Carlos Fuentes - Böcker

Published in its entirety, Frida Kahlo’s amazing illustrated journal documents the last ten years of her turbulent life. These passionate, often surprising, intimate records, kept under lock and key for some 40 years in Mexico, reveal many new dimensions in the complex personal life of this remarkable Mexican artist. The 170-page journal contains the artist’s thoughts, poems, and dreams—many reflecting her stormy relationship with her husband, artist Diego Rivera—along with 70 mesmerizing watercolor illustrations. The text entries, written in Frida’s round, full script in brightly colored inks, make the journal as captivating to look at as it is to read. Her writing reveals the artist’s political sensibilities, recollections of her childhood, and her enormous courage in the face of more than 35 operations to correct injuries she had sustained in an accident at the age of 18. This intimate portal into her life is sure to fascinate fans of the artist, art historians, and women’s culturalists alike.

Fuentes' bold and timely study discusses the origins and nature of the tumultuous events that have recently transformed Mexican politics and society. The rebellion in Chiapas, a rash of assassinations, the break between Presidents Salinas and Zedillo, the continual struggle for democratic self-rule: These and other developments are addressed by one of Mexico's wisest, most influential commentators.

___________________AN EXPLORATION OF LOVE, LUST AND BETRAYALPart novel, part expose, Diana is a stirring portrait of a passionate affair amid the cultural chaos of the 1960s and 1970s. The central character is Diana Soren, an elegy for a decade that refused to die. She is a predator set on self-destruction, and a casualty of her own times and beauty. Mexico's pre-eminent novelist presents a poignant story of bittersweet love that was a huge success in his native country.

_______________________A DRAMATIC FICTIONAL PORTRAIT OF THE US-MEXICO BORDER, MIGRATION, AND ITS IMPACT ON PEOPLE’S LIVES_______________________Through this network of nine personal stories, Carlos Fuentes sets out to explain Mexico and America to each other – and to the rest of the world. He presents a dramatic fictional portrait of the relationship between the United States and Mexico, as played out in a Mexican dynasty led by a powerful Mexican oligarch with complex ties north of the border.It is the story of Mexican families who send their sons north to provide for whole villages with dollars and of Mexican tycoons who exploit their own people. Young Jose Francisco grows up in Texas, determined to write about the border world – the immigrants and illegals, Mexican poverty and Yankee prosperity – stories to break the stand-off silence with a victory shout, to shatter at last the crystal frontier.

_____________________‘An admirable novel'- The Times‘In this portrait of men and women swept along by great events, and determined to be on the side of the angels, Fuentes has invested the often colourless world of politics with romantic ardour' - Sunday Telegraph_____________________An epic and heartbreaking love story that will leave no one untouched.Like Fuentes's masterpiece The Death of Artemio Cruz, the action in this novel begins in the state of Veracruz and moves to Mexico City. From 1905 to 1978, Fuentes traces the extraordinary Laura Díaz; a life filled with a multitude of witty, heartbreaking scenes and the sounds, colours, tastes and scents of Mexico. Laura grows into a politically committed artist who is also a wife and mother, a lover of great men, and a complicated and alluring heroine whose bravery prevails despite her losing a brother, son, and grandson to the darkest forces of Mexico's turbulent, often corrupt politics. Hers is a life which has helped to affect the course of history, and it is the story of a woman who has loved and understood with unflinching honesty._____________________‘Fuentes's affair with the fickle forces of creativity reaches a rare and poignant intensity ... a landmark book' - Scotsman

_________________________‘Dazzling ... The translation by Margaret Sayers Paden is elegant' - New York Times Book Review‘A complex, focused novel ' - The Times'Passionate ... a paean to music and musical genius, to romantic love and the mysterious sources of language and creativity' - Newsday_________________________In this magical story of love and art, life and death, Carlos Fuentes entwines two narratives: one tells of the passion of orchestra conductor Gabriel Atlan-Ferrara for red-haired Mexican diva, Inez Prada; the other of the first encounter in human history between a man and a woman. Berlioz's music for The Damnation of Faust brings Atlan-Ferrara and Inez together, and continues to resound on every page of this haunting work. At the same time, the emergent love of neh-el and ah-nel - the original lovers - reminds us of the Faustian pact of love and death. The link between these two stories is a beautiful crystal seal that belongs to Atlan-Ferrara, who is obsessed by its meaning. Maybe this ancient and seductive object gives its bearer the ability to read unknown languages and hear music of impossible beauty...

_________________________‘This collection examines the people, places and ideas that have shaped Fuentes's life ... stimulating and provoking' - Sunday Times‘A characteristically dazzling display of Fuentes' erudition and of a remarkable life ... The book defies categorization ... There are flashes of his soul' - Financial Times‘Magnificent ... an essay on children made me weep as I read it ... he is a marvellous novelist' - Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph_________________________Carlos Fuentes is Mexico's most admired novelist, and this is his manifesto, and memoir, offering a rare and wonderful insight into the mind of a great writer. This I Believe is an A to Z of the things that he loves and believes in. In a series of inspired meditations and polemics, he embraces his subjects from ‘Balzac' and ‘Beauty' to ‘Sex' and ‘Shakespeare'. The essays are woven together with the familiar Fuentes themes of politics, time and language, and through them runs the vein of his personal journey, his views on love, sex, women, friendship and family. From ‘Amor' to ‘Zürich', this is a collection of thoughts that is both witty and profoundly searching. _________________________‘Fuentes certainly dazzles; he cites aptly, and scatters one-liners. As you read him, you sense genuine mental alertness and snappy judgements. There's a touch of the guru in this latest book, revealing our world to us' - Independent

