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Summary
Summary
Armed 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. American Visa is beautifully written, atmospheric, and stylish in the manner of Chandler ... a smart, exotic crime fiction offering.' - George Pelecanos, author of The Night Gardener'
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The narrator of this sweet noir (which won Bolivia's National Book Prize in 1994 and has been filmed) claims to have read Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, Dashiell Hammett and Manuel V zquez Montalb n "as if they were prophets," and their presiding spirits are not far from this winning tale. Mario Alvarez, an English teacher from the provinces of Bolivia, arrives at the zero star Hotel California in La Paz wearing his best suit and clutching a round-trip ticket to the U.S. sent to him by his son. He meets Blanca, a prostitute with cinnamon skin from the tropical part of Bolivia who "had within her the serenity of the great rivers that run through her homeland." Blanca falls for Mario and offers him a more realistic future than the vague promise made by his son, but Mario is obsessed with getting to the U.S. When it becomes clear the authorities will investigate his faked documents, Mario needs to "expedite" his visa problem. Coming up with the harebrained idea of robbing a gold buyer for bribe money, he proceeds to land himself in various inglorious situations. Recacoechea deploys his clich?s knowingly and makes Alvarez's crime less a puzzle than an intriguing window onto a society on the fringes of globalization. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In this 1994 Bolivian bestseller, written as an antidote to what de Recacoechea considered an overdose of magical-realism in Latin literature, a schoolteacher with a taste for American crime fiction sees the underside of La Paz as he awaits a visa to enter the United States. Near-broke, provincial, middle-aged Mario Alvarez seems a bit like an older, only slightly wiser, but oddly more likable Holden Caulfield. Clad in a well-tailored suit, armed with fake documents, Mario hopes to snow the American consular authorities who will decide whether he may redeem the plane ticket to Miami sent to him by his son. Checked into a hotel that is middle-class only by comparison to the places that rent to the country's desperate Indian peasants, Mario finds himself in company with, among others, a washed up soccer player, an amiable ancient intellectual and a luscious, level-headed hooker named Blanca. When he finally gains the courage to apply for the visa, Mario, scared by the thoroughness of the team that will examine his papers, flees to a "fixer" willing to get him the visa for $800. Down to his last pesos and a handful of gold pebbles from his late father, the schoolteacher spends several days hatching a plot to come up with the funds and doing some serious drinking in the seedy bars and bordellos that make life in La Paz interesting. Before the story lurches into the world of crime, Mario has some pleasant exchanges with the delightful Blanca and an eye-opening evening at a posh party for the brother of a dazzling but unattainable beauty, whom he meets after stealing a book. A serious novel made palatable by humor as dry as the Andean uplands in which it is set. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A best-seller in its own country, this novel about a man desperate to get into America is one of the few Bolivian novels to be translated into English, and especially with the present furor about immigration, it is sure to spark interest. Mario Alvarez, an unemployed English teacher, has come to La Paz, Bolivia, to get an American visa so he can visit his son in Miami. But he cannot get past the embassy bureaucracy. Living in the rough streets, he gets to know tramps, crooked politicians, and prostitutes, including Blanca, who loves him. He needs money to bribe corrupt officials for papers, so he draws on his experience with American crime fiction--Chandler, Hammett, and more--to steal the money any way he can, even if he has to kill to get it. De Recacoechea celebrates the hybrid in ethnicity and culture, and he does it without reverence or even respect, blending absurdity with harsh realism to tell a surprising story of roots and finding home. --Hazel Rochman Copyright 2007 Booklist