Cecilia Valdés or El Angel Hill

Cirilo Villaverde was born in Cuba in 1812. In 1848 he was imprisoned for his role in an Anti-colonial conspiracy. In 1849 he escaped and eventually settled in New York City, where he continued his political activism against the Colonial Regime in Cuba. Cecilia Valdés is his best-known work and has been translated into many languages, including Russian and Chinese. Villaverde died in exile in 1894. The late Helen Lane translated works by Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Goytisolo, Augusto Roa Bastos, and Octavio Paz, and is the translator of Fray Servando's Memoirs and Marmol's Amalia for the Library of Latin America series. She received the PEN award for her works. Sibylle Fischer (editor) is Associate Professor of Spanish, Portuguese, and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution.