Read Around North America Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in North America.
Best books from North America (1210)
261.
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
262.
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
263.
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.
264.
The Vulnerable Observer : Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart by Ruth Behar EN
Country: North America / Cuba
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
265.
Waiting for Snow in Havana : Confessions of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire EN
Country: North America / Cuba
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.
266.
267.
The Black Cathedral by Marcial Gala EN
Country: North America / Cuba
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
268.
Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutierrez EN
Country: North America / Cuba
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.
270.
Sab by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda EN
Country: North America / Cuba
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