Carmen Boullosa

A contemporary classic from award-winning author Carmen Boullosa, in the tradition of Juan Rulfo, Jorge Luis Borges and César Aira, now available in a special Tenth Anniversary Edition. Loosely based on the little-known 1859 Mexican invasion of the United States, Texas: The Great Theft is a richly imagined evocation of the volatile Tex-Mex borderland. Boullosa views border history through a new lens decentering US narratives, and her sympathetic portrayal of each of her wildly diverse characters—Mexican ranchers and Texas Rangers, Comanches and cowboys, German socialists and runaway slaves, Southern belles and dancehall girls—makes her storytelling tremendously powerful and absorbing. Featuring a new introduction by Merve Emre, the Tenth Anniversary Edition of Texas sheds important historical light on current battles over the Mexican–American frontier while telling a gripping story with Boullosa's singular prose and formal innovation.

A brilliant, feminist twist on the Book of Genesis from Carmen Boullosa. What if everything they’ve told us about the Garden of Eden was wrong? Faced with what appears to be an apocryphal manuscript containing ten books and ninety-one parts, Eve decides to tell her version of the story of Genesis: she was not created from Adam’s rib, nor was she expelled for taking the apple from the serpent; the story of Abel and Cain isn't true, neither are those of the Flood and the Tower of Babel... In brilliant prose, Carmen Boullosa offers a take on the Book of Genesis that dismantles patriarchy and rebuilds our understanding of the world—from the origin of gastronomy, to the domestication of animals, to the cultivation of land and pleasure—all through the feminine gaze. Based on this exploration, at times both joyful and painful, The Book of Eve takes a tour through the stories we’ve been told since childhood, which have helped to foster (and cement) the absurd idea that woman is the companion, complement, and even accessory to man, opening the door to criminal violence against women. Boullosa refutes this entrenched, dangerous perspective in her foundational and brazen feminist novel.

"A literary feast that is both heartwarming and nostalgic . . . This anthology makes the perfect companion for cozy winter evenings."--The Los Angeles TimesThis seventh installment in our beloved Very Christmas series is a celebration of the Mexican Yuletide spirit. Replete with mouthwatering Nochebuena meals, mysterious felines, multicolored boxes, marvelous sweet rolls, and many a bedside tale, A Very Mexican Christmas is sure to delight, warm, and astonish by turns. You'll find spellbinding work by some of Mexico's most important writers, including Carlos Fuentes, bestselling Laura Esquivel, and other contemporary favorites like Amparo D vila, Sandra Cisneros, Fabio Mor bito, and Carmen Boullosa, as well as fresh translations of classics by Sor Juana In s de la Cruz, Amado Nervo, and Ignacio Manuel Altamirano. Get a glimpse of how Christmas is done in a land of no snow, as well as among Mexicans living north of the border, with this sparkling assortment of literary gems that will guarantee a very feliz Navidad. With a gorgeous cover design by Cecilia Ruiz.

A bilingual poetry collection in which a microwave, a fly, a soup, a football match, a train, or a child in the subway serve as pretexts to explain the tragic nature of life when death is involved. One with strong personality and the double capacity of playing with language and using it as a mirror of the Mexican reality, sometimes violent, with memorable lines and reflections of great depth.

Saint Petersburg, 1905. Behind the gates of the Karenin Palace, Sergei, son of Anna Karenina, meets Tolstoy in his dreams and finds reminders of his mother everywhere: the vivid portrait that the tsar intends to acquire and the opium-infused manuscripts Anna wrote just before her death, which open a trapdoor to a wild feminist fairy tale. Across the city, Clementine, an anarchist seamstress, and Father Gapon, the charismatic leader of the proletariat, plan protests that embroil the downstairs members of the Karenin household in their plots and tip the country ever closer to revolution. Boullosa tells a polyphonic and subversive tale of the Russian revolution through the lens of Tolstoy’s most beloved work.

