Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Five top books about South America

Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez's new novel is The Sound of Things Falling.

One of his five favorite novels about South America, as told to The Daily Beast:
Nostromo
by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad’s insultingly ambitious and incredibly accurate political novel is, to my mind, the best piece of fiction ever written about Latin America outside of Latin America. The fictional republic of Costaguana watches one of its provinces secede, aided by the military intervention of the United States, in a series of events that are suspiciously reminiscent of the revolution through which the province of Panama seceded from Colombia in 1903. This is political literature at its best.
Read about the other books on the list.

Nostromo is one of Ben Ryder Howe's top ten novels featuring mythical countries.

--Marshal Zeringue