Jay Parini, a poet and novelist, teaches at Middlebury College. His most recent novel is The Apprentice Lover (HarperCollins).
Pablo Neruda is often compared to Walt Whitman. In fact, the Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner outdid Whitman in some respects.
Sagesse (meaning “wisdom”) LaBasse, the narrator of Claire Messud’s second novel, The Last Life, is French-Algerian on her father’s side and American on her mother’s.
With Pablo Neruda and Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges set in motion the wave of astonishing writing that has given Latin American literature its high place in our time.