fantastic coexist and collide. Over two crowded decades, Sofia tries to hold things together following the disappearance of her husband, Domingo, he of the Clark Gable mustache and the uncontrollable gambling habit. Adventurous Esperanza, Chicana campus radical turned television news reporter, travels farthest from home only to be reeled back in spirit.

Río Salado es una población pesquera que muere lentamente y dentro de ella sus pobladores que se han acostumbrado tanto al lugar, que carecen del ánimo necesario para traspasar los cerros, cruzar el desierto y alejarse de ese sitio en el que muchas mujeres son seducidas, anualmente, por pescadores japoneses que las enamoran, las embarazan y las ilusionan con volver. Solo les dejan como recuerdo y recompensa bolsitas de perlas que muy pronto pierden valor porque en cada casa hay una de ellas.

Hugo Contreras’s world in Miami has shrunk. Since his wife died, Hugo’s debt from her medical bills has become insurmountable. He shuffles between his efficiency apartment, La Carreta (his favorite place for a cafecito), and a botanica in a strip mall where he works as the resident babaláwo.

Emilia and Gregorio spent their childhood following their grandmother through the mountains of central México, gathering the ingredients she used for curandera work and learning about the supernatural world. When she passes away, the siblings are left alone. So they scrape together their money and pay coyotes to smuggle them to their father in the United States. The siblings are exhausted before they even reach the border, where the coyotes seize Emilia for their own harsh ends.

El protagonista y narrador de esta novela va en busca de la cita definitiva con la lady en forma de polvo blanco, y para ello emprende un viaje al final de la noche en el que se sucederán encuentros con personajes inquietantes, con los fantasmas de los amigos muertos por el camino, con los recuerdos de la gran ciudad que ha dejado atrás y con su propio pasado.

Una saga familiare del XX secolo in cui si rispecchiano la storia e il destino di tutto un popolo. Un grande affresco che per fascino ed emozione può ricordare al lettore, nell'ambito della letteratura sudamericana, soltanto "Cent'anni di solitudine" di García Márquez.

Lilian Estrada seemingly has it all: an ob-gyn star on the rise, a master at balancing work with whirlwind romances and part of a family of fiercely loyal and exceptional women, all bound together by an extraordinary secret. The Estrada women each possess a unique power, and Lily shines with the rare gift to manipulate memories. Yet not even her mystical abilities can shield her from a harrowing event at the hospital, one that sends her powers—and her confidence—spiraling out of control.

El intenso relato del regreso clandestino del director de cine Miguel Littín a Chile, su patria.

When the story opens, the eponymous hero of Rudolfo Anaya's novel is in an ambulance en route to a hospital for crippled children in the New Mexican desert. A poor boy from Albuquerque, 16-year-old Tortuga takes his name from the odd, turtle-shaped mountain that is rumored to possess miraculous curative powers. Tortuga is paralyzed, and not even his mother's fervent prayers can heal him. But under the mountain's watchful gaze, with the support of fellow patients, he begins the Herculean task of breaking out of his shell and becoming whole again.

Abrán González always knew he was different. Called a coyote because of his fair skin, the kid from Barelas found escape through boxing and became one of the youngest Golden Gloves champs. But the arrival of a letter from a dying woman turns his entire life into a lie. The revelation that he was adopted makes him feel like an orphan and sends him on a quest to find his birth father.

In this visionary novel framed as a hagiography, the ruminative, subjective memories of Gabriel’s witnesses - spiritual, familial, romantic, and political - converge to make sense of the man’s confounding works and message. As they do, a surprising portrait develops...not only of the deepening mystery of Gabriel Romero himself but also of a country in conflict and the faith it takes to fight the suspicion and fear that divide us.

A literary jigsaw puzzle of a debut novel set in Colombia during the peak of its decades-long conflict, and in New York City. While her parents are away, a teenager finds herself home alone, with the household staff mysteriously gone, no phone connection, and news of an insurgency on the radio - and then she hears a knock at the door.

What does it mean to be other? What does it mean to love in a world determined to keep us apart? These questions murmur in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado’s strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically.

Larimar Cintrón works hard at three things: her job as brand manager for Beacon Café, a New York based corporate bakery chain; taking care of her parents and her abuela; and hiding that she’s a ciguapa—a mythical creature of Dominican folklore with long, straight hair and backwards-facing feet. Larimar may only be a ciguapa on full moons, but she feels like an outsider in her family the rest of the month too. Her love of ’90s punk rock music and style further sets her apart.

No es una novela. Es una "nivola", según su autor. Nuevo género creado por Unamuno, no tuvo mucho arraigo, pero aún así Niebla es una de las obras de ficción más importantes del escritor vasco. El libro aborda la inseguridad del hombre moderno que se preocupa por su destino y su mortalidad. El título está cargado de significado, dado que el libro difumina la línea entre la ficción y la realidad. También son nebulosas las descripciones físicas de los personajes y lugares, y hasta pone en duda la naturaleza de la existencia humana.

Dans un village des Caraïbes, la légende d'un trésor disparu vient bouleverser l'existence de la famille Otero. À la recherche du butin du capitaine Henry Morgan, dont le navire aurait échoué dans les environs trois cents ans plus tôt, les explorateurs se succèdent. Tous, dont l'ambitieux Severo Bracamonte, vont croiser le chemin de Serena Otero, l'héritière de la plantation de cannes à sucre qui rêve à d'autres horizons.