Alan Grostephan presents The Banana Wars in conversation with Frank Bures

Urabá, Colombia, 1990: A violent strike at plantations across the banana zone leads to crops in flames, managers murdered, and the local economy teetering on the brink. In retaliation, the banana producers finance right-wing paramilitaries to cleanse the zone of guerrillas and their supposed collaborators.

Through the intertwined lives of four characters—a banana worker making a play for power in the guerrillas, a decadent Colombian banana planter who runs his business from the safety of Medellín, a widow in Urabá struggling to stay on the right side of the local paramilitaries, and an American banana executive wading ever deeper into troubled waters—The Banana Wars charts the struggle to survive in impossible conditions, in a place where no one is to be trusted and one false move can lead to death.

Starkly drawn from the true history of Urabá and this period of conflict, including the unseen role of US corporate interests, celebrated author Alan Grostephan’s latest is an incandescent historical novel for fans of Jesmyn Ward, Roberto Bolaño, and Fernanda Melchor.

Alan Grostephan is the author of Bogotá, a novel chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best ten books of fiction in 2013 and longlisted for the Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize. He is also the editor and translator of "Stories of Life and Death," a collection of writing by emerging Colombian writers. He lives in Georgia.

Frank Bures is author of The Geography of Madness, a book about "cultural syndromes," which Newsweek called one of the best travel books of the decade. He is the editor of Under Purple Skies: The Minneapolis Anthology, and the author of The Shape of the World: Essays on Travel, Culture and Belief from Rotary Magazine, His work has been included or selected as “Notable” in the Best American Travel Writing, Best American Essays and Best American Sports Writing nineteen times.

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