Novels
- Before (1989)
- They’re Cows, We’re Pigs (1991)
- The Miracle-Worker (1994)
- Heavens on Earth (1997)
- Leaving Tabasco (2001)
- Cleopatra Dismounts (2003)
- Texas: The Great Theft (2014)
- The Book of Anna (2020)
Collections
Novels Book Covers
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Carmen Boullosa Books Overview
They’re Cows, We’re Pigs
The emerging societies of the Caribbean in the seventeenth century were a riotous assembly of pirates, aristocrats, revolutionaries, and rogues outcasts and fortune seekers all. In They’re Cows, We’re Pigs, acclaimed Mexican novelist Carmen Boullosa animates this world of bloody chaos and uncertain possibility through the eyes of the young Jean Smeeks, kidnapped in Flanders at age thirteen and sold into indentured servitude on Tortuga, the mythical Treasure Island. Trained in the magic of medicine by le Negre Miel, an African slave healer, and Pineau, a French born surgeon, Smeeks signs on as a medical officer with the pirate band the Brethren of the Coast. Transformed by the looting and violence of pirate life, Smeeks finds himself both healer and despoiler, servant and mercenary, suspended between the worlds of the law abiding, tradition bound ‘cows’ and the freely roaming and raiding ‘pigs.’
Leaving Tabasco
Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico’s most acclaimed young writers, and Leaving Tabasco tells of the coming of age of Delmira Ulloa, raised in an all female home in Agustini, in the Mexican province of Tabasco. The Washington Post Book World wrote, ‘We happily share with Delmira…
her life, including the infinitely charming town she inhabits and her grandmother’s fantastic imagination.’ In Agustini it is not unusual to see your grandmother float above the bed when she sleeps, or to purchase torrential rains at a traveling fair, or to watch your family’s elderly serving woman develop stigmata, then disappear completely, to be canonized as a local saint. As Delmira becomes a woman she will search for her missing father, and will make a choice that will force her to leave home forever. Brim*ming with the spirit of its irrepressible hero*ine, Leaving Tabasco is a story of great charm and depth that will remain in its readers’ hearts for a long time. ‘Carmen Boullosa…
immerses us once again in her wickedly funny and imaginative world.’ Dolores Prida, Latina ‘To flee Agustini is to leave not just a town but the viscerally primal dreamscape it represents.’ Sandra Tsing Loh, The New York Times Book Review ‘A vibrant coming of age tale…
Boullosa is a master…
. Each chapter is an adventure.’ Monica L. Williams, The Boston Globe
Cleopatra Dismounts
Carmen Boullosa is one of Latin America’s most original voices, and in Cleopatra Dismounts she has written a remarkable reconstruction of the life of the Egyptian queen, who famously died in Marc Antony’s arms. But is this really the true Cleopatra?Through the intervention of Cleopatra’s scribe and informer Diomedes, Boullosa creates two previous Cleopatras, and in effect two deliriously wild other lives for the young monarch a girl escaping the intrigues of royal society, and the young queen who is carried across the sea on the back of a magical bull, to live among the Amazons and become part of their society. Magical, multifaceted, and rippling with luminous imagination, Cleopatra Dismounts is a work that recalls Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry and confirms Carmen Boullosa as an important international voice.
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