The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction

A groundbreaking volume from Lamda Award-winning editors Naomi Holoch and Joan Nestle, The Vintage Book of InternationalLesbian Fiction presents a range of literary voices--from twenty-seven countries spanning six continents--and offers glimpses of lesbian life in unfamilar, often exotic climes.

We follow an Irish woman as she travels through time in search of a wronged maiden, and anticipate the harrowing fate of a married Indian woman who pursues pleasure with her female lover under the shadow of her husbands suspicious rage.We meet a teacher in Barcelona who locks herself up in her grandmother's house with her young Columbian student, and witness a Slovenian woman's rendezvous with her long dead lover.

This collection includes the work of familiar writers, as well as a number never before published in English.From the West Indies to Eastern Europe, the Middle East to Southeast Asia, Latin America to South Africa, the distinctive stories found in these pages evoke the diverse political, cultural, emotional, and sexual landscapes of each writer's life.A groundbreaking volume from the Lamda Award-winning editors Naomi Holoch and Joan Nestle, who also wrote the introduction, this collections evokes the universal urgency of persistent desire.

Table of Contents:

Mary Dorcey, Ireland from A Noise from the WoodshedMakeda Sivera, JamaicaCaribbean ChameleonMireille Best, FranceSt

Short fiction by Dionne Brand, Emma Donoghue, Violette Leduc, Anchee Min, Shani Mootoo, Sylvia Molloy, Achy Obejas, Alifa Rifaat, and others highlights an outstanding anthology of international lesbian fiction that captures the richly diverse political, emotional, cultural, and sexual landscapes of the writers' lives. Original. 17,500 first printing.

Naomi Holoch is co-editor, with Jon Nestle, of the Women on Women series of anthologies of American lesbian short fiction and the author of short stories and a novel, Offseason. She teaches French language and literature, lesbian

Caribbean chameleon / Makeda Silvera — Stephanie's book / Mireille Best — Final judgment ; Singing in the desert / Cristina Peri Rossi — Lemon Scent / Shani Mootoo — Sappho or suicide / Marguerite Yourcenar — Looking for Petronilla / Emma Donoghue — Gypsophila / Dale Gunthorp — They came at dawn / Karen Williams — Lesbian bedrooms / Cynthia Price — My world of the unknown / Alifa Rifaat — The Civil War ; Sandalwood ; Transl(iter)ation I ; Transl(iter)ation II (for Aruna and Giti) / Yasmin V. Tambiah — Madame Alaird's breasts / Dionne Brand — Lost faces / Karen-Susan Fessel — The girl typist who worked for a provincial ministry of culture / Maria Eugenia Alegria Nunez — Paretipua ; Old Man Tuna ; Watching the big girls / Ngahuia Te Awekotuku — Forever lasts only a full moon / Rosamaria Roffiel — Waters / Achy Obejas — Meeting Natalia / Gila Svirsky — Under the ironwood trees / Suzana Tratnik — Aphrodite's vision / Elena Georgiou — Minnie gets married / Gina Schein.