Kirjahaku

In the late 60s, three teenagers from around the globe are making their way in the world: Enrique Florit, from Cuba, living in southern California with his flamboyant magician father; Marta Claros, getting by in the slums of San Salvador; Leila Rezvani, a well-to-do surgeon's daughter in Tehran. We follow them through the years, surviving war, disillusionment, and love, as their lives and paths intersect. With its cast of vividly drawn characters, its graceful movement through time, and the psychological shifts between childhood and adulthood, A Handbook to Luck is a beautiful, elegiac, and deeply emotional novel by beloved storyteller Cristina Garc a.

A fines de los a os sesenta, tres adolescentes de varios rincones del planeta tratan de encontrar su lugar en el mundo: el cubano Enrique Florit, que vive en el sur de California con su padre, un mago extravagante; Marta Claros, que se las arregla para subsistir en un tugurio de San Salvador; Leila Rezvani, hija de una acomodada familia de un cirujano en Teher n. Los seguimos de cerca mientras sobreviven guerras, desilusiones y amores, a medida que sus vidas y sus caminos se entrecruzan. Con un reparto de personajes vivamente retratados, una forma agraciada de moverse por el tiempo y aquellos cambios psicol gicos que se suscitan entre la ni ez y la madurez, Las caras de la suerte es una novela hermosa, melanc lica y profundamente emotiva escrita por la estimada narradora de historias, Cristina Garc a.

"Impressive . . . Cristina Garc a's] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the 'sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond, ' as rhythmic as the music of Beny Mor ."--Time Cristina Garc a's acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country's revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is "a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel Garc a M rquez" (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel's original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban "Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush."--San Francisco Chronicle "Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose."--The Washington Post "Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, Garc a just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind."--The Denver Post

Reina and Constancia Ag ero are Cuban sisters who have been estranged for thirty years. Reina--tall, darkly beautiful, and magnetically sexual--still lives in her homeland. Once a devoted daughter of la revoluci n, she now basks in the glow of her many admiring suitors, believing only in what she can grasp with her five senses. The pale and very petite Constancia lives in the United States, a beauty expert who sees miracles and portents wherever she looks. After she and her husband retire to Miami, she becomes haunted by the memory of her parents and the unexplained death of her beloved mother so long ago. Told in the stirring voices of their parents, their daughters, and themselves, The Ag ero Sisters tells a mesmerizing story about the power of myth to mask, transform, and finally, reveal the truth--as two women move toward an uncertain, long awaited reunion.

In this deeply stirring novel, acclaimed author Cristina Garc a follows one extraordinary family through four generations, from China to Cuba to America. Wonderfully evocative of time and place, rendered in the lyrical prose that is Garc a's hallmark, Monkey Hunting is an emotionally resonant tale of immigration, assimilation, and the prevailing integrity of self.

A definitive compilation of Mexican-American literature from both sides of the border introduces a landmark array of stories, essays, poetry, and criticism by Alfonso Reyes, Rudolfo Anaya, Gloria Anzalda, Xavier Villaurutia, Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, and Ruben Martinez, among others. Original. 20,000 first printing.

A definitive compilation of Mexican-American literature from both sides of the border introduces a landmark array of stories, essays, poetry, and criticism by Alfonso Reyes, Rudolfo Anaya, Xavier Villaurutia, Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, and Ruben Martinez, among others.

