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 (558)
471.

Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
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.

472.

The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu by Augusto Higa Oshiro EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
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

473.

La Ciudad de las Bestias by Isabel Allende ES

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
En este primer volumen de las «Memorias del Águila y el Jaguar» Alexander Cold va a vivir una aventura que jamás olvidará. Alexander Cold es un muchacho americano de quince años que parte al Amazonas con su abuela Kate, periodista especializada en viajes. La expedición se interna en la selva en busca de una extraña bestia gigantesca. Junto a su compañera de viaje, Nadia Santos, y un centenario chamán indígena, Alex conocerá un mundo sorprendente. El universo ya conocido de Isabel Allende se amplía en La Ciudad de las bestias con nuevos elementos de realismo mágico, aventura y naturaleza. Los j... continue

474.

Here Be Icebergs by Katya Adaui EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
The weird, fetid, familiar discomfort of family is front and centre in these short stories of all the ways we remain a mystery to each other. The mysteries of kinship (families born into and families made) take disconcerting and familiar shapes in these refreshingly frank short stories. A family is haunted by a beast that splatters fruit against its walls every night, another undergoes a near-collision with a bus on the way home from the beach. Mothers are cold, fathers are absent—we know these moments in the abstract, but Adaui makes each as uncanny as our own lives: close but not yet underst... continue

475.

The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende EN

0 Ratings
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea comes “a bold exploration of womanhood, feminism, parenting, aging, love and more” (Associated Press). “The Soul of a Woman is Isabel Allende’s most liberating book yet.”—Elle “When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,” begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without “resources or voice.” Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn’t have. As a young woman com... continue

476.

The Wind Knows My Name : A Novel by Isabel Allende EN

Rating: 5 (6 votes)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “The lives of a Jewish boy escaping Nazi-occupied Europe and a mother and daughter fleeing twenty-first-century El Salvador intersect in this ambitious, intricate novel about war and immigration” (People), from the author of A Long Petal of the Sea and Violeta “Timely, provocative . . . emotionally satisfying . . . [a story about] the kindness of strangers who become family.”—The New York Times Book Review AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht—the night his family loses everything. As her ... continue

477.

Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
In a novel where the setting moves from the sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue to the lavish parlors of New Orleans at the turn of the 19th century, an African slave and concubine is determined to claim her own destiny against impossible odds. (historical fiction). By the author of The Sum of Our Days.

478.

The Means That Make Us Strangers by Christine Kindberg EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
Home is where your people are. But who are your people? Adelaide has lived her whole life in rural Ethiopia as the white American daughter of an anthropologist. Then her family moves to South Carolina, in 1964. Adelaide vows to find her way back to Ethiopia, marry Maicaah, and become part of the village for real. But until she turns eighteen, Adelaide must adjust to this strange, white place that everyone tells her is home. Then Adelaide becomes friends with the five African-American students who sued for admission into the white high school. Even as she navigates her family's expectations and... continue

479.

Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende EN

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
**The moving novel from the multi-million-bestselling author of The House of the Spirits and The Japanese Lover** Irene Beltrán is a force to be reckoned with. As a magazine journalist – an unusual profession for a woman with her privileged upbringing – she is constantly challenging the oppressive regime. Her investigative partner is photographer Francisco Leal, the son of impoverished Spanish Marxist émigrés. They are an inseparable team, and – despite Irene’s engagement to an army captain – form a passionate connection. When an assignment leads them to uncover an unspeakable crime, they are ... continue

480.

The Dust Never Settles by Karina Lickorish Quinn EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
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