Join ‘English PEN and the writer Evelio Rosero

News from 'ENGLISH PEN'
Writers in Translation are promoting an exciting book The Armies by an established Colombian author Evelio Rosero. Please join ‘English PEN’ and the writer at the London Review Bookshop on 21 October at 7pm. Tickets are available by calling the shop on 020 7269 9030.
Venue: London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, WC1A 2JL London
Evelio Rosero: The Armies
Tuesday 21 October

If you ask Colombians how Evelio Rosero's novel fares in his own country they tell you that you will scarcely find a copy. This magisterial, beautiful, book is effectively suppressed. What is going on in that endlessly tortured country cannot go on being suppressed and ignored outside Colombia. Ismael, a retired school teacher in a small Colombian village, gathers oranges, admires beautiful women and has, in the opening pages, an idyllic everyday life. Then the village is ransacked by an obscure militia and he is thrown into the fray and his mental stability collapses. The horrors which overwhelm the inhabitants of this village have become an everyday occurrence in Colombia. Villagers are kidnapped, killed, they disappear at the hands of unidentified groups - the armies of the title: guerillas, paramilitaries, drugs traffickers. Rosero does not directly describe the reality of an unpredictable, violent world, he imitates it in the mind of a man going mad. In this story, no-one is spared, no-one is protected.
Evelio Rosero studied Social Communication in the Externado University of Colombia. In 2006 he was awarded the Tusquets National Prize for Literature in Colombia for this novel Los Ejércitos.
Venue: London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, WC1A 2JL London
How to Book: Call the London Review Bookshop on 020 7629 9030.