The Weeping Woman: A Novel

(Hardback)

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Description

Winner of the prestigious Azorin Prize for Fiction, the best-selling novel about love, sacrifice, and Picasso's mistress, Dora Maar. A writer resembling Zoe Valdes--a Cuban exile living in Paris with her husband and young daughter--is preparing a novel on the life of Dora Maar, one of the most promising artists in the Surrealist movement until she met Pablo Picasso. The middle-aged Picasso was already the god of the art world's avant-garde. Dora became his lover, muse, and ultimately, his victim. She became The Weeping Woman captured in his famous portrait, the mistress he betrayed with other mistress-muses, and their affair ended with her commitment to an asylum at the hands of Picasso's friends. The writer's research centers on a mysterious trip to Venice that Dora took fifteen years later, in the company of two young gay men who were admirers of Picasso, including the biographer James Lord. After this episode, Dora cut off contact with the world and secluded herself in her Paris apartment until her death. "After Picasso, God," she would say. What happened in Venice The more the writer investigates, the more she finds herself implicated in a story of passion taken to the extremes. In The Weeping Woman, prize-winning novelist Zoe Valdes narrates the journey of a woman who would do anything and everything for love. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction--novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Reviews

"The Weeping Woman interweaves present and past with intelligence and humor ... Many of the leading Parisian avant-gardists--Guillaume Apollinaire, Leonor Fini, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Wifredo Lam, Andre Lhote, Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray--are conjured with fidelity and charm." --The New York Times Book Review "We are steeped in the history, drama, and even mundaneness of the Surrealist era, with a colorful cast of characters that includes Man Ray, Paul Eluard, and the master himself, Picasso... Valdes reveals Maar to be more than just Picasso's model for his portrait The Weeping Woman but an inspiring artist in her own right."--Booklist "Zoe Valdes rescues Dora Maar from Picasso's clutches."--ABC "The Weeping Woman is a book about 'someone who separates herself from her work to dedicate herself to genius.'"--El Pais

Author Bio

Zoe Valdes was born in Cuba in 1959 and has lived in exile in France since 1995. Once dubbed "the Madonna of Cuban literature," she is the acclaimed author of several novels, including Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada and I Gave You All I Had, both published by Arcade. Besides being awarded the 2013 Azorin Prize for The Weeping Woman, she has won the Planeta Prize and the Premio de Novela Ciudad de Torrevieja. She received the Tres Llaves (Three Keys) to the city of Miami in 2001. She lives in Paris.