A novel by Juan Crdenas, trans. by Lizzie Davis

September 12, 20235 x7.75 176 pages 978-1-56689-677-1

After a series of failures, a biologist returns to his hometown to live with his grieving mother. But in this gripping crime novel that upends the genres conventions, strange events unravel what he thought he knew of his past, his present, and himself.

When a biologist returns to Colombia after fifteen years abroad, he quickly becomes entangled in the trappings of his past and his increasingly bizarre present: the unsolved murder of his brother, a boarding school where girls give birth to strange creatures, a chance encounter with his irrevocably changed first love. A brush with a well-connected acquaintance leads to a biotechnology job offer, and hes gradually drawn into a web of conspiracy. Ultimately, he may be destined to remain in the city hed hoped never to see againin The Devil of the Provinces, nothing is as it seems.

About the Author

Juan Crdenas (1978) is a Colombian art critic, curator, translator, and author of seven works of fiction, most recently the story collection Volver a comer del rbol de la ciencia and the novel Elstico de sombra. He has translated the works of such writers as William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Gordon Lish, David Ohle, J. M. Machado de Assis, and Ea de Queirs. In 2014, his novel Los estratos received the Otras Voces Otros mbitos Prize. In 2017, he was named one of the thirty-nine best Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine by the Hay Festival in Bogot. Crdenas currently coordinates the masters program in creative writing at the Caro y Cuervo Institute in Bogot, where he works as a professor and researcher.

About the Translator

Lizzie Davis is a translator and a writer. Her recent projects include Juan Crdenass Ornamental (a finalist for the 2021 PEN Translation Prize); Elena Medels The Wonders, cotranslated with Thomas Bunstead; and work by Valeria Luiselli, Pilar Fraile Amador, and Aura Garca-Junco.

Praise for The Devil of the Provinces