Table of Contents

Book One: The House of Power

Portrait of the Emperor
The Two Hands
The End of a Dynasty, or The Natural History of Ferrets
The Siege, Battle, and Victory of Selimmagud
Concerning the Unchecked Growth of Cities

Book Two: The Greatest Empire

Portrait of the Empress
And the Streets Deserted
The Pool
Basic Weapons
“Down There in the South”
The Old Incense Road

About the Author

Angélica Gorodischer (1928-2022) was born in Buenos Aires and lived in Rosario from 1936 on. She published many novels and short story collections including Kalpa Imperial, Mango Juice, and Trafalgar, as well as a memoir, History of My Mother. Her work has been translated into many languages and her translators include Ursula K. Le Guin and Alberto Manguel. With certain self-satisfaction she claimed to never have written plays or poems, not even at 16 when everybody writes poems, especially on unrequited love. She received two Fulbright awards as well as many literary awards around the world, including the Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Awards and a 2014 Konex Special Mention Award.

Reviews

“The history of an imaginary empire in a series of tales that adopt the voice of a marketplace storyteller. . . . While the point of each tale eludes paraphrase, the cumulative burden is the imperfectibility of human society . . . Le Guin’s translation, which ranges from blunt to elegant to oracular, seems like the ideal medium for this grim if inescapable message.” — New York Times Book Review “A novel that evokes weighty matters lightly and speaks of self-evident wisdom while itself remaining mysterious.”
— Washington Post
"The dreamy, ancient voice is not unlike Le Guin's, and this collection should appeal to her fans as well as to those of literary fantasy and Latin American fiction."
—Library Journal (starred review)"There's a very modern undercurrent to the Kalpa empire, with tales focusing on power (in a political sense) rather than generic moral lessons. Her mythology is consistent—wide in scope, yet not overwhelming. The myriad names of places and people can be confusing, almost Tolkeinesque in their linguistic originality. But the stories constantly move and keep the book from becoming overwhelming. Gorodischer has a sizeable body of work to be discovered, with eighteen books yet to reach English readers, and this is an impressive introduction."
—Review of Contemporary Fiction
"Borges and Cortázar are alive and well."
—Bridge Magazine
"Those looking for offbeat literary fantasy will welcome Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was, by Argentinean writer Angélica Gorodischer. Translated from the Spanish by Ursula Le Guin, this is the first appearance in English of this prize-winning South American fantasist."
—Publishers Weekly
"It's always difficult to wrap up a rave review without babbling redundant praises. This time I'll simply say 'Buy this Book!'"
—Locus
"The elaborate history of an imaginary country...is Nabokovian in its accretion of strange and rich detail, making the story seem at once scientific and dreamlike."
—Time Out New York

Praise for the Spanish-language editions of Kalpa Imperial:

"Angélica Gorodischer, both from without and within the novel, accomplishes the indispensable function Salman Rushdie says the storyteller must have: not to let the old tales die out; to constantly renew them. And she well knows, as does that one who met the Great Empress, that storytellers are nothing more and nothing less than free men and women. And even though their freedom might be dangerous, they have to get the total attention of their listeners and, therefore, put the proper value on the art of storytelling, an art that usually gets in the way of those who foster a forceful oblivion and prevent the winds of change."
—Carmen Perilli, La Gaceta, Tucuman
"At a time when books are conceived and published to be read quickly, with divided attention in the din of the subway or the car, this novel is to be tasted with relish, in peace, in moderation, chewing slowly each and every one of the stories that make it up, and digesting it equally slowly so as to properly assimilate it all."
—Rodolfo Martinez
"A vast, cyclical filigree . . . Gorodischer reaches much farther than the common run of stories about huge empires, maybe because she wasn't interested in them to begin with, and enters the realm of fable, legend, and allegory."
—Luis G. Prado, Gigamesh, Barcelona