The Beggar's Knife

Translated by Paul Bowles. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1985.

 

 

The Animal

The Beggar's Knife

The Black Room

The Book

The Heart of God

The Inheritance

The Lost Key

The Monastery

Nine Occasions

Path Doubles Back

A Prisoner

The Rain and Other Children

Recurrent Dreams

The Release

Reports from Cahabon

The River Bed

The Seeing Eye

The Sign

Son and Father

The Sorcerer's Son

Sunrise

Uncertain Readings

A Version of My Death

A Widespread Belief

The Widow Of Don Juan Manuel

A Yellow Cat

 

Dust on Her Tongue, 1989.

City Lights Books, San Francisco

    

The Proof 11 Dust on Her Tongue 17 Privacy 25 The Burial 29 Still Water 35 Coralia 43 The Truth 51 Angelica 59 The Host 63 People of the Head 67 Las Lagrimas 77 Xquic 83

 

The Pelcari Project / Cárcel de árboles

Cadmus Editions

THE PELCARI PROJECT

CÁRCEL DE ÁRBOLES

Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Translated by Paul Bowles

 

Cover illustration by Leon Golub

128 pp. 8" x 5½" Bilingual: Spanish and English texts en face

First American edition

 

"Ably translated from Spanish by Paul Bowles, Rodrigo Rey Rosa's The Pelcari Project (Carcel de arboles) is a masterful, bilingual novella showcasing in fiction that all too real human rights abuse issue so much a part of the international political debates. The Pelcari Project would serve well for a television "movie of the week", bringing home for Americans the realities of political oppression throughout the third world, and not unknown in some of the developed countries as well. The informative Afterword by Paul Bowles further enhances this Cadmus Editions version for an American readership."

Midwest Book Review - Internet Bookwatch: June 1997 - THE FICTION BOOKSHELF

James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief - Diane Donovan, Editor

Midwest Book Review

 

Rosa's theme in this fiction examines the effect language has on consciousness, and vice versa. The main character experiments with his own language awareness while realizing his role in a Latin American experimental prison camp. He, like the 34 other prisoners, has mysteriously lost his ability to make all but one sound, yet he alone discovers his retention of writing ability. Eventually he risks sharing this revelation with a fellow inmate who makes the same self-discovery. Together they find that their memory is sustained only by reading previous entries into a notebook they hide from the prison guards. The purpose of their limited facilities, they conclude, is merely to produce menial daily tasks.

Because of the sadistic mind control imposed by the government upon the prisoners, The Pelcari Project has a "Big Brother" feel to it. Rosa weaves a dark tale of what is possible of a government and how far will it go to regiment its masses. In the end, regardless of the mental and physical restrictions imposed on the prisoners, they have an innate desire to be liberated that can't be surgically removed.

This is a captivating story and a quick read. It is written in Spanish, translated to English by Paul Bowles. I highly recommend it.

T. Lynne - - 8/97 - The Book Buffet

 

"This vivid and cruel novella is without the least doubt or argument the work of a great writer."

Pierre Lepape, Le Monde

 

"Rodrigo Rey Rosa seems to share Darío’s faith in the liberating power of literature, however muted by the experience of exile and the resurgence of extreme violence in Guatemala."

Erica Segre, The Times Literary Supplement

 

(La información sobre The Pelcari Project ha sido sacada de : http://www.cadmus-editions.com/pelcari.html)