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  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407074566
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

The Vision Of Elena Silves




'Shakespeare must be praised for his energy, his always lucid presentation' IAN MORRISON, Independent on Sunday

In the Amazon city of Belén, in the heart of the Peruvian jungle, three old men sit on a bench. They sit in the square every day under the hot sun, remembering the women they loved and the world when it was a better place. One day a woman hurries past their bench whom all have reason to remember - Elena Silves, the girl with eyes as blue as the sky who once saw a vision and has been incarcerated by the Church authorities in a convent high in the Andes ever since. But the old men remember something else. They remember that Elena had been in love at the time with Gabriel, a student revolutionary who became the most wanted man in Belén.

  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407074566
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

About the author

Nicholas Shakespeare

Nicholas Shakespeare was born in 1957. The son of a diplomat, much of his youth was spent in the Far East and South America. His novels have been translated into twenty languages. They include The Vision Of Elena Silves, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, Snowleg and The Dancer Upstairs, which was chosen by the American Libraries Association in 1997 as the year's best novel, and in 2001 was made into a film of the same name by John Malkovich. Recent books include Secrets of the Sea and Priscilla. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is married with two sons and divides his time between Oxford and Tasmania.

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Praise for The Vision Of Elena Silves

A story of love and insurrection brilliantly told-a remarkable debut-one of the best books about the continent written by an outsider

Sunday Times

An Englishman's novel of magic realism, flavoured with the more traditional English spices such as thriller and tourchsong, and a touch of Anglo-Saxon irony-a fine literary novel, combining several traditions and genres of fiction

The Times

A novel of action in the best tradition of Conrad and Greene-Love, violence, revolution and death-a d-nouement that is unexpected, shocking and brilliantly conceived-I closed the novel with both satisfaction and regret

Literary Review

'The Vision of Elena Silves is a terrific novel'

John Sutherland, London Review of Books

'Written with precision, clarity and rare beauty-Alongside Salman Rushdie and the late Bruce Chatwin, Shakespeare now joins the ranks of the New Exotics school'

Robert Carver, New Statesman
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