The Death of Artemio Cruz

On the 60th anniversary of its publication, Alfaguara rereleases this masterpiece of the Latin American Boom

«His faith in the messianic destiny of literature knows no bounds. Nor does it tolerate jokes, of course. A writer like this, being such a good writer, is twice as good.»
Gabriel García Márquez

«Revolutions are made by flesh and blood men, not saints, and they all end up creating a new privileged caste.»

On his deathbed, during his last half-day in the world, the old and sick Artemio Cruz remembers: he was not always that sad sack of bones and bodily ferments; he was once young, daring, vigorous. And he had ideals, dreams, faith. To defend all that, he even fought in a revolution. But greed, avarice, and corruption extinguished his fire and annihilated his hope. Perhaps that is why he lost the only woman who truly loved him.

On the 60th anniversary of its publication, Alfaguara rereleases this masterpiece of the Latin American Boom. A novel that addresses fundamental themes such as the temptations of power, love, and evil, and is also a reflection on the Mexico that emerged from the Revolution.

Critics have said...
«Exceptional, both in its way of encompassing the entire human spectrum and in its corrosive satire and biting dialogue.»
The New York Times Book Review

«His work is an eloquent testament to all the great political problems and cultural realities of our time.»
Mario Vargas Llosa

«Throughout his literary career, Carlos Fuentes carried out the vast task of making invention an instructive instrument of history, or vice versa, in that constant game of mirrors that was his writing.»
Sergio Ramírez

«Fuentes's novelistic work is a true encyclopedia of the human species and in this sense can be compared to that of Balzac.»
Juan Goytisolo

«Through superb language, he became an accomplice of the human and of our history.»
Nélida Piñon

«Fuentes's work gave us an idea of ambition, showed us that vocation is not to hide from the world, but to call it and transform it.»
Juan Gabriel Vásquez

«I admire that incessant energy of invention that he has to always find a new way to say what every writer has to say, which are two or three things but which constitute his reason for existing.»
Álvaro Mutis

«Undoubtedly Carlos Fuentes is one of the most important shapers of the transformation undergone by the Spanish American novel in recent years, and The Death of Artemio Cruz one of his best-known works.»
Hernán Vidal

«Carlos Fuentes organized this novel into thirteen chapters. In these scales, as if it were a jazz trio, we read - we hear - an off-beat ensemble that comes and goes through the mind of a dying man. With this unconventional structure, the story flows #through different fugues# through six decades of 20th century Mexico. From the rural novecento to the most cosmopolitan decade of the sixties, we see Artemio Cruz exhibiting a type who is constantly rising in public, but with a disintegrated inner history.»
Antonio Valle, La Jornada