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Fiction / Gay Interest / Latin American Literature

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Twilight at the Equator A Novel Jaime Manrique "[Santiago's] true purpose is to become 'the Colombian Sylvia Plath,' and in a frantic two weeks, he writes a violent, surrealistic novel designed to shock his family."—Kirkus Reviews Colombian-born Santiago Martinez starts his adult life as a young gay writer living in Spain. Years later, as a university professor in New York City, Santiago is called back to his native Colombia upon the suicide of his sister. There he learns some shocking secrets about his childhood and adolescence and comes to the realization that cherished memories of the past are only illusion. "The male characters in Manrique's latest [novel] cross-dress as easily as they cross borders to assume European and American lives without fully eliminating the vestiges of their Colombian backgrounds. A young writer who has left a city in Colombia to seek his fortune in Madrid, Barcelona, and New York, Santiago Martinez often finds himself wistful for his hometown, which he remembers as a lush tropical, peaceful paradise instead of the drug-ridden and politically claustrophobic society it is. . . . Much more than the semi-autobiographical story the novel claims to be, this boisterous and tragic work addresses issues of solitude, exile, and self-discovery with generous feeling and honest emotion."—Publishers Weekly Jaime Manrique is the author of the memoir Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press, the novels Latin Moon in Manhattan and Colombian Gold, and two poetry collections, My Night with Federico García Lorca and Tarzan, My Body, Christopher Columbus. He is cotranslator, with Joan Larkin, of Sor Juana's Love Poems. He lives in New York City and is an associate professor in the MFA program at Columbia University. Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)

April 2003 LC: 2002075663 PS 208 pp.   6 x 9 Paper $15.95 t ISBN 978-0-299-18774-3 ADD TO CART   1997 hardcover, Faber and Faber; 1999 paperback, Painted Leaf

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