Ransom, Roberto 1960–

PERSONAL:

Born May 8, 1960, in Mexico City, Mexico; married; children: three. Ethnicity: Irish, Irish American. Education: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, B.A.; University of Virginia, M.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Chihuahua, Mexico.

CAREER:

Writer, educator.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Prize for Children's Literature, Mexico, 2003.

WRITINGS:

En esa otra tierra, Alianza Editorial (Mexico City, Mexico), 1991.

Historia de dos leones, Ediciones El Aduanero (Naucalpan, Mexico), 1994, translation by Jasper Reid published as A Tale of Two Lions: A Novel, Norton (New York, NY), 2007.

Desaparecidos, animales y artistas, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (Mexico City, Mexico), 1999.

La línea del agua, Joaquín Mortiz (Mexico City, Mexico), 1999.

Te guardaré la espalda, Joaquín Mortiz (Mexico City, Mexico), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mexican-born writer Roberto Ransom is the author of several books in his native Spanish, but A Tale of Two Lions: A Novel is the first of his works to be published in English translation. The book is actually a series of three linked stories, whose common thread is two cats: Cattino, a pet cat that might in actuality be a lion, and Pasha, a stuffed lion that might actually be real. In the first tale, a count is jealous of the attention his wife lavishes on her pet cat, Cattino, even as they await the arrival of their guests for a dinner party. The second story follows the adventures of Pasha, a stuffed and mounted lion who is supposedly under the watchful eye of Jeremiah Jones, a tourism official who is paid to dress as a big-game hunter for the tourists. When Pasha vanishes, Jones is accused of stealing the creature. In the final story, Pasha and Cattino meet. Tiffany Lee-Youngren, in a review for the San Diego Union-Tribune Online, found the book failed to live up to its critical acclaim, stating: "There's a difference between simple and lacking, and Ransom's stories leave far too much up to the imagination, and far too little for extrapolation." However, Barbara Fisher, reviewing for the Boston Globe Online, found the stories to be charming, and the two cats "delightfully unreliable narrators well suited to the enigmatic stories they have to tell." Alexander McCall Smith, reviewing in the New York Times Book Review, commented that "while Ransom's book is charming, it is perhaps a bit too brief to explore its theme of lions lost and found."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2006, review of A Tale of Two Lions: A Novel, p. 1151.

New York Times Book Review, January 28, 2007, Alexander McCall Smith, "Big Cats," p. 21.

Publishers Weekly, November 20, 2006, review of A Tale of Two Lions, p. 37.

ONLINE

Boston Globe Online,http://www.boston.com/ (January 7, 2007), Barbara Fisher, "Short Takes," review of A Tale of Two Lions.

Coordinacion Nacional de Literatura,http://www.literaturainba.com/ (October 10, 2007), Spanish author biography.

San Diego Union-Tribune Online,http://www.signonsandiego.com/ (May 6, 2007), Tiffany Lee-Youngren, "A Child Might Be the Best Guide When Trapped ‘In the Country of Men.’"