Synopses & Reviews
With stolen cash and tickets booked through a shady travel agency, Marlon Cruz and his girlfriend, Reina, have smuggled themselves out of Colombia and into the United States. But on their first night in New York City, they lose each other, and Marlon finds himself cast into the city's immigrant underworld, alone. As he searches for Reina in the bars and boarding houses where illegals congregate, the story of their harrowing cross over the border is retold, mapping the arc of a relationship that has transformed him into a reluctant immigrant.
Jorge Franco was born in Medellín, Colombia. His books include Rosario Tijeras, Moldito Amor, and Mala Noche. Moving between lower-middle class Colombia and immigrant New York, Paradise Travel is an work from an author celebrated by Gabriel García Márquez as a writer "to whom I should like to pass the torch." Paradise Travel recounts the adventures of Marlon Cruz, a naïve young man from Medellín, Colombia, who agrees to accompany the beautiful, ambitious woman he loves to New York. On their first flight in Queens, Marlon and Reina lose each other, and Marlon is left alone in a world larger, colder, and more bewildering than he had ever imagined could exist. A leader of the gritty realist movement known as McOndo, Jorge Franco evokes the follies and pains of unrequited love as he explores the inequalities between North and South America.
"Franco belongs to a generation of Colombian novelists who prefer their realism straight up, no magic; unlike the elaborate dream worlds of Gabriel García Márquez, their work focuses on the country's problems with drugs, corruption and violence. Now, in an engagingly noirish coming-of-age story, Franco shifts his attention to the United States and the experience of the illegal immigrant."Gregory Cowles, The New York Times Book Review "Franco belongs to a generation of Colombian novelists who prefer their realism straight up, no magic; unlike the elaborate dream worlds of Gabriel García Márquez, their work focuses on the country's problems with drugs, corruption and violence. Now, in an engagingly noirish coming-of-age story, Franco shifts his attention to the United States and the experience of the illegal immigrant . . . At heart, though, despite its pronouncements on the Colombian character and its harrowing picture of the aliens' underground railroad, this book is more romantic than political . . . His purity and his tough-tender voice, ably preserved in Katherine Silver's translation, give Franco's novel its own kind of magic."Gregory Cowles, The New York Times Book Review
"[The] experience of love and loss is the core of being human, and this book captures it. . . . There is a subtle irony to the whole novel, from the choice of names to the way the humor plays, that is wonderfully captured by Katherine Silver in this translation. Paradise Travel . . . is picaresque and romantic, reminding one of Dante and Cervantes."Chris Albani, Los Angeles Times "Gabriel García Márquez imprisoned a generation of aspiring writers. Jorge Francowith Paradise Travel, now available in English translationhas set them free . . . With four well-received works published in Spanish in his native country, Franco's already a name to reckon with there. But here, in the United States, the fervor is only just beginning . . . Thats because, somewhat improbably, Franco has written the great American novelno, the great Pan-American novelfrom Medellín. And he's done so, on his own terms, on the strength of his own voice, one that manages to get the whole world into his prose without resorting to the techniques of magical realism . . . Paradise Travel is an immigrant's tale, and true to form it is full of all of the pathos and grotesquerie that accompanies life at the far margins of a fulfilled dream. It is also filled with the cosmic humor and insistent tenderness that is also part of that experience. It is a cliche to say that a book will make you laugh and cry, but to get through this novel without recognizing you are (to borrow another cliche) walking the razor's edge between hilarity and horror, is to not be Hispanic. You will laugh. You will cry. And you will see yourself, and your uncle, and your mom and your dad, and so many more. But also, if you look from other angles, you may also see F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Mark Twain, and Homer, and not a few practitioners of the Spanish picaresque novels of the long-dead past, not to mention García Márquezbut stripped here of all of his alchemistic hijinksand you will enter a tale that is lyrical, yet straightforward, the fruit of a consciousness finely attuned to the costs of large dreams. Yes, you will see, but you, like the protagonist, will also search. And you can celebrate. It has happened again: The great American novel (as in North and South American) has been written, though set far from García Marquez's Macondo; in fact, set right here in McOndo where we have grown so accustomed to living, where there is no escape."Victor Cruz-Lugo, Hispanic magazine "They are all around us and yet much of the time we don't even really see them: the army of illegal immigrants who wait tables, deliver groceries, and scrub floors. Paradise Travel by Jorge Franco, however, has the power to change that for its readers. After picking