Eucalyptus
An Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013: Top 100/Editors' Pick
"Captivating . . . a story of blood, hatred, vengeance, and politics."—Radio-Canada
Alberto Ventura has travelled to Chile to attend the funeral of his father, Roberto. A man hated and loved both by his family and the local people, Roberto was known in the village as an enigma, a rake, a controversial boss, and a quick-tempered thug. It's said that he has destroyed the family land by mass-farming eucalyptus trees, and he's known to have killed a local boy in a fit of rage. Yet as Alberto delves into the rumours that obscure his father's death—was it natural causes, vengeance, murder, or self-sacrifice?—he finds the reputation at stake is his own.
In a breath-catching story of race and identity, rife with Chile's centuries-old tension between natives and local landowners, Mauricio Segura's Eucalyptus investigates the flashpoint of one village community in an expanding world.
"Well-executed, with a cinematic quality and keen visual sense … Segura locates the political through the personal in a way that is uncommon."—Stephen Sparks, Green Apple Books
"A solid novelist of infallible instincts."—L'Actualité
Born in Chile in 1969, Mauricio Segura grew up in Montreal and studied at Université de Montréal and McGill University. A well-known journalist and documentary filmmaker, he is the author of three novels and a study of French perceptions of Latin America. His novel Black Alley, published by Biblioasis in 2010, was widely praised as “a gritty look at multiculturalism in practice” (Noah Richler, CBC Radio) that exerts “an urgent complicity rarely seen in other works about racial tensions, multiculturalism and the immigrant experience” (Words Without Borders).
Mauricio Segura lives with his family in Montreal.
Donald Winkler is a Montreal-based literary translator and documentary filmmaker. He has translated books by the astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, the philosopher Georges Leroux and the novelists Daniel Poliquin and Nadine Bismuth. Winkler is a two-time winner of the Governor General's Award.
