The Secret History of Costaguana
by Vasquez, Juan Gabriel
- Used
- Condition
- Used - Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 1594485828
- ISBN 13
- 9781594485824
- Seller
-
Mishawaka, Indiana, United States
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About This Item
Synopsis
A bold historical novel from "one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature" (Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature). In the early twentieth century, a struggling Joseph Conrad wrote his great novel Nostromo, about a South American republic he named Costaguana. It was inspired by the geography and history of Colombia, where Conrad spent only a few days. But in Juan Gabriel Vásquez's novel The Secret History of Costaguana, we uncover the hidden source- and one of the great literary thefts. On the day of Joseph Conrad's death in 1924, the Colombian-born José Altamirano begins to write and cannot stop. Many years before, he confessed to Conrad his life's every delicious detail-from his country's heroic revolutions to his darkest solitary moments. Conrad stole them all. Now Conrad is dead, but the slate is by no means clear- Nostromo will live on and Altamirano must write himself back into existence. As the destinies of real empires collide with the murky realities of imagined ones, Vásquez takes us from a flourishing twentieth-century London to the lawless fury of a blooming Panama and back. Tragic and despairing, comic and insightful, The Secret History of Costaguana is a masterpiece of historical invention. It will secure Juan Gabriel Vásquez's place among the most original and exuberantly talented novelists working today.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Better World Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 46620552-6
- Title
- The Secret History of Costaguana
- Author
- Vasquez, Juan Gabriel
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Paperback
- ISBN 10
- 1594485828
- ISBN 13
- 9781594485824
- Publisher
- Penguin Publishing Group
- This edition first published
- 2012-08-07
Terms of Sale
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