Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... A Tale of the Dispossessedby Laura Restrepo
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. You know how sometimes you read a story and then think, "Eh"? This novella of a foreigner (presumably American) working at a refugee shelter in war-torn Columbia and falling for a native man searching for everything that has been lost to violence, symbolically in the search for one woman, has promise and needed full length novel treatment in my opinion. As a novella needing to pack a shorter and less developed punch, it leaves too much on the table. Restrepo has been lauded by Garcia Marquez and by critics generally, so I'll try another of her books. ( ) no reviews | add a review
"How can I tell him that he will never find her, after he has been searching for her all his life? If I could talk to him without breaking his heart, there is something I would tell him, in hopes it would stop his sleepless nights and wrongheaded search for a shadow. I would repeat this to him: 'Your Matilde Lina is in limbo, the dwelling place of those who are neither dead nor alive.' But that would be like severing the roots of the tree that supports him. Besides, why do it if he is not going to believe me." In the midst of war, the protagonists of A Tale of the Dispossessed are continuously searching: for a promised land, a destiny, the face of a woman who has disappeared -- searching for an impossible love and, conversely, for a love that is possible. A way station for refugees from violence is the setting for an intense love triangle in which an uprooted and wandering people lead the reader to experience the collective drama of forced relocation. A Tale of the Dispossessed speaks to us about the inexorable law that has led man, expelled from paradise since the days of Adam through to modern times, in his search for a way back home. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)863.7Literature Spanish and Portuguese Spanish fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |