Fuentes, Carlos. The Old Gringo. New York. 1985. Farrar Straus Giroux. 199 pages. October 1985. hardcover. 0374225788. Original title: El Gringo Viejo, 1985 - Fondo de Cultura Economica. Cover: Author photo (c) 1985 Andres Caray Jacket design by Drenttel Doyle Partners.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Carlos Fuentes has long been concerned with the Mexico of Pancho Villa. As Mexico’s greatest living novelist - one whose work is suffused with the weight of history - it is not surprising that in his new novel, THE OLD GRINGO, he brings the Mexico of 1914 uncannily to life. But Fuentes also knows a great deal about the United States, and his novel is, most of all, about the tragic history of these two cultures in conflict. THE OLD GRINGO tells the story of Ambrose Bierce, the American writer, soldier, journalist, and his last mysterious days in Mexico among Villa’s soldiers. In particular, the book is about the encounter between Bierce (the ‘old gringo’ of the title) and Tomás Arroyo, one of Villa’s generals. The novel also concerns Harriet Winslow, an American woman in Mexico, whose relations with Bierce and Arroyo become crucial to the book’s conclusion. In the end, the incompatibility of Mexico and the United States (or, paradoxically, their intimacy) claims both Bierce and Arroyo. THE OLD GRINGO is a wise book, full of toughness and humanity. It is without question one of the finest works of modern Latin American fiction. Fuentes is a master storyteller, and he has written a book of enormous ambition in a way that is at once challenging and accessible. THE OLD GRINGO is a profound work about politics, love, the human tragedy.

Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 – May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, the New York Times described him as ‘one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world’ and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the ‘explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s’, while The Guardian called him ‘Mexico's most celebrated novelist’. His many literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize as well as Mexico's highest award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won.