Norte: A Novel

By Edmundo Paz Soldán and Valerie Miles

This “impressive and multifaceted novel” explores the lives of an artist, a savant, and a serial killer as they cross the Mexico-US border (Times Literary Supplement, UK).

Three unconnected people travel north, each passing in isolation over one of the most troubled and controversial dividing lines in the world: the Mexico?US border. But in a melee of language and blood, their stories and the stories of those they meet—of a young serial killer; a waitress and graphic novelist and her lover (and former professor); and an outsider artist in a mental institution—gradually begin to coalesce.

Daring in both its protagonists and its structure, Edmundo Paz Soldán’s Norte is a fast-paced, vivid, and disquieting blending of distinct voices. By turns shocking, violent, and revelatory, they lay bare the darkness of the line over which these souls—like so many others—have passed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780226207346

Edmundo Paz Soldán

Edmundo Paz Soldán is the author of six novels and two short story collections. He was awarded the 2002 Bolivian National Book Award for Turing’s Delirium and a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship. He has won the National Book Award in Bolivia, the prestigious Juan Rulfo Award, and was a finalist for the Romulo Gállegos Award. He is an associate professor at Cornell University. One of the few McOndo writers who live in the United States, he is frequently called upon as the movement’s spokesperson by the American media.

Reviews for Norte

[colligan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Solid writing and an interesting (and topical) plot makes it a good read. A few structural issues around the plotting could be better but not enough to mar the works overall strength. Some may find the borderline gratuitous violence and questionable feeding of cultural stereotyping a bit unsettling. Worth the time.