Tales from the Town of Widows

Tales from the Town of Widows is a lyrical novel written by Colombian-born author James Cañón. It 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 Left to fend for themselves with an ethically challenged priest, a transvestite and a withdrawn gay man, the virtual widows slowly emerge from their supporting roles as wives and daughters to become unwitting founders of a remarkable new society: an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. Interspersed with the central narrative are blunt and brutal first-person accounts (each a page and a half long and signaled by an alternate font) that serve as reports on the men. They are all fighting, displaced, or brutally murdered, including left-wing rebels, right-wing paramilitary soldiers, Colombian national army soldiers and the civilians that are caught between all these forces. These are designed to remind the readers of the very unmagical reality the women are rejecting.

Contents

• Awards and honors
• Film adaptation
• References

The novel was first published in 2007 by Harper Collins NY. Since, it has been published in over twenty countries and translated into French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Hebrew, Korean, Turkish, Arabic, Croatian and Polish.