Cristina Rivera Garza

"On a dark and stormy night, two mysterious women invade an unnamed narrator's house, where they proceed to ruthlessly question their host's gender and identity. The increasingly frantic protagonist fails to defend his supposed masculinity and eventually finds himself in a sanatorium. A Gothic tale of destabilized male-female binaries and subverted literary tropes, this is the book's first English publication"--

Joaquin Buitrago, a photographer in the Castaneda Insane Asylum, believes a patient is a prostitute he knew years earlier. His obsession in confirming Matilde's identity leads him to explore the clinics records, and her tragic history. He discovers that she was a peasant adopted by a doctor uncle. She led a calm life until Castulo, a young revolutionary chased by the authorities, finds shelter in her home. Matilde's eyes are opened to the social upheaval will lead her to break with her uncle and hide out with Diamantina Vicari. Diamantina's death devastates Matilde so much that she wanders about, completely lost, doing all kinds of jobs, including prostitution. As the photographer discovers more details, he becomes convinced that he and Matilde should live together. Ultimately, as they face defeat in a repressive society, they search to establish in the rubble an uncertain future that will somehow restore their freedom.

"A fairy tale run amok, THE TAIGA SYNDROME follows an unnamed female Ex-Detective as she searches for a couple who has fled to the far reaches of the earth. A betrayed husband is convinced by a brief telegram that his second ex-wife wants him to track her down--that she wants to be found. He hires the Ex-Detective, who sets out with a translator into a snowy, hostile forest where strange things happen and translation betrays both sense and one's senses. Tales of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood haunt the Ex-Detective's quest, though the lessons of her journey are more experiential than moral: that just as love can fly away, sometimes unloving flies away as well. That sometimes leaving everything behind is the only thing left to do."--Amazon.com.

"La Castañeda Insane Asylum is the first inside view of the workings of La Castañeda General Insane Asylum—a public mental health institution founded in Mexico City in 1910 only months before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. It links life within the asylum’s walls to the radical transformations brought about as Mexico entered the Revolution’s armed phase and then endured under succeeding modernizing regimes. Author Cristina Rivera Garza brings the history of La Castañeda asylum to life as inmates, doctors, relatives, and others engage in dialogues on insanity. They discuss faith, sex, poverty, loss, resentment, envy, love, and politics. Doctors translated what they heard into the emerging language of psychiatry, while inmates conveyed their personal experiences and private histories through expressions of mental suffering. The language of pain—physical and spiritual, mild to excruciating—allowed patients to detail the sources and consequences of their misfortune. Available now for the first time in English, this edition contains updated sources and features a note by the translator, Laura Kanost. "

"To celebrate the Year of Mexico in the UK and the Year of the UK in Mexico in 2015, Hay Festival, the British Council and Conaculta have joined forces to bring twenty young Mexican writers under the age of forty, paired with twenty British translators, to an international readership"--Page 4 of cover.

"Una mujer descubre accidentamente el cadáver castrado de un joven. El cuerpo yace al fondo de un callejón, junto a unos enigmáticos versos de la poeta Argentina Alejandra Pizarnik que rezan: "Cuídate de mí amor mío."... La aparición de nuevas víctimas, siempre hombres castrados, da pie a la policía a pensar que se enfrenta a un asesino en serie. Dos mujeres se empeñan en encontrarlo: la infatigable detective del Departamento de Investigación de Homicidios y una misteriosa periodista especializada en sucesos."--P. of cover. A woman accidentally finds the dead body of a young man who has been castrated. Next to him are found enigmatic verses by the Argentinean poet Alejandra Pizarnik, which reads: "Look after me, my love." When more castrated bodies are found, police start to think it might be work of a serial killer. Two women investigate: one, a tireless police detective; the other, a mysterious crime journalist.