Free shipping on all orders over $50
7-15 days international
13 people viewing this product right now!
30-day free returns
Secure checkout
69859521
"A knockout of a novel...we predict [Infinite Country] will be viewed as one of 2021's best." --O, The Oprah Magazine"An exquisitely told story of family, war, and migration, this is a novel our increasingly divided country wants and needs to read." --R.O. Kwon, Electric LiteratureI often wonder if we are living the wrong life in the wrong country.Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family in the north.How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope. We see Talia's parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and indecisions that lead to Mauro's deportation and the family's splintering--the costs they've all been living with ever since.Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their respective circumstances. And all the while, the metronome ticks. Will Talia make it to Bogotá in time? And if she does, can she bring herself to trade the solid facts of her father and life in Colombia for the distant vision of her mother and siblings in America?Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country is the story of two countries and one mixed-status family--for whom every triumph is stitched with regret, and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream deferred.
“I’ve had borders drawn around me all my life, but I refuse to live as a bordered person.”This is a stunning book about the sheer lunacy and cruelty we engender when we refuse to see others as human beings and resort to viewing them as “the other.” It’s been done before, but perhaps never quite as powerfully as in Patricia Engel’s elegantly written novelMauro and Elena fall in love, have a daughter Katrina, and immigrate lawfully to Texas in hopes of a better life. They then have a son, Nando, who is born a U.S. citizen. A third baby, Talia, comes along right at the time when Mauro is caught on trumped-up charges and deported back to Colombia. Elena can find menial work and someone to look after her older two, but not the baby. She arranges for Talia to return to her grandmother – and father – in Colombia with the hopes of reuniting.So there is the plot, in a nutshell. One child who is Colombian by birth growing up in a land where she is looked at askance. A son who is born in the U.S. and actually lives in his birth country. And a daughter, a U.S. citizen by birth, who is forced to grow up back in Colombia. And, of course, two parents who love each other but are separated, perhaps permanently.Yet it’s not the plot that drives Infinite Country. It is the artistic risks that Patricia Engel takes and the themes she tackles. Only Talia is given an active, exterior life and only Talia is firmly rooted in the present. The other characters are provided with back stories or internal reflections that are highlighted in spare and sometimes fragmented paragraphs or chapters that reveal a lot. For example, this: “Emigration was a peeling away of the skin. An undoing. You wake each morning and forget where you are, who you are, and when the world outside shows you your reflection, it’s ugly and distorted; you’ve become a scorned, unwanted character.” Just wow.Interspersed with the narrative is Colombian folklore, which provides a mythic framework to provide meaning to the present. The themes are universal: how do we define home? Are we choosing to traffic ourselves when we choose to emigrate? Is leaving home a kind of death or a renewal or can it be both? What are the costs of living in a land where you don’t truly belong and never really know its folklore, customs or extended family?Those who prefer a book with multi-dimensional characters who spearhead the narrative won’t find it here. The themes reign, but the themes are devastatingly presented. The story of Mauro and Elena and their family is a human story and most definitely a universal one. It will make you think and feel.