This edition includes a new Preface by the author to the 1997\npaperback edition. In this portrait of the people, the politics,\nthe land, and the poetry of Nicaragua, Rushdie brings to the\nforefront the palpable human facts of a country in the midst of a\nrevolution. Rushdie went to Nicaragua in 1986, \“harboring no\npreconceptions of what he might find.\” What he discovered was for\nhim overwhelming: a culture of heroes who had turned into inanimate\nobjects and of politicians and warriors who were poets, a land of\ndifficult, often beautiful contradictions. Rushdie came to know an\nenormous range of people, from the Foreign Minister–a priest–to a\nmidwife who kept a pet cow in her living room. His perceptions\nalways heightened by his special sensitivity to \“the views from\nunderneath,\” Rushdie reveals a land resounding to the clashes\nbetween history and morality, government and individuals. In_The\nJaguar Smile_Rushdie brings us–as few Americans or Europeans\ncould–the true Nicaragua, where nothing is simple, everything is\ncontested, and struggles to the death are daily fare.

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