"The world is ready for her blend of insane Angela Carter with the originality of Clarice Lispector."—Mariana Enriquez, LitHubDelicately crafted, intensely visual, deeply personal stories explore the nature of memory, family ties, and the difficult imbalances of love." Both her debut story collection, Forgotten Journey, and her only novel, The Promise, are strikingly 20th-century texts, written in a high-modernist mode rarely found in contemporary fiction."—Lily Meyer, NPR"Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature."––Jorge Luis Borges"I don't know of another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us."—Italo Calvino"These two newly translated books could make her a rediscovery on par with Clarice Lispector. . . . there has never been another voice like hers."—John Freeman, Executive Editor, LitHub" . . . it is for the precise and terrible beauty of her sentences that this book should be read. A masterpiece of midcentury modernist literature triumphantly translated into our times."—Publishers Weekly * Starred Review"Ocampo is beyond great—she is necessary."—Hernan Diaz, author of In the Distance and Associate Director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University "Like William Blake, Ocampo's first voice was that of a visual artist; in her writing she retains the will to unveil immaterial so that we might at least look at it if not touch it."—Helen Oyeyemi, author of Gingerbread"Ocampo is a legend of Argentinian literature, and this collection of her short stories brings some of her most recondite and mysterious works to the English-speaking world. . . . This collection is an ideal introduction to a beguiling body of work."—Publishers WeeklyThis collection of 28 short stories, first published in 1937 and now in English translation for the first time, introduced readers to one of Argentina's most original and iconic authors. With this, her fiction debut, poet Silvina Ocampo initiated a personal, idiosyncratic exploration of the politics of memory, a theme to which she would return again and again over the course of her unconventional life and productive career. Praise for Forgotten Journey:"Ocampo is one of those rare writers who seems to write fiction almost offhandedly, but to still somehow do more in four or five pages than most writers do in twenty. Before you know it, the seemingly mundane has bared its surreal teeth and has you cornered."—Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World: Stories"The Southern Cone queen of the short-story, Ocampo displays all her mastery in Forgotten Journey. After finishing the book, you only want more."—Gabriela Alemán, author of Poso Wells"Silvina Ocampo's fiction is wondrous, heart-piercing, and fiercely strange. Her fabulism is as charming as Borges’s. Her restless sense of invention foregrounds the brilliant feminist work of writers like Clarice Lispector and Samanta Schweblin. It’s thrilling to have work of this magnitude finally translated into English, head spinning and thrilling."—Alyson Hagy, author of Scribe

Three narrators from different historical eras engage in preserving history in Heavens on Earth. As her narrators sense each other and interact through time and space, Boullosa challenges the primacy of recorded history and asserts literature and language's power to transcend the barriers of time and space in vivid, urgent prose. Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico's leading novelists, poets, and playwrights. Her most recent novel Texas: The Great Theft (Deep Vellum, 2014) was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize, nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award, and won Typographical Era's Translation Award. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Mexico City, Mexico.

The term ? Mexican Drug War” misleads. It implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair. But this diverts attention from the U. S. role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It’s not just that Americans buy drugs from, and sell weapons to, Mexico’s murderous cartels. It’s that ever since the U. S. prohibited the use and sale of drugs in the early 1900s, it has pressured Mexico into acting as its border enforcer?with increasingly deadly consequences. Mexico was not a helpless victim. Powerful forces within the country profited hugely from supplying Americans with what their government forbade them. But the policies that spawned the drug war have proved disastrous for both countries. Written by two award-winning authors, one American and the other Mexican, A Narco History reviews the interlocking twentieth-century histories that produced this twenty-first century calamity, and proposes how to end it.

One of BBC's "10 Books to Read in August" "an altogether fresh take on the coming-of-age story... Boullosa manages to merge humor with panic seamlessly." -- Publishers Weekly Starred Review "Carmen Boullosa is, in my opinion, a true master."--Alvaro Mutis Part bildungsroman, part ghost story, part revenge novel, Before tells the story of a woman who returns to the landscape of her childhood to overcome the fear that held her captive as a girl. This powerful exploration of the path to womanhood and lost innocence won Mexico's two most prestigious literary prizes. Carmen Boullosa, one of Mexico's leading writers, has published nearly twenty novels. Her most recent novel, Texas: The Great Theft, won the 2014 Typographical Era Translation Award and was shortlisted for the 2015 PEN Translation Award.

