Three unconnected people travel north, each passing in isolation over one of the most troubled and controversial dividing lines in the world: the Mexico-US border. But in a melee of language and blood, their stories and the stories of those they meet – of a young serial killer, a waitress and graphic novelist and her lover (and former professor), and an outsider artist in a mental institution – gradually begin to coalesce. Daring in both its protagonists and its structure, Edmundo Paz Soldan's Norte is a fast-paced, vivid, and operatic blending of distinct voices. Together, they lay bare the darkness of the line over which these souls – like so many others – have passed. A prominent member of a new generation of Latin American writers, Paz Soldan stands in defiant opposition to the magical realism of the past century, instead grounding his work in political, economic, and historical realities. Norte is no exception; it is a tale of displacement and the very human costs of immigration. Shocking with its violence even as it thrills with its language, confounding rather than cowering under the cliche of the murderous, drug-dealing immigrant, "Norte" is a disquieting, imperative work – an undeniable reflection of our fragmented modern world.
About the Author
Born in Bolivia, Edmundo Paz Soldan is professor of Latin American literature at Cornell University. He is the multiple-award-winning author of five short story collections and ten novels, two of which, "Turing's Delirium" and "The Matter of Desire", have been translated into English.
Reviews
"This searing novel about three Latinos lost north of the border is not for the faint of heart... Paz Soldan perfectly modulates the tension, evincing our sympathy even as we recoil... We don't forgive, but we understand. This is the Bolivian-born Paz Soldan's miraculous gift. With unflinching realism and steely grace, 'Norte' reminds us why literature can do what journalism cannot: We inhabit the minds of people we'd prefer to forget" – Lili Wright, author of "Dancing with the Tiger", New York Times Book Review
"The lives of a mentally ill savant, a young artist, and a serial killer converge in a powerful novel that shuttles across the US-Mexico border. The wide-ranging Bolivia-born Paz Soldan delivers a small cross-section of very different lives of Latinos in the United States, better to counter casual generalizations about them. But 'Norte's' key strength is its well-formed individual characterizations... Paz Soldan effectively inhabits the interior lives of each of his three characters, and Miles's translation captures their distinct emotional flavors... A superb set of interlinked character studies" – Kirkus Reviews
"'Norte' is a rare book because it's about immigrants and heavily focused on the act of immigration, but neither of the immigrant characters are held up as models... This tangled, daring novel isn't just about violence – it's about roaming, missing home, and trying to find a place in the world... Paz Soldan is part of a new breed of writers from Latin America: fascinated by America, aware of its contradictions, concerned with the role of immigrants in our society, but not willing to go over the same well-trod narrative ground. 'Norte' isn't your typical immigrant story, but that's what makes it all the more powerful" – Richard Z. Santos, Kirkus Reviews
"Paz Soldan is one of the leading Bolivian writers of his generation... In truth his work is so multifaceted that any single classification disserves him... [This is] a sterling translation by editor and translator Miles. It traces three thematically interlocked narratives of Latin Americans who have made the border crossing and, to quote the author, have become 'lost in the US'. Containing elements of popular pulp fiction, academic satire, metafiction, and psychological realism, it is a riveting book that gives a complex perspective on the borderlands shared by the United States and Mexico" – Scott Esposito, BOMB
"These voices speak of displacement, grief, and loss, the result of the painful tension between the cultural self and the smothering seduction of the United States, el Norte... Paz Soldan has written a riveting and gritty story... What I find so appealing about 'Norte' is that Paz Soldan makes no attempt to sugarcoat the grim and persistent realities he portrays about immigrants who face being 'one more digit in a disposable labor force... at the cost of living without dreams'. He clearly asserts that the struggle against perder el norte is an arduous process of keeping one's soul on the immigrant journey; his novel is but one stop on that journey" – Russell J. MacMullan Jr., Washington Independent Review of Books
"Paz Soldan, who commutes fluently between his home country and his adopted one, is well placed to redress what he might call the global inequities of the imagination" – Pico Iyer, New York Times Book Review
"One of the most creative voices of modern Spanish-American literature" – Mario Vargas Llosa
"'Norte' stays with the reader not only because of the rhythm of its histories, but also because it says something transcendent about the horror of the present, the horror that it is impossible not to see as well as the one which is neatly camouflaged" – Yuri Herrera, author of "Signs Preceding the End of the World"
