• Warsaw Public Library / Biblioteka Glowna Województwa, Poland
  
  
  

For him it began with a bright blue parrot feather that fell from Ella Lynch's hat when she was horseback riding in the Bois de Boulogne. The year was 1854, and Francisco Solano Lopez -- "Franco," the future dictator of Paraguay -- began his courtship of the young, beautiful Irishwoman with a poncho, a Paraguayan band, and a horse named Mathilde.

From Paris, Ella Lynch follows Franco to Asunción, where she reigns as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover's ill-fated dream -- one fuelled by outsize imperial ambition and heedless arrogance, and with devastating consequences for Paraguay and all its inhabitants.

A historical epic that tells an unusual love story, The News from Paraguay offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of nineteenth-century Paraguay, a largely untouched wilderness where Europeans and North Americans intermingle with both the old Spanish aristocracy and native Guaraní Indians. It captures the devastating havoc wrought on both a country's fate and a woman's heart by ruthless ambition and war.

Born in Paris, Lily Tuck is the author of three previous novels, Interviewing Matisse, The Woman Who Walked on Water, and Siam and a collection of stories, Limbo and Other Places I Have Lived. The News from Paraguay won the 2004 National Book Award. Lily lives in New York City, USA.