The Messenger - Couverture souple

Montero, Mayra

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1860466737 ISBN 13 : 9781860466731

Editeur : The Harvill Press, 2000

Synopsis

In 1920 Enrico Caruso arrives in Havana, carrying with him a death-threat he has received from the Sicilian Black Hand. During a performance of Aida at the Teatro Nacional, a bomb explodes and a horrified Caruso, still dressed as Radam's, runs into the street. This is a matter of historical record. What happens next is fiction, imagined by Mayra Montero. As Caruso flees the death-wish of the Black Hand, he is drawn into a passionate affair with a beautiful mulatto-Chinese woman. She engages the help of Santero, a powerful priest in the Afro-Cuban religion, to help him escape death. In this extraordinary and stylish narrative, Mayra Montero has produced an exotic hybrid of ancient tribal myth and opera, fact and fantasy, love story and thriller. The Messenger shows clearly that she is one of the most original voices in Caribbean writing today.

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur

Mayra Montero was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1952, but has lived in Puerto Rico since the mid 1960s. She studied journalism in Mexico and Puerto Rico and worked for many years as a correspondent in Central America and the Caribbean. She is presently a highly acclaimed journalist in Puerto Rico and writes a weekly column in El Nuevo Dia newspaper. Montero's first book was a collection of short stories, Twenty-Three and a Turtle. Her second book, a novel titled The Braid of the Beautiful Moon, was a finalist for the Herralde awards, one of Europe's most prestigious literary awards. Each of her subsequent books -- The Last Night I Spent With You, The Red of His Shadow, In the Palm of Darkness, and The Messenger -- has been published in the United States in translations by Edith Grossman, as well as in several European countries. Her other nonfiction work appears frequently in scholarly and literary publications throughout the world.

Edith Grossman is the distinguished prize-winning translator of major works by leading contemporary Hispanic writers, including Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Alvaro Mutis, and Mayra Montero. Her new translation of Don Quixote is Edith Grossman's excursion into the classic literature of an earlier time, a natural kind of progression in reverse. Now she employs her many years' experience translating modern classics to bring us an elegantly contemporary translation of Don Quixote.

Présentation de l'éditeur

Set in Cuba, The Messenger tells the story of a pair of doomed lovers-world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso and his Chinese-Cuban mullatta mistress. In June 1920 a bomb exploded at the Teatro Nacional in Havana at the very moment that Enrico Caruso was singing Radamès in the opera AÏda. In a panic, he fled the theater and disappeared into the streets of Havana. What happened to him is the story imagined by Mayra Montero. As Caruso tries to escape the murderous agents of the Black Hand, he is drawn into a passionate love affair with Aida Cheng, a woman whose godfather is the powerful Afro-Cuban santero José de Calazán. Told by Enriqueta, the daughter born of the love affair, and by Aida herself as she lies dying many years later, The Messenger unfolds its mysteries against the rhythms of African santería and Chinese folk magic and weaves a brooding, compelling tale of love and death.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: The Harvill Press
• Date d'édition: 2000
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1860466737
• ISBN 13: 9781860466731
• Reliure: Broché
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 276
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Terminal Video; n.pederzini@terminaldistribuzione.com; ; Via Bruno Buozzi, 24/26,; Granarolo dell'Emilia BO,; Italie