Product Description
Languedoc, Francia, finales del siglo XIX. Josep Alvarez descubre de la mano de un viticultor frances el arte de la elaboracion del vino. Desde ese momento, su vida estara determinada por esta pasion. A pesar de su juventud, Josep ha conocido el amor, las intrigas politicas y el trabajo duro, experiencia que, junto a su temprana vocacion, caracterizara su destino. Tras participar contra su voluntad en un complot que convulsionara la ya turbulenta escena poli­tica del momento, huye a Francia, donde trabajara para un viticultor. Pese a su temor de caer en manos de la justicia, decide un di­a volver a su hogar. Luchando contra los elementos, Josep emprende una aventura tan ardua como fascinante: la elaboracion de un buen vino. En torno a el, los habitantes de Santa Eulalia: la joven viuda Marimar y su hijo Francesc; Nivaldo, el tendero de origen cubano; Donat, el hermano obrero, todos ellos personajes que pueblan esta rica novela. La bodega contiene la esencia anterior de Noah Gordon: historias personales de fuerza, personajes vitales, retratos fidedignos de una epoca, plasmados con una sensibilidad y acierto que ha admirado a miles de lectores a lo largo de muchisimo tiempo. / The Bodega, a story of political intrigue, winemaking, and love, set in Catalonia in the late 19th century. While it is the author's literary tribute to Spain, The Bodega is a universal story, sure to captivate Noah Gordon's readers all over the world. In Spain, La Bodega and the Catalan translation, El Celler, will be published October 24. On October 23, a gala book launching will be held in a plaza in Vilafranca del Penedès, organized by Roca Editorial, Noah Gordon's Spanish publisher. This event will be followed by a book tour through Spain. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A Very Interesting and Well-written book
The books by Noah Gordon are very well written and enjoyable.He holds the reader's interest by the variety of details included in what are basically historical novels.He characters come alive as they bring to life the history of their times.They are very worthwhile reading.

It's OK
It's ok if you really like the style of Mr. Gordon and you are into the wine! Really complete description of the place and process to produce wine, but kind of boring in some parts.

Un terrible secreto
El prolífico autor norteamericano, creador de la saga El Médico, Chamán y La Doctora Cole escapa un poco de las intrigas de la familia Cole para ubicar La Bodega en la turbulenta España de finales del siglo XIX, donde un sencillo campesino catalán, Josep Álvarez, descubrirá en Francia el arte de la elaboración del vino y se aferrará con pasión a forjar su propio destino, hacer en su tierra natal un gran vino.

Gordon ha afirmado que esta novela es una carta de amor a España, donde descubrió su gran afición al buen vino y desarrolló una gran empatía con su cultura y sus gentes. Tanto los personajes y los lugares son ficticios pero basados en tradiciones y documentación investigadas por el autor.

El protagonista es un tipo inteligente pero sin estudios, segundo hijo de una familia que se dedica a hacer vinos para fabricar vinagres, pronto y sin querer se ve envuelto en un complot político de dimensión nacional, en el contexto de las guerras carlistas. Josep huye a Languedoc en Francia, donde de la mano de un viticultor galo aprende los secretos de la elaboración de un buen vino. Luego de unos años vuelve a su hogar, el ficticio pueblo de Santa Eulalia, donde emprenderá su sueño de ser un viticultor reconocido. En el arduo camino descubrirá que sus padres han muerto, que su hermano ha abandonado el negocio familiar, que sus amigos ya no están, ni su viejo amor. Se reencontrará con los fantasmas de su pasado, con un nuevo amor y se dejará llevar por esa pasión que desata en él la uva y la vinificación. Todo mientras va creando su propio sueño de tener un gran viñedo con bodega incluida, donde no solo guardará el vino sino su más terrible secreto.

El autor mantiene con fuerza la esencia de sus historias, situaciones fuertes con un desenlace inminente, personajes sencillos pero llenos de vitalidad, una ambientación histórica fiel y detalles precisos sobre enología y viticultura.

