The Wind That Lays Waste
A Novel
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Descripción editorial
A taut, lyrical portrait of four people thrown together on a single day in rural Argentina
The Wind That Lays Waste begins in the great pause before a storm. Reverend Pearson is evangelizing across the Argentinian countryside with Leni, his teenage daughter, when their car breaks down. This act of God or fate leads them to the workshop and home of an aging mechanic called Gringo Brauer and a young boy named Tapioca.
As a long day passes, curiosity and intrigue transform into an unexpected intimacy between four people: one man who believes deeply in God, morality, and his own righteousness, and another whose life experiences have only entrenched his moral relativism and mild apathy; a quietly earnest and idealistic mechanic’s assistant, and a restless, skeptical preacher’s daughter. As tensions between these characters ebb and flow, beliefs are questioned and allegiances are tested, until finally the growing storm breaks over the plains.
Selva Almada’s exquisitely crafted debut, with its limpid and confident prose, is profound and poetic, a tactile experience of the mountain, the sun, the squat trees, the broken cars, the sweat-stained shirts, and the destroyed lives. The Wind That Lays Waste is a philosophical, beautiful, and powerfully distinctive novel that marks the arrival in English of an author whose talent and poise are undeniable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The drama of this refreshingly unpredictable debut, set in the author's native Argentina, smolders like a lit fuse waiting to touch off its well-orchestrated events. Four primary characters shape the plot: Gringo Brauer, a mechanic in the countryside; Tapioca, his young son and assistant; the Reverend Pearson, an evangelical preacher whose disabled car is towed to Brauer's garage; and Leni, Pearson's rebellious teenage daughter. Over the course of a single afternoon, Pearson, who thinks of himself smugly as "an arrow burning with the flame of Christ," attempts to convert Tapioca, despite Brauer's complete indifference to religious faith. When Pearson tries to persuade Brauer to let Tapioca come with him, because he sees the boy as a "pure soul" lacking the flaws he himself had at that age, the stage is set for a finale that explodes to the accompaniment of a furious thunderstorm. All of the characters have rich, multidimensional personalities that engage the reader's sympathy even Pearson, whose arrogant swagger is counterbalanced by the sincerity of his faith. The characters' thoughtful discussion of their beliefs and the potential for both violence and grace that overshadows their interactions results in a stimulating, heady story.
