AROUND THE WORLD IN 100 BOOKS

COLOMBIA

THE SOUND OF THINGS FALLING by JUAN GABRIEL VASQUEZ:
In the city of Bogotá, Antonio Yammara reads an article about a hippo that
had escaped from a derelict zoo once owned by legendary Colombian drug
kingpin Pablo Escobar. The article transports Antonio back to when the war
between Escobar’s Medellín cartel and government forces played out
violently in Colombia’s streets and in the skies above.

Back then, Antonio witnessed a friend’s murder, an event that haunts him
still. As he investigates, he discovers the many ways in which his own life
and his friend’s family have been shaped by his country’s recent violent
past. His journey leads him all the way back to the 1960s and a world on the
brink of change: a time before narco-trafficking trapped a whole generation
in a living nightmare.

THE DIVINE BOYS by LAURA RESTREPO: Immune to the
consequences of immorality, five privileged young men in Bogotá bond over
a shared code: worship drugs and drink, exploit women, and scorn the
underclass.

As males, they declare the right to freedom of pleasure. As friends, only
disloyalty to each other is forbidden. When a little girl from the slums
disappears, the limits of a perverse and sacred bond will be tested in ways
none of them could have imagined.

Hauntingly true, this daringly told work of fiction explores the tragic
dynamic between genders, social classes, and victim and victimizer, and
between five men whose intolerable transgressions will shake the
conscience of a country.

THERE ARE NO DEAD HERE by MARIE MCFARLAND SANCHEZ-
MORENO: Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews and five years on the

ground in Colombia, Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno takes readers from the
sweltering Medellín streets where criminal investigators constantly looked over
their shoulders for assassins on motorcycles, through the countryside where
paramilitaries wiped out entire towns in gruesome massacres, and into the
corridors of the presidential palace in Colombia's capital, Bogota. Throughout, she
tells the interconnected stories of three very different Colombians bound by their
commitment to the truth.

The first is the gregarious Jesús María Valle, whose prophetic warnings about the
military's complicity with the paramilitaries got him killed in 1998. A decade later,
Valle's friend, the shy prosecutor Ivan Velasquez, became an unlikely hero when
his groundbreaking investigations landed a third of the country's congress in
prison for conspiring with paramilitaries, and put him in the crosshairs of
Colombia's then wildly popular president, US protégé Álvaro Uribe. When Uribe's
smear campaign against Velasquez threatened to bury the truth, the scrawny
investigative journalist Ricardo Calderón exposed the lies, revealing that the
paramilitaries' reach extended all the way into the presidency.

ECUADOR

POSO WELLS by GABRIELA ALEMAN: In the squalid settlement of Poso
Wells, women have been regularly disappearing but the authorities have
shown little interest. When the leading presidential candidate comes to town,
he and his entourage are electrocuted in a macabre, darkly hilarious
accident witnessed by a throng of astonished spectators. The sole survivor--
next in line for the presidency--inexplicably disappears from sight.

Gustavo Varas, a principled journalist, picks up the trail, which leads him
into a violent, lawless underworld, and ultimately to a strange group of
almost supernatural blind men. Bella Altamirano, a fearless local woman, is
on her own crusade to pierce the settlement's code of silence, ignoring the
death threats that result from her efforts. It turns out that the disappearance
of the candidate and those of the women are intimately connected, and not
just to a local crime wave, but to a multinational magnate's plan to plunder
the country's ecologically sensitive cloud forest.

EVERYTHING HERE IS BEAUTIFUL by MIRA T. LEE: Two Chinese-
American sisters—Miranda, the older, responsible one, always her younger
sister’s protector; Lucia, the headstrong, unpredictable one, whose impulses
are huge and, often, life changing. When Lucia starts hearing voices, it is
Miranda who must find a way to reach her sister. Lucia impetuously plows
ahead, but the bitter constant is that she is, in fact, mentally ill. Lucia lives
life on a grand scale, until, inevitably, she crashes to earth.

Miranda leaves her own self-contained life in Switzerland to rescue her sister
again—but only Lucia can decide whether she wants to be saved. The
bonds of sisterly devotion stretch across oceans—but what does it take to
break them?

