The Armies
ABOUT
THE BOOK
In the town of San Jose in the remote mountains of Colombia, Ismael, a retired teacher, spends his mornings gathering oranges in the sunshine and spying on his neighbour as she sunbathes naked in her garden. It is a languid existence, pierced only by his wife’s scolding; which induces in him the furtive guild of an ageing voyeur.
Ismael returns from an early morning walk one day and cannot find his wife. The old man is fearful, for soon more people begin to go missing, and gradually bursts of gunfire can be heard in the distance. Sensing war drawing near, most pf the villagers make their escape but Ismael decides to stay, becoming an unwilling witness to the senseless violence steadily sweeping through his country.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Anne
McLean
Anne McLean translates Latin American and Spanish novels, short stories, memoirs, and other writings. She has twice won both the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán, and received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award with Juan Gabriel Vásquez for his novel The Sound of Things Falling. She lives in Toronto.
Anne McLean translates Latin American and Spanish novels, short stories, memoirs, and other writings. She has twice won both the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán, and received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award with Juan Gabriel Vásquez for his novel The Sound of Things Falling. She lives in Toronto.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
The author gives a voice to people in Colombia’s small towns whose lives are affected by events going on around them (guerrillas, paramilitaries, national army) and suffer desperation confusion, kidnapping, murder and rape.