Katherine Vaz

The stories in this prize-winning collection evoke a complete world, one so richly imagined and finely realized that the stories themselves are not so much read as experienced. The world of these stories is Portuguese-American, redolent of incense and spices, resonant with ritual and prayer, immersed in the California culture of freeway and commerce. Packed with lyrical prose and vivid detail, acclaimed writer Katherine Vaz conjures a captivating blend of Old World heritage and New World culture to explore the links between families, friends, strangers, and their world. ø From the threat of a serial killer as the background for a young girl?s first brush with death to the fallout of a modern-day visitation from the Virgin Mary; from an AIDS-stricken squatter refusing to vacate an empty Lisbon home to a mother?s yearlong struggle with the death of her synesthetic daughter, these deft stories make their world ours.

Our Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese-American Stories

A Novel

Above the Salt

In this long-awaited collection of short fiction by the author of Mariana and Our Lady of the Artichokes, beauty is continually and painfully present in all places--in a Thanksgiving dinner assembled by a widowed DMV worker being stalked by an irate customer; in a middle-aged Hollywood actress who captivates a young studio animator for decades; in the aftermath of an unthinkable tragedy; and in a daughter's memories of the ethereal, melting ice sculptures made by a woman embroiled in an affair with a wealthy lawyer. Amid their complex, turbulent relationships in a chronic state of crisis, Katherine Vaz's wise and restless protagonists carry within them the seeds of a vanished, gracious world of urbane dinner parties and passionate affairs--a humane and cultured civilization whose flawed inhabitants are redeemed by their ability to blend the aesthetic imperative with the power to love.

The Love Life of an Assistant Animator & Other Stories

Mariana

Based on the true story of one of Europe's most notorious love affairs, Mariana is the tale of a Portuguese nun who shocks her convent by having an affair with a French soldier.

José Luís Luna

Describes the health advantages of preparing for triathlons, gives advice on training for swimming, running, and bicycling, and explains how to plan one's own training regimen

The Complete Book of the Triathlon

Cross-training

The exotic Clara, born deaf on a Portuguese island steeped in legend and mystery, relocates to northern California, where her profound sense of longing drives her to create her own language to express her sensual vitality. A first novel.

Saudade

Winner of the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize This collection is filled with narrative and character grounded in the meaning and value the earth gives to human existence. In one story, a woman sleeps with the village priest, trying to gain back the land the church took from her family; in another, relatives in the Azores fight over a plot of land owned by their expatriate American cousin. Even apparently small images are cast in terms of the earth: Milton, one narrator explains, has made apples the object of a misunderstanding by naming them as Eden’s fruit: “In the Bible, no fruit is named in the Garden of Eden - and to this day apples are misunderstood. They were trying to tempt people not into sin but into listening to the earth more closely. . . . their white meal runs wet with the knowledge of the language of the land, but people do not listen.” Vaz’s beautiful, intensely conscious language often delicately slips her stories into the realm of the fado, the Portuguese song about fate and longing. “Listen for the nightingale that presses its breast against the thorns of the rose,” on character sings, “that the song might be more beautiful.” Such a verse might describe Vaz’s own motive behind her willingness to confront her subject’s ambiguities and her characters’ conflicts - the simultaneous joy and sorrow of some of life’s discoveries, the pain sometimes hidden within passion and pleasure.

Katherine Vaz

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