Imagining Argentina - by Lawrence Thornton (Paperback)

About the Book

A political novel about "los desaparecidos" (the disappeareds), in Argentina during the late 1970s, it tells the mesmerizing story of Carlos Rueda, a man who discovers, after his own wife disappears, that he can imagine the fate of other disappeareds, but not his own Cecilia.

Book Synopsis

"Remarkable . . . deeply inventive . . . Thorton has imagined Argentina truly; his inspired fable troubles and feeds our own intriguing imagining."--Los Angeles Times

Imagining Argentina is set in the dark days of the late 1970's, when thousands of Argentineans disappeared without a trace into the general's prison cells and torture chambers. When Carlos Ruweda's wife is suddenly taken from him, he discovers a magical gift: In waking dreams, he had clear visions of the fates of "the disappeared." But he cannot "imagine" what has happened to his own wife. Driven to near madness, his mind cannot be taken away: imagination, stories, and the mystical secrets of the human spirit.

Praise for Imagining Argentina

"A harrowing, brilliant novel."--The New Yorker

"A powerful new novel . . . Thorton seems to have wedded his study of such writers as Borges and Marquez with thy his own instinctive gift for metaphor, and in doing so, created his own brand of magical realism"--The New York Times

"Imagining Argentina is a slim volume filled with beautiful writing. It is an exciting adventure story. It is a haunting love story. And it is a story for all time."--Detroit Free Press

"The writing is crystalline, the metaphors compelling . . . Its central theme is universal."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"In a time when much North American fiction is contained by crabbed realism, Thorton takes for his material one of the bleaker recent instances of human cruelty, sees in it the enduring nobility of the human spirit and imagines a book that celebrates that spirit."--The Washington Post Book World

"A powerful first novel and a manifesto for the memorializing power of literature."--The New York Times Book Review

"A profoundly hopeful book."--The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Review Quotes

"A harrowing, brilliant novel."--The New Yorker

"A powerful new novel . . . Thorton seems to have wedded his study of such writers as Borges and Marquez with thy his own instinctive gift for metaphor, and in doing so, created his own brand of magical realism"--The New York Times

"Remarkable . . . deeply inventive . . . Thorton has imagined Argentina truly; his inspired fable troubles and feeds our own intriguing imagining."--Los Angeles Times

"Imagining Argentina is a slim volume filled with beautiful writing. It is an exciting adventure story. It is a haunting love story. And it is a story for all time."--Detroit Free Press

"The writing is crystalline, the metaphors compelling . . . Its central theme is universal."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"In a time when much North American fiction is contained by crabbed realism, Thorton takes for his material one of the bleaker recent instances of human cruelty, sees in it the enduring nobility of the human spirit and imagines a book that celebrates that spirit."--The Washington Post Book World

"A powerful first novel and a manifesto for the memorializing power of literature."--The New York Times Book Review

"A profoundly hopeful book."--The Cleveland Plain Dealer

About the Author

Lawrence Thornton is an award-winning novelist best known for Imagining Argentina, his first novel, which received a number of literary prizes, including the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award, the PEN American Center West Award for Best Novel of 1987, a nomination for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Shirley Collier Award from UCLA, and the Silver Medal of the Commonwealth Club of California. He also received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Thornton was born and educated in California, where he lives with his wife.