The new and very special issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review is available, complete with more than ample coverage of South America in the 21st Century. Aside from poems by Marjorie Agosín and Odi Gonzales (paired with stunning collages by Ana de Orbegoso and translated from Quechua!) the VQR provides a glimpse at the forthcoming book by Roberto Bolaño, reason enough to nab a copy. Daring readers may wish to get this for reports on transsexual life in Peru (by way of Paris and Milan), cardboard scrap collectors in Buenos Aires, and the excavation of a skull with a 500-year-old bullet hole, documenting the first indigenous victim of Spanish invasion. These pieces do well to compress the complex history of South America from the time of the Conquistadors to the present. Exciting stuff. At 322 pages for all of eleven bucks it’s a steal. Oh, and a certain online international literature magazine was thanked for their assistance in providing a network of translators.