Read Around North America Challenge

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

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Best books from North America (1137)
241.

33 Revolutions by Canek Sánchez Guevara EN

0 Ratings
Country: North America / Cuba flag 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

242.

Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier, John Sturrock EN

Rating: 2 (1 vote)
Country: North America / Cuba flag 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.

243.

The Vulnerable Observer : Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart by Ruth Behar EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: North America / Cuba flag Cuba
Description:
The 25th-anniversary edition of the groundbreaking book that changed anthropology, asserting that ethnographers needn’t exclude themselves or their vulnerabilities from their work In a new epilogue to this classic work, renowned ethnographer and storyteller Ruth Behar reflects on the groundbreaking impact The Vulnerable Observer has had on anthropology, sociology, and psychology and on scholarly writing. A pocket companion for writers, journalists, documentarians, and activists alike, this book speaks to the power of including oneself in the story, bringing deeper meaning to the relationship b... continue

244.

Waiting for Snow in Havana : Confessions of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: North America / Cuba flag Cuba
Description:
A survivor of the Cuban Revolution recounts his pre-war childhood as the religiously devout son of a judge, and describes the conflict's violent and irrevocable impact on his friends, family, and native home.


246.

The Black Cathedral by Marcial Gala EN

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Country: North America / Cuba flag Cuba
Description:
Haunting and transcendently twisted, this English-language debut from a Cuban literary star is a tale of race, magic, belief, and fate The Stuart family moves to a marginal neighborhood of Cienfuegos, a city on the southern coast of Cuba. Arturo Stuart, a charismatic, visionary preacher, discovers soon after arriving that God has given him a mission: to build a temple that surpasses any before seen in Cuba, and to make of Cienfuegos a new Jerusalem. In a neighborhood that roils with passions and conflicts, at the foot of a cathedral that rises higher day by day, there grows a generation marked... continue

247.

Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutierrez EN

Rating: 1 (1 vote)
Country: North America / Cuba flag Cuba
Description:
Pedro Juan used to be a reporter in Havana, but as life in Cuba and his own life begin to collapse around him, he gives up the farce of a daily job, and begins to train himself to take nothing seriously. His training involves lots of sex, drugs, rum, jazz, beat literature and street philosophy.


249.

Sab by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: North America / Cuba flag Cuba
Description:
This tale of a slave's unrequited love for the woman who owns him is set in nineteenth-century colonial Cuba and was the only feminist-abolitionist novel published during the century in Spain or its colonies. This unique text raises important issues concerning power, race, gender and class in colonial societies, colonial and post-colonial subjectivity and identities, feminist appropriations of the abolitionist agenda, human rights discourse, and literary and philosophical issues associated with enlightenment thought. This new annotated critical edition is the first to provide the original Span... continue