Carolina De Robertis – The Gods of Tango

Late Night Conversation, hosted by Kristin Maffei

Featured guest: Carolina De Robertis

Listen to the episode here:

In this episode, Carolina and Kristin talk about the new novel, rich with the cultural history of Buenos Aires, tango, and the hidden stories of immigrants.

What fiction can do is go deeper into these hidden stories. Scholars can’t get away with that kind of conjecture. I do have this wild hope that novelists can play some sort of part in honoring history….

GIVEAWAY: You can win a copy of Carolina’s novel, The Gods of Tango. Win by listening for Kristin’s question in the episode and being the FIRST LISTENER to email the correct answer to [email protected].

PURCHASE THE GODS OF TANGO HERE

From the award-winning, internationally bestselling author of The Invisible Mountain and Perla—a lush, lyrical, deeply moving story of a young woman whose passion for the early sounds of tango becomes a force of profound and unexpected change.

February 1913: seventeen-year-old Leda, carrying only a small trunk and her father’s cherished violin, leaves her Italian village for a new home, and a new husband, in Argentina. Arriving in Buenos Aires, she discovers that he has been killed, but she remains: living in a tenement, without friends or family, on the brink of destitution. Still, she is seduced by the music that underscores life in the city: tango, born from lower-class immigrant voices, now the illicit, scandalous dance of brothels and cabarets. Leda eventually acts on a long-held desire to master the violin, knowing that she can never play in public as a woman. She cuts off her hair, binds her breasts, and becomes “Dante,” a young man who joins a troupe of tango musicians bent on conquering the salons of high society. Now, gradually, the lines between Leda and Dante begin to blur, and feelings that she has long kept suppressed reveal themselves, jeopardizing not only her musical career, but her life.

Richly evocative of place and time, its prose suffused with the rhythms of the tango, its narrative at once resonant and gripping, this is De Robertis’ most accomplished novel yet.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carolina De Robertis was raised in England, Switzerland, and California by Uruguayan parents. She is the author of two previous novels, Perla and The Invisible Mountain (a Best Book of 2009 according to the San Francisco Chronicle, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Booklist), the recipient of Italy’s Rhegium Julii Prize, and a 2012 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has spent the past year living in Uruguay, but her permanent home is in Oakland, CA.