Tales from the Town of Widows

Set against the backdrop of the ongoing Colombian war, this brilliant novel tells the story of Mariquita, a mountain village that's forever altered the day a band of communist guerrillas forcibly recruits all but three of its men.

Left to fend for themselves with an ethically challenged priest, a transvestite and a withdrawn gay man, the virtual widows slowly emerge from their supporting roles as wives and daughters to become unwitting founders of a remarkable new society: an all-female utopia far greater than any revolutionary's imagined ideal society.

And when some of the men come home after their 16-year absence and try to reclaim their power, things get really interesting. . .

Deft, rich and darkly humorous, Tales From the Town of Widows & Chronicles From the Land of Men marks the arrival of an unforgettable new literary talent.


Genre: General Fiction

"Cañón is a gifted storyteller, as full of his radical purpose as Jonathan Swift, as enchanting as Gabriel García Márquez, as brainy as Pamuk, yet his anger and compassion, as well as his humor, are distinctly his own." - Maureen Howard

"Like his villagers, James Cañón has built a new world on an old - a realigned literary landscape, with new sex roles, new stubbornness, new glory, and new wreckage. A much-loved tradition of Colombian fiction has been gorgeously re-imagined." - Joan Silber