Margaret Sayers Peden je americká prekladateľka a emeritná profesorka španielčiny. Jej práca sa zameriava na prenos literárnych diel do angličtiny. Jej preklady sú cenené pre svoju presnosť a citlivosť k originálu. Prispieva k šíreniu španielsky písanej literatúry v anglicky hovoriacom svete.
Románom Paula si Isabel Allendová vo svete opäť získala srdcia svojich čitateľov i odbornej kritiky. Hlboko dojímavý príbeh románu tematicky vychádza z tragickej osobnej skúsenosti autorky – zo smrti jej 28-ročnej dcéry. Začína sa ako list, ktorý píše matka svojej dcére, no postupne sa z neho stáva meditácia o matkinom živote a dcérinej smrti, popretkávaná spomienkami, bizarnými postavami a vlastnými zážitkami.
Perhaps the most ambitious novel from one of Mexico's greatest writers, the narrative covers 20 centuries of European and American culture, and prominently features the construction of El Escorial by Philip II. The title is Latin for "Our earth". Modeled on James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Terra Nostra shifts unpredictably between the sixteenth century and the twentieth, seeking the roots of contemporary Latin American society in the struggle between the conquistadors and indigenous Americans. -Terra Nostra is the spreading out of the novel, the exploration of its possibilities, the voyage to the edge of what only a novelist can see and say.- Milan Kundera
Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zarité -- known as Tété -- is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, Tété finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves. When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it’s with powdered wigs in his baggage and dreams of financial success in his mind. But running his father’s plantation, Saint-Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy. It will be eight years before he brings home a bride -- but marriage, too, proves more difficult than he imagined. And Valmorain remains dependent on the services of his teenaged slave. Spanning four decades, Island Beneath the Sea is the moving story of the intertwined lives of Tété and Valmorain, and of one woman’s determination to find love amid loss, to offer humanity though her own has been battered, and to forge her own identity in the cruellest of circumstances. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden.
Autor spracoval jednu z najčastejších tém latinskoamerickej literatúry: klasicizmus, systém osobnej moci malých vidieckych pohlavárov vládnúcich neobmedzene nad životom a smrťou svojich poddaných na rozsiahlych latifundiách...
Autorka dej románu situovala do Venezuely, kde zobrazila dva súbežné príbehy, príbeh muža a ženy, ktorí sa po mnohých životných peripetiách stretnú a nájdu spoločný zmysel života. Eva, dcéra Indiána a nálezenky, odchovanej misionármi v pralesnej oblasti Venezuely, rozpráva svoj príbeh, v ktorom sa ako hrdinovia v pikaresknom románe pretľka životom vo venezuelskej metropole i na vidieku, ocitá sa v nezvyčajných situáciach, poznáva dobro i zlo, zoznamuje sa so svojráznymi typmi rozličných profesií a viacerých spoločenských vrstiev.
Aurora del Valle sa musí vyrovnať so zradou milovaného muža a vzoprieť sa hroziacej samote. Rozhodne sa rozlúštiť záhadu svojej minulosti, ktorá sa jej vymazala z pamäti pri šoku, čo utrpela v detstve. Dej románu sa odohráva koncom 19. storočia na pozadí vzrušujúcich udalostí čilských dejín a spája osudy hrdinov knihy Dcéra šťasteny s protagonistami Allendeovej slávneho románu Dom duchov.
Hlavnou hrdinkou románu Dcéra šťasteny je Eliza Sommersová. Slušné a krehké dievča, prichádzajúce do Kalifornie v časoch vrcholiacej zlatej horúčky. Krutosť, ktorá v týchto časoch a v tomto prostredí vládla, ju prinúti zmeniť svoje správanie a rozmýšľať nad životnými hodnotami. Verný obraz amerického juhu, precízne vykreslené postavy a postavičky, dômyselná kompozícia a predstavivosť Allendeovej predurčujú tento román, aby sa zaradil medzi obľúbené diela slovenských čitateľov. Knihu preložila Eva Palkovičová
Sixteen-year-old Alexander Cold accompanies his grandmother, a writer for a geography magazine, to the remote Forbidden Kingdom in the Himalayas to help locate a sacred statue of a golden dragon before it is stolen by a greedy outsider.
The second swashbuckling adventure in the internationally acclaimed Captain Alatriste series Captain Alatriste, Madrid’s most charismatic swashbuckler, returns in Perez-Reverte’s acclaimed international bestseller. The fearless Alatriste is hired to infiltrate a convent and rescue a young girl forced to serve as a powerful priest’s concubine. The girl’s father is barred from legal recourse as the priest threatens to reveal that the man’s family is “not of pure blood” and is, in fact, of Jewish descent—which will all but destroy the family name. As Alatriste struggles to save the young hostage from being burned at the stake, he soon finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a conspiracy that leads all the way to the heart of the Spanish Inquisition. A literary thriller that delivers adventure and rich historical detail, Purity of Blood captivates to the final page.
When fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold accompanies his individualistic grandmother on an expedition to find a humanoid Beast in the Amazon, he experiences ancient wonders and a supernatural world as he tries to avert disaster for the Indians.
Bestselling author Isabel Allende's first adult novel since Portrait in Sepia' - beautiful, disturbing and atmospheric.
Excellent, highly colloquial translation of Arr ancame la vida (see HLAS 48:5193), set in post-revolutionary Mexico. Peden has created a sparkling, irreverent Catalina, Mastretta's first-person protagonist who narrates her coming of age through a marriage to a retired general much older than hersel
From one of the world's best loved storytellers, the trilogy that began with City of the Beasts comes to a thrilling climax. Alexander Cold knows all too well his grandmother Kate is never far from an adventure. When National Geographic commissions her to write an article about the first elephant-led safaris in Africa, they head - with Nadia Santos and the magazine's photography crew - to the blazing, red plains of Kenya. Days into the tour, a Catholic missionary approaches the camp in search of his companions who have mysteriously disappeared. Kate, Alexander, Nadia, and their team, agreeing to aid the rescue, enlists the help of a local pilot to lead them to the swampy forests of Ngoube. There they discover a clan of Pygmies who unveil a harsh and surprising world of corruption, slavery, and poaching. Alexander and Nadia, entrusting the magical strengths of Jaguar and Eagle, their totemic animal spirits, launch a spectacular and precarious struggle to restore freedom and return leadership to its rightful hands. The final instalment of Isabel Allende's celebrated trilogy soars with radiant settings, spirits, beings - and the transformation of an extraordinary friendship.
One of Carlos Fuentes’s greatest works, The Old Gringo tells the story of Ambrose Bierce, the American writer, soldier, and journalist, and of his last mysterious days in Mexico living among Pancho Villa’s soldiers, particularly his encounter with General Tomas Arroyo. In the end, the incompatibility of the two countries (or, paradoxically, their intimacy) claims both men, in a novel that is, most of all, about the tragic history of two cultures in conflict.
Infamous for the murder of Maria Iribarne, the artist Juan Pablo Castel is now writing a detailed account of his relationship with the victim from his prison cell: obsessed from the first moment he saw her examining one of his paintings, Castel had become fixated on her over the next months and fantasized over how they might meet again.
