The Potbellied Virgin (Texas Pan American Literature in Translation Series)

In an unnamed town in the Ecuadorian Andes, a small wooden icon—La Virgen Pipona (the Potbellied Virgin)—conceals the documents that define the town's social history. That history recently has been dominated by the women of the Benavides family, a conservative clan and, not coincidentally, the caretakers of the Virgin. Their rivals are the Pandos, a family led by four old men who spend their days smoking in the park across from the Virgin's cathedral and offering revisionist versions of local and national events. When a military skirmish threatens the Virgin (and the secret in her famous belly), the Benavides women must scramble to preserve their place as local matriarchs—without alerting the old Pandos to the opportunity that might enable them to finally supplant their rivals. One of Ecuador's foremost contemporary writers, Alicia Yánez Cossío illuminates the complexity of Andean society by placing disenfranchised players such as women and Amerindians onstage with traditional powers such as the military and the church. Folk wisdom, exemplified in The Potbellied Virgin by the beautifully translated proverbs so popular with the Benavideses and the Pandos alike, stands up to historical record. Such inclusiveness ultimately allows the whole truths of Yánez Cossío's subjects to emerge. Only the second of her novels to be translated into English, The Potbellied Virgin (La cofradía del mullo del vestido de la Virgen Pipona) is a funny, focused portrait of Ecuadorian life in the twentieth century.

Yánez Cossío, Alicia

Literature & Fiction

University of Texas Press

Genre Fiction

This magical novel, available in English for the first time, chronicles the history of Bruna and her wealthy, eccentric family, a clan with a centuries-long history in the somnolent mountains of northern Ecuador. Bruna's relatives spend their waking hours reassembling the family tree, appropriating and casting off relations and ancestors at will. As she pieces together her family history, Bruna begins to create her own identity, emerging from the shadow of history and coming to grips with the struggles of her family and nation to achieve a balance between the best of the old and the new.

Bruna and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City

United States

Northwestern University Press

<p><div> <div><i>Bruna and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City</i> chronicles a wealthy, eccentric family with an ancient presence in northern Ecuador. Bruna's past is dominated by ghosts and scandals that linger in the old family home in the mountains. As she pieces together the outrageous adventures of her ancestors and relatives, Bruna emerges from the husk of tradition to achieve a balance between the best of the old and the new. Tracing the complete history of Ecuador from the Conquest through the 1970s, the book is a seriocomic examination of the tensions and conflicts inherent in a world that wavers between its oppressive colonial past and its future as a modern society obsessed with material gain.</div> </div></p>

Curbstone Books 2

Retratos cubanos, 1957-1961: Cuentos (Spanish Edition)

Seix-Barral

El cristo feo (Spanish Edition)

Abrapalabra Editores]

Bruna Soroche y los tíos

World Literature

LIBRESA

Aprendiendo a morir (Biblioteca breve) (Spanish Edition)

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Books by Yánez Cossío, Alicia