Best Seller
La cuadra / The Block
By Gilmer Mesa
Hardcover
$34.95
Available on Apr 06, 2027 | 232 Pages
Con una energía y un dolor latentes, como si no hubieran transcurrido veinticinco años desde la muerte de su hermano, el narrador recuerda cómo fue crecer en Aranjuez, su barrio, en la turbulenta Medellín de finales de los años ochenta. Acorralados por la pobreza, el tedio y la desesperanza, los adolescentes de la cuadra no tenían otra alternativa que la violencia: para ser alguien debían empuñar un arma, sin importarles que a la vuelta los esperara, inevitablemente, la muerte. Desoladora, emotiva, apasionante, esta novela testimonial es más que la historia de unos jóvenes; es, de algún modo, el espejo de una época y de un país.“En La cuadra, Gilmer Mesa recrea de primera mano la vida de una de las comunas de Medellín en los años ochenta-noventa, desde un ángulo absolutamente nuevo y original: el de un sobreviviente, alguien que estuvo ahí y que, al evocar la muerte de su adorado hermano mayor, transforma ese mundo inquietante, con toda su violencia y a la vez su extraña ternura, en un poderoso espacio literario”.
Santiago Gamboa
ENGLISH DESCRIPTIONWith latent pain and energy, as though it hadn’t been twenty-five years since his brother’s death, the narrator remembers what it was like to grow up in Aranjuez, his neighborhood, in the turbulent Medellin of the late 1980s.Trapped by poverty, boredom, and desperation, the teenagers of the block had no alternative but violence: to be someone, they had to wield a weapon, without caring that just around the corner, inevitably, death was waiting for them.Heartbreaking, moving, and thrilling, this testimonial novel is more than the story of some young people; it is, in some ways, a window into a country and an era.”In The Block, Gilmer Mesa reproduces firsthand the life of one of the communities in Medellin in the ‘80s and ‘90s, from an absolutely new and original angle: that of a survivor, someone who was there and who, upon recalling the death of his adored older brother, transforms that unsettling world, with all its violence and at once its strange tenderness, into a powerful literary space.” – Santiago Gamboa
Santiago Gamboa
ENGLISH DESCRIPTIONWith latent pain and energy, as though it hadn’t been twenty-five years since his brother’s death, the narrator remembers what it was like to grow up in Aranjuez, his neighborhood, in the turbulent Medellin of the late 1980s.Trapped by poverty, boredom, and desperation, the teenagers of the block had no alternative but violence: to be someone, they had to wield a weapon, without caring that just around the corner, inevitably, death was waiting for them.Heartbreaking, moving, and thrilling, this testimonial novel is more than the story of some young people; it is, in some ways, a window into a country and an era.”In The Block, Gilmer Mesa reproduces firsthand the life of one of the communities in Medellin in the ‘80s and ‘90s, from an absolutely new and original angle: that of a survivor, someone who was there and who, upon recalling the death of his adored older brother, transforms that unsettling world, with all its violence and at once its strange tenderness, into a powerful literary space.” – Santiago Gamboa
