American Visa - Paperback - 9781933354200

"American Visa, the best-selling novel in Bolivian history, relates the harrowing and hilarious adventures Mario Alvarez endures in his quest to get a visa so he can visit his son in Miami." --Boston Globe"Quite possibly Bolivia's baddest-ass book . . . Ironic that Juan de Recacoechea's protagonist spends all his time trying to get to America, when it is we who should be getting to Juan de Recacoechea." --Miami Sun-PostArmed with fake papers, a handful of gold nuggets, and a snazzy custom-made suit, an unemployed schoolteacher with a singular passion for detective fiction sets out from small-town Bolivia on a desperate quest for an American visa, his best hope for escaping his painful past and reuniting with his grown son in Miami.Mario Alvarez's dream of emigration takes a tragicomic twist on the rough streets of La Paz, Bolivia's seat of government. Alvarez embarks on a series of Kafkaesque adventures, crossing paths with a colorful cast of hustlers, social outcasts, and crooked politicians--and initiating a romance with a straight-shooting prostitute named Blanca. Spurred on by his detective fantasies and his own tribulations, he hatches a plan to rob a wealthy gold dealer, a decision that draws him into a web of high-society corruption but also brings him closer than ever to obtaining his ticket to paradise.

• | Author: Juan De Recacoechea
• | Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
• | Publication Date: Apr 01, 2007
• | Number of Pages: 264 pages
• | Binding: Paperback or Softback
• | ISBN-10: 1933354208
• | ISBN-13: 9781933354200