La séptima edición del Concurso de relatos de viaje Moleskin, patrocinado por Ediciones del Viento, ha supuesto un gran salto cualitativo y cuantitativo con respecto a las seis anteriores gracias a la consolidación de la categoría de microrrelatos. Un total de 400 obras, 212 relatos y 189 microrrelatos, de 170 autores provenientes de 16 países diferentes, casi todos latinoamericanos, pero con aportaciones desde países tan distantes como USA, Argentina o Australia. Comienza pues una ruta fascinante que nos llevará por la geografía de Marruecos, haremos un viaje literario por un vagón de metro, navegaremos las aguas del Orinoco, caminaremos por la India, disfrutaremos de las delicias turcas, conoceremos la doble vida de Albania, seguiremos las andanzas de un mosquito por Rotterdam, y, en suma, recorreremos el mundo a través de las palabras.

Orientalismo, exotismo y traducción pretende ahondar en la reflexión en torno a la traducción en cuanto vehículo mediatizado de contacto intelectual, presentando especial atención a la recepción de la cultura árabe-islámica en Europa y al papel desempeñado en ella por las distintas tradiciones de estudios árabes e islámicos. El colonialismo ha condicionado la visión que tenemos de otras culturas como la árabe e islámica. Textos como Las mil y una noches y, especialmente, sus traducciones a las lenguas europeas son paradigmas de estas visiones desenfocadas y exóticas. Las disciplinas habitualmente englobadas bajo la etiqueta de Orientalismo -en España fundamentalmente Arabismo y Africanismo- han estado en nuestro país condicionadas por dos hechos que las han llevado a divergir de otras tradiciones europeas. Por un lado, la existencia de un "Oriente doméstico", Alándalus, ha marcado el desarrollo y orientación de los estudios árabes, islámicos y orientales en la universidad española. Por otra parte la empresa colonial española se materializó en un Oriente, Marruecos, que, aunque no doméstico sí era demasiado cercano, demasiado inmediato para poder separarlo de los entresijos y vivencias de la propia historia de España.

Silvia Roig explores the narrative of Aurora Bertrana (1892-1974), an unknown writer today, but a successful and recognized female author in Catalonia and Spain during the 20th century. Aurora Bertrana's works are almost never mentioned in manuals of literature. Her rich, intellectual work has not received the attention it deserves, relegated almost to absolute oblivion. The author reviews and studies twenty-four of Bertrana's novels written in Catalan andSpanish, including: Ariatea (1960), El pomell de les violes (MS), L'inefable Philip (MS), La aldea sin hombres (mn.), La madrecita de los cerdos (MS), Entre dos silencis (1958), La ninfa d'argila (1959), Fracàs (1966) and La ciutat dels joves: reportatge fantasia (1971). She studies her work, published and unpublished, from a feminist approach, taking into account the intellectual history of Spain and Catalonia. Bertana's strong commitment to social issues reveals her association with the Modernist and Noucentists trends of her time. Bertrana's novels reveal a unique interest in non-Western cultures and lifestyles and her work undertakes controversial topics and socio-cultural issues, while she observes and draws special attention to the situation of women in different circumstances and cultural geographies. This book is therefore anchored on interpretive and theoretical parameters that intersect with consideration of gender, such as travel-and-gender and war-and-gender. Roig uses the work of feminists such as Simone De Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone, Jelke Boesten, Margaret and Patrice Higonnet, Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Julia Kristeva to help assess Bertrana's engagement with gender and socio-political issues. This approach is particularly well suited for a writer like Bertrana, a Catalan and Republican intellectual woman forced into self-exile during the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Silvia Roig is a Faculty Member, BMCC Department of Modern Languages, The City University of New York.

A major biography of the queen who transformed Spain into a principal global power, and sponsored the voyage that would open the New World. In 1474, when Castile was the largest, strongest, and most populous kingdom in Hispania (present day Spain and Portugal), a twenty-three-year-old woman named Isabella ascended the throne. At a time when successful queens regnant were few and far between, Isabella faced not only the considerable challenge of being a young, female ruler in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world, but also of reforming a major European kingdom riddled with crime, debt, corruption, and religious factionism. Her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon united two kingdoms, a royal partnership in which Isabella more than held her own. Their pivotal reign was long and transformative, uniting Spain and setting the stage for its golden era of global dominance. Acclaimed historian Giles Tremlett chronicles the life of Isabella of Castile as she led her country out of the murky Middle Ages and harnessed the newest ideas and tools of the early Renaissance to turn her ill-disciplined, quarrelsome nation into a sharper, truly modern state with a powerful, clear-minded, and ambitious monarch at its center. With authority and insight he relates the story of this legendary, if controversial, first initiate in a small club of great European queens that includes Elizabeth I of England, Russia's Catherine the Great, and Britain's Queen Victoria.