To say it shortly, this is one of the best 10 books I have ever read (and I have read plenty of books). Please do not pass away without having read TTT.

I discovered Cabrera Infante's Tres Tristes Tigres (in Spanish) about 15 years ago and was so blown away that I searched for a copy in English so I could share it with my non Spanish speaking friends. I read the English version as well so I would know what I was recommending since I did not know how well it would translate, and found another book, equally funny--I believe he and a graduate assistant did the translation. Infante has an incredible way with language. It is certainly true that he should be read aloud. He painted an intriguing picture of a Havana which was probably almost as much a dream to him by that time as it was to me. I am buying this book today to give to a friend who introduced me to Felipe Alfau's Locos. I hope he will enjoy it as much as I have. Tres Tristes Tigres remains one of my favorite books.

Infante has written a masterpiece. This book covers ( and plays on ) the styles of so many popular writers that it boggles the mind. On top of that the TRANSLATED version plays with the english language in a way that would make James Joyce proud,and maybe a wee bit jealous (and in all possibility giving the translator a nervous break down). Easily one of the best books I have ever read.

Borges, besides being a poet and short-fiction writer, took his ultra-worldly ideas to "non-fiction" pieces as well. As you can imagine, the mind-bending work in fiction is even more thought provoking when Borges remarks on Shakespeare, the clipping of one's toes, or the nature of art.

Perhaps the best part of this collection are the "non-fictions" from The Chronicles of Bustos Domeqc -- a very cheeky collection of essays which are written about fictive subjects: a poet who is doomed to repeat himself, a new wave of cuisine where taste has devolved to elemental proportions -- salty, sweet, tart, etc.

Borges wrote as a literarist: he knew his work would be collected, read, and re-read. These collection "non-fictions" are finely translated, with a fresh breath and fresh pen by a trio of translaters.

Jorge Luis Borges And The Canadian Rebellion Of 1944 That Cut Off Relations With Greece
Many sociologists agree that Jorge Luis Borges is clearly the most monumental event in Roman history. While other powerful scholars may disagree, it became obvious that Jorge Luis Borges was not nearly as monumental as Cuban anthropologists would have us believe. This claim is confirmed by three skillful points: the Marcus Aurelius Coup of 1916 that cut off relations with Ireland, the Roman Doctrine of 1968 that paved the way for the Anarchism Doctrine, and the Abraham Lincoln Revolution of 1945 that improved relations with the Italian citizenry.

In 1781 a member of a reknown group of Japanese historical writers wrote: "Nothing succeeds like success." (King 90) In some circles, this caused revolution; in others, revulsion. This begs the question, was Jorge Luis Borges Colonialism? In 1913 it was thought that "It hath been an opinion that the American elite are wiser than they seem, and the French populace seem wiser than they are; but howsoever it be between nations, certainly it is so in Jorge Luis Borges." (Gould 120) Obviously sociologists recognize that the two are intertwined.

These days the lessons of Jorge Luis Borges seem outdated and irrelevant. It's easy to forget that, once, Jorge Luis Borges was a reknown force that changed the minds and hearts of the Italian landed gentry. Even as late as 1945, Abraham Lincoln noted, "To the memory of Jorge Luis Borges, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of German countrymen." (Cromwell 121) God bless America.

The End

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One of the most cherished items in my ever-expanding library is my dog-eared copy of "Labyrinths", complete with the coffee-, alcohol-, and bath stains which lend it almost as much character as the words within its covers. This new edition of Borges selected non-fiction will no doubt in the fullness of time reach a position of equal prominence on my bookshelves. The debate will forever rage as to whether Borges deserves that grandest(yet often all too hollow and ephemeral) of epithets - "Great Writer", purely by virtue of the fact that he never wrote anything of more than a few pages in length. But the pellucidity and erudition of his prose raises quality above quantity to an altitude from where we lose sight of the debate, thus rendering it redundant. Along with a number of essays already available elsewhere, including the seminal "New Refutation Of Time", this collection ranges in typical Borges style from film reviews (King Kong, The Petrified Forest etc.), through dispassionate yet condemnatory meditations on Fascism, to his well- ploughed but ever-fruitful ground of literary rumination.His series of essays on Dante opened this reader's eyes-and heart- to the true heartbreaking nature of that poet's relationship with Beatrice, prompting a reappraisal of a book I gave up on fifteen years ago, halfway through "Il Purgatorio"; this summer, I've promised myself, I WILL read the whole of "Il Divina Commedia".Not out of a sense of duty, you understand, but because I WANT to. Therein lies the hub of Borges greatness as a writer: his self-proclaimed greatness as a reader manifests itself on the written page as dizzying eclecticism and enthusiasm for allusion that moves the reader to explore not only new avenues of thought, but also a newer and more verdant landscape of literature than had previously been suspected to even exist. Sail with Borges and new continents, new constellations will rise before you. On a personal note I have Borges to thank for my discovery of Hume, Chesterton, the Pre-Socratics, St Augustine,Flann O'Brien,Thomas Browne, and so many others who would have remained permanently below my horizon otherwise. If you feel that reading a book should an experience of expansion, of glimpsing new vistas,to develop a hunger for exploration, then this is for you.

