Within the troubled landscape in which literature finds itself, with the declining number of readers worldwide, BookTok culture proves important in driving the act of reading, especially among young audiences.
This community has already placed the book The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, by the acclaimed Machado de Assis, among the most talked-about topics of 2024, when American writer Courtney Henning Novak posted a video expressing her admiration for the famous Brazilian novel. She also revealed that her interest in Brazilian literature stemmed from a project in which she committed to reading one book from every country.
Although that video brought us into closer contact with South American literature, it is an even richer world than it may seem, each author possesses a lyricism that explores the history and uniqueness of their countries and it is not limited to the past.
This literature is often marked by horror, not as fiction, but as everyday life. There are authors such as Selva Almada, Agustina Bazterrica, Giovanna Rivero, María Fernanda Ampuero, and Elaine Vilar Madruga, all from Latin America who understand that they write about horror, whether as a theme or a genre, because they live in Latin America. This idea then permeates the literature of South America.
In this landscape, many authors have already won the Nobel Prize in Literature, including: Gabriela Mistral (Chile, 1945), Pablo Neruda (Chile, 1971), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia, 1982), and Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru, 2010).
With the aim of bringing more people to appreciate South American literature, I will recommend one book from each country: voices of today that offer a dense and intelligent interpretation of what still stirs the world. I will share, then, stories that endure against the conflicts of our time.
ARGENTINA – THE QUEENS OF SARMIENTO PARK (Las Malas)
Camila Sosa Villada brings ferocity, social critique, and honesty to her books. In her debut novel she explores the lives of trans women, especially the protagonist, who seeks a sense of belonging from childhood amid a drunk and violent father. When she arrives in Córdoba to study, she meets the sex workers of Sarmiento Park and discovers that being a travesti goes beyond pain, it can also be a celebration. A harrowing story of how prejudice can degrade the lives of minority groups. In this work, Camila narrates powerful and unforgettable experiences through a lyrical style that blends violence with hope, acting as a source of resistance.
The most important book I have read about sexuality since Jean Genet. It challenges all current frameworks of politics and literature — it is a fragment of the future.”
Édouard Louis
BOLIVIA – YOU GLOW IN THE DARK
Through short stories, the author Liliana Colanzi employs precise writing that traverses the region of Oaxaca in Mexico, El Alto, Amazonian villages, a religious community in Bolivia, and even the city of Goiânia, in Brazil. The history and culture of these places vividly shape the characters and their journeys. New technologies and social configurations do not erase historical roots and ancestral beliefs, and Liliana Colanzi explores this coexistence and the anxieties that surround it with great precision.
BRAZIL – EYES OF WATER (Olhos d’Água)
In this work, Conceição Evaristo, the author’s own life story directly informs the themes of the short stories contained in the book. “I have always said that my condition as a Black woman consciously marks my writing. I choose these themes intentionally. This defines me as a citizen and as a writer.” This is how the author operates across the 15 stories in the book, blending poetry and prose to denounce the violence, racism, and prejudice that black people face in Brazil.
These issues are told through the concept created by Conceição Evaristo called “escrevivência” — formed from the Portuguese words for “writing,” “living,” and “seeing oneself” — though its meaning goes beyond the mere combination of words. It urges us to think about collective existence and the experiences of those who came before us. As the author says: “The core idea of escrevivência is that it carries the driving force of the enslaved black women who preceded us.”
CHILE – CHILEAN POET
This beautiful 2020 book by chilean writer Alejandro Zambra seems to reveal its essence in its very title: it defends the thesis that, just as in Brazil everyone is a potential footballer, in the land of Neruda, the great collective dream is poetry. That is why its plot, which follows the life of Gonzalo, his girlfriend Carla, and her son Vicente is filled with the names of real and fictional Chilean poets. A book capable of making you laugh and emotional, it captures the essence of literature and the infinite forms of love.
COLOMBIA – THE BITCH (La Perra)
Pilar Quintana published La Perra in 2017. A novel centered on solitude with deeply unsettling prose, the author reveals certain social and emotional realities faced by rural Colombia. The story follows a woman named Damaris who lives in an isolated region marked by poverty, suffocating heat, and an ever-present natural world.
