A Thousand Deaths Plus One - Hardcover

Sergio Ramirez

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0929701879 ISBN 13: 9780929701875

Publisher: McPherson, 2009

Synopsis

In 1987, while on a state visit to Warsaw, the author happened upon an exhibition of remarkable works by a hitherto unknown Nicaraguan photographer, Juan Castellan, who plied his craft in Europe between roughly 1880 and 1940. This incredible discovery launches Ramirez on a consuming quest to reveal the forgotten artist's identity -- an obsession that eventually takes him from Nicaragua to Vienna to Mallorca, and leads him to sift through the evidentiary remains of a raffish entourage of European and Latin American madmen, nobles, adventurers, and poets. Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, Castellan tells his own side of the story, from his fantastic conception in Nicaragua, to an education in France courtesy of Napoleon III, to nights of debauchery in the company of his compatriot-in-exile Ruben Dario, to a final and unexpected residence in a Nazi concentration camp. A Thousand Deaths Plus One is a coruscating novel that recapitulates, in the biographical snapshots of an exceptionally ordinary man, the history of the exceptionally unfortunate, not to say “nonexistent,” country of Nicaragua.

About this title

About the Author:

Sergio Rami­rez was born in Masatepe, Nicaragua in 1942. His first book was published in 1963; the following year he earned a law degree at the University of Nicaragua. After a lengthy voluntary exile in Costa Rica and Germany during which he continued to write works of fiction and nonfiction he became active as the leader of the Group of Twelve, consisting of intellectuals, businessmen and priests united against the Somoza regime. With the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in 1979, he became part of the Junta of the Government of National Reconstruction, where he presided over the National Council of Education. He was elected vice-president of Nicaragua in 1984, an office he held until 1990. He continued to serve as the leader of the Sandinista block in the National Assembly until 1995, when he founded the Movement for Sandinista Renovation (MRS) because of his differences with Daniel Ortega. In 1996 he retired from politics. Sergio Rami­rez is the author of thirty books, only a handful of which have been translated into English. He has received Spain's Dashiel Hammet Award, France's Laure Bataillon Award, Cuba's Jose Mari­a Arguedas LatinAmerican Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Alfaguara International Novel Award. A Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of France, and a doctor honoris causa of Blaise Pascal University (France), he is also recipient of the International Prize for Human Rights awarded by the Bruno Kreisky Foundation, and the Order of Merit of the Federal Government of Germany. He holds the Robert Kennedy Professorship in Latin American Studies at Harvard University in 2009. His recent books include Catallina y Catalina (2001), Sombras nada mas (2002), Mil y una muertes (2004) [A Thousand Deaths Plus One], and El Reino Animal.

Review:

A Thousand Deaths Plus One is an elaborate fiction that stakes itself firmly in the real. A fascinating set of stories and bits of history, it also neatly addresses the issue of capturing history and human fates, in photographs or in writing -- both documentary and fictional. Well worthwhile. --Complete Review.com

This dazzling novel allows English-speaking readers to discover what others have known for years: that Sergio Rami­rez is one of the world's most imaginative and gifted storytellers. Leaping across cultures, continents and centuries, populated by figures from Turgenev to Queen Victoria to a bird named Pericles, A Thousand Deaths Plus One pulls readers into a phantasmagorical world as vivid as any ever created by a Latin American writer --Stephen Kinzer

With this compulsive masterpiece, Sergio Rami­rez will enchant American readers as he has been delighting us in the Spanish-speaking world for many years. Through the quest for an elusive photographer, Rami­rez reveals and celebrates the history of Nicaragua, but indeed of the whole Western world in the last two centuries, and does so in ways that are as entertaining as they are profound, --Ariel Dorfman

This dazzling novel allows English-speaking readers to discover what others have known for years: that Sergio Rami­rez is one of the world's most imaginative and gifted storytellers. Leaping across cultures, continents and centuries, populated by figures from Turgenev to Queen Victoria to a bird named Pericles, A Thousand Deaths Plus One pulls readers into a phantasmagorical world as vivid as any ever created by a Latin American writer --Stephen Kinzer, author of Blood of Brothers

A Thousand Deaths Plus One is an elaborate fiction that stakes itself firmly in the real. A fascinating set of stories and bits of history, it also neatly addresses the issue of capturing history and human fates, in photographs or in writing -- both documentary and fictional. Well worthwhile. --Complete Review.com

This dazzling novel allows English-speaking readers to discover what others have known for years: that Sergio Rami­rez is one of the world's most imaginative and gifted storytellers. Leaping across cultures, continents and centuries, populated by figures from Turgenev to Queen Victoria to a bird named Pericles, A Thousand Deaths Plus One pulls readers into a phantasmagorical world as vivid as any ever created by a Latin American writer --Stephen Kinzer

A Thousand Deaths Plus One is an elaborate fiction that stakes itself firmly in the real. A fascinating set of stories and bits of history, it also neatly addresses the issue of capturing history and human fates, in photographs or in writing -- both documentary and fictional. Well worthwhile. --Complete Review.com

This dazzling novel allows English-speaking readers to discover what others have known for years: that Sergio Ramírez is one of the world's most imaginative and gifted storytellers. Leaping across cultures, continents and centuries, populated by figures from Turgenev to Queen Victoria to a bird named Pericles, A Thousand Deaths Plus One pulls readers into a phantasmagorical world as vivid as any ever created by a Latin American writer --Stephen Kinzer

A Thousand Deaths Plus One is an elaborate fiction that stakes itself firmly in the real. A fascinating set of stories and bits of history, it also neatly addresses the issue of capturing history and human fates, in photographs or in writing -- both documentary and fictional. Well worthwhile. --Complete Review.com

About this edition

• Publisher: McPherson
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0929701879
• ISBN 13: 9780929701875
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 295