While the mechanics of the novel don’t always work and some of it reads as rather awkward shoehorning, I’m glad this book exists as it does a very good job of expressing it’s purpose. This is a really important book that takes many of the major talking points about immigration and citizenship and delivers it in an engrossing narrative to shed light on the life of families such as the ones here. Infinite Country by Patricia Engel centers the political narrative as the human struggle of a family from Bogota as they experience the anxieties, aggressions and alienations of living in the United States without official documentation as if this somehow diminished their existence.

The framing has been atrocious and has only furthered violence upon people simply trying to make their way in the world. This has been all the more heightened in the past few years as the recent government administration doubled down on the deportations and family separations of previous presidents and weaponized fear of immigration for political gain. Immigrants have always been the targets of aggression and political discourse. Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality for the undocumented in America, Infinite Country is the story of two countries and one mixed-status family-for whom every triumph is stitched with regret and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream deferred. When Mauro is deported, Elena, now tasked with caring for their three small children, makes a difficult choice that will ease her burdens but splinter the family even further.Īward-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself the daughter of Colombian immigrants and a dual citizen, gives voice to Mauro and Elena, as well as their children, Karina, Nando, and Talia-each one navigating a divided existence, weighing their allegiance to the past, the future, to one another, and to themselves. As their family expands, and they move again and again, their decision to ignore their exit dates plunges the young family into the precariousness of undocumented status, the threat of discovery menacing a life already strained. They travel to Houston and send wages back to Elena’s mother, all the while weighing whether to risk overstaying their tourist visas or to return to Bogotá. Once their first daughter is born, and facing grim economic prospects, they set their sights on the United States. Elena and Mauro are teenagers when they meet, their blooming love an antidote to the mounting brutality of life in Bogotá. For readers of Valeria Luiselli and Edwidge Danticat, an urgent and lyrical novel about a Colombian family fractured by deportation, offering an intimate perspective on an experience that so many have endured-and are enduring right now.Īt the dawn of the new millennium, Colombia is a country devastated by half a century of violence.

Infinite country book review