title: Affections: A Novel
author:  Rodrigo Hasbn 
description: <b>PRAISE FOR RODRIGO HASBUN:</b><br /> <br /> "He is not a good writer, thank goodness. He is a great one."<b>Jonathan Safran Foer</b><br /> <br /> <br /><br /><b>PRAISE FOR <i>AFFECTIONS:</i></b><br /> <br /> Dark, deep, disturbing. No concessions, no sweeteners: here everything hurts. Through this ably crafted family saga, Hasbn manages to explore the permanent conflicts and contradictions of a whole nation.<b>Andrs Neuman, author of<i>Travel of the Century</i></b><br /><br />"In<i> Affections</i>, a family elegy is woven into an epitaph for the radical politics of South America and the result is an act of literary hypnosis you won't soon forget."<b></b><b>Adam Haslett, bestselling author of<i> Imagine Me Gone</i></b><br /><br />"Concise yet wild, haunting yet exuberantly full of life, Rodrigo Hasbn's <i>Affections</i> achieves all sorts of artful, intoxicating contradictions. What a gloriously unpredictable book."<b>Idra Novey, author of<i>Ways to Disappear</i></b><br /><br />"A slim, striking novel."<b><i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br /><br />A dark, stunning novel, <i>Affections</i> is charged by a brilliant kaleidoscope of perspectives, the voices of exiles, a post-war German family in Bolivia. Hasbn has spun a tale of displacement, of political turmoil, in which the characters motives are as complicated as the Bolivian jungle they explore. Its a fascinating book."<b>Lynne Tillman, author of <i>American Genius, A Comedy</i></b><br /><br />"A compact and evocative historical novel. . .Hasbun has crafted an intriguing tale that ably bridges a pair of indelible historical moments. Lots of novels plumb the intersection of the personal and the political, but few have this kind of intellectual helf and emotional subtlety."<b><i>World Literature in Review</i></b><br /><br />"It's hard to decide which character is more fascinating in Hasbn's masterful blend of history and fiction about a German family living in La Paz in the decades after the war. As the quick-paced narrative covers from the search for a lost city in the Amazon to the brutal guerrillas in the Bolivian jungle, the inner lives of each family member build up to enormous emotional payoff. This is sharp storytelling, both in the political and intimate fronts."<b>Daniel Galera, author of <i>Blood-Drenched Beard</i></b><br /><br />"I have rarely read a novel so gently and quietly concerned with adding two and two and getting five, in fact, of making it possible to read the same sentence twice and see two different things. At first, I thought this was just because Hasbn is a very good writerwhich he isbut it isnt just that: to tell a story about a person is to freeze them in place, but to<i>live</i>the story that is told about you, to move forward in time from the image into which you were frozen, like a word being italicizedit<i>does</i>something to render that story a mere fiction, false and inadequate. And if telling stories is a form of control over realitywhich it isthen living in a world made by stories is all about finding the places where the story doesnt fit, where the lives we are sentenced to break apart and become something else. This novel is about that:<i>Affections</i>is not a story about lives, in the end; its about how people live in a world constructed by stories, how they make those stories, and how they are lost in them."<b>Aaaron Bady, <i>The New Inquiry</i></b><br /><br /><i>Affections</i> is a masterpiece, its spare mosaic narrative mesmerizes and brilliantly explodes in the reader's imagination like slow fireworks that will never fade. With its Chekovian emotional intimacy, the razor sharp and tragic political insight of a Coetzee or Bolao, the seamless enchantment of a Dinesen tale, this novel feels timeless.<b>Francisco Goldman, author of <i>Say Her Name</i></b>
zlib_text: **_He froze._ She must be dreaming, he thought. But then she laid her hand
  across his cheek, tenderly stroking it. ‘You’re such a good man really…and
  sometimes…sometimes so hard to resist.’**  
    
  
  
  ‘Do you know what you are saying?’ he demanded huskily.  
    
  
  
  ‘Yes, I do. I’m wide awake, Rodrigo.’  
    
  
  
  ‘This is a dangerous game you’re playing, Jenny Wren.’  
    
  
  
  ‘Don’t you want to kiss me?’ she whispered, her hand moving gracefully from
  his cheek into his hair.  
    
  
  
  His blood heating violently, Rodrigo gripped her shoulder. Self-control was
  suddenly frighteningly thin. ‘I want much more than just a sweet, drowsy
  little kiss, my angel. Unless you are prepared for that then we will stop this
  right here, right now.’  
    
  
  
  In answer, Jenny gazed up at him with her bewitching light eyes full of
  longing, and then with a fleeting bold smile she slanted her petal-soft lips
  against his.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Surrender to Her Spanish Husband
  
  
  BY
  
  
  ### Maggie Cox  
    
    
  
  
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