English books from South America
Recommended English books (211)
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
If you speak English here are some English books from South America for the next part of the "Read Around The World Challenge".
1.
100 Love Sonnets : Cien sonetos de amor by Pablo Neruda EN
Country: South America / 
Chile
Chile
Description:
Against the backdrop of Isla Negra — the sea and wind, the white sand with its scattering of delicate wild flowers, the hot sun and salty smells of the Pacific — Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda sets these joyfully sensual poems in celebration of his love. The subject of that love: Matilde Urrutia de Neruda, the poet's "beloved wife." As popular in the Hispanic world as the poet's renowned Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair,One Hundred Love Sonnets has never before been published in its entirety in English translation. The reason for this astonishing neglect may lie in the historical circumsta... continue
2.
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez EN
Country: South America / 
Colombia
Colombia
Description:
One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin ... continue
3.
A Long Petal of the Sea : A Novel by Isabel Allende EN
Country: South America / 
Peru
Peru
Description:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The House of the Spirits, this epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a place to call home. “One of the most richly imagined portrayals of the Spanish Civil War to date, and one of the strongest and most affecting works in [Isabel Allende’s] long career.”—The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Esquire • Good Housekeeping • Parade In the late 1930s, civil war grips Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succ... continue
4.
A Perfect Cemetery by Federico Falco EN
Country: South America / 
Argentina
Argentina
Description:
The mountains of Argentina pulse with life in these disarming stories of people radically reinventing themselves--to find love and connection, to escape their pasts, to offer a way out of the banalities of sorrow and loss in the present.
5.
A Simple Story : Dancing for His Life by Leila Gierriero EN
Country: South America / Argentina
Argentina
Description:
'Everything in him seemed to shout this is what I am made of: there is nothing that I cannot do.' The Malambo is no ordinary dance. A murderous feat of endurance, it inspires fear and awe in the young working-class men who dance it. Whoever is crowned Champion at the annual competition in the remote Argentinian town of Laborde is treated as a demigod for the rest of his life - yet once he wins, he must never perform again. Twenty-eight-year-old Rodolfo, who grew up poor and hungry in a flat with a leaking tin roof, has dreamed of winning at Laborde ever since he was a boy. Journalist Leila Gue... continue
6.
A Taste of Ecuador: The Collected Stories of Eugenia Viteri by Eugenia Viteri EN
Country: South America / 
Ecuador
Ecuador
Description:
7.
Country: South America / Colombia
Colombia
Description:
A 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE FINALIST By the Colombian author of The Bitch, a 2020 National Book Award Finalist and PEN Awards Winner "An eight-year-old girl takes in a series of troubling eventsin this luminous and transfixing account of fractured family life fromColombian writer Quintana (TheBitch). Readers will be dazzled." --Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW Claudia is an impressionable eight-year-old girl, trying to understand the world through the eyes of the adults around her. But her hardworking father hardly speaks a word, while her unhappy mother spends her day... continue
8.
Affections : A Novel by Rodrigo Hasbún EN
Country: South America / 
Bolivia
Bolivia
Description:
The award-winning and haunting novel from Rodrigo Hasbún, the literary star Jonathan Safran Foer calls, “a great writer,” about an unusual family’s breakdown—set in South America during the time of Che Guevara and inspired by the life of Third Reich cinematographer Hans Ertl. Inspired by real events, Affections is the story of the eccentric, fascinating Ertl clan, headed by the egocentric and extraordinary Hans, once the cameraman for the Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. Shortly after the end of World War II, Hans and his family flee to Bolivia to start over. There, the ever-restless Hans d... continue
9.
Água Viva by Clarice Lispector EN
Country: South America / 
Brazil
Brazil
Description:
Lispector at her most philosophically radical.
10.
All My Goodbyes by Mariana Dimopulos EN
Country: South America / Argentina
Argentina
Description:
This highly acclaimed contemporary Argentinian novel is the first in Giramondo’s Literature of the South series, featuring innovative fiction and non-fiction by writers of the southern hemisphere. It is translated from the Spanish by Australian translator Alice Whitmore. All My Goodbyes is a novel told in overlapping vignettes, which follow the travels of a young Argentinian woman across Europe (Málaga, Madrid, Heidelberg, Berlin) and back to Argentina (Buenos Aires, Patagonia) as she flees from situation to situation, job to job, and relationship to relationship. Within the complexity of the ... continue