Book description
In a small town in the mountains of Colombia, Ismael, a retired
teacher, spends his mornings gathering oranges in the sunshine and
spying on his neighbour as she sunbathes naked in her garden. Returning
from a walk one morning he discovers that his wife has disappeared. Then
more people go missing, and not-so-distant gunfire signals the approach
of war. Most of the villagers make their escape, but Ismael cannot leave
without his Otilia. He becomes an unwilling witness to the senseless
civil war that sweeps through his country with a tragic inevitability.
In The Armies Rosero has created a hallucinatory, relentless,
captivating narrative often as violent as the events it describes, told
by an old man battered by a reality he no longer recognizes. In a
small town in the mountains of Colombia, Ismael, a retired teacher,
spends his mornings gathering oranges in the sunshine and spying on his
neighbour as she sunbathes naked in her garden. Returning from a walk
one morning he discovers that his wife has disappeared. Then more people
go missing, and not-so-distant gunfire signals the approach of war. Most
of the villagers make their escape, but Ismael cannot leave without his
Otilia. He becomes an unwilling witness to the senseless civil war that
sweeps through his country with a tragic inevitability. In The Armies
Rosero has created a hallucinatory, relentless, captivating narrative
often as violent as the events it describes, told by an old man battered
by a reality he no longer recognizes.
