European women writers series

Rosa Montero retrata con audacia la historia de Ana, quien deberá cumplir con las exigencias de su trabajo como redactora en una revista, cuidar de su hijo y navegar por la noctámbula vida del convulso Madrid de finales de los setenta. Crónica del desamor es la primera novela de la autora y una obra clave para entender las inquietudes de una generación que se sentía a la vez poderosa y desorientada, y que aún no sabía manejar su libertad sin herirse.

A novel on a Spanish landowner and his bastard half brother to whom he is at once attracted and repelled. The relationship is played out against the background of the approaching 1930s Spanish Civil War, the causes of which the novel examines.

A group of girls escape from their convent school and after surviving a shipwreck found a feminist paradise on an exotic island. Written in the 1840s by a mother-daughter team, the novel was a critique of German paternalism.

The memoir of a precocious Spanish girl. Atthe age of 11, a woman-friend of her father is so charmedby her, she suggests her husband tutor the girl. Whereupon the girl seduces the husband. The book waspublished in 1945 in Spain and this is its first appearancein English.

The Forbidden Woman tells the story of Sultana, an Algerian woman doctor who, after years spent living in France, returns to her native village in order to attend the funeral of a former lover. The clash between her origins and the Westernized life she now leads is explored in telling detail against the backdrop of current events in Algeria. A work that combines insight into both political and personal matters, The Forbidden Woman develops a complex portrait of a country torn between progress and prejudice, secular life and Islamic fundamentalism. In this passionate book, Malika Mokeddem places special emphasis on the position of women in modern Algeria. The frequent indignities and injustices suffered by the narrator reflect the plight of women in a society marked by patriarchalism and religious fundamentalism. Yet the novel also suggests that, along with modernization, there are emerging demands for women's rights in Algeria - demands that might well signal a vastly different future for this tormented nation.

One of the last books published by a Jew in Germany before Hitler came to power. The work is autobiographical, a collection of essays and vignettes. Published in 1932, it contains a warning about the climatic dangers of interfering with ozone and has emphasis on spiritual development rather than the materialistic.

Abelard's Love is an inspired retelling of the story of Abelard and Heloise - the French medieval theologian and his brilliant student whose love affair led to a scandal that has echoed through the centuries. In the affair's aftermath, Abelard became a monk and Heloise a nun. Forgotten to history was their unwanted son. Luise Rinser sets at center stage that son and his unique perspective on his legendary parents. The novel is cast in the form of a long letter written by the son, Astrolabe. Addressed to Heloise in the weeks after Abelard's death, the letter brings the story of this tragic family vividly to life. Rinser offers insights into each of the three participants in this family drama, yet it is the perspective of the aggrieved son that lies at the book's core.

"Isabelle de Charriere (1740-1805) is best known for four of her novels: Lettres neuchateloises, Lettres de Mistriss Henley, Lettres ecrites de Lausanne, and Caliste. These finely drawn representations of provincial courtship, marriage, and domestic life have been called the closest thing in French to the novels of Jane Austen.". "A daughter of a distinguished Dutch noble family, she was known in her youth as Belle de Zuylen. At the age of twenty she began a clandestine correspondence with a middle-aged Swiss colonel stationed in Holland. David-Louis, Baron de Constant d'Hermenches, was a friend of Voltaire, an accomplished musician, an amateur writer, and a ladies' man. Their correspondence was one of the finest in a great age of letter writing. It lasted fifteen years, and nearly all of it is extant.". "Although the two rarely saw each other, their epistolary friendship became one of great depth and scope. Their correspondence touches on a wide range of subjects; James Boswell's courtship of Isabelle, her opinions of English high society, the new smallpox inoculation, and visits by royalty. It includes firsthand accounts of the French conquest of Corsica and of Voltaire's social activism. Readers acquainted with Charriere's novels will see in these letters the same finely observed detail, epistolary style, and moral and intellectual awareness."--BOOK JACKET.

A collection of stories on life in Romania under Communism, illustrating the violence and the corruption. They are based on the writer's experience in her youth, in a village in the German-speaking part of the country.

In writing Le Livre de Promethea Hélène Cixous set for herself the task of bridging the immeasurable distance between love and language. She describes a love between two women in its totality, experienced as both a physical presence and a sense of infinity. The result is a stunning example of Pecriture feminine that won kudos when published in France in 1983. Its translation into English by Betsy Wing will extend the influence of a writer already famous for her novels and contributions to feminist theory.