Return to the Dark Valley - Softcover

Gamboa, Santiago

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1609454251 ISBN 13: 9781609454258

Publisher: Europa Editions, 2017

Synopsis

A kaleidoscopic, cosmopolitan novel infused with inky noir

Return to the Dark Valley tells the stories of four immigrants united by their need to return to their place of origin and exact vengeance in some form. Manuela Beltrán, haunted by a troubled childhood she tries to escape through books and poetry; Tertuliano, an Argentine preacher who claims to be the Pope's son, ready to resort to extreme methods to create a harmonious society; Ferdinand Palacios, a Colombian priest with a dark paramilitary past now confronted with his guilt; Juana and the consul, central characters in Gamboa's Night Prayers, who are united in a relationship based equally on hurt and need. And Rimbaud, the precocious, brilliant poet whose life was incessant exploration.

These characters animate Gamboa's richly imagined portrait of a turbulent world where liberation is found in perpetual movement and determined exploration.

About this title

Review:

Praise for Santiago Gamboa
"Gamboa's talent at cultivating intrigue and the extravagant energy of his stories make him compulsive reading."
--Times Literary Supplement
"Brilliantly translated, Night Prayers is an incredible reading experience with a pounding heart and wisdom to boot."
--Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore
"Gamboa's work calls to mind Roberto Bolano in its masterful suspense, complex literary references, and frank depiction of violence, sex, and drugs."
--Publisher's Weekly
"Gamboa's storytelling impresses."
--The Complete Review
"Gamboa's strength is an apparently inexhaustible stream of narriative invention, an addictive 'and then, and then' quality that, at its best, erupts into flourishes of breathtaking poetry."
--Shelf Awareness

"Each novel by Santiago Gamboa is at the forefront of the best Latin American novels. Gamboa dismantles the legacy of Chandler and Hammett, adapting it to the craggy environs of Colombia, and adds to it a tireless sense of ethics. His novels revitalize a genre that we thought could do no more."
--Martin Solares, author of The Black Minutes

"This novel stands on its own as a masterwork of storytelling."
--Publishers Weekly about Necropolis
"A work that is by turns tender, farcical, explicit, bombastic and never less than engrossing."
--The Irish Times about Necropolis

About the Author:

Novelist, short story writer, and journalist, Santiago Gamboa was born in Colombia in 1965. His American debut, published by Europa in 2012, was the novel Necropolis, winner of the Otra Orilla Literary Prize. He is also the author of Night Prayers (Europa Editions, 2016).

About this edition

• Publisher: Europa Editions
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1609454251
• ISBN 13: 9781609454258
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464