Unable to have children of her own and judged by her neighbors, who saw this “incapacity” as a failure in her role as a woman, she adopts a dog and raises it as if it were her child, projecting onto it her frustrations, desires, and inner wounds. Gradually, this fused relationship breaks apart, revealing a profound loneliness and a bleak violence. The novel tackles powerful themes such as motherhood, the female body, abandonment, and social marginalization.
ECUADOR – MANDIBLE (Mandíbula)
Here the author Mónica Ojeda provokes a deep sense of unease in her narrative, built on a non-linear structure. The story begins at its climax: Fernanda, passionate about literature and horror films, wakes up in a warehouse in the middle of a forest, bound. We already know her captor is her language and literature teacher, Miss Clara. The entire narrative arc unfolds to explain what drove Miss Clara to kidnap her student. This horror story mobilizes themes central to contemporary society: motherhood, psychoanalysis, adolescence, mental disorders, the female body as public property, repressed sexuality, the education system, the internet, and more.
URUGUAY – PINK SLIME
Fernanda Trías masterfully explores the social and political complexities in her books and Pink Slime, published in late 2019, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, is no exception. In this dystopian novel, a woman faces an unknown plague that drives society to despair. In this scenario, isolation becomes necessary, and the protagonist, amid the chaos of the outside world, questions her own solitude while struggling to find ways to survive, both physically and emotionally. In this work, the author delivers a reflective narrative about the collapse of the world as we know it.
PARAGUAY – CHICO BIZARRO Y LAS MOSCAS
The author, Mónica Bustos published this work in 2010. It tells the fictional story of Chico Bizarro, a gang leader, through streams of consciousness that unfold after he receives a phone call from a childhood friend. The book draws on historical references — the Paraguayan War, the military dictatorship, European colonization — while also richly incorporating Paraguayan culture, including urban legends and indigenous heritage.
VENEZUELA – NIGHT IN CARACAS
Here, Karina Sainz Borgo draws on her own experiences as a Venezuelan emigrant to write, in 2019, a story of reinvention and survival through the character of Adelaida, who is attending her mother’s funeral at the very start of the novel. Grieving, she recalls her childhood in a coastal town and a Caracas that no longer exists. A book that embodies the loss of hope for this country’s future.
SURINAME – ON A WOMAN’S MADNESS
Through fragments, Astrid Roemer, writing in 1982 tells the story of Noenka, a fearless woman who dares to question everything. She was married for only nine days to a man named Louis before recognizing his abuse.
She demanded a divorce,but it was refused, and decided to flee to her hometown of Paramaribo. Insecure and without support, she continues her life, marked by numerous romantic involvements, including with a woman named Gabrielle, her first overwhelming passion for another woman. With both delicacy and fury, Roemer narrates the ethnic and racial tensions, the violence, and the colonial legacy of Suriname.
GUYANA – CHILDREN OF THE SPIDER
In this story, writer Imam Baksh blends technology and Greek mythology to create a dystopian reimagining of the contemporary Caribbean. The book follows two Amerindian children: Mayali, a girl from another world and Joseph, a deaf-mute young man experienced with technology. Both are hunted by the ambitious spider gods of the land of Zolpash. The narrative travels from the interior of Guyana to the vibrant city of Georgetown, where the colonial past continues to intertwine with the contemporary world.
PERU – TELL IT ALL (Contarlo Todo)
The author Jeremías Gamboa tells his story through the character of Gabriel Lisboa, a young Journalism student from the outskirts of Lima who struggles through romantic and financial hardships, interns at a weekly political magazine, lives on others’ goodwill, and reads every single day. This is the profile of the man who, having become an experienced journalist, decides to abandon it all and live for literature, just as Gamboa himself left the newsrooms (he now contributes a weekly literature column to El Comercio) to write the book and teach writing workshops in Peru. In trying to find an answer for himself how that would even be possible living by literature today the author found both the title and the heart of the novel an existential act of courage in the direction of words.
These were the recommendations for the recent South American works, books that reflect on today’s world with political depth, that broaden our understanding of these countries.
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The article above was edited by Duda Kabzas.
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