Full Description
Cristina Peri Rossi is one of the most acclaimed and personal voices in Hispanic letters. This volume of short stories, Panic Signs, first published in 1970 in Montevideo, Uruguay, presages the atrocities that would come with dictatorship in 1972.
The premonitory dimension is one of the striking characteristics in all the stories - a sense of impending catastrophe, sometimes hallucinatory and often graphic, leads us to undetermined places where the horrors of censorship, torture, and human bondage take place. At the same time, the stories expose the shackles that incapacitate us and deny us the acceptance of ourselves.
This elegy for freedom mourns the loss of liberty and justice while seducing us into questioning what we hold true. The metaphorical procession of images, and the craftsmanship of a narrative that continually engage us, motivate us to explore our own uncertainties and values, and offer an unquestionable opportunity to reassess today's global conditions. Peri Rossi succeeds in creating a whirlwind of despair and self-discovery, impelling us to assess our own panic signs and so avoid being entrapped by those who hold power over us.
The translation of this powerful text will help English-speaking readers attain a more profound understanding of the complexities of Latin America's cultural and socio-political issues.
Contents
Panic Signs by Cristina Peri Rossi, translated by Merceds Rowinsky-Geurts and Angelo A. Borrás
Preface
Prologue
1. I am very interested in botany
2. I live in a country of old people
3. I have never been in Vermont
4. We have not gone to the moon
5. For more than twenty-five years
6. Sometimes my mother consoles me
7. I spent many years caressing statue
8. I always imagine
9. She brought me passionate presents
10. She hands me the scarf
11. I contribute to the general racket
12. She had been brought from Peru
13. I have a tiny apartment
14. She has given me happiness
15. Dialogue with the Writer
16. For many years I lived
17. When I was mature enough
18. Hell is bloody birds
19. ""You are very beautiful""
20. I will till no more
21. In the ghetto of my womb
22. I dreamt that I was
23. Desertion
24. What is happening?
25. As I was walking along
26. The Acrobats
27. Besieged
28. The minister called me
29. ""What are you doing?""
30. Disobedience and the Bear Hunt
31. The Statue
32. I possessed her when I was eight
33. Mamá's Farewell
34. I started to feel your absence
35. At the corner bar
36. When the bishops rebelled
37. A Great Family
38. Such apparent senselessness
39. I was enjoying an ice cream cone
40. Selene I
41. Selene II
42. I have come by train
43. Urgent Messages for Navigators
44. The Social Contract
45. The Stampede
46. The Hero
Other books by Cristina Peri Rossi
