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Kiss of the Spider Woman — Manuel Puig
Manuel Puig
Alfred A. Knopf · New York · 1979
First American Edition · First Printing · First English-Language Edition
The Book:
The first American edition, first printing—and first English-language edition—of Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1979 and translated from the Spanish by Thomas Colchie. First published as El beso de la mujer araña in Spain in 1976, the novel could not initially be published in Puig’s native Argentina. This copy retains its original cloth-backed boards, red topstain, and original unclipped $8.95 dust jacket. The volume comprises 281 pages.
Condition:
Near Fine in a Near Fine original dust jacket. The book remains square and firmly bound with a clean interior and only minor age-related wear. The original unclipped jacket remains bright and complete, showing light rubbing and minor edge wear. No restoration, rebinding, or replacement components are observed.
Story Of The Book
Two prisoners share a cell. One escapes through politics. The other escapes through movies.
Set in Argentina in 1975, Kiss of the Spider Woman brings together Molina, a gay window dresser imprisoned for a sexual offense, and Valentín, a Marxist revolutionary being held for his political activity. Molina retells old films; Valentín talks revolution. What begins as mutual suspicion gradually becomes intimacy.
Puig uses their confinement to examine how power operates through more than prisons and police. Political repression, sexual stigma, masculinity, ideology, and fear all become ways of defining people before they can define themselves. Even Molina’s relationship with Valentín is exploited by authorities seeking information about the revolutionary underground.
The novel ultimately asks whether solidarity can survive the identities and divisions that systems of power use to keep people apart.
Why It’s In The Collection
Kiss of the Spider Woman belongs in Consigned to Darkness because it connects political imprisonment with another form of repression: the policing of identity.
Puig places a political dissident and a marginalized gay man inside the same confined space and gradually dismantles the assumptions separating them. The state’s power depends partly upon those divisions; the novel’s resistance lies in their ability to recognize one another as human beings despite them.
This 1979 first English-language printing matters because it carried Puig’s novel beyond its original Spanish readership and into the international literary culture that would make it one of his defining works.
Collection Categories: Anti-Authoritarianism · Political Dissent · Political Movements · LGBTQ+ History · Literature · Censorship · Publication-Event Object · Latin American Literature
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Authentication Evidence
Title page identifies Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig, translated from the Spanish by Thomas Colchie, and published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
Copyright page records the relevant 1978 and 1979 copyrights and explicitly states “First American Edition.”
No later-printing statement is present, consistent with first-printing status.
Original tan paper-covered boards backed in black cloth are present, consistent with documented first American copies.
Original copper-colored spine lettering is present.
Original red topstain is present, consistent with documented first American copies.
Original dust jacket illustrated by Josef Hoffman is retained.
Dust jacket retains the original unclipped $8.95 publisher’s price on the front flap.
Collation of 281 pages is consistent with documented first American copies.
Translation by Thomas Colchie corresponds to the first English-language edition.
No evidence of book-club manufacture, rebinding, facsimile dust jacket, or replacement components is observed.
Observable bibliographic evidence supports identification as the 1979 Alfred A. Knopf first American edition, first printing, and first English-language edition.
Manuel Puig
Alfred A. Knopf · New York · 1979
First American Edition · First Printing · First English-Language Edition
The Book:
The first American edition, first printing—and first English-language edition—of Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1979 and translated from the Spanish by Thomas Colchie. First published as El beso de la mujer araña in Spain in 1976, the novel could not initially be published in Puig’s native Argentina. This copy retains its original cloth-backed boards, red topstain, and original unclipped $8.95 dust jacket. The volume comprises 281 pages.
Condition:
Near Fine in a Near Fine original dust jacket. The book remains square and firmly bound with a clean interior and only minor age-related wear. The original unclipped jacket remains bright and complete, showing light rubbing and minor edge wear. No restoration, rebinding, or replacement components are observed.
Story Of The Book
Two prisoners share a cell. One escapes through politics. The other escapes through movies.
Set in Argentina in 1975, Kiss of the Spider Woman brings together Molina, a gay window dresser imprisoned for a sexual offense, and Valentín, a Marxist revolutionary being held for his political activity. Molina retells old films; Valentín talks revolution. What begins as mutual suspicion gradually becomes intimacy.
Puig uses their confinement to examine how power operates through more than prisons and police. Political repression, sexual stigma, masculinity, ideology, and fear all become ways of defining people before they can define themselves. Even Molina’s relationship with Valentín is exploited by authorities seeking information about the revolutionary underground.
The novel ultimately asks whether solidarity can survive the identities and divisions that systems of power use to keep people apart.
Why It’s In The Collection
Kiss of the Spider Woman belongs in Consigned to Darkness because it connects political imprisonment with another form of repression: the policing of identity.
Puig places a political dissident and a marginalized gay man inside the same confined space and gradually dismantles the assumptions separating them. The state’s power depends partly upon those divisions; the novel’s resistance lies in their ability to recognize one another as human beings despite them.
This 1979 first English-language printing matters because it carried Puig’s novel beyond its original Spanish readership and into the international literary culture that would make it one of his defining works.
Collection Categories: Anti-Authoritarianism · Political Dissent · Political Movements · LGBTQ+ History · Literature · Censorship · Publication-Event Object · Latin American Literature
———
Authentication Evidence
Title page identifies Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig, translated from the Spanish by Thomas Colchie, and published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
Copyright page records the relevant 1978 and 1979 copyrights and explicitly states “First American Edition.”
No later-printing statement is present, consistent with first-printing status.
Original tan paper-covered boards backed in black cloth are present, consistent with documented first American copies.
Original copper-colored spine lettering is present.
Original red topstain is present, consistent with documented first American copies.
Original dust jacket illustrated by Josef Hoffman is retained.
Dust jacket retains the original unclipped $8.95 publisher’s price on the front flap.
Collation of 281 pages is consistent with documented first American copies.
Translation by Thomas Colchie corresponds to the first English-language edition.
No evidence of book-club manufacture, rebinding, facsimile dust jacket, or replacement components is observed.
Observable bibliographic evidence supports identification as the 1979 Alfred A. Knopf first American edition, first printing, and first English-language edition.