News from Foreign Country Came (Flamingo S.) - Tapa blanda

Set in Canada, in French colonial Algeria, in Paris of the sixties and in Argentina during the time of the ‘disappeared’, 'News from a Foreign Country Came' is many books in one. It is a portrait of an apparently ordinary family, delicately exploring what is known, unknown and unknowable between close relatives; it is a book about innocence, that of the child and that of the adult; it is an evisceration of patriotism and its all-too frequent corruption into the naked exercise of power.

‘'News from a Foreign Country Came' is written with water-colours of melting poetry, but it’s the substance that lingers after the style has echoed away. In his depiction of history collapsing into a tangle of guilt, Alberto Manguel has created a grim parable of considerable power. This impressive first novel suggests that Manguel has both the intellect and the voice to speak to his readers on the highest levels of fiction.’
WASHINGTON POST

‘There is a quality, a subtlety that is not uncommon in music, when the unspeakable, even the unbearable, is realised and listening becomes a compulsion. There are a few books that have this quality – unbearably sad yet compelling. 'News from a Foreign Country Came' is one of these rare, and beautiful, books. A luminous, harrowing novel.’
MELBOURNE AGE

‘While comparisons with Conrad and Calvino must be made, Alberto Manguel’s own strikingly original voice... shocks and impresses with its civilised barbarity.’
IRISH TIMES

‘A truly remarkable first novel.’
THE TIMES