Entretenido, una historia muy bien lograda
Es un libro muy agradable,para mi fue una sorpresa, es el segundo libro que leo de Noah Gordon y en verdad es tan bueno como El ultimo judio, por supuesto con una tematica totalmente diferente.
Esta ubicado en una etapa interesante de la historia de Espana. Una Espana convulsionada politicamente; finales del siglo XIX.
La descripcion del pueblo, los personajes son maravillosos, estan muy bien logrados. La historia esta muy bien lograda, es entretenido y ademas tiene algo de novela historica sin ser una novela historica,aunque ademas del tema politico el tema central el inicio de la producion vinicola en el norte de Espana
No deje de leerlo, pasara un buen rato, yo lo lei en una noche

La Bodega: A good story on winemaking in Spain.
La Bodega is really a good read.Spain has had for a long time a bad name for mass producing cheap wines, but this trend changed some 20 years ago, and now it markets some really great wines.Making good wine is a long process, which started in Spain around the end of the 19th century.The novel is located in the region of Catalumya around the time of the filoxera epidemy, and also briefly refers to the carlists wars. However this is not a history book, the references are there to develop the plot not as focal point. ... Read more

Product Description
Noah Gordon nacio el 11 de noviembre de 1926 en Worcester Massachusetts (Estados Unidos). Acudio a la Universidad de Boston para estudiar medicina como asi era el deseo de sus padres pero finalmente termino cursando periodismo. A comienzos de los anos 50 comenzo a trabajar como editor en Nueva York en la compania Avon Publishing. Su primera novela fue El Rabino (1965) un texto autobiografico protagonizado por Michael Kind que cosecho un exito de ventas considerable. Mas tarde aparecerian titulos como El comite de la muerte (1969) en donde el tema medico era parte esencial de la trama El diamante de Jerusalen (1979) y su consagracion como escritor de best-sellers El medico (1986) primera parte de la conocida trilogia sobre la familia de origen britanica Cole que continuaria con Chaman (1992) y La doctora Cole (1996). Sus ultimos trabajos han sido El ultimo judio (2000) con accion transcurrida en la Espana del siglo XV y el protagonismo de un personaje llamado Yonah Toledano Sam y otros cuentos de animales (2002) un libro de cuentos dedicado al publico infantil y La bodega (2007) novela ambientada en el mundo de la enologia. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

From England to Persia and Back in Search of Knowledge.
My good friend Mario strongly recommended me this book, even if he knew a physician's life wasn't my cup of tea.
I'm grateful he convinced me to read this book; it is a very good one to be sure!
The curious story about this novel is that it was first a success in Germany and Spain before booming at the USA.
"El Medico" is the Spanish translation of "The Physician" published by prestigious editorial house Martinez Roca.

First I'll point out the less successful aspect of the opus: the historical period reconstruction doesn't sound fully accurate. I'm not sure why this happens, may be due to very modern view point of the main character, to some characters name and/or some doubtful historical issues.

That said, nevertheless, "The Physician" is a valuable and gripping read and once you start with it you can't stop!
The story, situated around year 1050, follows Robert J. Cole's life from boyhood until he is around 40 years old.
Rob & his brothers are orphaned while they were very young. Carpenter's Guild helps them finding new homes. Rob is left in charge of Barber, a barber-surgeon, as his apprentice and joins his new master in his wandering life.
In a way that makes me remember Gelsomina in Fellini's movie "La Strada", Rob learn how to perform as entertainer, medicine seller & surgeon.
He also discovers he possess a strange Gift, he is capable to sense when a person, apparently ill or not, is nearing death.
Some experiences in this nomadic life, awake Rob's desire to become a physician in order to help suffering people better.
He learns that in Ispahan (Persia) exists a great teaching place with Avicenna as its most conspicuous doctor.
There is only on big obstacle: Persians are Muslims and confronting Byzantine Christians, son no Christian will be admitted. What to do? Rob decides to go there and pass as a Jew, as Jews are tolerated.
After Barber's death he starts a two year journey traversing all Europe and learning how to pass as a Jew. He will soon discover that is not so easy to be a Jew.

Here starts the most fascinating part of the story with a gripping cavalcade thru an exotic world!

