Read Around South America Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in South America.
Best books from South America (543)
311.
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
312.
Tales From the Town of Widows by James Canon EN
Country: South America / Colombia
Colombia
Description:
From a new literary star comes a beautifully crafted story about a group of women in a Colombian village who find their lives changed while their husbands and sons are away fighting a deadly civil war. The women of Mariquita - made widows when their men are swept away by the army or rebel forces - learn hard lessons about love and survival. Forced to grow in extraordinary ways, they challenge the tenets of male-dominated society, discover power with all its pitfalls and strive to create an entirely new social order, an all-female utopia. Their narrative is punctuated by short vignettes of the ... continue
313.
The Bitch by Pilar Quintana EN
Country: South America / Colombia
Colombia
Description:
Colombia's Pacific coast, where everyday life entails warding off the brutal forces of nature. Damaris lives with her fisherman husband in a shack on a bluff overlooking the sea. Childless and at that age 'when women dry up,' as her uncle puts it, she is eager to adopt an orphaned puppy. But this act may bring more than just affection into her home. The Bitch is written in a prose as terse as the villagers, with storms - both meteorological and emotional - lurking around each corner. Beauty and dread live side by side in this poignant exploration or the many meanings of motherhood and love.
314.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez EN
Country: South America / Colombia
Colombia
Description:
One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.
315.
El coronel no tiene quien le escriba by Gabriel García Márquez ES
Country: South America / Colombia
Colombia
Description:
"No One Writes to the Colonel" is a portrait of old age, that period when physical decay conflicts with still-alert mental pride. Gabriel Garca Mrquez was born in 1928 in the town of Aracatca, Columbia. Latin America's preeminent man of letters, he is considered by many to be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
316.
In The Beginning Was The Sea by Tomás González EN
Country: South America / Colombia
Colombia
Description:
The young intellectuals J. and Elena leave behind their comfortable lives, the parties and the money in Medellin to settle down on a remote island. Their plan is to lead the good life, self-sufficient and close to nature. But from the very start, each day brings small defeats and imperceptible dramas, which gradually turn paradise into hell, as their surroundings inexorably claim back every inch of the 'civilisation' they brought with them. Based on a true story, 'In the Beginning Was the Sea' is a dramatic and searingly ironic account of the disastrous encounter of intellectual struggle with ... continue
317.
Doce cuentos peregrinos / Twelve Pilgrim Tales by Gabriel García Márquez ES
Country: South America / Colombia
Colombia
Description:
These stories are all about Latin Americans living in Europe; a view of various immigrant lives.
318.
Song of the Flies : An Account of the Events by Maria Mercedes Carranza EN
Country: South America / Colombia
Colombia
Description:
Canto de las Moscas (Song of the Flies), by the late Colombian poet María Mercedes Carranza, was published for the first time in 1997, following a decade marked by extremely high levels of violence in Colombia. At this point the country had already endured nearly half a century of armed struggle between government and rebel groups, and had more recently experienced the emergence of paramilitary forces and warring drug lords. Carranza wrote these twenty-four poems, each bearing the name of a town or city that had been the site of large-scale violence, as a sort of chronicle and commemoration of... continue
319.
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez EN
Country: South America / Colombia
Colombia
Description:
This is Marquez's account of a real-life event. In 1955, eight crew members of the destroyer Caldas, were swept into the Caribbean Sea. The sole survivor, Luis Alejandro Belasco, told the true version of the events to Marquez, causing great scandal at the time.
320.
The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vásquez EN
Country: South America / Colombia
Colombia
Description:
With a tightly honed plot, deftly crafted situations, and a cast of complex and varied characters, "The Informers" is a fascinating novel of callous betrayal, complicit secrecy and the long quest for redemption in a secular, cynical world. It heralds the arrival of a major literary talent.