The Banana Wars

Grostephan (Bogotá) dramatizes in his visceral latest a series of real-life attacks on banana planations in 1990 Colombia. The novel begins with a group of guerrilla soldiers destroying infrastructure and massacring managers in their homes, carnage Grostephan portrays in grisly detail. The terror campaign, along with a planned labor strike, was meant to drive the banana planters to sell their holdings and leave the region. The violence’s aftermath is conveyed from the perspectives of several characters, including Orejas, a communist guerrilla leader who possesses “a sea-like memory with the names of people who had crossed him in his twenty years since birth,” and hopes that his forces will be able to control multiple municipalities. American executive Jay Harrison works for a company planning to acquire failing or bankrupted plantations following the strikes, and considers hiring paramilitary soldiers to wipe out the guerrillas. The most memorable protagonist is Yenifer Rodriguez, the wife of another guerrilla fighter, who dreams of putting her interest in architecture to good use, but struggles to maintain her ethics as the violence unfolds. Grostephan’s grim yet affecting depiction of the period contains plenty of indelible images (a fire set by guerrillas in a corporate office burns “little family photos taped to the sides of desks”). This war story stands out for its heartrending portrait of the conflict’s impact on individual lives. (May)