The Banana Wars

Alan Grostephan

Hardcover

Regular price$27.95With free membership trial$13.9850% off your first book+ Free shipping

In Stock– Ships within one business day

Do you recommend this book?

Yes!

Winner of the Dzanc Prize
for Fiction

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.

Book Details

Publisher: Dzanc Books
Publish Date: May 14th, 2024
Pages: 280
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.70in - 1.00in - 1.05lb
EAN: 9781950539949
Categories: • Literary• Historical - 20th Century - General• World Literature - Colombia

About the Author

Grostephan, Alan: - 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.

Praise for this book

"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

"Grim yet affecting...This war story stands out for its
heartrending portrait of the conflict's impact on individual lives."
--Publishers Weekly

"Grostephan traces the shifting fortunes of several
characters in 1990s Colombia ... a harrowing tale of survival at increasingly
brutal costs." --Kirkus Reviews

"Here is a novel in which dead men still speak 'for not even the dead shut their mouths.' The Banana Wars is as fine a novel as Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo or Fernanda Melchor's Hurricane Season. Alan Grostephan's prose is devastatingly precise, with a beauty that arises--perversely--only from horrifying situations. I have not read anything as fine as The Banana Wars in ages."
--Michelle Latiolais, author of Widow and She

"In Urabá, Columbia, the banana trade is an extremely violent and unsettling history, one that Grostephan resists sugarcoating. Unlike an actual banana, there is nothing banal or mild about The Banana Wars. Told from several compelling perspectives, this novel is blistering, unflinching, and hard to put down."
--Jen Beagin, author of Big Swiss and Vacuum in the Dark

"Don't let banana in this title alleviate war in any way for you. From its opening quote by A.S. Ramos to its final chapter, Alan Grostephan's THE BANANA WARS is a riveting and indispensable novel that hails life as monumental, and the only force of the Universe worth talking about--fuck all them Riders of the Apocalypse! It just so happens that life burns brightest when its opposing forces are present and Grostephan knows this well; he is marvelous at detail, an engrossing storyteller and a deep feeler to boot. What a book! It was both a surprise and a balm for this war-torn heart and mind to read it."
--Ismet Prcic, author of Shards and Unspeakable Home

"I dare you to enjoy a banana split after you've read Alan
Grostephan's gut-wrenching novel The Banana Wars. Vividly
written, unforgettably peopled, ranging across a landscape at once horrific and
sublime, The Banana Wars will wring you out, leaving you at once
exhausted and enriched, the way every good book exacts something from you even
as it feeds your soul." -Angel Khoury, bestselling author of Between
Tides

"A searing account of the ongoing consequences of colonial
power structures in Colombia. What strikes me about The Banana Wars is
the keen, journalistic eye and the refusal to look away from the lives and
power struggles of everyday people--guerillas, paramilitary soldiers, sex
workers, plantation owners and their backers overseas--all of whom are trapped
in a brutal system of exploitation and madness." -Blair Austin, author of Dioramas

"Alan Grostephan writes with lush exuberance as though he
were a Garcia Marquez's nephew. Confidently the narrative follows several
people, switching POVs along the way, so we have a nearly omniscient
picture of the class warfare, crime, and the mystery centered around the magic
fruit, and at the same time intimate and sensual details. Cinematic. Each
sentence delights." -Josip Novakovich, author of Rubble of Rubles