The Death of Artemio Cruz

by Carlos Fuentes, Alfred MacAdam (Translator)

Overview

Immerse yourself in the extraordinary life of Artemio Cruz, a powerful newspaper magnate and land baron, as he navigates the blurred boundaries between dreams, memories, and reality.

On his deathbed, Cruz's thoughts flit among pivotal moments crafted by renowned author Carlos Fuentes, offering glimpses into a world of magical realism.

Author Carlos Fuentes manipulates the ensuing kaleidoscope of images with dazzling inventiveness, layering memory upon memory, from Cruz's heroic campaigns during the Mexican Revolution, through his relentless climb from poverty to wealth, to his uneasy death.

Perhaps Fuentes's masterpiece, The Death of Artemio Cruz is a haunting voyage into the soul of modern Mexico.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374531805
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	02/03/2009
Series:	FSG Classics
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	263,467
Product dimensions:	8.26(w) x 5.56(h) x 0.87(d)

About the Author

Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012) was one of the most influential and celebrated voices in Latin American literature. He was the author of 24 novels, including Aura, The Old Gringo and Terra Nostra, and also wrote numerous plays, short stories, and essays. He received the 1987 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honor.

Fuentes was born in Panama City, the son of Mexican parents, and moved to Mexico as a teenager. He served as an ambassador to England and France, and taught at universities including Harvard, Princeton, Brown and Columbia. He died in Mexico City in 2012.

Editorial Reviews

This is more than a retranslation of a masterpiece. It amounts to a restoration: here is the magnificent book that Fuentes wrote originally, superbly rendered by Alfred Mac Adam into an English version that precisely meshes with Fuentes's Spanish.” —Douglas Day

“Carlos Fuentes is perhaps the only living Latin-American writer who has it in him to do for his country what Euclides da Cunha did for Brazil in Os Sertoes, and to make the passion of the land's rebirth and repossession comprehensible to the outsider.” —Anthony West, The New Yorker

“Remarkable, in the scope of the human drama it pictures, the corrosive satire and sharp dialogue.” —Mildred Adams, The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

First translated into English more than a quarter-century ago, Fuentes's acclaimed novel about modern Mexico has since gone through nearly 30 printings. Despite its popularity, the original English version often was unclear, obscuring Fuentes's language and intent. MacAdam's meticulous new rendering gives the English-reading public a fresh slant on the fictional Cruz, a newspaper owner and land baron. The novel opens with Cruz on his deathbed, and plunges us into his thoughts as he segues from the past to his increasingly disoriented present. Drawn as a tragic figure, Cruz fights bravely during the Mexican Revolution but in the process loses his idealism--and the only woman who ever loved him. He marries the daughter of a hacienda owner and, in the opportunistic, postwar climate, he uses her family connections and money to amass an ever-larger fortune. Cocky, audacious, corrupt, Cruz, on another level, represents the paradoxes of recent Mexican history. Written before Fuentes's masterpieces A Change of Skin and Terra Nostra, this novel, with its freewheeling experimental prose and psychological exploration, anticipates many of the author's later themes.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly