Books by country South America
Five books that put you in Venezuela. Four are by writers from Venezuela and set there, starting with It Would Be Night in Caracas and Doña Bárbara. The other is a wider pick, by someone who knows the place well.
Venezuela's best-known novel is Doña Bárbara (1929) by Rómulo Gallegos, whose name also graces one of the Spanish-language world's major fiction prizes. Most Venezuelan writing is in Spanish, and Caracas, birthplace of Simón Bolívar, is the setting for much of it, from colonial times to the present. Many writers now work abroad; Karina Sainz Borgo lives in Madrid.
Teresa de la Parra's Iphigenia: The Diary of a Young Lady Who Wrote Because She Was Bored is a witty portrait of upper-class Caracas life and the limits placed on women. Sainz Borgo's It Would Be Night in Caracas leaves a woman alone in a collapsing, violent city in the Chavista era. Ana Teresa Torres's Doña Inés vs. Oblivion traces one Caracas family from colonial times to the modern era.
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A woman is left alone in a collapsing, violent Caracas in the Chavista era, where housing, scarcity and fear drive the plot.
The classic novel of the Llanos plains, setting civilisation against lawless cattle country through a ruthless landowner and the man who challenges her.
A witty early twentieth-century portrait of upper-class Caracas life and the constraints placed on women.
A multigenerational Caracas family saga spanning colonial times to the modern era, about memory, class and the country's history.
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for Venezuela.
A musician's journey upriver into the Orinoco jungle, contrasting modern city life with an almost timeless interior.
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