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    The Wind That Lays Waste: A Novel
    The Wind That Lays Waste: A Novel
    The Wind That Lays Waste: A Novel
    Audiobook3 hours

    The Wind That Lays Waste: A Novel

    Written by Selva Almada

    Narrated by Almarie Guerra

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The Wind That Lays Waste begins in the great pause before a storm. Reverend Pearson is evangelizing across the Argentinian countryside with Leni, his teenage daughter, when their car breaks down. This act of God or fate leads them to the workshop and home of an aging mechanic called Gringo Brauer and a young boy named Tapioca.

    As a long day passes, curiosity and intrigue transform into an unexpected intimacy between four people: one man who believes deeply in God, morality, and his own righteousness, and another whose life experiences have only entrenched his moral relativism and mild apathy; a quietly earnest and idealistic mechanic's assistant, and a restless, skeptical preacher's daughter. As tensions between these characters ebb and flow, beliefs are questioned and allegiances are tested, until finally the growing storm breaks over the plains.

    Selva Almada's exquisitely crafted debut, with its limpid and confident prose, is profound and poetic, a tactile experience of the mountain, the sun, the squat trees, the broken cars, the sweat-stained shirts, and the destroyed lives. The Wind That Lays Waste is a philosophical, beautiful, and powerfully distinctive novel that marks the arrival in English of an author whose talent and poise are undeniable.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    TranslatorChris Andrews
    Release dateJul 9, 2019
    ISBN9781684573134
    The Wind That Lays Waste: A Novel
    Author

    Selva Almada

    Compared to Carson McCullers, William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, Selva Almada (Entre Ríos, Argentina, 1973) is considered one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Latin American literature and one of the most influential feminist intellectuals in the region. She has published several novels, a book of short stories, a book of journalistic fiction and a film diary (written on the set of Lucrecia Martel’s film Zama ). She has been finalist for the Medifé Prize, the Vargas Llosa Prize for Novels, the Rodolfo Walsh Award and of Tigre Juan Award. Her debut in English was The Wind that Lays Waste (Winner of the EIBF First Book Award 2019), followed by Dead Girls (2020), Brickmakers (2021), and Not a River (winner of the IILA Prize in Italy).

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    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      A preacher and his teenage daughter meet a mechanic and his naive apprentice when they brake down in the Argentinian countryside. This novella is an account of that single day. We get a brief and intriguing glimpse into the inner worlds of these four very different characters but there wasn't quite enough depth for me and a little too much of the preacher's preaching