Lost City RadioLost City Radio
Imparting comfort while reading the names of missing people to her war-ravaged listeners, radio host Norma finds her life irrevocably changed when a young boy from a remote jungle village provides a connection to her long-missing husband.
For ten years, Norma has been the voice of consolation for a people broken by violence. She hosts Lost City Radio, the most popular program in their nameless South American country, gripped in the aftermath of war. Every week, the Indians in the mountains and the poor from the barrios listen as she reads the names of those who have gone missing, those whom the furiously expanding city has swallowed. Loved ones are reunited and the lost are found. Each week, she returns to the airwaves while hiding her own personal loss: her husband disappeared at the end of the war.
But the life she has become accustomed to is forever changed when a young boy arrives from the jungle and provides a clue to the fate of her long-missing husband.
Lost City Radio probes the deepest questions of war and its meaning: from its devastating impact on a society transformed by violence to the emotional scarring each participant, observer, and survivor carries for years after.
'Daniel Alarcon writes about subterfuge, lies, and the arbitrary recreation of history with a masterful clarity. By accepting the premise that war is senseless, he goes on to make sense of the lives that are destroyed in its wake. Lost City Radio is both ambitious and resonant.' ' Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and The Dutch House
In his critically acclaimed debut novel, award winning author Daniel Alarcón vividly portrays an anonymous nation searching for its identity at the end of a war with no clear right or wrong.
For ten years, Norma has been the on-air voice of consolation and hope for the Indians in the mountains and the poor from the barrios'a people broken by war's violence. As the host of Lost City Radio, she reads the names of those who have disappeared'those whom the furiously expanding city has swallowed. Through her efforts lovers are reunited and the lost are found. But in the aftermath of the decade long bloody civil conflict, her own life is about to forever change'thanks to the arrival of a young boy from the jungle who provides a cryptic clue to the fate of Norma's vanished husband.
Stunning, timely, and absolutely mesmerizing, Lost City Radio probes the deepest questions of war and its meaning: from its devastating impact on society to the emotional scarring each survivor carries for years after.
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- New York : Harper Collins Publishers, c2007.
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