Carmen Boullosa - Böcker

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.

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."

Carmen Boullosa’s Cleopatra Dismounts tells three versions of the life of Cleopatra. In the first sequence, Marc Antony had just disemboweled himself, knowing they had lost the war against Octavian and believing that Cleopatra was dead. Hugging his corpse, Cleopatra castigates Octavian and history for its betrayal of her, recalling variously how she had herself delivered to Caesar in a roll of carpet, and bore his child (Caesarion); the twins and third child she bore to Marc Antony; the bitterness of the recent military defeat.At this point Diomedes, variously described as an informer and her official chronicler, intercedes, admitting that this version of the story is not true to the brilliant, accomplished woman who was the true Cleopatra really was. Telling of how he betrayed Cleopatra, by altering the histories of her reign and allowing Caesar and others to destroy or change her scrolls, he begins again with the story of Cleopatra’s flight from Pompey (the Roman leader who was placed in charge of Cleopatra and her brothers and sisters after Ptolemy Auletes, her father and ruler of Egypt, died). The girl queen (Cleopatra inherited the throne as a teenager) sneaks with several faithful servants out of the palace into a wagon, accompanied by a group of brightly costumed gladiators, on her way to Ascalon. She and her supporters carve the words “Queen of Kings” (Cleopatra’s motto in real history) into the boards of the wagon in which she is traveling, and leave it behind when they reach Rome. When they are beset by pirates, Cleopatra stages an elaborate show using some costumes the young gladiator Apollodorus, who has become part of her retinue, helped her buy. She convinces the pirates that she is Isis (a myth which was in reality part of her statecraft). She makes an alliance with them and is taken in peace to Cilicia.The third and longest version of the Cleopatra story is a delightful interlude in which Cleopatra goes live with the Amazons. Cleopatra is at war with the Ruling Council of her husband and brother Ptolemy (she was, historically, forced to marry her brother because she could not rule alone as a woman). The Ruling Council has sent an envoy to summon her to Alexandria to make peace, but when she realizes it is a trap, she flees with her retinue. She arrives in Pelusium, a trade center on the Mediterranean, where many merchants have been stranded by bad weather, and where, as if by magic, she sees a replica of the cart, carved with the words “Queen of Kings,” she left behind in Rome. Chased by the “reception committee” of the Ruling Council, she escapes on the back of a magical bull. He carries her across the Mediterranean to the land of the Amazons, who take her in. The Amazons welcome her into their society of women, eschewing marriage and traditional female roles to live as warriors and hunters. They sing her the stories of their joining the Amazons and of the many myths that surround them. She meets a group of aged poets, kidnapped by the Amazons to write verses for them, because they love poetry and music. She learns that one Amazon, Orthea, is in love with a god who has the power of extreme heat and cold, and who caused an earthquake that day. The Amazons go to bed, falling into each other’s arms and making love. Though initially disgusted, eventually Cleopatra falls asleep in the protective (and erotic) embrace of Hippolyta, the Amazons’ queen.The next day, the Amazons go to battle a group of rebellious male warriors who charge the Amazons and seek, ultimately, to follow the Sirens. Charging them on their horses, driving cattle at them, the Amazons battle the men. One of their prized poets, however, in an act of suicide, surrenders himself to the Sirens, who devour him before everyone. This breaks the spell and the men cease their clamoring to get to the Sirens. Cleopatra sees Orthea consummating her passion for the god, which kills her. The Cyrene male warriors, who withstood the Sirens’ onslaught in their fort by plugging the windows with rocks and mud, invite Cleopatra and the Amazons to their court to celebrate their successful protection of so many men. Hippolyta declines but sends Cleopatra with her blessing. Once there, she is joyfully reunited with the gladiator Apollodorus and her faithful maidservant and right hand Charmian. The Cyrenes offer to ally with her against her enemies in Ptolemy’s Ruling Council. The alliance between Cleopatra and Caesar (wherein she was smuggled to him rolled up in a carpet, and he assisted her in defeating her enemies in Egypt, part of history) is presaged. At the close of the piece, Cleopatra returns to bid goodbye to the Amazons. She finds them naked, covered in blood, having just sacrificed a horse. Hippolyta is holding the horse’s castrated penis. She repudiates her earlier alliance with the Amazons and returns to Cyrene alone, to her military campaign to become the queen history knows.

In this continuation of Anna Karenina’s legacy, Russia simmers on the brink of change and the stories that have long been kept secret finally come to light.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.

Despite the extensive coverage in the U.S. media of the southern border and Donald Trump's proposed wall, most English speakers have had little access to the multitude of perspectives from Mexico on the ongoing crisis. Celebrated novelist Carmen Boullosa (author of Texas and Before) and Alberto Quintero redress this imbalance with this collection of essays - translated into English for the first time - drawing on writing by journalists, novelists, and documentary makers who are Mexican or based in Mexico.

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.

"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.

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.

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.