Nine Guardians — Rosario Castellanos

The magic and malice of warring gods and men crowd this novel of Mexico's turbulent history, written by Mexico's most important modern woman writer. Rosario Castellanos' towering fictional achievement is wonderfully conveyed in Irene Nicholson's translation from the Spanish, giving the reader all the urgency of rising Indian resentment, the jealousies of childhood, the fascination of ancient myths, dzulúms and the Nine Guardians, the isolation and tension within a tiny, doomed landowning class as it fights to keep its power.Castellanos' narrator, a seven-year-old girl, watches wide-eyed as the old order -- where a few powerful landowning families and their male heirs could dominate a region politically and even sexually -- breaks down. Into her world of nursery tales, Indian magic and religious superstition come new and powerful dangers.Castellanos' art... is mesmerizing and beautiful. PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY