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These days, Frank McCourt would seem to have cornered the market on lyrical depictions of Celtic poverty But never fear, Sebastian Barry--the brilliant Irish playwright, poet, and prose-wrangler--is here. His new novel, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty recounts the odyssey of a small-town innocent, who grows up in circumstances more bucolic, but no less threadbare, than McCourt's. It's clear from the very first paragraph, however, that Barry means to take a wide-angle view of his Irish urchin: "In the middle of the lonesome town, at the back of John Street, in the third house from the end, there is a little room. For this small bracket in the long paragraph of the street's history, it belongs to Eneas McNulty. All about him the century has just begun, a century some of which he will endure, but none of which will belong to him."

Having handily survived his Sligo childhood, Eneas joins the British Army in time for World War I--and upon his return home, finds himself shunned as a collaborator. Tarred with this very Britannic brush, he goes one better and enlists in the Royal Irish Constabulary. Alas, this move only cements his fate as a marked man, and his father is soon issued a warning: "Let your son keep out of Sligo if he wants to keep his ability to walk." With a price on his head, Eneas commences a life of wandering, from Mexico to Africa to Nigeria (which the moonlight, he notices, "brings closer to Ireland.") From time to time he sneaks back to Sligo and is promptly expelled.

In another author's hands, this epic of dislocation could well be a bitter one. Yet the stoical and simple-minded Eneas is surprisingly free of anguish, and even his constant fear "has become something else, could he dare call it strength, a privacy anyhow." And the reader, at least, has the delightful distraction of Barry's prose, in which the occasional Joycean notes are entirely subsumed by the author's own colloquial brilliance. In the end, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is less a novel than an exhibition of bardic fireworks--a latter-day Aeniad that's actually worthy of the name. --James Marcus.
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The city of Prague has inspired a lot of fine literature, and Paul Wilson has done the English-speaking world a vast favor by compiling this anthology of 23 Prague stories There are classics by the likes of Franz Kafka, Jan Neruda, and Ivan Klima, and lesser-known works making their English-translation debuts. There are autobiographical pieces, fiction, legend, stories from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, tales from the Soviet regime, and contemporary pieces from the Czech Republic. Ivan Klima's epilogue is titled "The Spirit of Prague," and after reviewing Prague's history--cultural and political--he concludes that paradox is at Prague's heart, and irony and ridicule are its primary tools. Both devices are employed deftly throughout Wilson's anthology, providing clever, lyrical, and moving snippets of Prague's complex reality..
Price: $8.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Costa Rica: A Traveler's Literary Companion has been compiled in an attempt to provide tourists with a different perspective on the country Each of the twenty-six remarkable stories in this collection has been selected to reflect the geographical area in which it is set. (Though Costa Rica is only about half the size of Ireland, it is wonderfully diverse.) Story settings range from the high valleys of the central plateau to the flatlands of the Caribbean coast to the plains of Guanacaste. A typical guidebook will instruct visitors on the politics, history, culture, economy, and ethnicity of a country, but only fiction can portray its soul. After reading the stories contained in this literary companion, travelers to Costa Rica will no doubt view this Central American nation with whole new eyes..
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These ruminations, assembled in the form of a journal and here published in paperback for the first time, were written at Alan Watts' retreat in the foothills of Mount Tamalpais, California. Many current themes are discussed, including meditation, nature, established religion, race relations, karma and reincarnation, astrology and tantric yoga, and the nature of ecstasy, but the underlying motif is the art of feeling out and following the watercourse way of nature, known in Chinese as the Tao. Watts suggests a way of contemplative meditation in which we temporarily stop naming and classifying all that we experience, and simply feel it as it is..
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Mexico has long been the top travel destination for Americans But until now, there has not been such a panoramic vision of Mexico offered by some of Mexico's finest contemporary writers of fiction and literary prose. Here are writings-many translated for the first time-that bring you to the people of the beaches, the deserts, jungles, snow-capped mountains, and megacities.

The voices are rich and diverse, the stories enthralling and strange. These writings shatter stereotypes as they provide a rollicking journey from the Pacific to the Gulf, from Yucatan to border slums, from humble ranchos to a fabulous mountaintop castle.

Contributors include rising stars as well as many of Mexico's best-known literary writers, including: Fernando del Paso, Elena Poniatowska, Carlos Fuentes, Angeles Mastretta, Alberto Ruy-Sanchez, Ilan Stavans, and Juan Villoro.

C.M. Mayo is a winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and founding editor of Tameme, one of the most prestigious publishers of Spanish/English literary translation.

