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Reading Groups

The Death of Artemio Cruz: Modern Mexico, Citizen Kane, and an Introduction to “El Boom” with Daniel Castro

Four Sessions Wednesdays, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT June 26 to August 7, 2024

Online via Zoom

The ‘With Book’ option includes the title required for this group with a 10% discount from our Bookstore.


Meeting Dates:
6/26, 7/10, 7/24, 8/7
Online via Zoom

Widely viewed as Carlos Fuentes’s masterpiece, The Death of Artemio Cruz takes readers on a journey into the heart of post-revolutionary Mexico. It is also a seminal novel in the Latin American Boom. With the help of supplemental texts by authors such as Octavio Paz, we will discuss the novel’s definition of Mexican identity, as well as the characteristics that make it a classic “Boom” novel.

Participants should read pages 1–79 in advance of the first meeting.

Sessions I–IV: The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes, translated by Alfred MacAdam

What to expect from this reading group: The instructor will present ideas and topics for discussion, but the course will be conversational and participant-driven.

Please Note: All virtual classes are recorded. Please click here for information about our recording policy.

fuentes-carlos.artemio-cruz

Led by

  • Daniel Castro Large

    Daniel Castro

    Daniel Castro

    Daniel Castro is a Salvadoran-Cuban American writer based in Mexico City, and his work has appeared in Harper’s and Salon. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and has won awards and fellowships from the Fulbright Association, Cintas Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony. He taught writing and literature at the University of Iowa and Sackett Street Writers Workshop, and he is a co-founder of the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.