BOLIVAR by MARIE ARANA: It is astonishing that Simon Bolívar, the
great Liberator of South America, is not better known in the United
States. He freed six countries from Spanish rule, travelled more than
75,000 miles on horseback to do so, and became the greatest figure
in Latin American history.

His life is epic, heroic, straight out of Hollywood--he fought battle after
battle in punishing terrain, forged uncertain coalitions of competing
forces and races, lost his beautiful wife soon after they married and
never remarried (although he did have a succession of mistresses,
including one who held up the revolution and another who saved his
life), and he died relatively young, uncertain whether his achievements
would endure.

GUYANA

THE SECRET LIFE OF WINNIE COX by SHARON MAAS: 1910, South
America. A time of racial tension and poverty. A time where forbidden love
must remain a secret.

Winnie Cox lives a privileged life of dances and dresses on her father’s
sugar cane plantation. Life is sweet in the kingdom of sugar and Winnie
along with her sister Johanna, have neither worries nor responsibilities, they
are birds of paradise, protected from the poverty in the world around them.

But everything can change in a heartbeat ...

When Winnie falls in love with George Quint, the Black post-office boy, she
soon finds herself slipping into a double life. And as she withdraws from her
family, she discovers a shocking secret about those whom are closest to
her. Now, more than ever, Winnie is determined to prove her love for
George, whatever price she must pay and however tragic the consequences
might be.

A THOUSAND LIVES by JULIA SCHEERES: In 1954, a past or named Jim
Jones opened a church in Indianapolis called Peoples Temple Full Gospel
Church. He was a charismatic preacher with idealistic beliefs, and he quickly
filled his pews with an audience eager to hear his sermons on social justice.
As Jones's behavior became erratic and his message more ominous, his
followers leaned on each other to recapture the sense of equality that had
drawn them to his church. But even as the congregation thrived, Jones
made it increasingly difficult for members to leave. By the time Jones moved
his congregation to a remote jungle in Guyana and the U.S. government
began to investigate allegations of abuse and false imprisonment in
Jonestown, it was too late.

A Thousand Lives is the story of Jonestown as it has never been told. New
York Times bestselling author Julia Scheeres drew from tens of thousands
of recently declassified FBI documents and audiotapes, as well as rare
videos and interviews, to piece together an unprecedented and compelling
history of the doomed camp, focusing on the people who lived there.

THE GUYANA STORY by ODEEN ISHMAEL: The Guyana Story:
From Earliest Times to Independence traces the country's history from
thousands of years ago when the first Amerindian groups began to
settle on the Guyana territory. It examines the period of early European
exploration leading to Dutch colonization, the forcible introduction of
African slaves to work on cotton and sugar plantations, the effects of
European wars, and the final ceding of the territory to the British who
ruled it as their colony until they finally granted it independence in 1966.

The book also tells of Indian, Chinese, and Portuguese indentured
immigration and shows how the cultural interrelationships among the
various ethnic groups introduced newer forms of conflict, but also
brought about cooperation in the struggles of the workers for better
working and living conditions. The final part describes the roles of the
political leaders who arose from among these ethnic groups from the
late 1940s and began the political struggle against colonialism and the
demand for independence.

PARAGUAY

FLOWERS IN THE DUST by MYRIAM ALVAREZ: It's 1938 in Asuncion,
Paraguay. Chola is a young and innocent woman, born and raised in
ultra-conservative, Catholic South America. Hans is a recent immigrant, the
handsome son of a wealthy Jewish family from Berlin. Chola doesn't speak a
word of German and Hans doesn't speak a word of Spanish.

Yet there is a strong attraction that quickly brings them together in marriage.
Chola's dreams of happiness are quickly shattered as she finds herself the timid
servant to a man she hardly knows and shares neither a common culture or
language. Also, Hans refuses to shed the playboy lifestyle he had in the
free-spirited Berlin, even for his new bride.

Just as young Chola grapples with this dramatic and disappointing change in her
life, she faces a new challenge, as Hans' family flees Nazi Germany and heads
to South America to live with them. Hans' infidelities and obsession with gam-
bling force Chola to take measures into her own hands as she continues to raise
her daughters not to repeat her own mistakes. Even in the face of the ultimate
betrayal, she digs in and finds another reason to keep fighting for a better life.

