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Author | Isabel Allende |
---|---|
Original title | El Zorro: Comienza la leyenda |
Translator | Margaret Sayers Peden |
Language | Spanish |
Series | Zorro |
Genre | Adventure, Historical Novel |
Published | 2005 HarperCollins |
Publication place | Chile |
Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) and (audio-CD) |
Pages | 382 p |
ISBN | 0-06-077897-0 |
Zorro (Spanish : El Zorro: comienza la leyenda) is a 2005 novel by Chilean author Isabel Allende. Its subject is the American pulp hero Diego de la Vega, better known as El Zorro (The Fox). He first appeared as a character in Johnston McCulley's novella The Curse of Capistrano (1919). His character and adventures have also been adapted for an American TV series, other books, and cartoon series.
Allende presents her novel as a biography of Zorro. It is the first origin story for this legendary character. She incorporates details from a variety of works featuring the pulp hero, including the film The Mask of Zorro (1998).
Captain Alejandro de la Vega, a Spanish soldier, marries a Native American woman named Regina. He retires from the military and becomes a hacienda owner, and later an alcalde. The two have a son, Diego. While Regina is pregnant with Diego, she befriends Ana, also Native American and a young Christian convert assigned to care for her during her pregnancy. She has her own son, Bernardo, who grows up with Diego and the two become friends. As youths, Diego and Bernardo undergo an indigenous rite of passage to prove their maturity and to find their spirit guides. Bernardo's spirit guide is a horse and Diego's is a fox (zorro in his native Spanish).
Alejandro receives a letter from an old friend, Tomas de Romeu, who resides in what was then French-occupied Spain. Tomas urges Alejandro to send Diego to Barcelona, where he can receive more formal schooling, and learn fencing under the maestro Manuel Escalante. Alejandro reluctantly allows Diego to go, accompanied by Bernardo.
In Barcelona, the young men live with de Romeu and his two young daughters, Juliana and Isabel. Diego is immediately struck by Juliana and decides to pursue her romantically. The main competitor for her affections is Rafael Moncada, whom Diego humiliates in a fencing duel. At Escalante's invitation, Diego joins La Justicia, a secret organization devoted to justice for people who are marginalized in society. He takes the name Zorro.
After Napoleon is exiled, Escalante and de Romeu are arrested on suspicion of being French sympathizers. Diego convinces La Justicia to rescue Escalante. Juliana asks Moncada to use his influence to gain release of her father, Don de Romeu. He conditions his effort on her marrying him. She agrees, but Moncada is unable to secure a release, and de Romeu is executed for treason. Moncada offers protection to Juliana, hoping that she will either marry him or become his mistress. She demands that he compensate her for the loss of her father. He attacks Juliana but Diego and Isabel intervene and subdue him.
The girls and Diego decide to leave the city and head for the Americas. After months of traveling on foot, dressed as religious pilgrims, they reach the port and board a ship captained by Diego's old friend, Santiago de León. When the ship reaches Cuba, it is attacked by a pirate crew led by Jean Lafitte. Diego and the girls are taken hostage. Lafitte takes them to his base in southern Louisiana, where they await a ransom from Alejandro de la Vega. Juliana becomes smitten with Lafitte, until she learns that he is married, to a free woman of color named Catherine.
Diego begins gambling in New Orleans in an attempt to win enough money to buy their freedom. The girls use jewels they obtained before leaving Spain to buy their freedom. Lafitte returns the jewels to Juliana, an indication of his love for her. Catherine's mother tells Juliana that before Catherine died in childbirth with Pierre, she had chosen Juliana to marry Lafitte and raise their son. Juliana agrees to marry Lafitte, and Diego and Isabel are freed.
Diego returns to California with Isabel and her chaperone, to find his father in prison and his lands confiscated by his arch-enemy, Moncada. Diego frees his father from prison, and puts him in the care of the natives and his wife Regina to convalesce. Diego is captured and arrested, but freed by two Zorro figures. Zorro confronts Moncada, forces him to sign a confession of treason, and sends him back to Spain. Diego clears his father's name and succeeds in having the governor drop charges against him.
Allende creates a world in which her mix of fictional characters, some "borrowed" from earlier Zorro works and others created for this one, interact with known historical figures.
Allende contributed an essay on the writing of the Zorro novel to Tales of Zorro . This was the first anthology of original Zorro short fiction, edited by Richard Dean Starr and published by Moonstone Books.
