Reading List
Pilar Quintana
Colombian Novelist
Pilar Quintana is a Colombian writer, born in Cali in 1972, who studied at the Javeriana University in Bogotá. In 2007 the Hay Festival chose her as one of the Bogotá39, a selection of promising young writers in Latin America. Her novel La perra, published in English as The Bitch, was translated into 16 languages and shortlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Her novel Los abismos won the Premio Alfaguara de Novela in 2021 and appeared in English as Abyss. Her picks here are four Colombian novels: Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Chronicle of a Death Foretold, José Eustasio Rivera’s The Vortex and Marvel Moreno’s December Breeze.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
by Gabriel García Márquez · 2003 · Classics
“It's a perfect novel. Every creative writing lesson that you want to give is in there: the narrator, the narrative times, the universe, the character development.” — via Interview, February 2023
The Vortex
by José Eustasio Rivera · 2024 · Classics
“It's a very painful novel, because it tells us how the indigenous peoples of those areas of Colombia became slaves during the rubber boom.” — via Interview, February 2023
December Breeze
by Marvel Moreno · 2022 · Fiction
“It's a long novel, but it's a novel you devour. You want the day to finish so you can get home and read.” — via Interview, February 2023
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez · 2004 · Fiction
“Cien años de soledad is a great novel like Don Quijote de la Mancha” — via Interview, February 2023
