Cristina Garcia

In the 1970s, a teenaged Iranian princess, a German-Canadian girl, and a Cuban-Jewish girl from New York City become friends when they spend three summers at a Swiss boarding school.

Dreams of Significant Girls

A novel about the intertwining lives of the denizens of a hotel in an unnamed Latin American country in the midst of political turmoil.

A Novel

The Lady Matador's Hotel

Long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence ANew York Times Book Review Editor's Choice "Here in Berlin is one of the most interesting new works of fiction I've read . . . The voices are remarkably distinct, and even with their linguistic mannerisms . . . mark them out as separate people . . . [This novel] is simply very, very good." --The New York Times Book Review Here in Berlin is a portrait of a city through snapshots, an excavation of the stories and ghosts of contemporary Berlin--its complex, troubled past still pulsing in the air as it was during World War II. Critically acclaimed novelist Cristina García brings the people of this famed city to life, their stories bristling with regret, desire, and longing. An unnamed Visitor travels to Berlin with a camera looking for reckonings of her own. The city itself is a character--vibrant and postapocalyptic, flat and featureless except for its rivers, its lakes, its legions of bicyclists. Here in Berlin she encounters a people's history: the Cuban teen taken as a POW on a German submarine only to return home to a family who doesn't believe him; the young Jewish scholar hidden in a sarcophagus until safe passage to England is found; the female lawyer haunted by a childhood of deprivation in the bombed-out suburbs of Berlin who still defends those accused of war crimes; a young nurse with a checkered past who joins the Reich at a medical facility more intent to dispense with the wounded than to heal them; and the son of a zookeeper at the Berlin Zoo, fighting to keep the animals safe from both war and an increasingly starving populace. A meditation on war and mystery, this an exciting new work by one of our most gifted novelists, one that seeks to align the stories of the past with the stories of the future.

Here in Berlin

Long–listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence * A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice "Here in Berlin is one of the most interesting new works of fiction I've read . . . The voices are remarkably distinct, and even with their linguistic mannerisms . . . mark them out as separate people . . . [This novel] is simply very, very good." —The New York Times Book Review Here in Berlin is a portrait of a city through snapshots, an excavation of the stories and ghosts of contemporary Berlin—its complex, troubled past still pulsing in the air as it was during World War II. Critically acclaimed novelist Cristina García brings the people of this famed city to life, their stories bristling with regret, desire, and longing. An unnamed Visitor travels to Berlin with a camera looking for reckonings of her own. The city itself is a character—vibrant and postapocalyptic, flat and featureless except for its rivers, its lakes, its legions of bicyclists. Here in Berlin she encounters a people's history: the Cuban teen taken as a POW on a German submarine only to return home to a family who doesn’t believe him; the young Jewish scholar hidden in a sarcophagus until safe passage to England is found; the female lawyer haunted by a childhood of deprivation in the bombed–out suburbs of Berlin who still defends those accused of war crimes; a young nurse with a checkered past who joins the Reich at a medical facility more intent to dispense with the wounded than to heal them; and the son of a zookeeper at the Berlin Zoo, fighting to keep the animals safe from both war and an increasingly starving populace. A meditation on war and mystery, this an exciting new work by one of our most gifted novelists, one that seeks to align the stories of the past with the stories of the future. "Garcia’s new novel is ingeniously structured, veering from poignant to shocking . . . Here in Berlin has echoes of W.G. Sebald, but its vivid, surprising images of wartime Berlin are Garcia’s own." —BBC Culture, 1 of the 10 Best Books of 2017

A tale told from the alternating viewpoints of an aging Cuban dictator and an octogenarian Cuban exile in Miami obsessed with avenging himself against the dictator traces the impact of a six-decade revolution on their lives.

King of Cuba

Because Yumi RuÍz-Hirsch has grandparents from Japan, Cuba, and Brooklyn, her mother calls her a poster child for the twenty-first century. Yumi would laugh if only her life wasn't getting as complicated as her heritage. All of a sudden she's starting eighth grade with a girl who collects tinfoil and a boy who dresses like a squid. Her mom's found a new boyfriend, and her punk-rock father still can't sell a song. She's losing her house; she's losing her school orchestra. And worst of all she's losing her grandfather Saul. Yumi wishes everything could stay the same. But as she listens to Saul tell his story, she learns that nobody ever asks you if you're ready for life to happen. It just happens. The choice is either to sit and watch or to join the dance. National Book Award finalist Cristina García's first middle-grade novel celebrates the chaotic, crazy, and completely amazing patchwork that makes up our lives.

I Wanna Be Your Shoebox

Cubans call them cacharros: the gorgeous old American cars of the '40s and '50s that can be found throughout the country. There are classic Chevrolets, Fords, Lincolns, Cadillacs, Packards, Oldsmobiles, Buicks, De Sotos, Dodges, Pontiacs, Studebakers, Thunderbirds, Ramblers, and more, all from Detroit's golden age and all still on the road. Cars of Cuba - with an introduction by Cristina Garcia, author of the novel Dreaming in Cuban, and fifty-three color photographs by Joshua Greene - is a visit to the greatest American car museum in the world!

Cars of Cuba

Three women within a Cuban family struggle to persevere during the Cuban Revolution

Dreaming in Cuban

Clarinet-playing surfer Yumi Ruiz-Hirsch comes from a complex family, and when her grandfather is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she asks him to tell her his life story, which helps her to understand her own history and identity.

Pilar received two gifts for her birthday: a pair of dancing shoes, and a little white puppy, named Paco after her favorite uncle. Pilar loves Paco, even more than she loves dancing to the beat of her Tio Paco's drum. And Paco loves to dance with Pilar. But Pilar starts to notice that when the sun goes down, Paco never wants to dance. All he does is lie around and howl at the moon. "He's in love," says Chachi, Tio Paco's new girlfriend. "With whom?" everyone wonders. But Pilar has a suspicion, and she has a plan. And on her birthday, she and her family are going to make Paco's wish come true.

The Dog Who Loved the Moon

As the descendants of Mexican immigrants have settled throughout the United States, a great literature has emerged, but its correspondances with the literature of Mexico have gone largely unobserved. In Bordering Fires, the first anthology to combine writing from both sides of the Mexican-U.S. border, Cristina Garc’a presents a richly diverse cross-cultural conversation. Beginning with Mexican masters such as Alfonso Reyes and Juan Rulfo, Garc’a highlights historic voices such as “the godfather of Chicano literature” Rudolfo Anaya, and Gloria Anzaldœa, who made a powerful case for language that reflects bicultural experience. From the fierce evocations of Chicano reality in Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Poem IX to the breathtaking images of identity in Coral Bracho’s poem “Fish of Fleeting Skin,” from the work of Carlos Fuentes to Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo to Octavio Paz, this landmark collection of fiction, essays, and poetry offers an exhilarating new vantage point on our continent–and on the best of contemporary literature. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary Mexican and Chicana and Chicano Literature

Bordering Fires

A “darkly hilarious” (Elle) novel about a fictionalized Fidel Castro and an octogenarian Cuban exile obsessed with seeking revenge by the National Book Award finalist Cristina García, this “clever, well-conceived dual portrait shows what connects and divides Cubans inside and outside of the island” (Kirkus Reviews). Vivid and teeming with life, King of Cuba transports readers to Cuba and Miami, and into the heads of two larger-than-life men: a fictionalized Fidel Castro and an octogenarian Cuban exile obsessed with seeking revenge against the dictator. García’s masterful twinning of these characters combines with a rabble of other Cuban voices to portray the passions and realities of two Cubas—on the island and off— in a pulsating story that entertains and illuminates.

Cristina Garcia

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