Happy paperback Pub Day to “The banana wars” by alan grostephan
“The novel’s scenes are compact and eventful, and its sentences direct and percussive. The hardboiled depiction of extreme lawlessness invites comparisons to Graham Greene. And like Phil Klay’s outstanding novel “Missionaries” (2020), also about America’s interventions in Colombia’s civil unrest, the realistic story doubles as a kind of allegory of modern war, in which alliances and rationales are fluid, money is primary and violence generates more violence. ‘It was transgression to be alive,’ Orejas thinks in a particularly infernal scene, and there is a sense in this powerful novel that freedom from sin is only truly granted to the dead.” —Wall Street Journal
Urabá, Colombia, 1990: A violent strike at plantations across the banana zone leads to crops in flames, managers murdered, and the local economy teetering on the brink. In retaliation, the banana producers finance right-wing paramilitaries to cleanse the zone of guerrillas and their supposed collaborators.
Through the intertwined lives of four characters—a banana worker making a play for power in the guerrillas, a decadent Colombian banana planter who runs his business from the safety of Medellín, a widow in Urabá struggling to stay on the right side of the local paramilitaries, and an American banana executive wading ever deeper into troubled waters—The Banana Wars charts the struggle to survive in impossible conditions, in a place where no one is to be trusted and one false move can lead to death.
Starkly drawn from the true history of Urabá and this period of conflict, including the unseen role of US corporate interests, celebrated author Alan Grostephan’s latest is an incandescent historical novel for fans of Jesmyn Ward, Roberto Bolaño, and Fernanda Melchor.
Click here to get your copy of The Banana Wars!
about the author
Alan Grostephan is the author of Bogotá, a novel chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best ten books of fiction in 2013 and longlisted for the Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize. He is also the editor and translator of "Stories of Life and Death," a collection of writing by emerging Colombian writers. He lives in Georgia.