A Pre-Columbian Bestiary

"The imaginary and real beings described by Ilan Stavans with whimsy, wit, irony, and, most of all, wonder, emerge from the pre-Columbian and colonial Americas to remind us that even in our own decolonial times, the imaginary and the nonimaginary, the fantastic and the historical, the speculative and the real continue to coincide in the Americas on the elusive line between fact and fiction, where 'what is known and what is hoped for intermingle.'"

-Ramon Saldivar, author of The Borderlands of Culture: Americo Paredes and the Transnational Imaginary

"This is a delightful book. It is a parade, in the arbitrary order of importance that the alphabet allows, of creatures throughout indigenous America, from Aztlan southward, and that show up in the range of books that Stavans references. Challenged to pronounce their names and to imagine their shapes and attributes, the reader will recognize how uncanny the continent is, both strange and familiar."

-Doris Sommer, author of Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America

"This alphabetic delight offers not only a brief anthology of pre-Hispanic imaginary beings but also a door to the secret links between collective imageries that appear to be distant in space and time-although they all live in people's dreams, just like those Freudian insects called Colotls. Bestiaries have their own literary tradition in the Latin American lands (both before and after colonization), ranging from the Mayas, Incas, or Aztecs to contemporary masters such as Borges, Arreola, or Wilcock, which is one of the multiple reasons why the volume is so arresting. Ilan Stavans manages to turn deeply erudite research into personal introspection (including his own father under the form of a Nahuatl grasshopper), and vice versa, making it 'a double bird,' just like the Aztec flying Zulin 'that exists by looking at the mirror.' Only one fantastic creature seems to be omitted here: this very exquisite book."

-Andres Neuman, author of Traveler of the Century

"An inspiring record of memory from a civilisation whose pantheon of myths is captivating, A Pre-Columbian Bestiary will delight anyone interested in the history and culture of South America."

-B. C. Kennedy Gramarye