Books by country South America
Five books by writers from Argentina, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with Kiss of the Spider Woman and Rayuela.
Argentine literature has a national epic in José Hernández's Martín Fierro, a poem about a gaucho, or pampas horseman, first published in 1872. Later writers keep returning to it, and to the plains, the city of Buenos Aires and the military dictatorship of 1976 to 1983. Writing in Spanish, Jorge Luis Borges made his name with short stories, and his Ficciones gathers labyrinthine tales that draw on libraries and the pampas, though several are set in imagined spaces.
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara's The Adventures of China Iron retells the Martín Fierro story from a queer angle on the nineteenth-century pampas. Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman shuts two men in a Buenos Aires prison cell during the 1970s dictatorship. Marcelo Figueras's Kamchatka shows the Dirty War through a boy whose family goes underground in 1976.
“Find a copy” goes to Bookshop.org. If you buy, we earn a small commission and independent bookshops get a share too.
Two men share a Buenos Aires prison cell under the 1970s dictatorship, with film, politics and sexuality at the centre.
Half the novel follows Argentine bohemian exiles in Paris, but its Buenos Aires chapters capture the city's intellectual life and the homesick porteño mind.
A queer reimagining of the gaucho epic Martín Fierro, set on the 19th-century pampas amid frontier violence and colonisation.
A boy's family goes underground in 1976 as the military junta takes power, showing the Dirty War through a child's eyes.
Borges's labyrinthine stories draw on Buenos Aires libraries, the pampas and Argentine literary culture, though several are set in imagined or abstract spaces.
Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Ecuador Guyana Paraguay Peru Suriname Uruguay Venezuela