_________________________‘A compelling drama ... Fuentes at his best' - Sunday Times‘[Fuentes] writes with an energy, passion and humour that are as compelling now as when he first published a novel, more than forty years ago ... rattlingly good entertainment' - Daily Telegraph‘A man of remarkable gifts ... Fuentes has produced a narrative crammed with penetrating insights and provocative comments not merely on politics but also on history, art and literature' - Spectator_________________________The year is 2020. The Mexican President has provoked the United States by calling for the removal of US troops from Colombia and demanding higher prices for Mexico's oil. But the country's satellite communications system is controlled in Miami and suddenly Mexico is deprived of phone, fax and email. In a country where politicians never put anything in writing, letters are now the only way to communicate, leaving the private lives and true feelings of all brutally exposed. Especially regarding the hot topic of the day: Who will be the next President, the next to ascend the Eagle's Throne?As the characters struggle to identify and ally themselves to the future President, the letters fly ever faster. Who will be the victor? Handsome Nicolás Valdivia? Bald satyr Tácito de la Canal? Or the ‘unsavoury' ex-President César León? There are many questions to be answered before the last letter is sent._________________________‘This is Fuentes at his satirical best, mixing political wisdom, biting wit and poignant self-realisation' - Scotland on Sunday

‘The country's living national treasure ... The stories overflow with the kind of insights that only maturity brings. They are also painfully topical ... Fuentes keeps his finger on modern Mexico's pulse' - Ángel Gurría-Quintana, Financial Times‘Fuentes, now 80, is still masterful in evoking the lives of damaged characters ... beautifully observed ... a book seething with timeless rancour' - Independent_____________________A choral novel on the hopes, disillusionments and betrayals of family life in Mexico. _____________________A rich Catholic rancher wants his four sons to become priests, while the boys themselves have other plans; a bereaved mother explains her daughter's life to the man who killed her; three daughters meet up around their father's coffin for the first time in ten years; a middle-aged couple meet by chance on a cruise-ship and wonder if they were once young lovers. The result is a picture of contemporary Mexico seen through a violently fragmented narrative, not unlike the internationally successful film Amores Perros.The stories are punctuated by a chorus, commenting as if in a Greek tragedy, crudely and unsentimentally on the underbelly of modern Mexican life, offering a raw but richly textured glimpse of the inequalities of that society - street children, junkies, dead rock icons, the ideal wife, a honeymoon gone wrong, a child suicide, a man faking his death and beginning a new life - that throw the middle-class dramas of the linked stories into harsh relief. Happy Families is a dramatic polyphony of the many conflicting strands of Latin America and the modern urban world.

Conceived exactly nine months before the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the New World, the narrator of Christopher Unborn spends the novel waiting to be born. But what kind of world will he be delivered into? "Makesicko City," as the punning narrator calls it, is not doing well in this alternate, worst-case-scenario 1992. Politicians are selling pieces of their country to the United States. A black, acid rain falls relentlessly, forewarning of the even worse ecological catastrophes to come. Gangs of children, confined to the slums, terrorize their wealthy neighbors. A great novel of ideas and a work of aesthetic boldness, Christopher Unborn is a unique, and quite funny, work from one of the twentieth century's most respected authors.

"Where the Air Is Clear," Carlos Fuentes's first novel, is an unsparing portrayal of Mexico City's upper class. Departing from a traditional linear narrative, Fuentes overlays Mexican myths onto contemporary settings, showing that even the rich and powerful must succumb to the indomitable spirit of Mexico, which undermines all institutions and shapes all destinies. First published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1988, Dalkey Archive Press in 2004, now available again.

Where, Carlos Fuentes asks, is a modern-day vampire to roost? Why not Mexico City, populated by ten million blood sausages (that is, people), and a police force who won't mind a few disappearances? "Vlad" is Vlad the Impaler, of course, whose mythic cruelty was an inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. In this sly sequel, Vlad really is undead: dispossessed after centuries of mayhem by Eastern European wars and rampant blood shortages. More than a postmodern riff on "the vampire craze," Vlad is also an anatomy of the Mexican bourgeoisie, as well as our culture's ways of dealing with death. For--as in Dracula--Vlad has need of both a lawyer and a real-estate agent in order to establish his new kingdom, and Yves Navarro and his wife Asunci?n fit the bill nicely. Having recently lost a son, might they not welcome the chance to see their remaining child live forever? More importantly, are the pleasures of middle-class life enough to keep one from joining the legions of the damned?

In this comic novel of political intrigue, Adam Gorozpe, a respected businessman in Mexico, has a life so perfect that he might as well be his namesake in the Garden of Eden--but there are snakes in this Eden too. For one thing, Adam's wife Priscila has fallen in love with the brash director of national security--also named Adam--who uses violence against token victims to hide the fact that he's letting drug runners, murderers, and kidnappers go free. Another unlikely snake is the little Boy-God who's started preaching in the street wearing a white tunic and stick-on wings, inspiring Adam's brother-in-law to give up his job writing soap operas to follow this junior deity and implore Adam to do the same. Even Elle, Adam's mistress, thinks the boy is important to their salvation--especially now that it seems the other Adam has put out a contract on Adam Gorozpe. To save his relationship, his marriage, his life, and the soul of his country, perhaps Adam will indeed have to call upon the wrath of the angels to expel all these snakes from his Mexican Eden.