Brief Encounters with Che Guevara

Ben Fountain

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061847622
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Fiction
• Index: Literature

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award * A National Bestseller

" An exceptional story collection. " — New York Times Book Review

The well-intentioned protagonists of Brief Encounters with Che Guevera —including a disillusioned NGO worker, the wife of a special operations officer, and an obssessed ornithologist—are caught, to both disastrous and hilarious effect, in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them.

With masterful pacing and a robust sense of the absurd, each story is a self-contained adventure, steeped in the heady mix of tragedy and danger, excitement and hope, that characterizes countries in transition. An intelligent and keenly observed collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevera 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.

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Near-Extinct Birds...
• Rêve Haitien
• The Good Ones Are Already Taken
• Asian Tiger
• Bouki and the Cocaine
• The Lion's Mouth
• Brief Encounters with Che Guevara
• Fantasy for Eleven Fingers
• About the Author
• Books By Ben Fountain
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher