About this item
It is astonishing that Simón Bolívar, the great Liberator of South America, is not better known in the United States. He freed six countries from Spanish rule, traveled more than 75,000 miles on horseback to do so, and became the greatest figure in Latin American history. His life is epic, heroic, straight out of Hollywood: he fought battle after battle in punishing terrain, forged uncertain coalitions of competing forces and races, lost his beautiful wife soon after they married and never remarried (although he did have a succession of mistresses, including one who held up the revolution and another who saved his life), and he died relatively young, uncertain whether his achievements would endure. Drawing on a wealth of primary documents, novelist and journalist Marie Arana brilliantly captures early nineteenth-century South America and the explosive tensions that helped revolutionize Bolívar.
About the Author
www.mariearana.netMarie Arana was born in Lima, Peru, the daughter of a Peruvian father and an American mother. Her latest book is a biography of the South American founder Simón Bolívar, "Bolívar: American Liberator," which was released in April 2013. Highly praised in the United States and Britain, it won the Los Angeles Times Book Award in 2014. Marie is also the author of an acclaimed memoir "American Chica," which described her bicultural childhood between North and South Americas. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN-Memoir Award, and chosen best book of the year by several publications. Her novels, "Cellophane" and "Lima Nights," are dramatically different works, the first being a rich, lush satire of the Amazon jungle, the second being a stark, urban love story set in contemporary Peru; both were cited by numerous national publications as one of the best books of the year. Her book "The Writing Life," is a collection from her well-known column for The Washington Post, which explores the way writers think and work. Marie wrote the Latin American script for the film, "Girl Rising," which premiered in March 2013. Marie is the former editor in chief of "Book World" at The Washington Post and a senior consultant to the Librarian of Congress. You can find more information about her at www.mariearana.net.
