New York: Riverhead Books, 2011. 1st Edition thus . Soft cover. Near Fine. 21504 shelf. Unread. Trade paperback, pictorial brown/beige covers. Remainder mk bottom edge. New barcode sticker back cover. No names, clean text. Trans. from the Spanish by Anne McLean.

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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Bookseller: Gil's Book Loft (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #: 065215
Title: The Secret History of Costaguana
Author: Vasquez, Juan Gabriel
Format/Binding: Soft cover
Book Condition: Used - Near Fine
Quantity Available: 1
Edition: 1st Edition thus
Binding: Paperback
ISBN 10: 1594488037
ISBN 13: 9781594488030
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Place of Publication: New York
Date Published: 2011
Pages: 305
Keywords: South American literature

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