Read Around South America Challenge

Most Popular Book
The Alchemist


13 countries in South America means 13 books to read for this challenge.
Reading progress by all challenge participants
9.1%
90.9%

Read Around South America Challenge

Read at least one book by an author from each country in South America.

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Best books from South America (516)
1.

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo EN

Rating: 5 (10 votes)
Description:
Darwin is a down-on-his-luck gravedigger, newly arrived in the city to seek his fortune, young and beautiful and lost. Estranged from his mother, he is convinced that the father he never met may be waiting for him somewhere amid these bustling streets. Meanwhile in an old house on a hill, Yejide's mother is dying. And she is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide- the keeper of the dead. Darwin and Yejide will find one another in the ancient cemetery at the heart of the city, where trouble is brewing and destiny awaits... Embedded with timeless myth and magic, this hypnotic literary... continue

2.

Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
In 1976, a young boy flees Buenos Aires with his opposition-supporting family, renames himself after his hero Harry Houdini, and dedicates his time in exile to mastering his role model's escape artistry.


4.

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin EN

Rating: 4 (13 votes)
Description:
NOW A FEATURE FILM COMING SOON TO NETFLIX "Genius." —Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize! Experience the blazing, surreal sensation of a fever dream... A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the... continue

5.

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges EN

Rating: 5 (8 votes)
Description:
For the first time in English, all the fiction by the writer who has been called “the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century” collected in a single volume A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition From Jorge Luis Borges’s 1935 debut with The Universal History of Iniquity, through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, these enigmatic, elaborate, imaginative inventions display his talent for turning fiction on its head by playing with form and genre and toying with language. Together these incomparable works comprise the perfect one-volume compendium for all those who h... continue

6.

Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar EN

Rating: 4 (5 votes)
Description:
Julio Cortazar's crazed masterpiece, the forbearer of the Latin Boom in the 1960s - published in Vintage Classics for the first time 'Cortazar's masterpiece. This is the first great novel of Spanish America... A powerful anti-novel but, like deeply understood moments in life itself, rich with many kinds of potential meanings and intimations' Times Literary Supplement Dazed by the disappearance of his muse, Argentinian writer Horatio Oliveira wanders the bridges of Paris, the sounds of jazz and the talk of literature, life and art echoing around him. But a chance encounter with a literary idol ... continue

7.

Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Description:
Sometimes they talk all night long. In the still darkness of their cell, Molina re-weaves the glittering and fragile stories of the film he loves, and the cynical Valentin listens. Valentin believes in the just cause which makes all suffering bearable; Molina believes in the magic of love which makes all else endurable. Each has always been alone, and always - especially now - in danger of betrayal. But in cell 7 each surrenders to the other something of himself that he has never surrendered before.

8.

Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica EN

Rating: 4 (42 votes)
Description:
Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest q... continue

9.

Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2018. A manic, bruising stream of conscious portrayal of a mother and wife struggling to maintain both a normal life and her sanity.

10.

Heartbreak Tango by Manuel Puig EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
Awash in small-town gossip, petty jealousy, and intrigues, Manuel Puig's Heartbreak Tango is a comedic assault on the fault lines between the disappointments of the everyday world, and the impossible promises of commercials, pop songs, and movies. This melancholy and hilarious tango concerns the many women in orbit around Juan Carlos Etchepare, an impossibly beautiful Lothario wasting away ever-so-slowly from consumption, while those who loved and were spurned by him move on into workaday lives and unhappy marriages. Part elegy, part melodrama, and part dirty joke, this wicked and charming nov... continue


BEST BOOKS FROM SOUTH AMERICA BY COUNTRY

Argentina · Bolivia · Brazil · Chile · Colombia · Ecuador · French Guiana · Guyana · Paraguay · Peru · Suriname · Uruguay · Venezuela