Thursday 23 October 2008

CUBA WELCOMES NEW MUP EDITION

The classic Cuban testimonial text, Biografia de un Cimarrón (Biography of a runaway slave) is to be published for the first time in England. The testimony of Esteban Montejo, the last surviving former slave in Cuba, where slavery was not abolished until 1886, was transcribed by celebrated Cuban poet, ethnologist and novelist Miguel Barnet and will be published by Manchester University Press in a critical edition for students.

Dr. William Rowlandson, one of the most famous specialists in Spanish and Latin American Literature from the University of Kent, is responsible for this critical edition of the biography. The volume will include the text in Spanish, as it appeared in the original edition of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore, with an introduction and detailed notes in English.

Barnet’s work will be included in the Hispanic Texts series, which includes other works by eminent Hispanic authors, from Miguel de Unamuno and Federico García Lorca to Gabriel García Márquez and Alfredo Bryce Echenique.

The volume has generated interest in Barnet's homeland of Cuba - as seen on the Cuba News Agency website this week.

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