The Dark Bride - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552770930 ISBN 13: 9780552770934

Publisher: Black Swan

Synopsis

Sayonara is a beautiful Indian prostitute of Tora, a city in the Colombian forest. Once a month oil riggers descend upon the city, where Sayonara rules their squalid paradise like a queen. That is, until she violates the unwritten rules of her trade and falls in love with a man More... she can never have.

About this title

About the Author:

LAURA RESTREPO has been professor of literature at the National University of Colombia, and a magazine publisher. In 1984 she was a member of the Peace Commission that brought Colombian government and the guerillas to the negotiating table. She is the author of several novels, among them THE ANGEL OF GALILEA and LEOPARD IN THE SUN.

From Publishers Weekly:

Journalist, novelist, political activist and academic Restrepo (The Angel of Galilea; Leopard in the Sun) has written an innovative novel in the form of a journalist's investigation of a small Colombian oil town populated mostly by oil riggers and the prostitutes who service them. The narrator is a journalist who interviews a number of residents in the town of Tora, on the edge of the rain forest, in order to learn about the legendary prostitute Sayonara. The charismatic and irresistible daughter of a Guahibo Indian woman and a white man, Sayonara is the alpha whore of La Catunga, the barrio of prostitutes where the employees of the Tropical Oil Company come weekly to take their pleasure. Her downfall comes when she falls in love with two men, both workers with Tropical Oil. Sacramento she loves as a brother; Payanes as a lover. But Payanes is already married when they meet, and Sayonara considers marrying Sacramento, who desperately wants to save her from prostitution. Sayonara's story emerges through the lyrical voices of the interview subjects, as well as the more straightforward journalistic style of the narrator. Aphorisms abound ("The factory that smells the best is the most poisonous"), and the mostly evocative, textured prose has occasional moments of stiffness ("She was a bundle of scared chicken bones, anxious to find a connection to the world"). Still, it's hard not to get caught up in Restrepo's sexy, whirlwind narrative, which also reveals much about the effects of the global economy and Latin American politics on one small corner of Colombia. Agent, Thomas Colchie. (Aug. 1)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Swan
• ISBN 10: 0552770930
• ISBN 13: 9780552770934
• Binding: Paperback