2024 National Endowment for the Arts Big Read selection is

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

About the Author

• “Patricia Engel’s most recent book, a short story collection titled The Faraway World, was published in January 2023 and named a New York Times Editors’ Choice.She is also the author of Infinite Country, a New York Times Bestseller, a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, Reese’s Book Club pick, Indie Next pick, Entertainment Weekly’s #1 Best Book of the Year, and more. Infinite Country won the New American Voices Award, a Florida Book Award, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.Her other books include The Veins of the Ocean, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year; It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, winner of the International Latino Book Award; and Vida, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award and the Young Lions Fiction Award, winner of Colombia’s Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana, a Florida Book Award, International Latino Book Award and Independent Publisher Book Award, longlisted for the Story Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.Patricia has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and is the recipient of an O. Henry Award. Her books have been translated into many languages and selected as an NEA Big Read. Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, A Public Space, Ploughshares, The Sun, Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, Oprah Daily, and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Catapult, and in numerous anthologies. Born to Colombian parents, Patricia is a graduate of New York University and earned her MFA at Florida International University. She is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami.” Visit Patricia Engel online for more details.

About the Book

• “I often wonder if we are living the wrong life in the wrong country. Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family. How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope. We see Talia’s parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and indecisions that lead to Mauro’s deportation and the family’s splintering—the costs they’ve all been living with ever since.”
• Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their respective circumstances. Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country “is as much an all-American story as it is a global one” (Booklist, starred review).

Infinite Country is available for checkout at all Fox Cities libraries. An e-book and audiobook version is also available to check out in the digital library through Libby by OverDrive.

The purpose of the Fox Cities Reads is to select an author and title that encourages people in our community to read, think, talk, listen and grow  together. The FC Reads is organized by the Fox Cities Book Festival in partnership with Appleton Public Library, Kaukauna Public Library, Kimberly Public Library, Little Chute Public Library,  Menasha Public  Library and Neenah Public Library. Infinite Country by Patricia Engel is the 18th selection for Fox Cities Reads.

Now, let the reading begin!

We encourage you to read the book with your community and join us for an event with the author on April 5, 2024 at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. 

Please stay tuned for information on how you can further connect and engage with Reads programming. Details will go up on Fox Cities Book Festival-related social media and websites as they become available.

View a schedule of upcoming events on our Fox Cities Reads Event Page.

Visit the Fox Cities Reads event page for details about upcoming events!

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Please direct questions about Fox Cities Reads to: info@foxcitiesbookfestival.org or to your local Fox Cities public library.