It Would Be Night in Caracas
SynopsisPlot
In Caracas, Venezuela, Adelaida Falcón stands over an open grave. Alone, she buries her mother—the only family she has ever known—and worries that when night falls thieves will rob the grave. Even the dead cannot find peace here. Adelaida had a stable childhood in a prosperous Venezuela that accepted immigrants in search of a better life, where she lived with her single-mother in a humble apartment. But now? Every day she lines up for bread that will inevitably be sold out by the time she reaches the registers. Every night she tapes her windows to shut out the tear gas raining down on protesters. When looters masquerading as revolutionaries take over her apartment, Adelaida must make a series of gruesome choices in order to survive in a country disintegrating into anarchy, where citizens are increasingly pitted against each other. But just how far is she willing to go?
Story
About this book
Adelaida Falcón buries her mother in Caracas and worries that thieves will rob the grave before morning. She is now alone, without any remaining family, in a city where even the dead are not safe. Karina Sainz Borgo's debut novel opens at this stark moment and moves between Adelaida's memories of a more stable Venezuela and the violent present closing in around her.
Adelaida grew up in a country that once welcomed immigrants and offered a degree of everyday prosperity. She and her single mother shared a modest apartment in relative calm. The Venezuela she now inhabits is defined by bread lines that run out before she reaches the counter and tear gas that seeps through taped-shut windows at night. When a group of looters acting under the banner of revolution seize her apartment, Adelaida faces a set of dangerous decisions about how far she will go to survive.
Sainz Borgo, a Venezuelan journalist based in Spain, sets the novel against a recognizable collapse of civic order. The story stays close to one woman's perspective, tracing how personal grief and political disintegration press against each other in a city where ordinary routines have broken down. Caracas itself functions almost as a second character, its streets and shortages shaping every choice Adelaida can make.