up this book, it's hard not to wonder at every subsequent encounter with a nonnative: 'What did this person sacrifice to get here?' But heightened awareness of the plight of the alien (illegal or otherwise) is not the only reason to pick up this compact and compulsively readable novel, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver . . . For readers who want to dip into the dark urban currents emerging in Latin literature as well as to enjoy a survival tale (and the love story here is a survival tale as well), this tight and skillfully plotted novel would be the book."Marjorie Kehe, The Christian Science Monitor "Paradise Travel, a cautionary tale of the pitfalls of immigration, also relates a story of young love that would be tragic in any country. Illuminating the often-overlooked emotional consequences of migration, where legal realties like visas and green cards clash with the facts of the human heart, Paradise Travel is finally, a story about the dangerous journey of love."St. Petersburg Times "This remarkable, highly dramatic novel paints a picture of the world of illegal immigrants, who will do anything and pay any price to survive. At the same time, it is a wonderful love story."Paris Match
"Franco has reconfirmed his place among the new generation of Latin American authors after the success of his previous novel, Rosario Tijeras . . . An entertaining book, with situations that stand out all the more for depicting the grace of several dramatic moments in a natural, unforced manner; the dialogue is convincing in its colloquialism and beautifully phrased."Winston Manrique Sabogal, El País
"In this tale of Marlon Cruz, Franco provides a glimpse of a substratum of society: the undocumented, divided from most of the rest of us by language, economics, and class. Love motivates Marlon to leave his home of Medellin, Colombia, instead of going to university; he has the hots for Reina, the girl all the boys are sniffing around, and Reina wants to go to New York. Since neither Reina nor Marlon qualify for a visa, they pay thousands of dollars (Reina steals it from Marlon's aunt's honeymoon savings) to Paradise Travel to smuggle them into the States. But soon after arriving in Queens, Marlon goes out for a smoke and becomes lost, unable to find his way back to Reina. Patricia, a restaurant owner's wife, literally saves his life, and Milagros, a waiter's friend, offers him love, while Marlon struggles for sustenance and searches for Reina. With Franco's nimble prose, full-bodied characters, and portrayals of the undocumenteds' travel and living conditions, ranging from near horrific to humorous, this is something special."Michele Leber, Booklist
Review
"Jorge Franco writes in an addictive, riddling style that's driven by sexual tension, suspense, and a propulsive . . . interior monologue of despair . . . A complex portrayal of the immigrant experience."--
Time Out New York
"Compact and compulsively readable . . . tight and skillfully plotted."--The Christian Science Monitor
"Engagingly noirish . . . Franco's purity and his tough-tender voice, ably preserved in Katherine Silver's translation, give Franco's novel its own kind of magic."--The New York Times Book Review
"Paradise Travel is cinematic, its story jazzily fractured in the way of Pulp Fiction or The Limey. . . . If you're in the mood for a moody noir--plot clean and tight, atmosphere thick with grime--then this Colombian novelist has a handsome book for you."--Entertainment Weekly "Paradise Travel, a cautionary tale of the pitfalls of immigration, also relates a story of young love that would be tragic in any country. Illuminating the often-overlooked emotional consequences of migration, where legal realties like visas and green cards clash with the facts of the human hart, Paradise Travel is finally, a story about the dangerous journey of love."--St. Petersburg Times
"[The] experience of love and loss is the core of being human, and this book captures it. . . . There is a subtle irony to the whole novel, from the choice of names to the way the humor plays, that is wonderfully captured by Katherine Silver in this translation. Paradise Travel may not be magical realism, but it is picaresque and romantic, reminding one of Dante and Cervantes."--Los Angeles Times
Synopsis
With stolen cash and tickets booked through a shady travel agency, Marlon Cruz and his girlfriend, Reina, have smuggled themselves out of Colombia and into the United States. But on their first night in New York City, they lose each other, and Marlon finds himself cast into the city's immigrant underworld, alone. As he searches for Reina in the bars and boarding houses where illegals congregate, the story of their harrowing cross over the border is retold, mapping the arc of a relationship that has transformed him into a reluctant immigrant.
Synopsis
Madly in love with Reina, a beautiful and ambitious woman, Marlon Cruz, a nave young man from Medelln, Colombia, agrees to accompany her to New York, only to become separated from her on their first night in Queens, sending Marlon on a painful odyssey into the dark underbelly of New York as an illegal immigrant. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
About the Author
Jorge Franco was born in Medellín, Colombia. His books include Rosario Tijeras, Maldito Amor, and Mala Noche.