Aridjis, Homero

New York. 1991. June 1991. Summit Books. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0671644998. Translated from the Spanish by Betty Ferber. 285 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Julie Metz. Jacket painting: Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ins. habr. 1388, folio 14 recto (detail). Author photograph by Tom Victor. . keywords: Literature Translated Mexico Latin America. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Part picaresque novel, part moving romance, part historical document, this extraordinary reconstruction of fifteenth-century Spain, by one of Mexico's leading literary figures, has been acclaimed throughout Europe and Latin America. This was the century that changed the face of Spain, and of the world - the century of the wars with the Moors, which led to the end of Moorish Spain; the voyages of discovery, which culminated in Columbus's enterprise; and, perhaps above all, the century of the Inquisition, which financed both the wars and the voyages by seizing the fortunes of condemned Jews, and which led inexorably to the Expulsion. Here these events are seen through the eyes of one Juan Cabezon, a descendant of converted Jews, who is orphaned at an early age by a series of bizarre accidents and taken in hand by Pero Menique, a clever blind man, who uses him as a guide through the rich street life of Castile It is Menique who brings him beautiful young Isabel de la Vega, sentenced to death by the Inquisition, and begs him to hide her in his house. Juan and Isabel fall in love, but as time passes, Isabel is driven close to madness by her forced seclusion in Juan's house and her constant fear of death. One day she vanishes, and Juan sets off on a desperate search for her which takes him across Spain, into the heart of the Jewish communities, and constantly into the path of the Inquisition's autos-da-fë - a journey that stamps itself indelibly on the reader's mind. inventory #23916 ISBN: 0671644998.