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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > The Armies

The Armies

If you ask Colombians how Evelio Rosero’s novel fares in his own country they tell you that you will scarcely find a copy. This magisterial, beautiful, book is effectively suppressed.

What is going on in that endlessly tortured country cannot go on being suppressed and ignored outside Colombia.

Ismael, a retired school teacher in a small Colombian village, gathers oranges, admires beautiful women and has, in the opening pages, an idyllic everyday life. Then the village is ransacked by an obscure militia, he is thrown into the fray and his mental stability collapses. The horrors which overwhelm the inhabitants of this village have become an everyday occurrence in Colombia. Villagers are kidnapped, killed, they disappear at the hands of unidentified groups – the armies of the title: guerillas, paramilitaries, drugs traffickers. Rosero does not directly describe the reality of an unpredictable, violent world, he imitates it in the mind of a man going mad. In this story, no-one is spared, no-one is protected.

Author

Evelio Rosero

Evelio Rosero

Books

The Armies

Feast of the Innocents

Evelio Rosero studied Social Communication in the Externado University of Colombia. In 2006 he was awarded the Tusquets National Prize for Literature in Colombia for his novel Los Ejércitos.

Translator

Anne McLean

Anne McLean

Books

The Armies

The Anatomy of a Moment

The Sound of Things Falling

Feast of the Innocents

The All Saints' Day Lovers

The Sorrows of Mexico

The Shape of the Ruins

Anne McLean has translated works by many Spanish and Latin American authors including Hector Abad, Carmen Martín Gaite, Julio Cortázar, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Enrique Vila-Matas, Tomás Eloy Martínez and Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

Published by

MacLehose Press, 2008
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If you ask Colombians how Evelio Rosero’s novel fares in his own country they tell you that you will scarcely find a copy. This magisterial, beautiful, book is effectively suppressed.

What is going on in that endlessly tortured country cannot go on being suppressed and ignored outside Colombia.

Ismael, a retired school teacher in a small Colombian village, gathers oranges, admires beautiful women and has, in the opening pages, an idyllic everyday life. Then the village is ransacked by an obscure militia, he is thrown into the fray and his mental stability collapses. The horrors which overwhelm the inhabitants of this village have become an everyday occurrence in Colombia. Villagers are kidnapped, killed, they disappear at the hands of unidentified groups – the armies of the title: guerillas, paramilitaries, drugs traffickers. Rosero does not directly describe the reality of an unpredictable, violent world, he imitates it in the mind of a man going mad. In this story, no-one is spared, no-one is protected.

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