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Genre/Form: | Fiction Historical fiction Romans, nouvelles, etc |
---|---|
Named Person: | Joseph Conrad; Joseph Conrad; Joseph Conrad |
Material Type: | Fiction |
Document Type: | Book |
All Authors / Contributors: |
Juan Gabriel Vásquez; Anne McLean |
ISBN: | 9781594488030 1594488037 |
OCLC Number: | 1004982223 |
Description: | 283 pages ; 21 cm |
Other Titles: | Historia secreta de Costaguana. |
Responsibility: | Juan Gabriel Vasquez ; translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean. |
Abstract:
"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."--Publisher.
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Related Subjects:(14)
- Conrad, Joseph, -- 1857-1924 -- Fiction.
- Conrad, Joseph, -- 1857-1924. -- Nostromo -- Fiction.
- Colombians Dalston (London, England) -- Fiction.
- Novelists, English -- 20th century -- Fiction.
- Fiction -- Authorship -- Fiction.
- Colombia -- Fiction.
- Romanciers anglais -- 20e siècle -- Romans, nouvelles, etc.
- Roman -- Art d'écrire -- Romans, nouvelles, etc.
- Conrad, Joseph, -- 1857-1924.
- Colombians.
- Fiction -- Authorship.
- Novelists, English.
- Colombia.
- England -- London.