Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in the Humanities, Latin America, and Latino Culture at Amherst College and the publisher of Restless Books. He is the author, most recently, of Quixote: The Novel and the World (2015), Borges, the Jew (2016), and I Love My Selfie (2017) and the editor of Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing (2011), The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry (2013), and Oy, Caramba! An Anthology of Jewish Stories from Latin America (2017). He recently published a new translation of Lazarillo de Tormes (2016).
“Literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies,” Roberto Bolaño, who enjoyed accruing enemies in the pantheon of Latin American letters, writes in the short story “Meeting with Enrique Lihn” (...
Photo by Miko Guziuk / Unsplash
In his newest book, What Is American Literature? (Oxford University Press, 2022), award-winning cultural commentator, translator, and editor Ilan S...
Illustrations by Eko / Courtesy of Penn State University Press
Next week, Penn State University Press will release A Pre-Columbian Bestiary, which the Press describes as “an encyc...
Grave at the US/Mexico border taken at a cemetery near Anthony, New Mexico, July 19, 2015 / Photo by Lanie Elizabeth
The following is an excerpt from part 2 of a four-part poem called “T...
The following essay is adapted from Quixote: The Novel and the World, due out from W.W. Norton next week.
Asteroid 3552 displays some bizarre, disassociated behavior. Astronomers des...
Illustration adapted from Nikki Pugh/FlickrWith bookstores and the publishing world in crisis, could ads within books be the answer? Victoria’s Secret in Pride and Prejudi...
American exceptionalism makes us believe we are extraordinary. Consequently, we trust our literature is outstanding as well. Truth is, we are as narrow as everyone else, and our literature showcas...