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Seven Stories Press

Works of Radical Imagination

And We Sold the Rain

Contemporary Fiction from Central America

by Rosario Santos

Book cover for And We Sold the Rain
Book cover for And We Sold the Rain

Edited by Rosario Santos

Updated here with four new works, this collection features over twenty short stories by leading Central American writers. By turns unsettling, absurd, tragic, exhilarating, and mystical, the stories in And We Sold the Rain introduce us to the people behind the front-page horrors. A Torruban Indian loses a month's pay with a bad role of the dice; the beautiful young Anita hunts beetles and cockroaches; to up its popularity rating, a government stages the first "Miss Underdeveloped Contest"; after the 1954 massacres in Guatemala, children hold a funeral for a bird. Reflecting a wide range of styles, these stories point in new directions while evincing the particular strength and courage it takes to write in a war-torn country.

Book cover for And We Sold the Rain
Book cover for And We Sold the Rain

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“Twenty tales about the intangibility of justice … Our spirits are buoyed by their magical air and absurdist sense of humor.”

“Skillfully chosen, expertly translated, these stories have performed a greater service than a busload of congressional fact-finders.”

Rosario Santos

Born in La Paz, Bolivia, Rosario Santos directs Fulbright Programs for Latin America at the Institute of International Education. She has acted as the managing editor of the literary journal, Review: Latin American Art and Literature, and the director of the literature program at the Center for Inter-American Relations. Santos lives in New York City.