Originally from New Jersey, Engel moved to Miami in 2004 to earn her MFA at Florida International University; she now teaches at the University of Miami. Her first book,
Vida, a collection of short stories released in 2010, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award and the New York Public Library s Young Lions Fiction Award. She followed that up with two highly acclaimed novels,
It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris in 2013, and
The Veins of the Ocean in 2016, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019. Infinity Country is receiving similar praise and has already earned book-club recommendations from
Esquire magazine and from actress Reese Witherspoon.
Join award-winning writers
Patricia Engel and Edwidge Danticat on Thursday for a virtual discussion about Engle s new novel,
Infinite Country, hosted by Books & Books. The story follows Talia as she desperately searches for a way back to her family after being incarcerated following an impulsive act of violence. Her father is waiting for her in Bogotá with a ticket to the U.S., where the rest of her family resides.
Infinite Country is a tale of family, love, and sacrifice and explores what it means to straddle two worlds and what challenges are faced by those living undocumented in the U.S.
Image zoom Credit: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images; Nina Subin
Imbolo Mbue and Patricia Engel may not be the most obvious author pairing: The former s singular, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel
Behold the Dreamers concerns the collapse of Lehman Brothers; the latter has written three books centered largely on Pan-American communities. But this month, both release highly sought-after, deeply emotional works that meditate on the importance and meaning of home. Engel s
Infinite Country follows a young Colombian couple, Elena and Mauro, as they journey from a FARC-occupied Bogotá to small-town Texas, where circumstances beyond their control lead to a visa overstay, a deportation for Mauro, and the separation of their family which now includes three small children.
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Say what you will about the Royal Kerfuffle who’s at fault, who made whom cry, who acted a fool the saga of Meghan and Harry is really a story about politics and power. Scratch that. It’s really a story about race, politics and power: Who gets to have it and who gets the side eye for having the temerity to want it, too.