Read Around South America Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in South America.
Best books from South America (778)
761.
The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka EN
Country: South America / 
Venezuela
Venezuela
Description:
"Dr. Miranda is coming to terms with a tragedy: his father has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and has only a few weeks to live. And yet the doctor--the son--finds it impossible to tell him. Ernesto Duran is convinced he is sick. Ever since he separated from his wife he has been presenting symptoms of an illness he believes is killing him. It becomes an obsession far exceeding hypochondria, and when Dr. Miranda gives up responding to his letters and e-mails, Duran resolves to stalk him. The fixationhas its own creeping effect on Miranda's secretary, who cannot, despite her best intentions... continue
762.
Sleeping Dragons: Stories by Magela Baudoin EN
Country: South America / Venezuela
Venezuela
Description:
Baudoin’s beguiling portrayals of day-to-day lives belie the unsettling feeling of things unseen and unsaid, and on the verge of falling apart. In the title story, a pregnant woman on an eco-adventure to escape a recent break-up finds herself heading towards an even murkier future. In "Mengele in Love," a chambermaid in a hotel reminisces about her lost love for a previous resident. As Alberto Manguel observes in his introduction "each story takes a situation to unexpected extremes, and the endings are always surprising and subtly justified.
763.
Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela by Alejandro Velasco EN
Country: South America / Venezuela
Venezuela
Description:
"In the mid-1950s, in an effort to modernize Venezuela, the military government razed dozens of slums in the heart of the capital Caracas, replacing them with massive buildings to house the city's working poor. The project remained unfinished when the dictatorship fell on January 23, 1958, and in a matter of days city residents illegally occupied thousands of apartments, squatted on green spaces, and renamed the neighborhood to honor the emerging democracy: the 23 de Enero (January 23). Over the next thirty years, through eviction efforts, guerrilla conflict, state violence, internal strife, a... continue
764.
Freedom Is a Feast by Alejandro Puyana EN
Country: South America / Venezuela
Venezuela
Description:
"Venezuela, 1964. Stanislavo, a zealous young man whose vision is clouded by his high ideals, turns his back on his family and privilege to join an underground communist movement. During his first mission, Stanislavo meets Emiliana, a fellow revolutionary. Though it seems to be love at first sight, their budding romance is cut short by a single mistake with disastrous consequences. Forty years later, the landscape of Venezuelan politics is drastically changed, as well as the trajectories of Stanislavo's and Emiliana's lives. When a young boy is accidentally shot on the eve of President Chávez'... continue
765.
Crimes by Alberto Barrera Tyszka EN
Country: South America / Venezuela
Venezuela
Description:
Unexplained blood stains appear in a young couple's apartment; a disembodied hand is found in a rubbish dump; political prisoners resort to horrific measures in order to make a point. In this brilliant new collection of stories, Alberto Barrera Tyszka casts an eye on the violence that afflicts Latin America, and in particular its intimate effects on the individuals who suffer and inflict it. Mixing the surreal with the quotidian, the banal with the unspeakable, Tyszka has created a fragmentary panorama of man's misdeeds against his own kind. These windingly elliptical stories are ceaselessly s... continue
766.
No Place to Bury the Dead by Karina Sainz Borgo EN
Country: South America / Venezuela
Venezuela
Description:
"[A] rich and lyrical tale of desperation and redemption . . . Throughout, Sainz Borgo applies stark poetry to the terrifying setting, where 'moans and cries attributed to ghosts sometimes masked executions and beatings.' It's a stunner." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "[A] deeply felt meditation on migration, mourning and the simultaneous entanglement and estrangement of the living and the dead" --Los Angeles Times Winner of the 2023 Jan Michalski Prize, a searing novel of loss and resilience that illuminates the often-overlooked human dimension of the migrant crisis, re-imagining the b... continue
767.
Country: South America / Venezuela
Venezuela
Description:
'READING THIS TERRIFIC, ORWELLIAN NOVEL YOU ALMOST HOLD YOUR BREATH' Bel Mooney An alternative history with a strong feminist twist, perfect for fans of Robert Harris' Fatherland, Christina Dalcher's Vox and the dystopian novels of Margaret Atwood. 'A TRIUMPH' Amanda Craig 'CONVINCING AND GRIPPING' Elizabeth Buchan 'BRILLIANTLY IMAGINED' Clare Chambers 'TERRIFIC HEROINE' Adèle Geras 'VIVIDLY IMAGINED' Nicci French To control the past, they edited history. To control the future, they edited literature. London, 1953, Coronation year - but not the Coronation of Elizabeth II. Thirteen years have p... continue
768.
Madhouse : A Suspenseful Horror by Miguel Estrada EN
Country: South America / Venezuela
Venezuela
Description:
Don't talk to strangers... Faced with his parents' divorce, eleven-year-old Lucas runs away from home in the hope that his family will get back together to find him. While walking through the empty streets, he is picked up by a mysterious woman, who offers to take care of him and provide him with a loving family. The boy then wakes up in shackles, confined to a bed in a decrepit house in the middle of nowhere and will have to face his deepest fears in order to survive in his new home. Join Lucas in a desperate attempt to get back to his family in Madhouse, the first published book from horror-... continue
769.
The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos by Margaret Mascarenhas EN
Country: South America / Venezuela
Venezuela
Description:
Internationally acclaimed author Margaret Mascarenhas makes her US debut with an exquisite novel set in Venezuela about the search for individual truth, love, and belonging, embodied in a fifteen-year-old girl. Irene dos Santos disappeared at age 15. Believed to have drowned while on holiday with her best friend, Lily Martinez, her body was never found. Now, years later, she appears ghostlike in Lily's dreams, prompting a quest for the truth behind her disappearance. Mysteriously, Lily, eight-months pregnant with her first child, slips and falls on the same day that the statue of Maria Lionza,... continue
770.
The Bastards by Bertène Juminer, A. James Arnold, Kandioura Drame, Keith O. Warner EN
Country: South America / 
French Guiana
French Guiana
Description:
This is a novel of education: social, political, radical, and medical. The protagonist is collective, a group of medical students from French Guiana at the University of Montpellier, France, who learn what separates them as Caribbean people from their French and African counterparts. Juminer characterizes the three principal types of men drawn together in the stuggle for emancipation: "those who sooner or later will opt for violence; those who, by their sterling example, prefer to work patiently in the socioprofessional arena, in order to instill a certain moral and civic sense in their countr... continue