Thomas Colchie is an acclaimed translator, editor, and literary agent for international authors. He is the editor of A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes. He has written for the Village Voice and The Washington Post. His translations include Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman and (with Elizabeth Bishop, Gregory Rabassa, and Mark Strand) Carlos Drummond de Andrade's Travelling in the Family.
This cornucopia of delights presents to English-speaking readers a one-volume assortment of the representative best of the giants of recent Latin American letters: Borges, Cortazar, Garcia Marquez, Fuentes, Lispector. Only the absence of Donoso, Vargas Llosa, and especially Arreola's modern classic ``The Switchman'' prevents it from being definitive. Although most of the stories have been previously published and translated, this collection marks the first time these 26 powerhouses have been brought together. Since nothing recent combines Spanish American and Brazilian authors, nor includes newer writers not readily found elsewhere, this anthology is highly recommended for all collections.-- Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio
Colchie, a translator and literary agent for both Iberian and Ibero-American writers, assembles an outstandingbelow anthology of Latin American short stories, drawing heavily on the familiar sources--Garcia Marquez, Borges, Allende, Fuentes et al. In all, 26 authors (from eight countries) are represented by one story apiece, eight of which appear in English for the first time. Colchie groups them geographically, ``to emphasize three major landscapes: Brazil, the River Plate, and the Caribbean,'' a choice that excludes several prominent writers, most notably Mario Vargas Llosa. The stories themselves are uniformly excellent, demonstrating a wide range of styles, from the modernist conundrums of Julio Cortazar's ``Axolotl'' to the dextrous tour-de-force of Manuel Puig's ``Relative Humidity 95%,'' a canny mix of cinematic style and stream-of-consciousness. Perhaps the most satisfying stories in the volume, however, are by writers less well known in North America. Two Puerto Rican women, Rosario Ferre and Ana Lydia Vega, weigh in with very different feminist tales; Ferre's ``The Gift'' is a moving recollection of coming of age in a convent school, while Vega's ``Story-Bound'' is a smart domestic triangle/quadrangle with a stunning twist. QPB selection. (Nov.)
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