INVISIBLE COUNTRY by ANNAMARIA ALFIERI: A war against Argentina,

Brazil, and Uruguay has devastated Paraguay. Ninety percent of the males between
the ages of eight and eighty have died in the conflict and food is scarce. In the small
village of Santa Caterina, Padre Gregorio advises the women of his congregation to
abandon the laws of the church and get pregnant by what men are available. As he
leaves the pulpit, he discovers the murdered body of Ricardo Yotté, one of the most
powerful men in the country, at the bottom of the belfry.

There are many suspects: Eliza Lynch, a former Parisian courtesan who is now the
consort of the brutal dictator, Francisco Solano López, and who entrusted to Yotté the
country's treasury of gold and jewels; López himself, who may have suspected his ally
Yotté of carrying on an affair with the beautiful Eliza; Comandante Luis Menenez,
local representative of the dictator, who competed with Yotté for López's favor, and a
wounded Brazilian soldier who has secretly taken up with one of the village girls.

Lynch is desperate to recover the missing gold, and the comandante is desperate to
prove his usefulness to López. To avoid having an innocent person dragged off to
torture and death, a band of villagers undertake to solve the crime, including Padre
Gregorio, the village midwife, her crippled husband returned from combat, their
spirited daughter, and a war widow. Each carries secrets they seek to protect from the
others, while they pursue their quest for the truth.

THE NEWS FROM PARAGUAY by LILY TUCK: A rich historical
novel - part love story and part tragedy - about the Irish courtesan Eliza
Lynch, and how she became mistress to one of South America's first, and
most extravagant, dictators. 1854. In Paris, Francisco Solano - the future
dictator of Paraguay - picks up a blue feather fallen from the hat of a
beautiful woman. With this small gesture begins his pursuit of the remarkable
Irish courtesan Eliza Lynch.

Captivated by a unique courtship involving a poncho and a
Paraguayan band, Eliza follows Francisco to Paraguay where she reigns as
his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her
lover's ill-fated imperial dream - one fuelled by a heedless arrogance that will
devastate all of Paraguay, and throw this European woman into a world of
unprecedented privilege, ruthless exploitation and even revolution.

Peru

THE BOILING RIVER by ANDRES RUZO: In this exciting adventure mixed
with amazing scientific study, a young, exuberant explorer and geoscientist
journeys deep into the Amazon—where rivers boil and legends come to life.

When Andrés Ruzo was just a small boy in Peru, his grandfather told him
the story of a mysterious legend: There is a river, deep in the Amazon,
which boils as if a fire burns below it. Twelve years later, Ruzo—now a
geoscientist—hears his aunt mention that she herself had visited this
strange river.

Determined to discover if the boiling river is real, Ruzo sets out on a journey
deep into the Amazon. What he finds astounds him: In this long, wide, and
winding river, the waters run so hot that locals brew tea in them; small
animals that fall in are instantly cooked. As he studies the river, Ruzo faces
challenges more complex than he had ever imaged.

CITY OF CLOWNS by DANIEL ALARĆON: Oscar “Chino” Uribe is a young
Peruvian journalist for a local tabloid paper. After the recent death of his
philandering father, he must confront the idea of his father’s other family,
and how much of his own identity has been shaped by his father’s murky
morals. At the same time, he begins to chronicle the life of street clowns, sad
characters who populate the violent and corrupt city streets of Lima, and is
drawn into their haunting, fantastical world.

This remarkably affecting story by Daniel Alarcón was included in his
acclaimed first book, War by Candlelight, and now, in collaboration with artist
Sheila Alvarado, it takes on a new, thrilling form. This graphic novel, with its
short punches of action and images, its stark contrasts between light and
dark, truth and fiction, perfectly corresponds to the tone of Chino’s story.
With the city of Lima as a character, and the bold visual language from the
story, City of Clowns is moving, menacing, and brilliantly vivid.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE INCAS by KIM MACQUARRIE: In 1532, the

fifty-four-year-old Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro led a force of 167 men,
including his four brothers, to the shores of Peru. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards,
the Inca rulers of Peru had just fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Ata-
hualpa had defeated his brother Huascar. Pizarro and his men soon clashed with
Atahualpa and a huge force of Inca warriors at the Battle of Cajamarca. Despite
being outnumbered by more than two hundred to one, the Spaniards prevailed—
due largely to their horses, their steel armor and swords, and their tactic of sur-
prise. They captured and imprisoned Atahualpa. Although the Inca emperor paid
an enormous ransom in gold, the Spaniards executed him anyway. The following
year, the Spaniards seized the Inca capital of Cuzco, completing their conquest of
the largest native empire the New World has ever known. Peru was now a
Spanish colony, and the conquistadors were wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

