Description
A couple’s search for a rural paradise on the Caribbean coast takes a sinister turn in this darkly ironic modern classic.
When J. and Elena swap the parties and culture of the city for a simpler life on Colombia’s remote Caribbean coast, they expect to find an Eden to call their own. But in amongst the mango groves they discover decaying houses, diseased animals, suffocating heat and locals from another world. Faced with growing debt, how will they survive in this new environment when they themselves remain unchanged? And, as their relationship breaks down – and the horror unfolds – who can they count on if not each other?
Based on a true story, In the Beginning Was the Sea is a menacing, ironic tale of human weakness, the terrifying power of nature, and what happens when our dreams meet their fateful reality.
Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.
Translated by Frank Wynne
Tomás González was born in 1950 in Medellín, Colombia. He studied Philosophy before becoming a barman in a Bogotá nightclub, whose owner published In the Beginning Was the Sea, his first novel, in 1983. González has lived in Miami and New York, where he wrote much of his work while making a living as a translator. After twenty years in the US, he returned to Colombia, where he now lives. His books have been translated into six languages. His novels Fog at Noon, Difficult Light and The Storm have also been published in English.
Frank Wynne is an Irish literary translator, writer and editor. He has translated numerous French and Hispanic authors including Michel Houellebecq, Patrick Modiano, Javier Cercas and Virginie Despentes. Over a career spanning more than twenty-five years, his translations have won many awards, including the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Scott Moncrieff Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán twice. Most recently, his translation of The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers Guild by Mathias Énard won the 2024 French-American Prize.
‘Smoothly intriguing narrative, with touches of sinister, Patricia Highsmith-like menace’ Irish Times
‘A taut, uncompromising study of the faultlines in all of us’ J.G. Vásquez, Guardian
‘A writerly coup de grâce: short and swift, with sharp imagery, menace and sensuality nestling together in its luxuriant Caribbean setting’Times
Reviews
A taut, uncompromising study of the faultlines in all of us
J.G. Vásquez, Guardian
A writerly coup de grâce: short and swift, with sharp imagery, menace and sensuality nestling together in its luxuriant Caribbean setting
Financial Times
Smoothly intriguing narrative, with its touches of sinister, Patricia Highsmith-like menace
Irish Times
The lauded Colombian novelist lives up to the hype … Extraordinarily evocative
Independent
Extremely potent: sly, voyeuristic, ominously poetic … A clever riff on the Rousseaus (both Henri and Jean-Jacques), a cautionary tale about choosing to defy the laws of nature and man, and ultimately discovering that idealism can’t replace them
Jessica Loudis, TLS
Haunting
Metro
A novel that lingers
Telegraph
Superb
Eileen Battersby, Irish Times (Books of the Year)
Terse but poetic… J’s escape is by turns beautiful, hubristic and tragic. González writes gloriously about nature for good measure
Independent (Books of the Year)
[T]he novel leaves its mark… the arresting prose and complex characters shine.
Kirkus Reviews
Quietly unsettling, elegantly written
Sunday Express
A brief, pungent, powerful and unusual tale
Monocle
Tomás González has the potential to become a classic of Latin American literature… a very pure writer
Elfriede Jelinek, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
Skilfully planted with narrative bombs… you can hear it ticking
Intelligent Life
Through the sparse language and the handpicked metaphors, the exotic island that J. and Elena inhabit and the realities of mainland South America come to life… lean and severe but still ultimately artistic
Bookbag
A fascinatingly dark character study. It is an unflinching, and pitch perfect trip into the dark heart of Colombia and hippy culture in general. It is above all a powerful debut
Upcoming4Me
Gonzalez’s sharp and succinct delivery, combined with his crisp and startling imagery, leaves an impression upon a reader that takes time to fade
Litro
If García Márquez is Wagner, Tomás González is Bob Dylan
Arcadia magazine, Colombia
A fascinating sociological experiment…Tomás González writes with descriptive beauty and subtle irony
The Literateur
Tomás González is among the brilliant Colombian writers emerging from the shadow of Gabriel García Márquez
Maya Jaggi, Pen Atlas
Colombian novelist González tells a common story with uncommon economy
Booklist
González’s work has been translated into six languages, but this is his first book to appear in English, an auspicious beginning
Booklist
For readers following J’s fantasies and hopes […], it is impossible not to think of Kafka’s K
Booklist
Devastatingly evocative… a chilling, brilliantly plotted tale
Typographical Era
A truly captivating trouble-in-paradise novel… If this is a measure of what [González] is capable of, with luck there will be many more
Star Tribune
The finca’s surroundings, richly and sensuously rendered by González and Spanish-language translator Frank Wynne, burst with images of fecundity… For the English-speaking world, this novel is merely a taste of what is to come
Chicago Tribune
Gonzalez poetically and comically captures the inevitable destruction of those who live in a world of fantasy and hubris, depicting beauty and despair by turns
Publishers Weekly
Touching… González has established himself as one of Colombia’s leading writers
RTE
González’s story of failed bohemian idealism has new power in its conscious merging of fiction and confessional… After the studious buildup of suspense and endangerment […], González captures the ultimate smallness of the murder, the bathos of a handgun being fired, the stillness that immediately follows
Los Angeles Review of Books
The lyrical, haunting story has the feel of a fable – a young man and his beautiful wide abandon their hectic, intellectual, night-clubbing life in the city to buy a farm on an undeveloped stretch of coast – while the spare, disquieting prose suggests the start of an art-house horror film.
Words Without Borders
Book Details
Format: |
Paperback |
Number of Pages: |
160 |
ISBN: |
9781805332039 |
Published: |
Nov. 3 2026 |
Weight: |
367 g |
Dimensions: |
12.9 x 1.24 x 19.74 cm |
Language: |
English |
