Skip to Main Content

International Education Week 2022: South America

Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar

Hopscotch

by Julio Cortázar | Argentina

When La Maga, his mistress, disappears, Horacio Oliveira, an Argentinian writer living in Paris, decides to return home to Buenos Aires.

Seconds Out by Martin Kohan

Seconds Out

by Martin Kohan | Argentina

A novel built around the controversial 1923 world title fight between American champion Jack Dempsey and Argentine challenger Luis Angel Firpo.

American Visa by Juan de Recacoechea

American Visa

by Juan de Recacoechea | Bolivia

Armed with fake papers, a handful of gold nuggets, and a snazzy custom-made suit, an unemployed schoolteacher with a singular passion for detective fiction sets out from small-town Bolivia on a desperate quest for an American visa, his best hope for escaping his painful past and reuniting with his grown son in Miami.

Heliopolis by James Scudamore

Heliopolis

by James Scudamore | Brazil

Raised in the affluent communities of Säao Paulo, Ludo works to promote a supermarket chain that targets the city's poorest residents, and must navigate through his uncomfortable place in the city's class divide.

House of the Fortunate Buddhas by Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro

House of the Fortunate Buddhas

by Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro | Brazil

A searingly funny and passionate fictional monologue of woman who refuses to accept the constraints of life in 1950s Brazil.

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolano | Chile

New Year's Eve, 1975: Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, founders of the visceral realist movement in poetry, leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their quest: To track down the obscure, vanished poet Cesarea Tinajero. A violent showdown in the Sonora desert turns search to flight; twenty years later Belano and Lima are still on the run.

The Armies by Evelio Rosero

The Armies

by Evelio Rosero | Columbia

An elderly retired teacher is caught up in drug wars which slowly destroy his small town.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez | Columbia

The rise and fall, birth and death, of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family.

Huasipungo by Jorge Icaza

Huasipungo

by Jorge Icaza | Ecuador

Story of the ruthless exploitation and extermination of an Indian village of Ecuador by its greedy landlord.

Buxton Spice by Oonya Kempadoo

Buxton Spice

by Oonya Kempadoo | Guyana

A girl's sexual awakening in Guyana, portrayed against the background of political turmoil between blacks and Indians. The heroine is Lula and she narrates her sexual escapades with pornographic frankness.

"Encounter with the Traitor" in Between the Lines

by Augusto Roa Bastos | Paraguay

Reveals the story, in a foreign street, of an old cause not redeemed. A random encounter that makes fate emerge showing the other side of the facts.

Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa

Death in the Andes

by Mario Vargas Llosa | Peru

Evocatively intermingling past and present, the corporeal and the spiritual, "Death in the Andes" offers a fascinating panoramic view of contemporary Peru, telling the story of the disappearance of three men from a remote Andean village and the soldiers called in to investigate.

The Cost of Sugar by Cynthia McLeod

The Cost of Sugar

by Cynthia McLeod | Suriname

A frank exposé of life in a Dutch colony when sugar was king and demanded the consummate allegiance of all—colonists and slaves—regardless of the tragic consequence.

The Shipyard by Juan Carlos Onetti

The Shipyard

by Juan Carlos Onetti | Uruguay

In the provincial Argentine town of Santa Maria, Larsen is offered the job of general manager of Jeremias Petrus Ltd., and given the task of restoring the bankrupt shipyard.

Iphigenia by Teresa de la Parra

Iphigenia : The Diary of a Young Lady Who Wrote Because She Was Bored

by Teresa de la Parra | Venezuela

The story of Maria Eugenia Alonso, a girl brought up in France and forced to return to Venezuela when her father dies. Having had her inheritance stolen by an uncle, the family puts her up for marriage.

 

The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka

The Sickness

by Alberto Barrera Tyszka | Venezuela

Ernesto Duran is convinced that he is sick. Ever since he separated from his wife he has been presenting symptoms of an illness which he believes is killing him. It becomes an obsession far exceeding hypochondria, and when Dr. Andres Miranda gives up responding to his letters and e-mails, Duran resolves to stalk him.

Ask a Librarian