num_pages: 272
description: Set during the peak of Colombias drug-fueled conflict and in New York City this captivating kaleidoscopic debut novel centers on a group of high school girls and the people whose lives touch theirsincluding their parents teachers housekeepers and the warlords and guerrilla fighters who surround them. While her parents are away for a holiday weekend in the mountains around Cali a teenager finds herself home alone for the first time with the household help mysteriously gone no phone connection and news of an insurgency on the radioand then she hears a knock at the door. The girls teacher recites Shakespeare in the jungle to a class of sticks leaves and stones while his captors watch his every move. Another classmate having escaped Colombia for the clubs of New York is unable to forget the life she left behind without the help of the little bags of powder she carries with her. Taking place over two decades The Lucky Ones presents us with a world in which perpetrators are indistinguishable from saviors the truth is elusive and people you love can disappear without a trace. A prismatic tale of a group of characters who emerge and recede throughout the novel and touch one anothers lives in ways even they cannot comprehend The Lucky Ones captures the intensity of life in Colombia as paramilitaries guerillas and drug traffickers tear the country apart. Combining vivid details of life under siege with a hallucinatory feel that befits its violent world The Lucky Ones introduces a truly original and exciting new voice in fiction.
language: English
title: The Lucky Ones
publisher: Spiegel & Grau