Literanista
September 25, 2010
The Lady Matador’s Hotel: A Novel
Cristina Garcia
National Book Award finalist Cristina
García delivers a powerful and gorgeous novel about the intertwining lives of
the denizens of a luxurious hotel in an unnamed Central American capital in the
midst of political turmoil. The lives of six men and women converge over the
course of one week.
There is a Japanese-Mexican-American matadora in town for a
bull-fighting competition; an ex-guerrilla now working as a waitress in the
hotel coffee shop; a Korean manufacturer with an underage mistress ensconced in
the honeymoon suite; aninternational adoption lawyer of German descent; a
colonel who committed atrocities during his country’s long civil war; and a
Cuban poet who has come with his American wife to adopt a local infant.
With
each day, their lives become further entangled, resulting in the unexpected—the
clash of histories and the pull of revenge and desire.Cristina García’s
magnificent orchestration of politics, the intimacies of daily life, and the
frailty of human nature unfolds in a moving, ambitious, often comic, and
unforgettable tale.
About the Author
Cristina GarcÍa is the author of
four novels: Dreaming in Cuban, The AgÜero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, and
A Handbook to Luck. GarcÍa’s work has been nominated for a National Book
Award and translated into a dozen languages. She is the recipient of a
Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Hodder Fellowship at
Princeton University, and an NEA grant, among others. She is currently the
artistic director for the Centrum Writers Exchange in Port Townsend, Washington
and has taught literature and writing at numerous universities. In 2009-10, she
will be a Visiting Professor and a Black Mountain Institute Teaching Fellow in
Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
