En un lugar del sur de los Estados Unidos, en plena Depresión, Paul Edgecomb es un funcionario de prisiones encargado de vigilar la Milla Verde, un pasillo que separa las celdas de los reclusos condenados a la silla eléctrica. John Coffey, un gigantesco negro acusado de asesinar brutalmente a dos hermanas de nueve años está esperando su inminente ejecución. Tras una personalidad ingenua e infantil, Coffey esconde un prodigioso don sobrenatural. Cuando se presenta la ocasión de ponerlo en práctica, Edgecomb aprenderá que los milagros existen, incluso en los lugares más insospechados.
"No woman in the three-hundred-year history of the karyukai has ever come forward in public to tell her story. We have been constrained by unwritten rules... But I feel it is time to speak out." Celebrated as the most successful geisha of her generation, Mineko Iwasaki left her parents' home at five to enter the world of geisha. For twenty-five years, she navigated extraordinary professional demands and rich rewards, mastering the formal customs, language, and ancient arts of Japanese dance and music. She captivated kings, princes, and industry leaders, some becoming her closest friends. Through pride and determination, she emerged as one of Japan's most prized geishas and a key figure in a fading art form.
Mineko recounts her journey from a warm childhood to her intense upbringing in the Iwasaki okiya, her years as a renowned geisha, and her decision at twenty-nine to retire and marry, reflecting the decline of geisha culture. She vividly portrays Gion Kobu, a realm dedicated to preserving time-honored traditions amid post-World War II Japan's transformation. "There is much mystery and misunderstanding about what it means to be a geisha. I hope this story will help explain what it is really like," she writes. This narrative delicately unfolds the fabric of a geisha's life, offering a rare glimpse into a time and culture often hidden from the Western world.
In the early 1960s, financial circumstances demand that Frances and her sons move in with her ex-mother-in-law. Adding insult to injury, her ex-husband has just dumped his second wife's problem child at Frances' feet. As the world's political landscape takes a surreal turn, Lessing documents the social movement and disillusionment of a post-war generation, for whom the impossible dream will always endure.
John Banville, heredero confeso de la malicia de Nabokov y la prosa de Beckett, se ha convertido en una de las voces más tersas, sugerentes y originales de las letras en lengua ingles, y en uno de los artífices del renacimiento de la literatura irlandesa. Su primer libro, Long Lankin, apareció en 1970, y luego se han sucedido, entre otros, Copérnico (ganador del Premio James Tait Black en 1976), Kepler (ganador del Premio Guardian 1981), El libro de las pruebas (1991), El intocable (1999), La carta de Newton (2001), Eclipse (2002) y Mefisto (2002). Actualmente reside en Dublín, donde es editor del Irish Times.