But the Incas did not submit willingly. A young Inca emperor, the brother of
Atahualpa, soon led a massive rebellion against the Spaniards, inflicting heavy
casualties and nearly wiping out the conquerors. Eventually, however, Pizarro and
his men forced the emperor to abandon the Andes and flee to the Amazon. There,
he established a hidden capital, called Vilcabamba—only recently rediscovered by
a trio of colourful American explorers. Although the Incas fought a deadly, thirty-six
-year-long guerrilla war, the Spanish ultimately captured the last Inca emperor and
vanquished the native resistance.

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO

SECRETS WE KEPT by KRYSTAL A. SITAL: There, in a lush landscape
of fire-petaled immortelle trees and vast plantations of coffee and cocoa,
where the three hills along the southern coast act as guardians against
hurricanes, Krystal A. Sital grew up idolizing her grandfather, a wealthy
Hindu landowner. Years later, to escape crime and economic stagnation on
the island, the family resettled in New Jersey, where Krystal’s mother works
as a nanny, and the warmth of Trinidad seems a pretty yet distant memory.
But when her grandfather lapses into a coma after a fall at home, the
women he has terrorized for decades begin to speak, and a brutal past
comes to light.

In the lyrical patois of her mother and grandmother, Krystal learns the
long-held secrets of their family’s past, and what it took for her foremothers
to survive and find strength in themselves. The relief of sharing their stories
draws the three women closer, the music of their voices and care for one
another easing the pain of memory.

THE WHALE HOUSE by SHARON MILLAR: A pathologist is asked to lie
about a boy killed on government orders; a sister tries to make peace with
the parents of the white American girl her brother has murdered; a gangster
makes his posthumous lament: Trinidad in all its social tumult is ever present
in these stories, but so too are the lives of those with private griefs: a woman
mourning the still-birth of her baby; a young mother with cancer facing her
mortality. Millar’s characters come intensely alive at points of crisis, of
existential threat.

The stories in this collection range wide: across different ethnic communities;
across rural and urban settings; across the moneyed elite (and illicit new
wealth) and the poor scrabbling for survival; locals and expatriates; the
certainties of rational knowledge and the mysteries of the unseen and the
uncanny. Different locations in Trinidad are brought to the reader through a
precise and sensuous mapping of the country’s fauna and flora.

TIL THE WELL RUNS DRY by LAUREN FRANCIS-SHARMA: A
multigenerational, multicultural saga that sweeps from the 1940s
through the 1960s in Trinidad and the United States.

In a seaside village in the north of Trinidad, young Marcia Garcia, a
gifted and smart-mouthed sixteen-year-old seamstress, lives alone,
raising two small boys and guarding a family secret. When she meets
Farouk Karam, an ambitious young policeman the rewards and risks in
Marcia's life amplify forever.

'Til the Well Runs Dry sees Marcia and Farouk from their courtship
through personal and historical events that threaten Marcia's secret,
entangle the couple and their children in a tumultuous scandal, and
put the future in doubt for all of them.

URUGUAY

CANTORAS by CAROLINA DE ROBERTIS: In 1977 Uruguay, a military
government crushed political dissent with ruthless force. In this environment,
where the everyday rights of people are under attack, homosexuality is a
dangerous transgression to be punished. And yet Romina, Flaca, Anita "La
Venus," Paz, and Malena--five cantoras, women who "sing"--somehow,
miraculously, find one another. Together, they discover an isolated, nearly
uninhabited cape, Cabo Polonio, which they claim as their secret sanctuary.

Over the next thirty-five years, their lives move back and forth between
Cabo Polonio and Montevideo, the city they call home, as they return,
sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, with lovers in tow, or alone. And
throughout, again and again, the women will be tested--by their families,
lovers, society, and one another--as they fight to live authentic lives.

