We Are Green and Trembling

Antonio owes his life to the Virgin of the orange grove, who spared him the noose, and to repay her he escapes into the rainforest with two hungry little girls, Michi and Mitãkuña. There, surrounded by a forest that seems to breathe like a single many-bodied creature, he writes to his aunt, the mother superior of the convent he fled before taking vows. He has been a mule driver, a merchant, a soldier, a ship's boy and a page, and has killed with blade and dagger; now his charges are a herd of animals and two children whose questions never stop. The book reimagines Catalina de Erauso, the Basque-born 'Lieutenant Nun' who lived as a man in the conquest of the Americas, and recounts the conquest's violence in a language mixing Latin, Basque and Guaraní.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

First published

2023 by Random House

Author's age

55 when first published

ISBN

9780811238618 (New Directions, United States)

9781787304765 (Harvill Secker, United Kingdom)

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