Ilan Stavans

Ilan Stavans, according to Neal Kozol, the editor of this volume, is ""a man of letters and ideas with electricity at his fingertips."" Stavans is the author and editor of over two dozen books including the polemical classic, The Hispanic Condition, the best-selling memoir, Cantinflas, The Inveterate Dreamer, the well-known canonical anthologies of The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories and The Scroll and the Cross (an odyssey of 1,000 years of Jewish-Hispanic literature). Stavans oeuvre transports us back into the universe of Jorge Luis Borges, Edmund Wilson, and Isaiah Berlin, all of whom had a formative influence on him. In addition to his books Stavans's numerous articles in the major intellectual journals and international media on topics as far ranging as Subcomandante Marcos to Selena to Elian Gonzales, has already prompted Routledge to publish The Essential Ilan Stavans.