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    Damnificados: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Damnificados: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Damnificados: A Novel
    Ebook346 pages4 hours

    Damnificados: A Novel

    By JJ Amaworo Wilson

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Winner:
    2016 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, Fiction
    2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year, Multicultural Fiction
    2017 Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold, Multicultural Fiction

    Nominee:
    2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Debut Fiction


    Uses magical realism, revolutionary politics, and romantic adventure to bring to life a colorful community of squatters in an imaginary Latin American city

    Damnificados is loosely based on the real-life occupation of a half-completed skyscraper in Caracas, Venezuela, the Tower of David. In this fictional version, 600 "damnificados"—vagabonds and misfits—take over an abandoned urban tower and set up a community complete with schools, stores, beauty salons, bakeries, and a rag-tag defensive militia. Their always heroic (and often hilarious) struggle for survival and dignity pits them against corrupt police, the brutal military, and the tyrannical "owners." Taking place in an unnamed country at an unspecified time, the novel has elements of magical realism: avenging wolves, biblical floods, massacres involving multilingual ghosts, arrow showers falling to the tune of Beethoven's Ninth, and a trash truck acting as a Trojan horse.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPM Press
    Release dateJan 1, 2016
    ISBN9781629631752
    Unavailable
    Damnificados: A Novel

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    Reviews for Damnificados

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    • 5/5
      From 2007 in Caracas, Venezuela, squatters began moving into an unfinished and abandoned tower. Wilson transforms this real-life event into a novel with mythic power in The Damnificados.Nacho Morales, exposed by a river at birth because of a withered arm and leg, is taken by a poor man and brought up with his other son. Nacho is brilliant with a talent for languages, and studies enough to support himself as a translator. When his wretched slum is threatened by a Trash War, he leads some of the inhabitants, damnificados, the invisible destitute, into an abandoned 60 floor tower. They move in by the hundreds, steal electricity from the grid, get water through Nacho's powerful contacts for whom he translates, and set up their own businesses (a bakery, a beauty shop,a school) or work in the unnamed South American city. Then the head of the family that built and abandoned the building decides that he wants it back.The book is peopled by interesting characters, a polyglot bunch who have found a home and manage to live together under Nacho's leadership. Biblical allusions abound: Nacho as Moses, the tower itself, both Babel and the promised land, a flood. Magical realism underlines the feel of mythology; the Agua Suja (Dirty Water river where Nacho was found) turns into something like the Ganges for the Great Cleansing. We have a wolf pack, crocodiles, and a savior in the form of Nacho's brother Emil, who brings food by boat during the flood in time to save the people from starvation.It's funny. It's surprising. It's profound. I've just talked myself into another half star!