The greatest living Cuban writer, and one of the most important in all Latin America, Cabrera Infante's "Infante's Inferno," the English version of "La Habana para un Infante Difunto" is a wise, brilliant, wonderful and hilarious musing of a young man's coming of age in pre-Revolutionary Havana. A rich, delicious work to be savored like a mojito or your mother's caramel custard (flan, assuming your mother knows how to make one). Although grounded in a very specific time and place, Cabrera Infante writes for the ages, a tropical Dickens, only funnier and scabrous. After all, there are few things more important in life than women and movies.

Bioy Casares moves effortlessly from reality to fantasy. This collection of short stories are often grotesque, sometimes surreal, but always entertaining. Particularly read "Margarita" and "The Travel Diary"

Levine's book is a very personal exploration of the problems of translating not just one language into another (which is virtually impossible), but of translating from one or more culture(s) into another. Her specific experiences document in some detail the difficulties and possibilities that translating Latin American fiction into (American) English presents. Each of the four sections, "Puns: The Untranslatable", "Spoken into Written", "The Source of the Source", and "Words are Never the Same" takes the reader into her particular journeys through the jungles of translation difficulties - offering not only some of the options that presented themselves and were rejected, but also the reasoning that led to both the development of those options and the reasoning behind their being deemed inappropriate. What is especially productive and useful about this text to anyone interested in Latin American writing, translation studies, north-south relations in the Americas, etc. is that Levine's is an offering that goes into great detail about translation issues that are very specific to the Americas.
Levine has produced a book that confronts the complex relationship between the North and South Americas in all its multivalent intricacies of economics, politics, power and privilege, through her dissection of the particular translation practice of bringing some of the greatest literary works into the North American English forum. The strength of this book lies in the boundaries set by the author: by choosing to focus primarily on difficulties of translating puns, proper names, jokes, titles and other kinds of word-play, Levine has not only limited her scope geographically, but also literarily. By thus limiting her field of analysis, she offers a much more constructive and detailed picture of the importance of this particular area of translation.
The importance of her project, however, is betrayed by her own prefaces (two of them) and introduction to it. In her opening comments, Levine (like every translation theorist before or since) chases after her own reading of the relentless "traduttore, traditore" amid pages of apparent self-congratulation. There is nothing transgressive or subversive about her own general theorization about translation and the first twenty pages of her book are by far the weakest. Rather than making some attempt at clarifying the issues that will nuance much of the translation that she details through the subsequent chapters, she makes a vain effort to fabricate her own general theory of translation while weaving in several glowing reviews of her own work as a translator, from both critics and authors. As this is not what the book is about, it makes little sense for it to be the focus of her introduction. However, despite the relatively off-putting first twenty pages, the book is a good read and offers excellent insights into the very particular issues of the emerging field of hemispheric American studies.

Whether you know a word of Spanish or not, this book is a pure delight. Levine spins a web about her many experiences trying to accomplish the impossible: putting into English so many words in Spanish that most will say must be read in the original. Her stories about Guillermo Cabrera Infante are particularly amusing and informative. This is a substantial contribution to the literature on the task of translation. If you know a lot about Latin American writing, you will appreciate the discussions of legendary authors....

One of the 100 Best Gay & Lesbian Novels, Donoso's book centers on the transvestite la Manuela and his/her daughter who together run a whorehouse. Donoso's crisp voice lends an intense atmosphere to this intriguing story about machismo versus sexual ambiguity. I am always drawn to foreign literature, and I highly recommend Donoso, who in some ways reminds me of Manuel Puig and his "Kiss of the Spider Woman".

