Travel the world without leaving your chair.
The target of the Read Around The World Challenge is to read at least one book written by an author from each and every country in the world.
All books that are listed here as part of the "Read Around South America Challenge" were written by authors from Peru.
Find a great book for the next part of your reading journey around the world from this book list. The following popular books have been recommended so far.
51.
Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende
EN
Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Description:
In nineteenth-century Chile, Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that erases all recollections of the first five years of her life. Raised by her regal and ambitious grandmother Paulina del Valle, Aurora grows up in a privileged environment but is tormented by horrible nightmares. When she is forced to recognize her betrayal at the hands of the man she loves, and to cope with the resulting solitude, she explores the mystery of her past.
52.
Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo
EN
Description:
A chilling political thriller set at the end of Peru's grim war between Shining Path terrorists and a morally bankrupt government counterinsurgency. Associate District Prosecutor Felix Chacaltana Saldivar is a by-the-book prosecutor wading through life. Two of his greatest pleasures are writing mundane reports and speaking to his long-dead mother. Everything changes, however, when he is asked to investigate a bizarre and brutal murder: the body was found burnt beyond recognition and a cross branded into its forehead. Adhering to standard operating procedures, Chacaltana begins a meticulous inv... continue
54.
The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa
EN
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?
55.
The Cubs and Other Stories by Mario Vargas Llosa
EN
Description:
The Cubs and Other Stories is Mario Vargas Llosa's only volume of short fiction available in English. Vargas Llosa's domain is the Peru of male youth and machismo, where life's dramas play themselves out on the soccer field, on the dance floor and on street corners. The title work, The Cubs, tells the story of the carefree boyhood of PP Cuellar and his friends, and of PP's bizarre accident and tragic coming of age. In a candid and perceptive foreword to this collection of early writing, Vargas Llosa provides background to the volume and a unique glimpse into the mind of the artist.
56.
The Dust Never Settles by Karina Lickorish Quinn
EN
Description:
A hauntingly beautiful debut for fans of Isabel Allende and Kazuo Ishiguro The yellow walls of Anaïs' family home loom over the sprawling city of Lima. When she left Peru and moved to London, she dared to hope she might have left the echoing voices of her ancestors behind - voices that reverberate through the corridors of the family mansion. But now she must return to Peru to organise the sale of the house, submerging herself once more in the constant whispers of her deceased relatives. What begins as an uneasy homecoming soon becomes a reckoning with secrets that refuse to stay buried, in thi... continue
57.
The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu by Augusto Higa Oshiro
EN
Description:
Reminiscent of Kurasawa’s film Ikiru, Enlightenment explores the interior mindscape of a Japanese-Peruvian man and his luminous unraveling Katzuo Nakamatsu is having a recurring dream. He’s strolling down the glinting avenues of Lima, branches crowning overhead, when he hears someone snickering from the shadows. He wanders away in concentric circles, as if along a spider web, and wakes in a sweaty torment. Nakamatsu sleepwalks his way toward sublime disintegration. Katzuo is at sea after being forced out of his job as a literature professor without warning. He retreats into flânerie, musing wi... continue
58.
The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
EN
Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian... continue
59.
The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa
EN
Rating: 3 (3 votes)
Description:
Mario Vargas Llosa's classic early novel takes place in a Peruvian town, situated between desert and jungle, which is torn by boredom and lust. Don Anselmo, a stranger in a black coat, builds a brothel on the outskirts of the town while he charms its innocent people, setting in motion a chain reaction with extraordinary consequences. This brothel, called the Green House, brings together the innocent and the corrupt: Bonificia, a young Indian girl saved by the nuns only to become a prostitute; Father Garcia, struggling for the church; and four best friends drawn to both excitement and escape. T... continue
60.
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
EN
Description:
Spanning four generations, Isabel Allende's magnificent family saga is populated by a memorable, often eccentric cast of characters. Together, men and women, spirits, the forces of nature, and of history, converge in an unforgettable, wholly absorbing and brilliantly realised novel that is as richly entertaining as it is a masterpiece of modern literature.