Otilia's Body
A Novel
From reviews of the Spanish edition:
"...among the best works that Mexican fiction has produced."
—Héctor Gally, Sábado
"With homely features, but with a body so shapely and exciting that it sets men (priests included) aflame throughout the novel, with an incandescent voluptuousness and delightful amorality (surely explosive in the conservative Mexican society of her time and place) ...Otilia Rauda could be the protagonist of a Greek tragedy or of a soap opera made of improbable happenings and as many turns of fate as there are chapters used to tell the story of her life."
—Jorge Ruffinelli, Punto y Aparte
Winner of Mexico's prestigious Xavier Villaurrutia prize in 1986, Otilia Rauda is here translated into English for the first time as Otilia's Body. Widely considered Sergio Galindo's best work, the novel dramatizes a sexually liberated woman's obsession with an outlaw lover, played against the backdrop of Mexican history from 1910 to 1940. A fine example of "intimist" fiction, Otilia's Body is noteworthy for its penetratingly described characters who transcend time and place to become universally recognizable.
was the author of thirteen novels and many shorter works. Carolyn Brushwood is a professional translator. John S. Brushwood (1920–2007) was the Roy A. Roberts Professor of Latin American
Literature at the University of Kansas.
- About the Setting of the Novel
- First Part: The Encounters
- Second Part: Rubén Lazcano
- Third Part: Melquiades