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 (507)
391.

The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
The Time of the Hero has been acclaimed by critics around the world as one of the outstanding Spanish novels of recent decades. In the author's native Peru, this powerful social satire so outraged the authorities that a thousand copies were publicly burned. The novel is set in Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, where a group of cadets attempt to break out of the vicious round of sadistic ragging, military discipline, confinement and boredom. But their pranks set off a cycle of betrayal, murder and revenge which jeopardizes the entire military hierarchy. 'A work of undeniable power and ski... continue

392.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
'A comic novel on the grand scale written with tremendous confidence and verve. Mario, 18-year-old law student and radio news-editor, falls scandalously for his Aunt Julia, the 32-year-old divorced wife of a cousin, and the progressively lunatic story of this affair is interwoven with episodes from a series of radio soap-operas written by his friend Pedro Comacho. Vargas Llosa's huge energy and inventiveness is extravagant and fabulously funny.' New Statesman
Genre

393.

Ines of My Soul : A Novel by Isabel Allende EN

Rating: 4 (3 votes)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
A passionate tale of love, freedom, and conquest from the New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, Isabelle Allende. Born into a poor family in Spain, Inés Suárez, finds herself condemned to a life of poverty without opportunity as a lowly seamstress. But it's the sixteenth century, the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Struck by the same restless hope and opportunism, Inés uses her shiftless husband's disappearance to Peru as an excuse to embark on her own adventure. After learning of her husband's death in battle, she meets the fiery war hero, Pedro de ... continue

394.

Eva Luna by Isabel Allende EN

Rating: 4 (5 votes)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
An exotic dance that beguiles and entices... The enchanted and enchanting account of a contemporary Scheherazade, a wide-eyed American teller-of-tales who triumphs over harsh reality through the creative power of her own imagination... "From the Paperback edition.
Genre

395.

Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
Set in an isolated, rundown community in the Peruvian Andes, Vargas Llosa's novel tells the story of a series of mysterious disappearances involving the Shining Path guerrillas and a local couple performing cannibalistic sacrifices with strange similiarities to the Dionysian rituals of ancient Greece. Part detective novel and part political allegory, it offers a panoramic view of Peruvian society; not only of the current political violence and social upheaval, but also of the country's past and its connection to Indian culture and pre-Hispanic mysticism.

396.

The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa EN

Rating: 1 (2 votes)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as 'Lily' in Lima in 1950, where she claims to be from Chile but vanishes the moment her claim is exposed as fiction. He loves her next in Paris as 'Comrade Arlette', an activist en route to Cuba, an icy, remote lover who denies knowing anything about the Lily of years gone by. Whoever the bad girl turns up as and however poorly she treats him, Ricardo is doomed to worship her. Gifted liar and irresistible, maddening muse - does Ricardo ever know who she really is?
Genre

397.

Zorro : A Novel by Isabel Allende EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
A swashbuckling adventure story that reveals for the first time how Diego de la Vega became the masked man we all know so well Born in southern California late in the eighteenth century, he is a child of two worlds. Diego de la Vega's father is an aristocratic Spanish military man turned landowner; his mother, a Shoshone warrior. Diego learns from his maternal grandmother, White Owl, the ways of her tribe while receiving from his father lessons in the art of fencing and in cattle branding. It is here, during Diego's childhood, filled with mischief and adventure, that he witnesses the brutal in... continue

398.

Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
Guatemala, 1954. A CIA-supported military coup topples the government. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changed the development of Latin America: that those in power encouraged the spread of Soviet communism in the Americas.

399.

A Long Petal of the Sea : A Novel by Isabel Allende EN

Rating: 4 (4 votes)
Country: South America / Peru flag 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

400.

Het groene huis by Mario Vargas Llosa NL

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
Episodes vol geweld en onrecht uit het leven rond een bordeel in een Peruaans provinciestadje.


BEST BOOKS FROM SOUTH AMERICA BY COUNTRY

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