Translated from the Spanish by Samantha Schnee
2016 Longlist
Loosely based on the little-known 1859 Mexican invasion of the United States, Carmen Boullosa’s newest novel Texas: The Great Theft is a richly imagined evocation of the volatile Tex-Mex borderland, wrested from Mexico in 1848. Boullosa views the border history through distinctly Mexican eyes, and her sympathetic portrayal each of her wildly diverse characters-Mexican ranchers and Texas Rangers, Comanches and cowboys, German socialists and runaway slaves, Southern belles and dance hall girls-makes her storytelling tremendously powerful and absorbing. With today’s Mexican-American frontier such a front-burner concern, this novel that brilliantly illuminates its historical landscape is especially welcome.
(from publisher)
About the Author
Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico’s leading writers. The author of over a dozen novels that have received numerous prizes and honors, Boullosa has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. Also a poet and playwright, she has taught at New York University, Columbia University, CUNY, and Georgetown, among other universities, and she hosts a television show, Nueva York, on CUNY-TV, which has received five New York Emmys. Her work has been translated into several languages, and she is currently a FONCA fellow in Mexico. She lives in Brooklyn and Mexico City.
About the Translator
Samantha Schnee is the founding editior and chairman of the board of Words Without Borders. She has also been a senior editor with Zoetrope:All-Story, and her translations have appeared in the Guardian, Granta, and the New York Times.
Librarian’s Comments
Work translated into English. The author received the following prizes: Xavier Villaurrutia (1989), LiBeraturpreis (1996), Anna Seghers-Preis (1997), a novel Cafe Gijon (2009). She has received the following scholarships: Guggenheim (1991), Künstlerprogramm DAAD, Berlin (1995), and the Center for academic writers at the New York Public Library (2001).