{"product_id":"the-eighth-wonder-isbn-9781644215579","title":"The Eighth Wonder","description":"\u003cb\u003eA fantastical story where the protagonist is caught between reality and the feverish inventions of his mind by a groundbreaking female novelist of Argentina’s metaphysical tradition.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAvailable for the first time in English, this classic of Latin American literature features a foreword by Adolfo Bioy Casares.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlberto Paradella, a divorced lawyer, journalist, and writer who is thirty-two years old, wakes up one morning in Buenos Aires next to a blonde woman who insists her name is Alicia Martínez and wears a necklace identical to one he saw on another woman’s neck in Berlin. Originally written during Argentina's Dirty War, this story is set in Buenos Aires in the 1970s but shifts to Milan, Berlin, and Vienna. The narrator, a castaway of sorts, travels aimlessly between countries but also between past and present, waking life and dreams, truth and lies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIsolated in his study, Alberto pretends to write a novel to escape from himself and those around him. As betrayals are exposed, his life begins to fall apart. His journey—physical and psychological—unfolds like a dream. Specific characters like the mysterious woman appear, but the boundaries between memory, fantasy, and reality blur. This “adventure of the philosophical imagination” as Bioy Casares describes the book in his foreword, leads us to question, like all great fiction: What is real?\u003cb\u003eVLADY KOCIANCICH\u003c\/b\u003e (1941-2022) was a writer, literary critic, and translator. Alberto Manguel includes her in “that prestigious and select group of essential Argentine writers kept secret.” While Borges taught her to read, Bioy Casares taught her to write, yet her genealogy and approach to the fantastic are uniquely her own. Her influences range from H. G. Wells to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Julio Cortázar. She is the author of over a dozen books, including the novels \u003ci\u003eThe Eighth Wonder\u003c\/i\u003e (1982), \u003ci\u003eThe Last Days of William Shakespeare\u003c\/i\u003e (1984), and \u003ci\u003eEl templo de las mujeres \u003c\/i\u003e(1996); the short story collections \u003ci\u003eCoraje\u003c\/i\u003e (1971), \u003ci\u003eCuando leas esta carta\u003c\/i\u003e (1998), and \u003ci\u003eLa ronda de los jinetes muertos\u003c\/i\u003e (1996, finalist for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 2007); and the essay collection \u003ci\u003eLa raza de los nerviosos\u003c\/i\u003e (2006). Her translations into Spanish include Joseph Conrad’s \u003ci\u003eThe End of the Tether\u003c\/i\u003e. She also taught at the Complutense University of Madrid, and regularly contributed to the newspapers \u003ci\u003eLa Nación\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eClarín\u003c\/i\u003e. She won awards including the City of Buenos Aires Short Story Prize, the Torrente Ballester Prize, two Konex Foundation and Fondo Nacional de las Artes Jorge Luis Borges Prizes, and the Esteban Echeverría Trajectory Prize.","brand":"Seven Stories Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233658286309,"sku":"NP9781644215579","price":21.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781644215579.jpg?v=1767739141","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-eighth-wonder-isbn-9781644215579","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}