A recommended read for those interested in historical subject and more specifically in medieval life and medicine.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Terceras partes no fueron buenas
Un injusto final para la trilogía. Aunque la narrativa es interesante, creo que el autor se fijó más en cuanto le iban a pagar por completar la trilogía que en el contenido de la obra. Aburrida algunas veces, latosa en otras. Lo único rescatable de la obra... el fin de la misma. Dista mucho de las dos anteriores obras. ... Read more

Product Description
Winner of the 2006 Green Rose Prize in Poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

quite varied styles
Gordon indulges in quite varied styles in the different sections of this book. One, the Right of Return, is perhaps the tightest. In that its poems seems to thread together into a coherent narrative. Across the poems, a story is being told. Though there is (deliberate?) ambiguity if you try to read them this way. But there is enough logical progression to make a whole part.

The 4 Allusive Fields section has 4 sonnets. These are also and very explicitly connected. But somehow, without quite the same sense of narrative or events unfolding of the Right of Return.

In both, the imagery is vivid and sometimes quite compelling to the mind's eye. ... Read more

Product Description
Poetry. The Area of Sound Called the Subtone, Gordon's second full-length book, won the 2004 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, judged by Claudia Rankine. Rankine writes, "Noah Eli Gordon is a master of the shift between an epigrammatic and aphoristic line. Each utterance is a glance that implodes rhetorical strategies so spectacularly that the spray of intelligence that lingers in this reader's mind is not much different from a cooling shower from an illegally opened fire hydrant. Witty, vivid, and very, very vital, Gordon has entered a higher frequency"-Claudia Rakine. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

some book info...
The Area of Sound Called the Subtone filters the nihilistic aesthetic of DADA, where one might burn the canvas and hang the brush on the museum wall, through a politically charged embrace of gesture and its attendant inevitability of failure, failure to enact experience, essentially inhabiting such a condition, claiming a kinship with the palette, with its unintentional blending of the paints, the remnants of material production rather than the material produced, offering bullets for the epiphany and blossoms for the punctuated world.Mapping a mind at work, and subsequently blurring the outcome, the variously formal and self-imposed restraints of the text allow for the pleasure of numerous, open-ended readings. From a re-working of the double crown of sonnets in the title poem, to the ranging and disparate accrual of pseudo-images (paying homage to Chris Marker's film Sans Soleil-through an enactment of such discursive strategies-as much as it does to Tristan Tzara's L'Homme approximatif ) in the opening poem, "What Ever Belongs in the Circle", through the expansive and strange prose of "Jaywalking the Is" and its eight dreams sequences, scattered throughout, which respond to and were written through the eight sections of Akira Kurosawa's film Dreams, The Area of Sound Called the Subtone is by turns exploratory and exhaustive, attempting to constellate the chaos that constitutes the infinite formlessness one hears as noise into the sound of a tuning fork being struck endlessly, an unending digression into a sort of faux-order, where even melodic dissonance would make sense.

from the back of the book...
"Occultists know that somewhere between heaven and hell is the diaspora known as daily life. Others might call it purgatory, but that doesn't come close to describing the many hued weather Gordon inhabits. Remember the toothless man who said that his teeth picked up radio broadcasts, he was Jack Spicer's cousin. Impish and generous, Noah Eli Gordon is a more distant relative, his family tree a new hybrid. He has honed his own very special antennae. It's not that he picks up broadcasts from the living and the dead, and from objects and extraterrestrials, all of which he does, but that he channels the voices of the lost and forgotten, the dedicated gumshoe with a nervous twitch, the last Saxon, the dead civilian, the dirty clown, and the dweller in the dunk tank. Hey Reader, do you ever think about the stragglers, hagglers, wagerers and waggers that Walt Whitman was unable to embrace? Don't despair, they are pilgrims wandering through Gordon's dense, constantly shifting, musical landscape. After depositing their bodies in the wax museum of the everyday, they have (with Gordon's help) become what they always desired-beautifully disturbing music."-John Yau

