A Critic’s Journey

Ilan Stavans has been described by the
Washington Post
as ‘Latin America’s liveliest and boldest critic and most innovative cultural enthusiast’.
The New York Times
has called him ‘one of the most influential figures in Latino literature in the United States’. This collection of essays, part of the University of Michigan Press’ acclaimed
Writers on Writing
series, helps to explain why. Here Stavans focuses on his Jewish heritage and Hispanic upbringing and the relationship between the two cultures from both his own personal experience and that of others. Despite being hailed as a voice for Latino culture, he has also been criticized for writing about that culture while being Jewish and Caucasian, with the result that he is both an insider and an outsider, an observer and a participant, providing a unique point of view.
A Critic’s Journey
includes a lecture on the much-discussed topic of ‘Who Owns the English Language?’ as well as essays on everything from the translation of
Don Quixote
to the durability of
One Hundred Years of Solitude . He reflects on Hispanic anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in Latin America, his own experiences writing the memoir
On Borrowed Words
and the screen adaptation of the novella
My Mexican Shiva , and writers ranging from Roberto Bolano to W. G. Sebald. Truly, as the
Philadelphia Inquirer
has said, Stavans is ‘an intellectual force to reckon with’.