"Hell Has No Limits" is a stunning novel by Chilean author Jose Donoso. The book has been translated from Spanish into an effective English by Suzanne Jill Levine. This is a grim, tragic story about the lives of the residents of the doomed town of El Olivo.

The story focuses on La Manuela, a drag queen who owns a brothel, and his/her daughter, Japonesita (the story of Japonesita's conception is told in a series of vivid flashbacks). As Donoso peels back the layers from these and other memorable characters, he reveals a twisted story of lust, homophobia, violence, sexual ambiguity, and shattered dreams. And always in the background are the whores of El Olvido and the sinister black dogs owned by the powerful Don Alonso.

Donoso's remarkable mastery of language (as translated by Levine) perfectly complements this gripping story. If you are a fan of Latin American fiction, or if you are interested in gender themes in literature, you won't want to miss this trip to "Hell."

As a complete chronology of the life and work of Manuel Puig, this biography by one of his premiere English translators cannot be beaten and will be the definitive text for everybody to start with. Puig traveled widely, knew everybody (it seems) and was ready to move on whenever things got too hot. His tempestuousness and his literary ambitions come through here loud and clear. All fans of Puig's fabulous (in all senses) work will want to read this book to see what his work required of the man (or la woman as he referred to himself after his fateful meeting with Greta Garbo who spoke of herself in the third person as The Woman). Despite all that, and there is no doubt that this is a major achievement, I still yearned for more analysis of how Puig became the writer he was (his mastery of technique, his conscious choice of the self-reflective and collagist commentary of his best work). And although Levine rightly emphasizes Puig's sexual voracity for "straight" men, his self-image as "the woman" and his obsession with his mother, the repetition of those same explanations for many of the actions of this clearly complex man began to seem reductive and easy and to call for a fresh look below that received wisdom, if only to say, at last, that that was all there was.

El hecho de que haya sido la propia traductora de sus novelas al idioma ingles quien escribiera la primera biografia del escritor no es un mero dato, porque Jill Levine resulta ser tambien una perfecta traductora de su vida, de su pensamiento y de su sensibilidad, asi como tambien del ambiente y de la epoca en que vivio, y mas que eso, despierta el interes por leer todas las novelas del escritor, tan vigente en nuestra epoca: un visionario.

Puig's _Tropical Night Falling_ offers an interesting psychological study of two elderly women living in Rio de Janeiro. What is most perceptive about the novel is the movement the characters demonstrate from profound naivete to a sad, but necessary cynicism of the world around them. As the characters meet and become involved with neighbors and other people near their apartment complex, they begin to understand the complex, bizarre, and often self-destructive relationships that human beings tend to have. Puig makes astute psychological observations and scores points by creating main characters who are in their eighties, certainly an under-represented group in contemporary fiction. The most difficult aspect of reading the novel is that it is presented solely through dialogue, letters, and newspaper articles. At some point, one begins to wonder if the novel would not have worked better as drama. However, _Tropical Night Falling_ is still a good read for anyone who has an interest in contemporary fiction with an emphasis on the psychological.

"Cobra and Maitreya" contains two novels in one volume. These novels are the work of Severo Sarduy, the Cuban-born writer who left his homeland for France in 1960. This volume is an English edition, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine, with an introduction by James McCourt. Each novel is an elegantly ornate piece of prose; however, in each novel, the ebullient wordplay seems to overwhelm the basics of plot and characterization.

The title character of "Cobra" is a performer in the "Lyrical Theater of Dolls"; Cobra undergoes a torturous physical transformation in the course of the story. The novel also takes us into the world of a gang whose members have names like Scorpion, Tiger, and Totem. The equally bizarre "Maitreya" is a story about Buddhism and sex, among other things.

Sarduy's prose is, at times, witty, outrageous, grotesque, luxurious, hallucinatory, and/or sexually explicit. He occasionally throws in sarcastic messages to the reader in parodic footnotes.... The plots (or lack thereof) did not engage me, and I found the characters difficult to connect with. Nevertheless, adventurous readers may find these novels worthwhile; they are certainly remarkable works of 20th century fiction.

She combines the source of languages and modern linguistics to create a sacred wordplay, a place of sensuality... with some small lapses concerning the reality of ecological disaster (the worst of the book without any doubt). Overall though, it is well worth reading, especially for readers of both Spanish and English.