The Mansion is a series of poetic, linked stories of a fabulist nature by Latin America’s esteemed Alvaro Mutis. In The Mansion Mutis introduces the odd characters who inhabit a large house on a coffee plantation owned by the distateful Don Graci, and relates the unfortunate events which force its abandonment.

Difficult to categorize –– neither magic realist nor political novelist –– Mutis is a native of Columbia, who has lived in Mexico for many years. Initially known as a poet, from 1986 to 1993 Mutis wrote seven novellas that have been published all over the world, winning major prizes everywhere including two of Spain’s most distinguished literary honours, the ‘Príncipe de Asturias’ and ‘Reina Sofia’ in 1997. In the United States, the novellas were published in two collections, Maqroll and The Adventures of Maqroll. In 2002 Mutis received the Cervantes Prize, the most important award in Spanish literature.

Alvaro Mutis' profile page

Beatriz Hausner has published several poetry collections, including The Wardrobe Mistress, Sew Him Up, and Enter The Raccoon. Selected poems and chapbooks of hers have been published internationally and translated into several languages. Hausner is a respected historian and translator of Latin American Surrealism, with recent essays published in The International Encyclopedia of Surrealism in 2019. Her translations of César Moro, the poets of Mandrágora, as well as essays and fiction by legends like Aldo Pellegrini and Eugenio Granell have exerted an important influence on her work. Hausner's history of advocacy in Canadian literary culture is also well known: she has worked as a literary programmer in Toronto, her hometown, and was Chair of the Public Lending Right Commission. She is currently President of the Literary Translators' Association of Canada, a position she held twice before.

Beatriz Hausner's profile page