A genre-defining novel and De Robertis's masterpiece, Cantoras is a
breath-taking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the
strength of the human spirit.

THE DECAPITATED CHICKEN AND OTHER STORIES by HORACIO
QUIROGA: Horacio Quiroga's short stories are infused with the themes of
life and death that so obsessed him. They span many fiction genres; jungle
tale, Gothic horror story, psychological study, and morality tale- and possess
a universality that has made him a classic Latin American writer.

Horacio Quiroga was a master storyteller and author of over two hundred
pieces of Latin American fiction that have been compared to the works of
Poe, Kipling, and London. Like his stories, his own life from his birth in
Uruguay to his suicide in Argentina was filled with adventure, tragedy, and
violence.

CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION by PETER CAMERON: This
startling, beautiful novel set in South America explores the mysterious
concepts of love and home. Omar has won an award to write the
authorised biography of a celebrated yet obscure writer, Jules Gund,
author of The Gondola. It only remains for him to obtain permission
from Gund's literary executors: his widow, his mistress and his
brother.

Their lives still revolve around Ochos Rios, a dilapidated mansion in
Uruguay that Gund's parents built after fleeing Nazi Germany. The
three cannot agree to approve the work -- although Adam Gund feels
sure this will not stop Omar, because 'biographers are clever,
vindictive, ruthless people.' If Omar cannot reverse the executors'
decision, he will lose his award, his job and, perhaps, his redoubtable
girlfriend. Not allowing himself time for reflection, Omar acts against
instinct and flies to Uruguay. There, he disturbs the uneasy intimacy of
the world Gund has left behind and changes it forever.

VENEZUELA

THE SICKNESS by ALBERTO BARRERA TYSZKA: Dr. Miranda is faced
with a tragedy: his father has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has
only a few weeks to live. He is also faced with a dilemma: How does one tell
his father he is dying?

Ernesto Duran, a patient of Dr. Miranda’s, is convinced he is sick. Ever since
he separated from his wife he has been presenting symptoms of an illness
he believes is killing him. It becomes an obsession far exceeding
hypochondria. The fixation, in turn, has its own creeping effect on Miranda’s
secretary, who cannot, despite her best intentions, resist compassion for the
man.

A profound and philosophical exploration of the nature and meaning of
illness, Alberto Barrera Tyszka’s tender, refined novel interweaves the
stories of four individuals as they try, in their own way, to come to terms with
sickness in all its ubiquity.

IT WOULD BE NIGHT IN CARACAS by KARINA SAINZ BORGO: In
Caracas, Venezuela, Adelaida Falcon stands over an open grave. Alone, except
for harried undertakers, she buries her mother–the only family Adelaida has
ever known.

Numb with grief, Adelaida returns to the apartment they shared. Outside the
window that she tapes shut every night—to prevent the tear gas raining down on
protesters in the streets from seeping in. When looters masquerading as
revolutionaries take over her apartment, Adelaida resists and is beaten up. It is
the beginning of a fight for survival in a country that has disintegrated into
violence and anarchy, where citizens are increasingly pitted against each other.
But as fate would have it, Adelaida is given a gruesome choice that could
secure her escape.

Filled with riveting twists and turns, and told in a powerful, urgent voice, It Would
Be Night in Caracas is a chilling reminder of how quickly the world we know can
crumble.

DRAGON IN THE TROPICS by JAVIER CORRALES & MICHAEL
PENFOLD: Based on more than fifteen years' experience in
researching and writing about Venezuela, Javier Corrales and Michael
Penfold have crafted a comprehensive account of how the Chávez
regime has revamped the nation, with a particular focus on its political
transformation.

Throughout, they take issue with conventional explanations. First, they
argue persuasively that liberal democracy as an institution was not to
blame for the rise of chavismo. Second, they assert that the nation's
economic ailments were not caused by neoliberalism.

Instead they blame other factors, including a dependence on oil, which
caused macroeconomic volatility; political party fragmentation, which
triggered infighting; government mismanagement of the banking crisis,
which led to more centralization of power; and the Asian crisis of 1997,
which devastated Venezuela's economy at the same time that Chávez
ran for president.