LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Agustina
built 210 days ago
Agustina is the wife who has vanished, physically and mentally. Young, aristocratic, willfully eccentric and dazzlingly beautiful, Agustina is at the heart of the novel's journey. For her, the journey is an attempt to make a pattern out of the tangle of life's threads that have taken her to this place where delirium is the only answer she can find. Her narrative voice loops back to childhood when she tried to save her younger brother, Bichi Bichito, from their father's wrath, efforts that made her invent herself as a seer who could predict their father's rages.
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Agustina isn't the only one unhinged. It's obvious that Restrepo is charting the progress of a deeper, more insidious madness, one at the heart of Colombia itself. Like Agustina, Colombia is a tragic figure, flawed by a history of economic inequality and corruption that reached its nadir during the rise of Pablo Escobar's Medellín drug cartel. Agustina is a deeply felt, richly imagined character in this complex novel, but the overbearing weight of symbolic purpose makes her presence more didactic than entertaining (if "entertaining" can even be applied to a novel this serious).
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Gerardo Camacho and his wife Agustina have lived in W. Humboldt Park on the near north side of Chicago for the past five years. There they raise their children: Guadalupe (13), Vanessa (8), Eduardo (6), and Monica (9 months). Gerardo’s job requires him to work the third shift, returning home in the early morning to spend a few hours with his children and then sleep until his next shift. In his experience, it is common for parents with busy work and family lives not to have time to be involved in school and/or community activities. Gerardo and Agustina are not such parents.
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The image of Agustina as the saviour of Saragossa has... also overshadowed her later actions. After being captured, she was imprisoned and saw Eugenio die at the hands of her French guards. She subsequently mounted a daring escape and became a low-level rebel leader for the guerrilleros, helping to organise raids and attacks that harassed the French. As the strategic situation deteriorated for the French Army, her role became increasingly orthodox as supplies and training were covertly provided by the Duke of Wellington.
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Agustina's husband, arrested by Indonesia almost five months before the attack and now being held without charges by the US, is not directly tied to the Bali bombings. But US and Indonesian investigators say he and a handful of others prepared the ground for such attacks through aggressive propaganda and intensive recruiting. With the Muslim-Christian war in the Maluku provinces as their springboard, they swelled the ranks of local militants in an effort that would yield the worst terror attack since September 11.
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As Aguilar probes for answers, pulling on threads that could unravel the mystery, pieces of Agustina's life are tossed into view like a kaleidoscope. They change shape, focus and meaning through the eyes of the book's four narrators: Aguilar, Agustina, Midas McAlister, a drug trafficker and Agustina's former lover, and Nicolas, the grandfather who shared Agustina's mental disturbance.
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