A novel that blends politics, history and romance with unfailing gentleness, unforeseeable, explosive events determine the actions of the characters but never interrupt the work's lyrical structure. Carmen Rojas, the heroine, was a child when, in 1932, she witnessed the brutality of the El Salvadoran National Guard, who murdered 30,000 rioting peasants. The tragedy shapes her political consciousness, and, although she marries an American and lives in Washington, D.C., she cannot escape its memory. Thirty years later, she returns home to attend her mother's funeral and to care for her sickly father, and discovers a diary kept by her mother's American lover in the months before the 1932 uprisings.

Written in two voices, "Ashes of Izalco" is a collaborative novel by Claribel Alegrfa and Darwin Flakoll, a love story set against the events of 1932 when thirty thousand Indians and peasants were massacred in Izalco, El Salvador. "Ashes of Izalco" brings together a Salvadoran woman and an American man who together struggle over issues of love, loyalty and socio-political injustices.

An elaborate, elegant homage to the great Czech storyteller Bohumil Hrabal (author of Closely Watched Trains), The Book of Hrabal is also a farewell to the years of communism in Eastern Europe and a glowing paean to the mixed blessings of domestic life.

This vivid exposé of corruption and political tyranny in the Dominican Republic rang so true to the reality that the President of that country went on television to denounce the book. Sención's novel follows the lives of three seminary students who suffer from church-state oppression. The book also gives a chilling portrait of Dr. Ramos, a sinister autocrat, who manages to survive six terms as president of his country through manipulation and tyranny.

Halting Steps represents the most complete single-volume retrospective in English of Claribel Alegr a's seven-decade career. The volume collects all of Alegr a's poems from her fourteen previously published books and debuts several new poems under the title "Otherness." Alegr a was born in Nicaragua during the United States occupation of that country. Alegr a's family opposed the occupation and moved to El Salvador, where she grew up. Her poetry is not only lyrical and introspective but also po-litically engaged. Her verse has always spoken forcefully, specifically, and fearlessly to matters of social justice in her region. She strikes a universal theme, however, in giving a voice to individuals of all classes in their struggle against oppression, but especially women who must contend with a system in which men hold the power and women are ex-cluded. Alegr a demonstrates her remarkable range with deeply personal poems, perhaps most notably in the poem cycle "Sorrow," as she moves steadily through the waves of grief she experiences after her husband's death. In Halting Steps, both longtime admirers and those new to her work can appreciate the sustained creative power of Claribel Alegr a's poems.

Luisa, a young girl growing up in El Salvador tries to adapt to her country's violent and changing character

From The Other Boleyn Girl to Fingersmith , this collection explores the popularity of female-centred historical novels in recent years. It asks how these representations are influenced by contemporary gender politics, and whether they can be seen as part of a wider feminist project to recover women's history.