Good Cripple

Rodrigo Rey Rosa was born in Guatemala in 1958. Rey Rosa has based many of his writings and stories on legends and myths that are indigenous to Latin American as well as North Africa. Out of all of his works, there have only been four that have appeared in the English language. In the early 1980s, Rey Rosa went to Morocco and became a literary protege of American expatriate writer Paul Bowles, who later became on of Rey Rosa’s English translators. When Bowles died in 1999, Rey Rosa became an executor of his literature works.  He currently lives in Guatemala City. Esther Allen has translated Javier Marias, Jorge Luis Borges, Felisberto Hernandez, Flaubert, Rosario Castellanos, Blaise Cendrars, Marie Darrieussecq, and Jose Marti. She is currently a professor at Baruch College (CUNY) and has directed the work of the PEN Translation Fund since its founding in 2003. Allen has received a Fulbright Grant (1989), a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship (1995), and was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters (2006).

"A writer of unprecedented originality, of an exigency that removes him from any common standing. Essential and necessary."