"Mexico's greatest woman writer."--Roberto Bolano "A luminous writer ... Boullosa is a masterful spinner of the fantastic"--Miami Herald An imaginative writer in the tradition of Juan Rulfo, Jorge Luis Borges, and Cesar Aira, Carmen Boullosa shows herself to be at the height of her powers with her latest novel. Loosely based on the little-known 1859 Mexican invasion of the United States, Texas is a richly imagined evocation of the volatile Tex-Mex borderland. Boullosa views border history through distinctly Mexican eyes, and her sympathetic portrayal of each of her wildly diverse characters--Mexican ranchers and Texas Rangers, Comanches and cowboys, German socialists and runaway slaves, Southern belles and dancehall girls--makes her storytelling tremendously powerful and absorbing. Shedding important historical light on current battles over the Mexican--American frontier while telling a gripping story with Boullosa's singular prose and formal innovation, Texas marks the welcome return of a major writer who has previously captivated American audiences and is poised to do so again. Carmen Boullosa (b. 1954) is one of Mexico's leading novelists, poets, and playwrights. Author of seventeen novels, her books have been translated into numerous world languages. Recipient of numerous prizes and honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship, Boullosa is currently Distinguished Lecturer at City College of New York. Samantha Schnee is founding editor and chairman of the board of Words Without Borders. She has also been a senior editor with Zoetrope, and her translations have appeared in the Guardian, Granta, and the New York Times.

An audacious retelling of the life and legend of Cleopatra follows the ancient queen as a young girl fleeing the intrigues of royal society to take up residence with a band of pirates, as a young queen carried across the sea by a magical bull to live among the Amazons, and as the dying consort of Marc Antony. Reprint.

Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico's most acclaimed young writers, and Leaving Tabasco tells of the coming-of-age of Delmira Ulloa, raised in an all-female home in Agustini, in the Mexican province of Tabasco. The Washington Post Book World wrote, "We happily share with [Delmira] ... her life, including the infinitely charming town she inhabits [and] her grandmother's fantastic imagination." In Agustini it is not unusual to see your grandmother float above the bed when she sleeps, or to purchase torrential rains at a traveling fair, or to watch your family's elderly serving woman develop stigmata, then disappear completely, to be canonized as a local saint. As Delmira becomes a woman she will search for her missing father, and will make a choice that will force her to leave home forever. Brimming with the spirit of its irrepressible heroine, Leaving Tabasco is a story of great charm and depth that will remain in its readers' hearts for a long time. "Carmen Boullosa ... immerses us once again in her wickedly funny and imaginative world." -- Dolores Prida, Latina "To flee Agustini is to leave not just a town but the viscerally primal dreamscape it represents." -- Sandra Tsing Loh, The New York Times Book Review "A vibrant coming-of-age tale ... Boullosa [is] a master.... Each chapter is an adventure." -- Monica L. Williams, The Boston Globe

The emerging societies of the Caribbean in the seventeenth century were a riotous assembly of pirates, aristocrats, revolutionaries, and rogues -- outcasts and fortune seekers all. In They're Cows, We're Pigs, acclaimed Mexican novelist Carmen Boullosa animates this world of bloody chaos and uncertain possibility through the eyes of the young Jean Smeeks, kidnapped in Flanders at age thirteen and sold into indentured servitude on Tortuga, the mythical Treasure Island. Trained in the magic of medicine by le Negre Miel, an African slave healer, and Pineau, a French-born surgeon, Smeeks signs on as a medical officer with the pirate band the Brethren of the Coast. Transformed by the looting and violence of pirate life, Smeeks finds himself both healer and despoiler, servant and mercenary, suspended between the worlds of the law-abiding, tradition-bound "cows" and the freely roaming and raiding "pigs."