The stories in this volume announce a dramatic change, a transformation of the literature of love in Latin America, and of the role—even the nature—of women in this most “feminine” literary tradition. These stories, by exciting new writers as well as by the renowned, are “violations” of the most exhilarating sort, flouting conventions of language, behavior, subject matter, and style to remake and widen our once-narrow view of the literary landscape of Latin America. Here women writers from Mexico and Brazil, Colombia and Argentina, Cuba, Peru, and Uruguay break social, religious, political, and sexual barriers in fiction that is by turns erotic, satirical, shocking, tragic—and always, in its remapping of literary boundaries, deeply and richly entertaining.
Brian Matthews is Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Europe-Australia Institute at Victoria University in Melbourne. He is the author of Louisa, A Fine and Private Place, and Quickening and Other Stories. His numerous awards include the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society.