Synopses & Reviews
The well-intentioned protagonists of
Brief Encounters with Che Guevara are caught to both disastrous and hilarious effect in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them. In Near-Extinct Birds of the Central Cordillera, an ornithologist being held hostage in the Colombian rain forest finds that he respects his captors for their commitment to a cause, until he realizes that the Revolution looks a lot like big business.
In "The Good Ones Are Already Taken," the wife of a Special Forces officer battles a Haitian voodoo goddess with whom her husband is carrying on a not-entirely-spiritual relationship. And in "The Lion's Mouth," a disillusioned aid worker makes a Faustian bargain to become a diamond smuggler for the greater good. With masterful pacing and a robust sense of the absurd, each story in Brief Encounters with Che Guevara is a self-contained adventure, steeped in the heady mix of tragedy and danger, excitement and hope, that characterizes countries in transition.
Through Fountain's rounded and novelistic prose, these intelligent and keenly observed stories are painted in provocative and vibrant detail across a global canvas. Brief Encounters with Che Guevara marks the arrival of a striking and resonant new voice that speaks adeptly to the intimate connection between the foreign, the familiar, and the inescapably human.
Review
"The stories in Brief Encounters with Che Guevara are poignant, empathetic, ironic, and, perhaps surprisingly, often funny....Fountain writes in gorgeous sentences that do much of their work with transparency but can also stop you in your tracks. He is a writer of impressive intelligence and range, writing convincingly on subjects from diamond mining to voodoo rituals, and this collection is held together by his unsparing, hopeful, but ultimately deeply sad vision..." Jill Owens, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)
About the Author
Ben Fountain's fiction has appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All Story, and he has been awarded an O. Henry Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. He lives with his wife and their two children in Dallas, Texas.