Antigua and My Life Before

“Marcela is heir to Scheherazade. In Antigua and My Life Before, a woman again saves our lives by telling, every night, a new story. [Her novel] is an answer to the primeval death surrounding us. Thanks to writers like Marcela, life will never speak its last word.”–Carlos Fuentes“Her novels are wise and brilliantly feminine. To read Marcela Serrano is to peer into the eyes of every woman in the world.” –Arturo Pérez-Reverte, author of The Flanders Panel and The Club Dumas“Serrano’s prose is filled with phantasmagoric descriptions and suffused with the lush lyricism that distinguishes the work of Carlos Fuentes and Isabel Allende… With a dramatic plot and rich language, this is a stirring novel that inspires with its political astuteness, feminist ideology and literary quality.” – Publisher’s Weekly

Marcela Serrano was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1951. In 1994, her first novel won the Literary Prize in Santiago, and her second book won the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz prize, awarded to the best Hispano-American novel written by a woman. She now teaches at the University of Vicente Perez Rosales in Mexico City.

Margaret Sayers Peden is an award-winning translator and has worked closely with numerous illustrious Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Isabel Allende, and Octavio Paz.