Isabel Angélica Allende Llona is a Chilean-American writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the genre magical realism, is known for novels such as The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts, which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author." In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize. President Barack Obama awarded her the 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Zorro is a fictional character created in 1919 by American pulp writer Johnston McCulley, appearing in works set in the Pueblo of Los Angeles in Alta California. He is typically portrayed as a dashing masked vigilante who defends the commoners and Indigenous peoples of California against corrupt, tyrannical officials and other villains. His signature all-black costume includes a cape, a hat known as a sombrero cordobés, and a mask covering the upper half of his face.
The Mask of Zorro is a 1998 American Western swashbuckler film based on the fictional character Zorro by Johnston McCulley. It was directed by Martin Campbell and stars Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Stuart Wilson. The film features the original Zorro, Don Diego de la Vega (Hopkins), escaping from prison to find his long-lost daughter (Zeta-Jones) and avenge the death of his wife at the hands of the corrupt governor Rafael Montero (Wilson). He is aided by his successor (Banderas), who is pursuing his own vendetta against the governor's right-hand man while falling in love with de la Vega's daughter.
The Mark of Zorro is a 1920 American silent Western romance film starring Douglas Fairbanks and Noah Beery. This genre-defining swashbuckler adventure was the first movie version of The Mark of Zorro. Based on the 1919 story The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley, which introduced the masked hero, Zorro, the screenplay was adapted by Fairbanks and Eugene Miller.
The House of the Spirits is the debut novel of Isabel Allende. The novel was rejected by several Spanish-language publishers before being published in Barcelona in 1982. It became an instant best-seller, was critically acclaimed, and catapulted Allende to literary stardom. The novel was named Best Novel of the Year in Chile in 1982, and Allende received the country's Panorama Literario award. The House of the Spirits has been translated into over 20 languages.
Zorro is an American action-adventure Western television series produced by Walt Disney Productions and starring Guy Williams. Based on the Zorro character created by Johnston McCulley in his 1919 novella, the series premiered on October 10, 1957, on ABC. The final network broadcast was July 2, 1959. Seventy-eight episodes were produced, and four hour-long specials were aired on the Walt Disney anthology series between October 30, 1960, and April 2, 1961.
Toypurina (1760–1799) was a Kizh indian medicine woman from the Jachivit village. She is notable for her opposition to the colonial rule by Spanish missionaries in California, and for her part in the planned 1785 rebellion against the Mission San Gabriel. She recruited six of the eight villages whose men participated in the attack.
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Don Q, Son of Zorro is a 1925 American silent swashbuckler romance film and a sequel to the 1920 silent film The Mark of Zorro. It was loosely based upon the 1909 novel Don Q.'s Love Story, written by the mother-and-son duo Kate and Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard. The story was reworked in 1925 into a vehicle for the Johnston McCulley character Zorro. The film adaptation was made by screenwriters Jack Cunningham and Lotta Woods for United Artists studios. Douglas Fairbanks both produced the film and starred as its lead character. It was directed by Donald Crisp, who also played the villain Don Sebastian.
El Zorro, la espada y la rosa is a Spanish-language telenovela based on Johnston McCulley's characters. Telemundo aired it from February 12 to July 23, 2007. This limited-run serial shows the masked crusader as a hero torn between his fight for justice and his love for a beautiful woman. Telemundo president Don Browne called this show "without doubt the best production offered on Hispanic television in the United States today."
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Zorro is an American Western superhero television series featuring Duncan Regehr as the character of Zorro. Regehr portrayed the fearless Spanish hero and fencer on The Family Channel from 1990 to 1993. The series was shot entirely in Madrid, Spain and produced by New World Television (U.S.), The Family Channel (U.S.), Ellipse Programme of Canal Plus (France), Beta TV (Germany), and RAI (Italy). 88 episodes of the series were produced, Raymond Austin directed 55 episodes and produced 37. There were 10 more episodes made than the first Zorro television series, which was produced by Disney in the late 1950s.
Zorro: Generation Z is an animated series that began in 2006, and produced by BKN International, BKN New Media and Zorro Productions. Former Marvel Studios development executive Rick Ungar developed the original series. The programming deal and concept for the new series was developed by Ungar, G7, and Pangea and underwritten partially by a master toy license with Brazilian toy company, Gulliver Toys. What made the show unique were the plethora of Pangea-designed high tech gadgets and the conceit of having the young Zorro ride his motorcycle named after his horse, Tornado.
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