The Old Gringo
By Carlos Fuentes; Margaret Sayers Peden (Translator)
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Paperback, 9780374525224, 208pp.)
Publication Date: October 1997
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover, Paperback
Categories: Historical - General
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The celebrated American writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce mysteriously disapeared in Mexico during its civil war. In this brilliant novel, Carlos Fuentes imagines the fate of Bierce among Pancho Villa's troops and dramatizes the conflict of North America's two cultures locked in deadly embrace.
Carlos Fuentes, born in Panama in 1928, has received many awards for his accomplishments as a novelist, essayist, and commentator, among them the Cervantes Prize. He is the author of more than twenty books, most recently (in the United States) Inez. Other Fuentes titles from FSG include Aura, The Death of Artemio Cruz, and The Good Conscience. He divides his time between Mexico City and London.
"A dazzling novel that possesses the weight and resonance of myth [and] the fierce magic of a remembered dream."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"The fate of Bierce has intrigued Americans since 1914, when he vanished . . . Fuentes has spun an opalescent around the mystery."—Evan S. Connell, Los Angeles Times
"A perfect little gemstone, faceted by a master craftsman."—Charles Larsen, Chicago Tribune Book World
"A narrative of brilliant complexity and sophistication . . . fascinating both for what the author does and how he does it."—The Atlantic
"Cleverly conceived and crisply rendered . . . a haunting novel."—Paul West, The Washington Post Book World
"A Challenging meditation on politics, love and the burden of history itself . . . What lingers most in this profound work are the images that convey the wonderous grandeur of a society in transformation. The Old Gringo is a brilliant fiction, a luminous and compelling chronicle."—Henry Mayer, San Francisco Chronicle
"Sensual and mind-pleasing . . . The Old Gringo [is] the work of an integrated personality, the artist who contains and illuminates all the layers of all times and cultures of a nation."—Earl Shorris, The New York Times Book Review
"Fuentes gives us history as a dream that we might knowingly inhabit."—Jay Cantor, The Boston Globe
"A tribute to the economical power of his art. It radiates authenticity. Fuentes understands the Mexican Revolution as only a visionary can."—Dennis Drabelle, USA Today
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