B. Traven’s last novel, first published in 1960 but never before released in English, features a larger-than-life heroine: Ms. Aslan Norval, an American millionairess with Hollywood roots and political schemes up her sleeve Though Aslan Norval is wealthy beyond measure and contentedly married to an aging businessman, she finds herself tormented with the desire to do something epic, something no man has dared to do: she decides to build a canal across the continental United States. With the help of an uncouth Korean War veteran—whom she appoints as her right-hand man and unlikely lover—she forms a public corporation. A congressional committee of investigators, prodded by lobbyists, tries to stop the venture; but the ensuing publicity arouses the civic-minded public, and “democratic process” insists that the canal be realized as a federal undertaking. Not only will the project relieve chronic unemployment and demobilize the armed forces, but it will also benefit the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, aid world shipping, and relieve the Cold War! Rediscovered after B. Traven’s death in 1969, Aslan Norval is a hidden gem now unearthed—the final novel from the brilliant and beloved mind behind the cult classic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre—shedding new light on the life and work of a mysterious literary giant.

One of the most mysterious of authors, B. Traven spent his early life in Germany as an actor and anarchist publisher using the name of Ret Marut, then emerged in Mexico as B. Traven, a literary champion of the proletariat. This work examines his career through the production of his 16 books (twelve novels, two novellas, a work of nonfiction, and a collection of short stories), to the production of the movie The Treasures of the Sierra Madre, where he emerged this time as Hal Croves. The bibliography, with 140 illustrations and 1200 entries, provides information on the publication of over a thousand editions of Traven's books. For the first time, information on the states and issues of many editions, including first editions published in Germany between 1926 and 1960, is provided. Includes an illustrated descriptive bibliography of all of the American and British first editions. An essential tool for collectors, book dealers, and librarians.

In this book, Roy Pateman provides the most reader-friendly, up to date biography of B. Traven, an enigmatic writer whose readership spread across broader class, race, and language divides more than anyone else writing during the twentieth century. This unconventional biography discusses Traven's alternative histories, followed by an attempt to find out the major influences of this elusive man. Pateman addresses Traven's politics, his life of humanist anarchism, and discusses all of his works (in English and German), emphasizing The Death Ship, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and the "Jungle Sextet." Also included is a chronology of Traven's life, which is fuller than that found in any other study. The book ends with a modest solution to the intractable problem of who Traven really was and where he was born and raised.

The Cavalry Charges: Writings on Books, Film, and Music, Revised Edition is a collection of anecdotal reflections that relate many of the experiences that shaped Barry Gifford as a writer. Representative of Gifford’s body of work, this volume is divided into three sections: books, film and television, and music. Within these sections, Gifford’s best work is showcased, including a nine-part dossier on Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks in which Gifford examines the public and private lives of those involved in the film. New to the collection are four previously published essays: a brief look at the novels of Álvaro Mutis; a reflection on Gifford’s schooling under Nebraska poet John Neihardt; an essay on Elliot Chaze and his novel Black Wings Has My Angel; and a short piece on Sailor and Lula.

This book addresses contemporary discourses on a wide variety of topics related to the ideological and epistemological changes of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, and the ways in which they have shaped the Spanish language and cultural manifestations in both Spain and Hispanic America. The majority of the chapters are concerned with ‘otherness’ in its various dimensions; the alien Other – foreign, immigrant, ethnically different, disempowered, female or minor – as well as the Other of different sexual orientation and/or ideology. Following Octavio Paz, otherness is expressed as the attempt to find the lost object of desire, the frustrating endeavour of the androgynous Plato wishing to embrace the other half of Zeus, who in his wrath, tore off from him. Otherness compels human beings to search for the complement from which they were severed. Thus a male joins a female, his other half, the only half that not only fills him but which allows him to return to the unity and reconciliation which is restored in its own perfection, formerly altered by divine will. As a result of this transformation, one can annul the distance that keeps us away from that which, not being our own, turns into a source of anguish. The clashing diversity of all things requires the human predisposition to accept that which is different. Such a predisposition is an expression of epistemological, ethical and political aperture. The disposition to co-exist with the different is imagined in the de-anthropocentricization of the bonds with all living realms. And otherness is, in some way, the reflection of sameness (mismidad). The other is closely related to the self, because the vision of the other implies a reflection about the self; it implies, consciously or not, a relationship with the self. These topics are addressed in this book from an interdisciplinary perspective, encompassing arts, humanities and social sciences.