The Vortex

The 100th anniversary edition of a classic.

A classic of twentieth-century Latin American literature, José Eustasio Rivera's The Vortex follows the young poet Arturo Cova and his lover Alicia as they elope from Bogotá and embark on an adventure through Colombia's varied and magical landscapes, with their rich biodiversity. After becoming separated from Alicia in the rainforest, Arturo witnesses the appalling conditions of the workers forced or tricked into tapping rubber trees. Newly translated for its 100th anniversary, The Vortex is both a denunciation of the horrific human-rights abuses that took place during the Amazonian rubber boom, and one of most enduring renderings of the natural environment in Latin American literature.