La Cuadra / The Block [Spanish]

By Gilmer Mesa

Book Overview

Con una energ a y un dolor latentes, como si no hubieran transcurrido veinticinco a os desde la muerte de su hermano, el narrador recuerda c mo fue crecer en Aranjuez, su barrio, en la turbulenta Medell n de finales de los a os ochenta. Acorralados por la pobreza, el tedio y la desesperanza, los adolescentes de la cuadra no ten an otra alternativa que la violencia: para ser alguien deb an empu ar un arma, sin importarles que a la vuelta los esperara, inevitablemente, la muerte. Desoladora, emotiva, apasionante, esta novela testimonial es m s que la historia de unos j venes; es, de alg n modo, el espejo de una poca y de un pa s."En La cuadra, Gilmer Mesa recrea de primera mano la vida de una de las comunas de Medell n en los a os ochenta-noventa, desde un ngulo absolutamente nuevo y original: el de un sobreviviente, alguien que estuvo ah y que, al evocar la muerte de su adorado hermano mayor, transforma ese mundo inquietante, con toda su violencia y a la vez su extra a ternura, en un poderoso espacio literario".
Santiago Gamboa
ENGLISH DESCRIPTIONWith latent pain and energy, as though it hadn't been twenty-five years since his brother's death, the narrator remembers what it was like to grow up in Aranjuez, his neighborhood, in the turbulent Medellin of the late 1980s.Trapped by poverty, boredom, and desperation, the teenagers of the block had no alternative but violence: to be someone, they had to wield a weapon, without caring that just around the corner, inevitably, death was waiting for them.Heartbreaking, moving, and thrilling, this testimonial novel is more than the story of some young people; it is, in some ways, a window into a country and an era."In The Block, Gilmer Mesa reproduces firsthand the life of one of the communities in Medellin in the '80s and '90s, from an absolutely new and original angle: that of a survivor, someone who was there and who, upon recalling the death of his adored older brother, transforms that unsettling world, with all its violence and at once its strange tenderness, into a powerful literary space." - Santiago Gamboa

• Format: Paperback
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN: 9588979137
• ISBN13: 9789588979137
• Release Date: February 2017
• Publisher: Literatura Random House
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 9.1"