Yet another dull contribution to the decline of contemporary
Mr. Gordon has published another book that reads like a stereo manual, dry and ponderous, and somehow lacking at least the instructional value provided by a Sony pamphlet.While I applaud the success of a young poet, I cannot condone the willful dissemination of more boring and self-promoting poetry junk. ... Read more

Product Description
Poetry. "Noah Eli Gordon can spin, scratch, sample, and dub to mix a sound all his own. THE FREQUENCIES tunes in desire, poetry, static, and laughter - all the while broadcasting with the intensity and joy of first things"--Peter Gizzi. "This is the new music - listen to it"--Lisa Jarnot. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

radio novel rocks
This is a wonderful work of fiction in short prose sections. It's all about a fella who works at a radio station.

Spanning the FM dial
Part narrative, part lyric, Noah Eli Gordon's book-length poem The Frequencies unfolds as an exploration of the intersection between the self and the paradox of radio hiding the larger, outside world. Spanning the FM dial, these ephemeral broadcasts cut across unrequited love, pop-iconography, and the requisite music of any station worth a listen. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

It's a good story and very good characters
I like Noah Gordon books and this is one of the good stories.
A doctor during the American Revolution.If you like good reading and American History.You must read it.

From Scotland to Illinois!
My good friend Mario strongly recommended me "The Physician", even if he knew a physician's life wasn't my cup of tea.
I'm grateful he convinced me to read it. I was so trapped by Mr. Noah Gordon story that I went immediately to the bookstore and bought "Shaman" and "Choices".

IMHO "Shaman" is the best of the trilogy.

Since 2004 Ediciones B has launched a pocket book collection "Byblos" with no specific genre defined. Fortunately for us, historical novels buffs, some volumes pertain to this genre, allowing us to access a very inexpensive and high quality product.

This is the story of two members of the Cole family: Rob Sr. & Rob Jr.

The story, situated in the period around 1830-1870, starts following Rob Sr.'s life since his forced emigration from Scotland to America and is reconstructed thru his personal diary as discovered and read, after his death, by his son Rob Jr.
Rob Sr. initiates his medical practice at Boston's Irish ghetto and meets Oliver Wendell Holmes, precursor of medical prophylaxis.
Later he continues his migration going into Illinois and stopping at Holden's Crossing where he starts a new life as rural physician.
There he builds his home, start his relationship with the Sauk Native Americans people, fall in love, heal & marry Sarah, have a child who will contract scarlatina and lose his hearing.
At this point Rob's Jr. life is the second main thread of the narration, following his education and fervent desire to be a physician as his father.
Both threads will conflux at the Civil War period.

Historical reconstruction is paramount, showing domestic every day details, political issues, educational issues, medical issues and cultural issues with deepness and commitment. This aspect of the novel is by far better than the period reconstruction done by Mr. Gordon in "The Physician".

A much recommended read for those interested in historical subjects, daily life period reconstruction and medical practice. Enjoy this great novel!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.
... Read more

Product Description

"Figures for a Darkroom Voice enacts the transformations that occur in the objects that exist in our world. For Gordon and Wilkinson, this change normally follows an eroding path—a stripping away either to the essential or to the garbage. In this way, their voice comes across not as a warning, but as an ominous knell."
—Jesse Peterson , Interim

In Figures for a Darkroom Voice the rhetorical twisting of Noah Eli Gordon s abstractions meld with the ominous narratives of Joshua Marie Wilkinson s fragments, turning Wallace Steven s notion of a supreme fiction toward a supreme friction, one where the work of these two poets is fused into a voice as singular as it is sinister. Imagine a gallery in which Cornell boxes talk back, a Maya Deren film in which the audience dissolves into projector light, a Philip Glass composition played exclusively on medieval weaponry, such are the compelling results of this collaborative work.

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Descriptivo y apasionante
Buen libro. A pesar de los obvios agujeros históricos, el autor ha escrito un libro entretenido y de fácil digestión. En las 900 páginas del libro se encuentran descripciones detalladas del medio oriente y rasgos del mítico Avicena. Ampliamente recomendable para personas amantes de la lectura. ... Read more