La aclamada autora de So ar en cubano nos entrega la continuaci n de su novela, donde le sigue la pista a cuatro generaciones de la familia Del Pino a trav s de los tumultuosos panoramas contempor neos de Cuba, Estados Unidos, Alemania y Rusia. Celia del Pino, matriarca de una extensa familia cubana, ha visto a sus descendientes migrar a todas partes del mundo, luchando por comprender sus identidades transnacionales y las tensas relaciones entre unos y otros. En Berl n, el carism tico pero conflictivo Ivanito se presenta en el escenario con su personalidad de drag queen, mientras se siente acosado por el fantasma de su madre. Pilar Puente, a la deriva en Los ngeles, es una escultora y madre soltera con problemas financieros. La prima de Ivanito, Irina, se ha convertido en la acaudalada due a de una empresa de lencer a en Mosc , pero a n se siente profundamente sola tras la muerte de sus padres y el distanciamiento de su herencia cubana. Mientras tanto, en La Habana, Celia se prepara para reunirse con su amante perdido, Gustavo, y se pregunta si la edad y las d cadas separados habr n alterado el v nculo que los un a. Alejados de sus ra ces cubanas, pero sintiendo todav a la ineludible atracci n de la isla, Ivanito y su familia intentan descubrir el lugar al que pertenecen, y junto a qui n. A lo largo de un a o memorable, cada uno lidiar con su historia mientras son llamados a Berl n para una ltima y explosiva reuni n. Situada veinte a os despu s de los eventos de So ar en cubano, la nueva novela de Cristina Garc a es una historia pica sobre la familia, la devoci n y la b squeda eterna del hogar. "Una hermosa novela: hilarante en un momento, acechante despu s". --Chris Bohjalian, autor de The Flight Attendant y The Lioness ENGLISH DESCRIPTION From the acclaimed author of Dreaming in Cuban, a follow-up novel that tracks four generations of the del Pino family against the tumultuous backdrops of Cuba, the U.S., Germany, and Russia in the new millennium "A beautiful novel: hilarious one moment, haunting the next." --Chris Bohjalian, author of The Flight Attendant and The Lioness Celia del Pino, the matriarch of a far-flung Cuban family, has watched her descendants spread out across the globe, struggling to make sense of their transnational identities and strained relationships with one another. In Berlin, the charismatic yet troubled Ivanito performs on stage as his drag queen persona, while being haunted by the ghost of his mother. Pilar Puente, adrift in Los Angeles, is a struggling sculptor and the single mother of a young son. In Moscow, Ivanito's cousin Irina has become the wealthy owner of a lingerie company, but she remains deeply lonely in the wake of her parents' deaths and her estrangement from her Cuban heritage. Meanwhile, in Havana, Celia prepares to reunite with her lost lover, Gustavo, and wonders whether age and the decades spent apart have altered their bond. Cut off from their Cuban roots, yet still feeling the island's ineluctable pull, Ivanito and his extended family try to reimagine where--and with whom--they belong. Over the course of a momentous year, each will grapple with their histories as they are pulled to Berlin for a final, explosive reunion. Set twenty years after the events in Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina Garc a's new novel is an epic tale of family, devotion, and the timeless search for home.

When Cristina Garc a's first novel, Dreaming in Cuban, was published in 1992, The New York Times called the author "a magical new writer...completely original." The book was nominated for a National Book Award, and reviewers everywhere praised it for the richness of its prose, the vivid drama of the narrative, and the dazzling illumination it brought to bear on the intricacies of family life in general and the Cuban American family in particular. Now, with The Ag ero Sisters, Garc a gives us her widely anticipated new novel. Large, vibrant, resonant with image and emotion, it tells a mesmerizing story about the power of family myth to mask, transform, and, finally, reveal the truth. It is the story of Reina and Constancia Ag ero, Cuban sisters who have been estranged for thirty years. Reina, forty-eight years old, living in Cuba in the early 1990s, was once a devoted daughter of la revoluci n; Constancia, an eager to assimilate naturalized American, smuggled herself off the island in 1962. Reina is tall, darkly beautiful, unmarried, and magnetically sexual, a master electrician who is known as Compa era Amazona among her countless male suitors, and who basks in the admiration she receives in her trade and in her bed. Constancia is petite, perfectly put together, pale skinned, an inspirationally successful yet modest cosmetics saleswoman, long resigned to her passionless marriage. Reina believes in only what she can grasp with her five senses; Constancia believes in miracles that "arrive every day from the succulent edge of disaster." Reina lives surrounded by their father's belongings, the tangible remains of her childhood; Constancia has inherited only a startling resemblance to their mother--the mysterious Blanca--which she wears like an unwanted mask. The sisters' stories are braided with the voice from the past of their father, Ignacio, a renowned naturalist whose chronicling of Cuba's dying species mirrored his own sad inability to prevent familial tragedy. It is in the memories of their parents--dead many years but still powerfully present--that the sisters' lives have remained inextricably bound. Tireless scientists, Ignacio and Blanca understood the perfect truth of the language of nature, but never learned to speak it in their own tongue. What they left their daughters--the picture of a dark and uncertain history sifted with half-truths and pure lies--is the burden and the gift the two women struggle with as they move unknowingly toward reunion. And during that movement, as their stories unfurl and intertwine with those of their children, their lovers and husbands, their parents, we see the expression and effect of the passions, humor, and desires that both define their differences and shape their fierce attachment to each other and to their discordant past. The Ag ero Sisters is clear confirmation of Cristina Garc a's standing in the front ranks of new American fiction. Translation by Alan West.