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First published in the US as Texas: the great theft by Deep Vellum in 2014"--Copyright page.
About the author
Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico's leading novelists, poets, and playwrights. She has published over a dozen novels, several of which have been published by Deep Vellum in English translation. Boullosa has received numerous prizes and honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship. Also a poet, playwright, essayist, and cultural critic, Boullosa is a Distinguished Lecturer at City College of New York, and her books have been translated into Italian, Dutch, German, French, Portuguese, Chinese, and Russian. Other novels translated into English include
Before (tr. Peter Bush, Deep Vellum, 2016),
Heavens On Earth (tr. Shelby Vincent, Deep Vellum, 2017),
The Book of Anna (tr. Samantha Schnee, Coffee House Press, 2020) and
The Book of Eve (tr. Samantha Schnee, Deep Vellum, 2023).
Samantha Schnee is the founding editor of Words Without Borders. Her translation of Boullosa's
Texas: The Great Theft was shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize. She lives in Houston, Texas.
Summary
A contemporary classic from award-winning author Carmen Boullosa, in the tradition of Juan Rulfo, Jorge Louis Borge and Cesair Aira, now available in a special 10th anniversary edition.
Loosely based on the little-known 1859 Mexican invasion of the United States, Texas: The Great Theft is a richly imagined evocation of the volatile Tex-Mex borderland. Boullosa views border history through a new lens decentering US narratives, and her sympathetic portrayal of each of her wildly diverse characters—Mexican ranchers and Texas Rangers, Comanches and cowboys, German socialists and runaway slaves, Southern belles and dancehall girls—makes her storytelling tremendously powerful and absorbing.
Featuring a new introduction by a prominent writer, the Tenth Anniversary edition of Texas sheds important historical light on current battles over the Mexican–American frontier while telling a gripping story with Boullosa's singular prose and formal innovation.
