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Articles from SPLALit - Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American L

Cervantes prize 2007 2007-12-01 17:57:00 The Argentine poet Juan Gelman has won the Cervantes prize, the Spanish-speaking world's top literary award. Gelman, 77, has published more than 20 books of poetry since 1956, and is widely considered to be Argentina's leading contemporary poet. His poems address his Jewish heritage, family, Argentina and his painful experience as a political activist during his country's 1976-83 "dirty war" ...

100 Notable Books of 2007 2007-12-01 17:43:00 This year's New York Times' 100 Notable Books includes 5 Latin American Books, and Roberto Bolaño's Savage Detectives made it to The 10 Best Books of 2007 list. THE BAD GIRL. By Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated by Edith Grossman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) This suspenseful novel transforms “Madame Bovary” into a vibrant exploration of the urban mores of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. THE BRIEF ...

José Luís Peixoto: Blank Gaze 2007-11-27 05:17:00 Daniel Hahn reviews José Luís Peixoto' "Blank Gaze". An unnamed village in the Alentejo region, southern Portugal. Its inhabitants are rural, and poor – some are desperate, some more or less resigned, but all are poor. Among them are the old twins joined at a little finger, identical, with identical gaits and postures, and (though they don't know this) an identical number of white hairs on their ...

Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 2007-11-27 05:13:00 Amy Linden reviews Junot Diaz' "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao". Not sure if them there literary folks call it a comeback. But when you write a book, said book blows up, (and upon doing so breaks more ground than a jackhammer, as well as garnering unanimous acclaim), chances are good that when the author returns, his new book will be greeted with mad attention, anticipation and maybe even ( ...

Love in the Time of Cholera directed by Mike Newell 2007-11-27 05:10:00 Ryan Stewart reviews Mike Newell's "Love in the Time of Cholera". Great literature is dumbed down to drippy soap opera in Mike Newell's adaptation of the Gabriel García Márquez novel, Love in the Time of Cholera. Set in Colombia between the 1870s and the 1930s, the story follows a born romantic named Florentino Ariza (played in teen years by Unax Ugalde and in adulthood by the great Javier Bardem ...

Love in the Time of Cholera directed by Mike Newell 2007-11-27 04:27:00 Roger Moore reviews "Love in the Time of Cholera". They've gotten an entertaining movie out of Gabriel García Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera." But it's also one of those epic miscalculations that Hollywood makes, every so often, to let us know that, no, they haven't necessarily read the book. Well, not all of it. A spotty skip through a 50-year love triangle set in Colombia, it's a ...

Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz 2007-11-10 17:33:00 Andrew Fersch reviews Junot Diaz’s "Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao". Oscar De Leon’s life is interesting, maybe not necessarily wondrous, though. Oscar is the textbook definition of a tragic character — an overweight, science-fiction obsessed super-nerd who is unable to fulfill his Dominican manliness by scoring a lady — he’s just not a particularly captivating one. Thankfully, in Junot Diaz’s ...

Interview with Karla Suárez 2007-11-09 09:55:00 Fabiola Santiago interviews Karla Suárez. Like some of the characters in her short stories and novels, Cuban writer Karla Suárez is a nomad. She is a rising literary voice in a generation of irreverent creators who were raised within the Cuban Revolution's confines but are breaking out of its totalitarian mold by roaming the world and making music, literature and art. What makes Suárez and her ...

Interview with Arturo Pérez-Reverte 2007-11-09 09:38:00 Elizabeth Nash interviews Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Why write? I ask Spain's bestselling author of adventures and historical potboilers. The packed bar in Madrid's Palace Hotel empties as crowds move to an art auction in the next salon. Arturo Pérez-Reverte breaks the hush. "I clarify things. I organise things. I lead a very chaotic life. Writing enables me to reflect on this. It consoles me for the ...

Junot Díaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 2007-11-07 17:38:00 Marcela Valdes reviews Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Culo. Coño. Puta. Mariconcito. Coje that fea y metéselo! The number of obscenities that appear within the first twenty-five pages of Junot Díaz’s second book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, makes it abundantly clear that he’s not writing for Oprah’s Book Club. At the very least, Winfrey would have to bone up on her ...

Interview with Javier Marías 2007-11-07 17:32:00 Susan Irvine interviews Javier Marías. Garlanded in literary prizes, tipped as a future Nobel winner, the Spanish author Javier Marías is also hugely popular, having sold more than 5.5m copies of his work in 39 languages. Yet he remains surprisingly little known in Britain, even though he is something of an Anglophile. His magnum opus, Your Face Tomorrow, is narrated by a Spaniard who works for a ...

The Bad Girl - Mario Vargas Llosa 2007-11-02 19:11:00 Heller McAlpin reviews Mario Vargas Llosa's "The Bad Girl". Mario Vargas Llosa's wonderful new novel, "The Bad Girl," is about one man's persistent desire for a difficult woman. It is also, cunningly, about a broader persistence of hope for a better world. On one level a deliciously absorbing love story that details the eponymous bad girl's damaging lifelong hold on his narrator, Vargas Llosa's ...

Frida Kahlo 2007-11-02 19:07:00 Peter Schjeldahl writes about Frida Kahlo and a retrospective of her work at the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis. There are so many ways to be interested in Frida Kahlo, who was born a hundred years ago and died forty-seven years later, in 1954, that simply to look at and judge her paintings, as paintings, may seem narrow-minded. No one need appreciate art to justify being a Kahlo fan or even a ...

Las auroras de sangre. Juan de Castellanos y el descubrimiento poético de América - William Ospina 2007-10-26 19:35:00 Winston Manrique Sabogal reviews William Ospina's Las auroras de sangre. Juan de Castellanos y el descubrimiento poético de América. El cielo empezó a reverberar de grises hasta soltar un océano que convirtió en mares la tierra para llevarse Cubagua, Nueva Cádiz, frente a las costas de Venezuela. Fue uno de los primeros episodios que embistió al joven Juan de Castellanos en el umbral del nuevo ...

The Bad Girl - Mario Vargas Llosa 2007-10-26 19:13:00 Heller McAlpin reviews Mario Vargas Llosa's Bad Girl. Mario Vargas Llosa's wonderful new novel, "The Bad Girl," is about one man's persistent desire for a difficult woman. It is also, cunningly, about a broader persistence of hope for a better world. On one level a deliciously absorbing love story that details the eponymous bad girl's damaging lifelong hold on his narrator, Vargas Llosa's novel ...