The Banana Wars by Alan Grostephan (paperback)
Urabá, Colombia, 1990: A violent strike at plantations across the banana zone leads to crops in flames, managers murdered, and the local economy teetering on the brink. In retaliation, the banana producers finance right-wing paramilitaries to cleanse the zone of guerrillas and their supposed collaborators.
Through the intertwined lives of four characters—a banana worker making a play for power in the guerrillas, a decadent Colombian banana planter who runs his business from the safety of Medellín, a widow in Urabá struggling to stay on the right side of the local paramilitaries, and an American banana executive wading ever deeper into troubled waters—The Banana Wars charts the struggle to survive in impossible conditions, in a place where no one is to be trusted and one false move can lead to death.
Starkly drawn from the true history of Urabá and this period of conflict, including the unseen role of US corporate interests, celebrated author Alan Grostephan’s latest is an incandescent historical novel for fans of Jesmyn Ward, Roberto Bolaño, and Fernanda Melchor.
Publication Date: July 15, 2025
Paperback: 272 pages
ISBN: 9781938603327
Urabá, Colombia, 1990: A violent strike at plantations across the banana zone leads to crops in flames, managers murdered, and the local economy teetering on the brink. In retaliation, the banana producers finance right-wing paramilitaries to cleanse the zone of guerrillas and their supposed collaborators.
Through the intertwined lives of four characters—a banana worker making a play for power in the guerrillas, a decadent Colombian banana planter who runs his business from the safety of Medellín, a widow in Urabá struggling to stay on the right side of the local paramilitaries, and an American banana executive wading ever deeper into troubled waters—The Banana Wars charts the struggle to survive in impossible conditions, in a place where no one is to be trusted and one false move can lead to death.
Starkly drawn from the true history of Urabá and this period of conflict, including the unseen role of US corporate interests, celebrated author Alan Grostephan’s latest is an incandescent historical novel for fans of Jesmyn Ward, Roberto Bolaño, and Fernanda Melchor.
Publication Date: July 15, 2025
Paperback: 272 pages
ISBN: 9781938603327
Urabá, Colombia, 1990: A violent strike at plantations across the banana zone leads to crops in flames, managers murdered, and the local economy teetering on the brink. In retaliation, the banana producers finance right-wing paramilitaries to cleanse the zone of guerrillas and their supposed collaborators.
Through the intertwined lives of four characters—a banana worker making a play for power in the guerrillas, a decadent Colombian banana planter who runs his business from the safety of Medellín, a widow in Urabá struggling to stay on the right side of the local paramilitaries, and an American banana executive wading ever deeper into troubled waters—The Banana Wars charts the struggle to survive in impossible conditions, in a place where no one is to be trusted and one false move can lead to death.
Starkly drawn from the true history of Urabá and this period of conflict, including the unseen role of US corporate interests, celebrated author Alan Grostephan’s latest is an incandescent historical novel for fans of Jesmyn Ward, Roberto Bolaño, and Fernanda Melchor.
Publication Date: July 15, 2025
Paperback: 272 pages
ISBN: 9781938603327
PRAISE FOR THE BANANA WARS
“The novel’s scenes are compact and eventful, and its sentences direct and percussive. The hardboiled depiction of extreme lawlessness invites comparisons to Graham Greene. And like Phil Klay’s outstanding novel “Missionaries” (2020), also about America’s interventions in Colombia’s civil unrest, the realistic story doubles as a kind of allegory of modern war, in which alliances and rationales are fluid, money is primary and violence generates more violence. “It was transgression to be alive,” Orejas thinks in a particularly infernal scene, and there is a sense in this powerful novel that freedom from sin is only truly granted to the dead.” —Wall Street Journal
“Grim yet affecting…This war story stands out for its heartrending portrait of the conflict’s impact on individual lives.” —Publishers Weekly
"Grostephan traces the shifting fortunes of several characters in 1990s Colombia ... a harrowing tale of survival at increasingly brutal costs." —Kirkus Reviews
"Here is a novel in which dead men still speak 'for not even the dead shut their mouths.' The Banana Wars is as fine a novel as Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo or Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season. Alan Grostephan’s prose is devastatingly precise, with a beauty that arises—perversely—only from horrifying situations. I have not read anything as fine as The Banana Wars in ages." —Michelle Latiolais, author of Widow and She
"In Urabá, Columbia, the banana trade is an extremely violent and unsettling history, one that Grostephan resists sugarcoating. Unlike an actual banana, there is nothing banal or mild about The Banana Wars. Told from several compelling perspectives, this novel is blistering, unflinching, and hard to put down." —Jen Beagin, author of Big Swiss and Vacuum in the Dark
"Don’t let banana in this title alleviate war in any way for you. From its opening quote by A.S. Ramos to its final chapter, Alan Grostephan’s THE BANANA WARS is a riveting and indispensable novel that hails life as monumental, and the only force of the Universe worth talking about—fuck all them Riders of the Apocalypse! It just so happens that life burns brightest when its opposing forces are present and Grostephan knows this well; he is marvelous at detail, an engrossing storyteller and a deep feeler to boot. What a book! It was both a surprise and a balm for this war-torn heart and mind to read it." —Ismet Prcic, author of Shards and Unspeakable Home
“I dare you to enjoy a banana split after you’ve read Alan Grostephan’s gut-wrenching novel The Banana Wars. Vividly written, unforgettably peopled, ranging across a landscape at once horrific and sublime, The Banana Wars will wring you out, leaving you at once exhausted and enriched, the way every good book exacts something from you even as it feeds your soul.” -Angel Khoury, bestselling author of Between Tides
“A searing account of the ongoing consequences of colonial power structures in Colombia. What strikes me about The Banana Wars is the keen, journalistic eye and the refusal to look away from the lives and power struggles of everyday people—guerillas, paramilitary soldiers, sex workers, plantation owners and their backers overseas—all of whom are trapped in a brutal system of exploitation and madness.” -Blair Austin, author of Dioramas
“Alan Grostephan writes with lush exuberance as though he were a Garcia Marquez's nephew. Confidently the narrative follows several people, switching POVs along the way, so we have a nearly omniscient picture of the class warfare, crime, and the mystery centered around the magic fruit, and at the same time intimate and sensual details. Cinematic. Each sentence delights.” -Josip Novakovich, author of Rubble of Rubles
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Grostephan is the author of Bogotá, a novel chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best ten books of fiction in 2013 and longlisted for the Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize. He is also the editor and translator of "Stories of Life and Death," a collection of writing by emerging Colombian writers. He lives in Georgia.