Also available in the Traveler's Literary Companion series:

Amsterdam TP $13.95 1-883513-09-X CUSA
Australia TP $13.95 1-883513-05-7 CUSA
Chile TP $13.95 1-883513-13-8 CUSA
Costa Rica TP $14.95 1-883513-00-6 CUSA
Cuba TP $13.95 1-883513-11-1 CUSA
Greece TP $14.95 1-883513-04-9 CUSA
Israel TP $12.95 1-883513-03-0 CUSA
Italy TP $14.95 1-883513-14-6 CUSA
Prague TP $14.95 1-883513-01-4 CUSA
Spain TP $13.95 1-883513-12-X CUSA
Vietnam TP $13.95 1-883513-02-2 CUSA

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Traverse Chile's diverse literary and geographic landscape with its best contemporary writers. Arranged geographically, these 20 stories-many of which appear in English for the first time-guide the reader through Chile's unique regions. Let Ariel Dorfman take you to Santiago with a prodigal son, discovering his own country for the first time; travel to the remote south with Enrique Valdes; and enjoy the charms of Valparaiso with Pablo Neruda, one of Chile's two Nobel Prize winners.

With the return of democracy to Chile, large numbers of Americans and Chilean expatriates are rediscovering the rich cultural allure of Chile, as well as the draw of its unrivaled ecodiversity. Chile is an excellent literary guide for globetrotters and armchair travelers alike-for those new to Chile as well as those familiar with its charms.

Katherine Silver is a freelance translator, editor, teacher and writer who has lived in Chile frequently and for prolonged periods from 1979 to the present. She has translated the Il Postino by Antonio Skarmeta, as well as the works of Elena Poniatowska, Jose Emilio Pacheco and Martin Adan. She is currently translating Pedro Lemebel's I Tremble Toreador for Grove/Atlantic Press.

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Greece is a heady experience, with the hot sun and whitewashed homes, the sea, the food and people, the ruins, culture, and history. No matter which guide books one takes and how well versed one is in Homer and Sophocles, who doesn't sail into Piraéus feeling woefully ill-prepared to appreciate the glories of Greece? The 24 finely crafted short stories by modern Greek writers (many appear in English for the first time), arranged geographically (by Athens, the Peloponnese, Crete, and so on), help weave together some understanding of ancient, literary, and modern Greece. .
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This anthology begins with Nguyen Huy Thiep's disarmingly simple but riveting tale of Mr. Dieu's monkey hunt in the Dau Da Forest on a warm spring day, starting off with "A month after the new year is the best time to be in the jungle. The vegetation is bursting with fresh buds, and its leaves are deep green and moist." Fifteen stories follow "Salt of the Jungle," organized under the sections "Hanoi," "Rivers," "Ho Chi Minh City," "Dalat," and "Villages," ending with a "Remembrances" series, including Nguyen Ba Trac's "The White Horse," in which Mr. Nguyen, ever running red lights and earning parking violations, can't stop traveling back and forth between past and present, between his current abode in the United States and his memories of the old neighborhood in Ban Co District. "Memory is a horse on an ephemeral path," he writes, "but you can't stop it. It goes where it wants to go. It goes all the way back to Dalat, galloping freely upon green hills in an afternoon in which the hues of sunshine are as light and thin as smoke and clouds." These stories, penned by Vietnam's best writers, are a beautiful introduction to Vietnam. From "The Stranded Fish," Doan Quoc Sy's unassuming elaboration on a century-old folk poem, to "Fired Gold," a complex, Borgesian piece by Nguyen Huy Thiep, these literary pieces evoke the land, culture, people, concerns, and soul of Vietnam like no travel guide could ever hope to do. They are a pleasure to peruse, regardless of your Vietnam travel plans. --Stephanie Gold.
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Explore Spain's rich literary landscape with some of the country's best contemporary writers. Arranged geographically, these 18 stories-many of which appear in English for the first time-transport the reader through Spain's many enchanting regions: Experience the diversity of Juan Goytisolo's Almeria, join Berardo Atxaga in a Basque village, travel to the fjords of Galicia with Manuel Rivas, and revisit Julio Llamazares's Leon-a village now under the waters of a reservoir.

Peter Bush is Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia. He edited The Voice of the Turtle, an anthology of Cuban Stories (Grove), and has translated numerous Spanish novels.

Lisa Dillman has translated biography, art history, and pedagogy in addition to Spanish, Catalan, Cuban, and Argentinian fiction.

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