Books by Carlos Fuentes
“He develops a variety of characters. There are some immigrants from Mexico. There are also some characters visiting the United States – on lecture tours, or as students – or they live along the border. He focuses on the immense economic differences among Mexicans and the ways in which NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and the changing US-Mexican relationship manifested at the border have deepened those differences. We think about Mexico as a poor country from which immigrants come. But we don’t actually see how people, like the main character in this novel, Don Barroso – who lives in the border area – actually profit from the way the relationship between Mexico and the United States is playing out right now.” Read more...
Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Literary Scholar
“I read Aura as a teenager and it both terrified and fascinated me, but above all it invited me to join that search among dark corners that is literature. It is a very brief and self-contained novel that maintains the tension in each line. What I most admire about it is its ability to build atmosphere and cause us to feel trapped in this shady house among the smell of moss and decaying plants.” Read more...
Five of the Best Classic Mexican Novels
Ave Barrera, Novelist
Interviews where books by Carlos Fuentes were recommended
-
1
Recollections of Things to Come
by Elena Garro, translated by Ruth L.C. Simms, illustrated by Alberto Beltrán -
2
Cartucho
by Nellie Campobello, translated by Doris Meyer -
3
Balún Canán
by Castellanos Rosario -
4
Pedro Páramo
by Juan Rulfo, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden -
5
Aura
by Carlos Fuentes, translated by Lysander Kemp
Five of the Best Classic Mexican Novels, recommended by Ave Barrera
Five of the Best Classic Mexican Novels, recommended by Ave Barrera
We asked the award-winning Mexican novelist Ave Barrera—whose latest book, The Forgery, has recently been translated into English—to recommend five classic Mexican novels. Here she discusses her choices, which include books by Juan Rulfo, Elena Garro and Nellie Campobello.
The best books on Cuba, recommended by Oscar Hijuelos
In 2011, two years before his death, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Oscar Hijuelos told us about books that evoke the land of his parents, from a noirish take on contemporary Havana to the cabaret scene of pre-Castro Cuba
Border Stories, recommended by Claudia Sadowski-Smith
National borders are fertile territory for fiction, says literature professor Claudia Sadowski-Smith. She recommends five novels about migration and border crossings.
