John Updike, página 2 de 10

On a spring day in Vermont, seventy-nine-year-old painter Hope Chafetz tells the story of her life to Kathryn, a young interviewer from New York. Questions send Hope back to her youth, to the heady postwar days of American art and her relationships with the artists who defined their times. As the day wears on, Kathryn and Hope - interviewer and interviewee - try to understand one another across the gulf of age, experience and time that lies between them. And subtly, as each comes to know the other, their relationship changes . . .

More than three decades have passed since the events described in The Witches of Eastwick and the three divorcees - Alexandra, Jane and Sukie - have left town, remarried, and become widows. They cope with their grief and solitude as widows do: they travel the world to exotic lands such as Canada, China and Egypt and renew old acquaintances. And then, one summer, they decide to go back to Eastwick. The old Rhode Island seaside town where they once indulged in sensuous mischief still holds enchantment for the three, but it also holds memories, and there are those who remember them and wish them ill . . .

More than three decades have passed since the events described in "The Witches of Eastwick." Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie had each remarried and left town. Now all three are widowed and have returned to the Rhode Island seaside town in this long-awaited follow-up.

In his extraordinary and highly-charged new novel, John Updike tackles one of America's most burning issues - the threat of Islamist terror from within. Set in contemporary New Jersey, TERRORIST traces the journey of one young man, from radicalism to fundamentalism to terrorism, against the backdrop of a fraying urban landscape and an increasingly fragmented community. In beautiful prose, Updike dramatises the logic of the fundamentalist terrorist - but also suggests ways in which we can counter it, in our words and our actions.

Sally is big, blonde and pampered. She's married to Richard. But she loves Jerry. Jerry loves Sally in return, but he's also still in love with his wife Ruth. Who's been sleeping with Richard... As a hot, feverish summer of snatched weekends, secret phone calls and illicit lovemaking on the beach comes to a head, it turns out everyone knows more than they've been letting on. And that no one knows quite when to stop.

El día de verano en que se celebra la feria organizada por un pequeño asilo de Nueva Jersey es la jornada más importante del año para sus ancianos y enfermos residentes. Se trata de un acontecimiento que anualmente organizan con mucha ilusion para vender a los vecinos de la pequeña poblacion los productos que han hecho ellos mismos. Sin embargo, parece que en esta ocasion las cosas no se van a desarrollar como se habian planificado en un principio. A lo largo del dia, los extraordinariamente cercanos personajes de La feria del asilo se desnudan ante nosotros y nos desvelan sus anhelos, sus esperanzas, sus creencias y sus angustias, mostrandonos su desarmante humanidad. La primera novela publicada por Updike, una tragicomica fabula sobre la compasion y la comprension, prefigura ya muchos de los temas, los ambientes y los caracteres que seran recurrentes a lo largo de toda su trayectoria narrativa. Una excelente oportunidad para recuperar las raices de un referente de la literatura estadounidense.

John Updike was always as much a poet as a storyteller and the poems in this, his final collection, celebrate the everyday, even as they address his own imminent mortality. It is in the connected series of poems, Endpoint, written on his last few birthdays and culminating with the illness that killed him, that Updike's work is at its most touching and poignant.

Durante unos días Joey Robinson, un consultor de empresas neoyorquino, hace un parentesis en su vida cotidiana para regresar a la granja donde creció y donde aún vive su madre, viuda y ya demasiado mayor para realizar ella sola algunas tareas domesticas. En su viaje lo acompañan su segunda y sensual esposa, con la que se acaba de casar, y el hijo de ella, de once años. Los asuntos pendientes, las diferencias, la tension, los fantasmas del pasado y las confesiones van emergiendo a lo largo de una visita que dificilmente podran olvidar.

Golpe de estado, fábula política sobre un país africano imaginario en el que ha sido implantada una revolución de corte marxista e islámico y que se debate entre una sequía pertinaz y la insidiosa infiltracion del imperialismo americano, es una magistral obra narrativa en la que John Updike, con audacia imaginativa, virtuosismo estilistico y aires de gran comedia burlesca, escarnece las antitesis politicas del mundo de hoy y nos ofrece una lucida y comica reflexion acerca de las formas del poder despotico. Con Golpe de estado, Updike, el mas brillante narrador norteamericano de las ultimas decadas, ha creado una magistral comedia de absurda yuxtaposicion cultural, una burlesca parodia de las antitesis ideologicas en que se debate el mundo moderno con un gran despliegue de erudicion geografica, teologica e historica que recuerda con frecuencia la extraordinaria capacidad creadora de otro gran prosista moderno: Vladimir Nabokov.