Antipodes: Stories

by Ignacio Padilla, Alastair Reid (Translator)

Overview

These lively and eclectic narratives, by the author of Shadow Without a Name, move from the scorching heat of the Gobi desert to the glacial heights of Mount Everest: here, among others, are the stories of a Scottish engineer who builds an exact replica of the city of Edinburgh in the dunes; of a dying, cross-dressing pilot who allegedly climbs Mount Everest and then mysteriously disappears; and of a monk who conjures the devil to prove the devil's existence.

Based on history, legend, and an awe-inspiring power of invention, Antipodes delights, terrifies, and entrances.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312424381
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	06/01/2005
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.33(d)

About the Author

Ignacio Padilla is the author of several award-winning novels and short story collections, and is currently the cultural attache at the Mexican Embassy in London.

Table of Contents

Antipodes and the Century

Chronicle of the Second Plague

Ever Wrest: Log of the Journey

Ballistics: Some Notes

Rhodesia Express

Darjeeling

Hagiography of the Apostate

A Bestiary

Amends in Halak-Proot

About Our Flour

The Chinamen with the Heads

Time Regained

Editorial Reviews

A writer of outstanding gifts.” —Barry Unsworth, The New York Times Book Review

“Told with irony and zest...All seeming antipodes...are right at home and perfectly natural in Padilla's realm, making for a rich, complex texture against which he weaves his spell.” —Los Angeles Times

“Defiantly cosmopolitan...Padilla is a potent voice in Latin American literature today.” —The Miami Herald

“Spans time and place as the story moves from one colorful character to another.” —Hispanic

“One of Mexico's foremost young writers presents a handful of eclectic modern-day fables...His stories, placed within history, tell of colonialism gone amok, of spirituality gone awry, bringing a beautiful, surreal narrative to the ways our history has been shaped.” —Booklist

From the Publisher