Read Around North America Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in North America.
Best books from North America (1240)
261.
Los pasos perdidos by Alejo Carpentier ES
Country: North America / 
Cuba
Cuba
Description:
Buscar la utopia es querer encontrar el paraiso, y viceversa. Alejo Carpentier lo intentó por medio de un riquisimo lenguaje, de la naturaleza exuberante. Los pasos perdidos es un descenso a las raices, una travesía cargada de símbolos y de un a ancestral tradición cultural. Esta novela, escrita narra un viaje de vuelta: el protagonista, musicólogo, emprende una expedición al país de su infancia en busca de instrumentos musicales primitivos, al mismo tiempo, es una fuga: huye de un trabajo sinsentido, de una sociedad corrompida.
262.
El reino de este mundo by Alejo Carpentier ES
Country: North America / Cuba
Cuba
Description:
Una de las obras maestras del escritor cubano, El reino de este mundo narra, a través de la voz del esclavo negro Ti Noël, el tránsito que sufrió Haití al pasar a convertirse, de colonia francesa gobernada por blancos, en una nación negra regida por el primer monarca coronado del Nuevo Mundo. En una atmósfera lujuriosa y sensual que delata el barroquismo y el realismo mágico de su autor, este relato nos permite conocer las rebeliones de Mackandal, las aventuras de Pauline Bonaparte, así como la tiranía del rey negro Henri Christophe. [Resumen extraído de www.casadellibro.com].
263.
La tribu : retratos de Cuba by Carlos Manuel Álvarez ES
Country: North America / Cuba
Cuba
Description:
Engrossing essays by talented Cuban writer about people of that island and their daily lives between 2014 and 2016. Covers period from resumption of diplomatic relations with US to death of Fidel Castro. Offers intimate portraits of many Cubans who lived through revolution--dancers, poets, mothers, baseball players--comprising snapshot of nation on verge of great change.
264.
Havana Year Zero by Karla Suarez EN
Country: North America / Cuba
Cuba
Description:
It was as if we’d reached the minimum critical point of a mathematical curve. Imagine a parabola. Zero point down, at the bottom of an abyss. That’s how low we sank.
The year is 1993. Cuba is at the height of the Special Period, a widespread economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
For Julia, a mathematics lecturer who hates teaching, Havana is at Year Zero: the lowest possible point, going nowhere. Desperate to seize control of her life, Julia teams up with her colleague and former lover, Euclid, to seek out a document that proves the telephone was invented... continue
265.
Before Night Falls by Reynaldo Arenas EN
Country: North America / Cuba
Cuba
Description:
Reinaldo Arenas was born to a poverty-stricken family in rural Cuba. By the time of his death in New York four decades later, he had become one of Cuba's most important poets, an outspoken critic of Castro's regime and one of the leading gay voices of the twentieth century. In Before Night Falls, Arenas tells of his odyssey from young rebel fighting for the Revolution, through his suppression as a writer, his disillusionment with Castro, his imprisonment and torture, to his eventual exile from Cuba to New York, where in 1987 he was diagnosed with AIDS. He committed suicide in 1990, ending a li... continue
266.
Faith Among Shadows by Malcolm Leal EN
Country: North America / Cuba
Cuba
Description:
Lying face down on the muddy jungle floor, with the taste of his own blood in his mouth, all Malcolm Leal could do was call upon the God of his great-grandmother. Florencia Martinez Hernandez raised Malcolm as her own son in a small fishing village on the northern coast of Cuba. Teaching Malcolm wisdom gleaned from the worn pages of her century-old Bible, Florencia spoke of a temple "promised to all people" and that there were men on earth who "walked with God." Most importantly, she taught him to rely on "her" God for everything. While on assignment for the Cuban Special Forces in the dense r... continue
267.
Broken Paradise : A Novel by Cecilia Samartin EN
Country: North America / Cuba
Cuba
Description:
In the spirit of "The Kite Runner," this shimmering literary debut traces thepath of two cousins--one who left Cuba at the brink of revolution and the onewho stayed behind.
268.
Woman in Battle Dress by Antonio Benitez-Rojo EN
Country: North America / Cuba
Cuba
Description:
Finalist for the 2016 PEN Center USA Award for Translation In 1809, at the age of eighteen, Henriette Faber enrolled herself in medical school in Paris—and since medicine was a profession prohibited to women, she changed her name to Henri in order to matriculate. She would spend the next fifteen years practicing medicine and living as a man. Drafted to serve as a surgeon in Napoleon's army, Faber endured the horrors of the 1812 retreat across Russia. She later embarked to the Caribbean and set up a medical practice in a remote Cuban village, where she married Juana de León, an impoverished loc... continue
269.
33 Revolutions by Canek Sánchez Guevara EN
Country: North America / Cuba
Cuba
Description:
The hero of this mordant portrayal of life in contemporary Cuba is a black Cuban whose parents were enthusiastic supporters of the Castro Revolution. His father, however, having fallen foul of the regime, is accused of embezzlement and dies of a stroke. Following her husband's death, his mother flees the country and settles in Madrid. Our hero separates from his wife and now spends much of his time in the company of his Russian neighbor, from whom he discovers the pleasures of reading. The books he reads gradually open his eyes to the incongruity between party slogans and the gray oppressive r... continue
270.
Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier, John Sturrock EN
Country: North America / Cuba
Cuba
Description:
A swashbuckling tale set in the Caribbean at the time of the French Revolution, Explosion in a Cathedral focuses on Victor Hugues, a historical figure who led the naval assault to take back the island of Guadeloupe from the English at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In Carpentier's telling, this piratical character walks into the lives of the wealthy orphans Esteban and Sofia and casts them abruptly into the midst of the immense changes sweeping the world outside their Havana mansion.