The News From Paraguay

“Brimming with rich descriptions of a beautiful country….The News From Paraguay evolves from a quirky, elegant tale of an unconventional love affair into a sweeping epic.” — Fort Worth Star-Telegram Lily Tuck’s impressive novel offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of 19th century Paraguay, a largely untouched wilderness where European and American figures mix with the Spanish aristocracy of the capital and the indigenous peoples from the surrounding areas. The year is l854. In Paris, Francisco Solano—the future dictator of Paraguay—begins his courtship of the young, beautiful Irish courtesan Ella Lynch with a poncho, a Paraguayan band, and a horse named Mathilde. Ella follows Franco to Asunción and reigns there as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover's ill-fated imperial dream—one fueled by a heedless arrogance that will devastate all of Paraguay. With the urgency of the narrative, rich and intimate detail, and a wealth of skillfully layered characters, The News from Paraguay recalls the epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.

The Paraguayan War (1864?70) was the deadliest and most extensive interstate war ever fought in Latin America. The conflict involving Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil killed hundreds of thousands of people and had dire consequences for the Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano L¢pez and his nation. Though the Paraguayan War stirs the same emotions in South Americans as does the Civil War in the United States, there have been few significant investigations of the war available in English. In this first of two volumes, Thomas L. Whigham provides an engrossing and comprehensive account of the war's origins and early campaigns, and he guides the reader through the complexities of South American nationalism, military development, and political intrigue. Whigham portrays the conflict as bloody and inexcusable, though it paved the way for more modern societies in the continent. The Paraguayan War fills an important gap in our understanding of Latin American history.

"A transnational approach to the history of a key Latin American border region"--Provided by publisher.

Paraguay - the name conjures up everything most exotic and extreme in South America. It's a place of hellish jungles, dictators, fraudsters and Nazis, utopian experiments, missionaries and lurid coups. It's not a place for the timid tourist. It doesn't even have its own guidebook. But Paraguay, as revealed in this outstanding new travel book, is among the most beautiful and captivating countries in the world. The beguiling Paraguayans, despised and feared by their neighbours, are unfathomable. They adore Diana, Princess of Wales, as if she were still alive and hundreds volunteered to fight for Britain in the Falklands War. Their politics are Byzantine but when the Vice-President is murdered, they call in Scotland Yard. Discover more about the unique traditions of South American culture through this fascinating piece of travel journalism.

This National Book Award–winning author’s autobiographical novel is a “layered portrait of a family and the historical eras it lived through” (The Boston Globe). “Tuck is a genius.” —Los Angeles Book Review Her father is a German movie producer who lives in Italy. Her mother is a beautiful, artistically talented woman who resides in New York. As their child, Liliane’s life is divided between those two very different worlds—worlds that inspire her to find herself in both the present and in her ancestors’ pasts. A shy and observant only child with a vivid imagination, Liliane finds herself exploring her family’s vibrant history—which includes such renowned and diverse figures as the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and the tragic Mary Queen of Scots—and piecing together their vivid lives. And in doing so, what is revealed is an astonishing and riveting exploration of self, humanity, and family. Told with Lily Tuck’s inimitable elegance and peppered with documents, photos, and a rich and varied array of characters, “this autobiographical novel creates a portrait of the writer as a young woman” (The New Yorker).

The War of the Triple Alliance was one of the longest, least remembered, and, for one of its participants, most catastrophic conflicts of the 19th century. The decision of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay to go to war against Paraguay in May 1965 has generally been regarded as a response to the raids by the headstrong and tyrannical dictator, Francisco Solano Lopez. While there is some truth to this view, as Lopez had attacked towns in Argentina and Brazil, the terms of the Triple Alliance signed that same month reveal that the motivation of these two nations, at least, was to redraw the map in their favor, at the expense of Paraguay. That the resulting conflict lasted five years before Lopez was defeated and his country fully at the mercy of its neighbors was a tribute to the heroic resistance of his people, as well as to the inadequacies of the allied command. The military campaigns, which took place on land and on the rivers, often in appalling conditions of both climate and terrain, are examined from a strategic perspective, as well as through the experiences of ordinary soldiers. Leuchars looks in detail at the political causes, the course of the conflict as viewed from both sides, and the tragic aftermath. He brings to light an episode that, for all its subsequent obscurity, marked a turning point in the development of South American international relations.

Hemmed in by the vast, arid Chaco to the west and, for most of its history, impenetrable jungles to the east, Paraguay has been defined largely by its isolation. Partly as a result, there has been a dearth of serious scholarship or journalism about the country. Going a long way toward redressing this lack of information and analysis, The Paraguay Reader is a lively compilation of testimonies, journalism, scholarship, political tracts, literature, and illustrations, including maps, photographs, paintings, drawings, and advertisements. Taken together, the anthology's many selections convey the country's extraordinarily rich history and cultural heritage, as well as the realities of its struggles against underdevelopment, foreign intervention, poverty, inequality, and authoritarianism. Most of the Reader is arranged chronologically. Weighted toward the twentieth century and early twenty-first, it nevertheless gives due attention to major events in Paraguay's history, such as the Triple Alliance War (1864–70) and the Chaco War (1932–35). The Reader's final section, focused on national identity and culture, addresses matters including ethnicity, language, and gender. Most of the selections are by Paraguayans, and many of the pieces appear in English for the first time. Helpful introductions by the editors precede each of the book's sections and all of the selected texts.