A Tuesday Like Today

by Cecilia Urbina

Translated from the original Spanish by Clare E. Sullivan

During an almost accidental vacation in the Cambodian jungle, two sisters, Camila and Márgara, meet another wanderer, David Masters-Iturbe. They discover that they all have something in common – their Mexican heritage. Like benighted travelers from other times and places, the three proceed to tell stories in order to alleviate the boredom of long nights in their jungle hotel. Employing a twist of magical realism and a dash of cowboy-movie bravado, they end up constructing an imagined past for the sisters' ancestors that may be more than a metaphor for their own reality. With the horrors of Pol Pot's legacy outside their windows and a suave young man full of his own mysteries at the piano, Camila and Márgara must determine whether they are in the hands of random chance or destiny.

Cecilia Urbina was born in Mexico City, where she grew up and now resides. She studied English and French literature at the Sorbonne and Cambridge University.  She is the Coordinator of the Literature Department at Casa Lamm, where she teaches literature and creative writing. Her fields of study are contemporary British authors and postcolonial literature. She has written extensively in newspapers and cultural magazines. She has published six novels, including Firme compañera (Tava, 1994), La imaginación de Roger Donal (Sansores & Aljure, 1998), De noche llegan (Times Editores, 1999), and Un martes como hoy (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004), as well as a book of essays on contemporary writers, De escritos y escritores (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2001). In 2008, Cecilia Urbina received the prestigious Premio Coatlicue in recognition of De noche llegan and Un martes como hoy.  She is married, and has three children.