Dust on Her Tongue
London: Peter Owen, 1989. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. 75, [1] pages. Some page discoloration noted. DJ has some wear and soiling. Set in Guatemala, these spare and beautiful tales are linked by themes of magic, violence, and the fragility of existence. Paul Bowle’s translation perfectly captures Rey Rosa’s stories of the haunted lives of ordinary people in present-day Central America. “A genuinely surprising and original set of stories…a sense of violent unease shading into terror drifts up from every line…his writing has a sharp, almost sadistic edge.”—The Times Literary Supplement
“Compelling in the extreme…these twelve tales (that) boast of hidden dangers and lurking terrors, are written in a deceptively undramatic style, with masterful restraint. Stories that continue to disturb and delight long after they are laid to rest."—Blitz. Paul Frederic Bowles (December 30, 1910 – November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his life. He studied music with Aaron Copland, and in New York wrote music for theatrical productions, as well as other compositions. He achieved critical and popular success with his first novel The Sheltering Sky (1949), set in French North Africa, which he had visited in 1931. In 1947, Bowles settled in Tangier, at that time in the Tangier International Zone, and his wife Jane Bowles followed in 1948. Except for winters spent in Ceylon during the early 1950s, Tangier was Bowles's home for the remainder of his life. He came to symbolize American immigrants in the city. Rodrigo Rey Rosa (born November 4, 1958) is a Guatemalan writer. Rey Rosa was born in Guatemala City in 1958 into a middle-class family. He recalled that in his childhood he traveled extensively with his parents throughout Mexico and Central America, as well as through Europe. He lived in Guatemala before leaving (in 1979) because of unrest, and emigrated to New York. There he enrolled at the School of Visual Arts, attracted by its summer writing workshop with Paul Bowles in Tangier. Rey Rosa has based many of his writings and stories on legends and myths that are indigenous to Latin American as well as North Africa. A number of Rey Rosa's works have been translated into English, including; The Path Doubles Back (by Paul Bowles), Dust on her Tongue, "The Pelcari Project," The Beggar's Knife, The African Shore, and Severina. Along with his longer writings, he has also written a number of short stories that have been printed in college-level text books, such as "Worlds of Fiction, Second edition" By Roberta Rubenstein and Charles R. Larson. A few of these short stories include The Proof, and The Good Cripple. In the early 1980s, Rey Rosa went to Morocco and became a literary protege of American expatriate writer Paul Bowles, who later translated several of Rey Rosa's works into English. When Bowles died in 1999, Rey Rosa became an executor of his literary estate. Rey Rosa's early work is concise and restrained, often evoking extreme situations and emotions in ways that require the reader to infer the characters' motives or emotional reactions. This is true of the short stories in The Beggar's Knife, as well as of novels such as The Good Cripple, and The African Shore. The novels written after the auto-fictional Human Matter, published in 2009, are more engaged with the social problems of Guatemala, particularly environmental and Indigenous issues. Rey Rosa announced this shift in emphasis with the publication of La cola del dragón, his only book of non-fiction, in which he criticizes the collaboration of the Guatemalan elite with foreign mining companies and drug cartels, and its complicity with the genocide of Indigenous Mayan people. The themes in Rey Rosa's recent novels are influenced by the work of his sister, the environmentalist Magalí Rey Rosa, and by Rey Rosa's friendships with Indigenous Mayan intellectuals. Condition: Good / Good.
Keywords: Guatemala, Proof, Privacy, Burial, Still Water, Coralia, Truth, Angelica, Host, Las Lagrimas, Xquic
ISBN: 0720607469
[Book #85455]
Price: $60.00