Carlos Gamerro
The Islands
Buenos Aires, 1992. Hacker Felipe Félix is summoned to the vertiginous twin towers of magnate Fausto Tamerlán and charged with finding the witnesses to a very public crime. Rejecting the mission is not an option. After a decade spent immersed in drugs and virtual realities, trying to forget the freezing trench in which he passed the Falklands War, Félix is forced to confront the city around him – and realises to his shock that the war never really ended.
A detective novel, a cyber-thriller, an inner-city road trip and a war memoir, The Islands is a hilarious, devastating and dizzyingly surreal account of a history that remains all too raw.
Read an ExcerptMore Info
- With an introdcution by Jimmy Burns.
- The Islands was published in English after it was discussed at the And Other Stories Spanish-language reading group in spring 2010. Readers loved its rambunctious energy and speculative sci-fi imaginings, as well as its depiction of the Falklands War.
- If you subscribed to And Other Stories before before this book went to the printers, you would have received one of the limited number stamped, early copies of Islands and up to 3 other And Other Stories 2012 titles. Find out about subscribing to upcoming titles here.
Print status: Available
Author: Carlos Gamerro
Translator: Ian Barnett
Original language: Spanish
Format: Trade paperback with flaps
Publication date (UK): 7 June 2012
Publication date (US): 6 February 2014
ISBN: 9781908276087
Ebook ISBN: 9781908276131
Availability: World
Number of pages: 576
Reviews
Stuart Evers
The Guardian
‘Exhilarating, inventive and consistently absorbing.’
Ben Bollig
The Guardian
‘Gamerro picks history’s what-the-fuck moments, which when found in fiction are so strange as to knock the reader momentarily out of the imaginary world.’
Lorna Scott Fox
Times Literary Supplement
‘The reader is dragged headlong by Barnett’s athletic translation … a highly addictive comic voice, its peaks of hectic farce underlaid by a delicate, deadpan absurdism.’
Anthony Cummins
The Observer
‘A weird and wonderful thriller … rife with surreal horror and rampant bad taste.’
Anne McElvoy
BBC Radio 3 Night Waves
'A genre-bending book’
Tom Bunstead
Independent on Sunday
‘A danger-laden, mind-bending and ultimately redemptive quest. […] There are more ideas here than most writers would fit in 10 novels.’
Matthew Crockatt
Huffington Post UK
‘I urge you to find and read a copy of this important novel.’
