The Mangy Parrot

José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi author David Frye translator Nancy Vogeley editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Hackett Publishing Co, Inc

Published:1st Mar '04

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This paperback is available in another edition too:

The Mangy Parrot cover

Repeatedly imprisoned for his printed attacks on the Spanish administration, Mexican journalist and publisher José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi attempted, in 1816, to make an end-run around government censors by disguising his invective as serial fiction. Lizardi's experiment in subterfuge quickly failed: Spanish officials shut down publication of the novel--the first to be published in Latin America--after the third installment, and within four years Lizardi was back in jail. The whole of The Mangy Parrot (El Periquillo Sarniento) went unpublished until after Lizardi's death--and a decade after Mexico had won its independence from Spain.

Though never before published in its entirety in English, The Mangy Parrot has become a Mexican classic beloved by generations of Latin American readers. Now, in vibrant American idiom, translator David Frye captures the exuberance of Lizardi's tale-telling as the author follows his narrator and alter ego, Periquillo Sarniento, through a series of misadventures that exposes the ignorance and corruption plaguing Mexican society on the eve of the wars for independence. Raw descriptions of colonial street life, candid portraits of race and ethnicity, and barely camouflaged attacks on colonial authority fill this comic masterpiece of world literature--the Don Quixote of Latin America.

Finally, an engaging, full-fledged rendition of the first Latin American novel ever--and still one of the savviest. José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi invented Mexico . . . and David Frye shows us how.--Ilan Stavans


This new rendering into English . . . is the only complete English translation. Frye performs a delicate balancing act by fashioning language that is fresh and engaging while preserving historical flavor. The result is outstanding. Summing up: Highly recommended.--M. S. Arrington, Jr., CHOICE


With David Frye's exquisitely clear and elegant translation, the English-speaking world now can fully enjoy El Periquillo Sarniento, the 19th-century novel that rendered the swirling and messy city of Mexico into a comic work of art.--Richard Rodriguez, author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America (Viking, 2002)

ISBN: 9780872207356

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

592 pages