My thanks to Ayesha Pande, agent extraordinaire, and the Pande Literary team; to the always visionary Lauren Wein; Amy Guay, Meredith Vilarello, Alexandra Primiani, Morgan Hoit, Jessica Chin, Alison Forner, and everyone at Avid Reader Press and Simon & Schuster for your work on this book and for such a warm welcome.
My thanks to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for their generous support of my research and writing of this novel; to Viet Thanh Nguyen and Ploughshares for publishing an early excerpt; to my colleagues and students at the University of Miami, especially M. Evelina Galang and Chantel Acevedo; and to the dear friends who’ve encouraged me along the way.
My gratitude to my family in the United States and Colombia; to my nieces, the youngest Engel writers; to my husband, John Henry, for so much love and laughter; to S, G, and M, my adored companions.
Above all, I thank my mother and father for their love, their stories, and for holding on to each other no matter what.
Infinite Country
Patricia Engel
This reading group guide for Infinite Country includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Patricia Engel. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
At the dawn of the new millennium, Colombia is a country devastated by half a century of violence. Only teenagers, Elena and Mauro fall in love against a backdrop of paramilitary and guerilla warfare. A few years later, brutalities continue to ravage their homeland, but the couple now has a young daughter to protect. Their economic prospects grim, they bargain on the American Dream and travel to Houston to send wages back to Elena’s mother, all the while weighing whether to risk overstaying their visas or to return to Bogotá. The decision to ignore their exit dates plunges the expanding family into the precariousness of undocumented status, the threat of discovery menacing a life already strained with struggle. When deportation forces Mauro back to Colombia, Elena sends infant Talia on a plane back to her daughter’s grandmother, splintering the family into two worlds with no certain hope of reunion. Encompassing continents and generations, Infinite Country knits together the accounts of five family members as they struggle to keep themselves whole in the face of the hostile landscapes and forces that threaten to drive them apart.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
Infinite Country begins with Talia’s restraint of a prison school nun, her time at the correctional facility a punishment for committing an even more viscerally violent attack. Think about Talia’s decision to throw hot oil on the man who killed the cat and how this choice surfaces at various points. Reflect also on the sentence, “Talia considered how people who do horrible things can be victims, and how victims can be people who do horrible things.” What role does moral ambivalence play in the novel?
For Mauro and Elena’s family of five, the concept of “home” is a fluid one, distinct to each character and dependent on time and place. Choose a character and chart their relationship to Colombia and to the United States. Does it change, and if so, what affects this shift?
Although the settings of Infinite Country are primarily urban, Engel writes of lush Colombian landscapes brimming with beasts and allegories, stories in which Mauro finds a particular sense of pride. How do descriptions of North American cities compare, and what emotions can be gleaned from both kinds of imagery?
At the end of chapter five, Elena watches airplanes crash into the World Trade Center on September 11 and wonders “if she was hallucinating.” In what ways might feelings of uncanniness and displacement be heightened for Elena, Mauro, and other members of diaspora?
Talia is named after Talia Shire, the actress who plays Adrian Pennino-Balboa of the Rocky franchise. Elena thinks Adrian is “much tougher than the boxer. Only women knew the strength it took to love men through their evolution to who they thought they were supposed to be.” How does Mauro and Elena’s relationship demonstrate this dynamic? At the beginning of the novel, who does Mauro think he is supposed to be, and who does he end up becoming?
As she hitchhikes back to her father in Bogotá, Talia meets three men who agree to help her home. What insights do they share with her about her impending journey north? What does each encounter say about Talia’s character and the way she moves about the world?
In her nightmares, Elena finds herself in the midst of the Nevado del Ruiz eruption. Although she usually dreams that she is either trying to pull Omayra Sánchez to safety or she becomes Omayra herself, Elena dreams that she is “a bird or a cloud watching from above” after Mauro is deported. What does this passage disclose about Elena’s psyche during this difficult period in her life?