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Winner of the Dzanc Prize for Fiction
When a banana strike explodes into a war zone, a worker, a widow, a wealthy planter, and an American executive are pulled into a deadly chain of betrayals that no one can escape unscathed.
Urabá, Colombia, 1990: A violent strike at plantations across the banana zone leads to crops in flames, managers murdered, and the local economy teetering on the brink. In retaliation, the banana producers finance right-wing paramilitaries to cleanse the zone of guerrillas and their supposed collaborators.
Through the intertwined lives of four characters—a banana worker making a play for power in the guerrillas, a decadent Colombian banana planter who runs his business from the safety of Medellín, a widow in Urabá struggling to stay on the right side of the local paramilitaries, and an American banana executive wading ever deeper into troubled waters—The Banana Wars charts the struggle to survive in impossible conditions, in a place where no one is to be trusted and one false move can lead to death.
Starkly drawn from the true history of Urabá and this period of conflict, including the unseen role of US corporate interests, celebrated author Alan Grostephan’s latest is an incandescent historical novel for fans of Jesmyn Ward, Roberto Bolaño, and Fernanda Melchor.
“I dare you to enjoy a banana split after you’ve read Alan Grostephan’s gut-wrenching novel The Banana Wars. Vividly written, unforgettably peopled, ranging across a landscape at once horrific and sublime, The Banana Wars will wring you out, leaving you at once exhausted and enriched, the way every good book exacts something from you even as it feeds your soul.” -Angel Khoury, bestselling author of Between Tides
“A searing account of the ongoing consequences of colonial power structures in Colombia. What strikes me about The Banana Wars is the keen, journalistic eye and the refusal to look away from the lives and power struggles of everyday people—guerillas, paramilitary soldiers, sex workers, plantation owners and their backers overseas—all of whom are trapped in a brutal system of exploitation and madness.” -Blair Austin, author of Dioramas
“Alan Grostephan writes with lush exuberance as though he were a Garcia Marquez's nephew. Confidently the narrative follows several people, switching POVs along the way, so we have a nearly omniscient picture of the class warfare, crime, and the mystery centered around the magic fruit, and at the same time intimate and sensual details. Cinematic. Each sentence delights.” -Josip Novakovich, author of Rubble of Rubles
Past Praise for Alan Grostephan's debut novel, Bogotá
"The first thing to know about Alan Grostephan's novel "Bogotá" is that it is extraordinary. ... Fiction about slum life is often journalistic or ideological, but Mr. Grostephan describes the neighborhood's squalor in forthright, naturalistic prose streaked with acid irony." -Wall Street Journal
"With unflinching brutality and rawness, this remarkably executed debut novel achieves a highly original, catchy prose—often mingling Spanish slang throughout its hardboiled, supercharged narrative. ... The author’s focus on the downtrodden feels uniquely visceral and real." -Publishers Weekly starred review
"Alan Grostephan’s riveting first novel, 'Bogotá, follows the lives of a rural panguero, or boatman, and his family as they flee the violence of the Colombian countryside for the scarcely less violent slums of the city of Bogotá." -Minneapolis Star-Tribune