From the acclaimed author of Cantoras comes an incandescent novel—political, mystical, timely, and heartening—about the power of memory, and the pursuit of justice.
At his modest home on the edge of town, the former president of an unnamed Latin American country receives a journalist in his famed gardens to discuss his legacy and the dire circumstances that threaten democracy around the globe. Once known as the Poorest President in the World, his reputation is the stuff of myth: a former guerilla who was jailed for inciting revolution before becoming the face of justice, human rights, and selflessness for his nation. Now, as he talks to the journalist, he wonders if he should reveal the strange secret of his imprisonment: while held in brutal solitary confinement, he survived, in part, by discussing revolution, the quest for dignity, and what it means to love a country, with the only creature who ever spoke back—a loud-mouth frog.
As engrossing as it is innovative, vivid, moving, and full of wit and humor, The President and the Frog explores the resilience of the human spirit and what is possible when danger looms. Ferrying us between a grim jail cell and the president’s lush gardens, the tale reaches beyond all borders and invites us to reimagine what it means to lead, to dare, and to dream.
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A former president of an unnamed Latin American country lives out his retirement simply, the same way he served his people, in a humble home surrounded by things he loves-wife, dogs, garden. A journalist travels from Norway for an interview, one of many seeking insight into this former guerilla and political prisoner-turned-president. The ex-president is an international curiosity, so he has given many interviews and been generous of his time, but he has never shared it all. Until now, he has never spoken of how he survived so many years in solitary confinement; of how, as he teetered on the edge of sanity, he spoke to a frog-a thoroughly unsympathetic frog, who challenged him relentlessly. What results is sometimes full of despair, at other times shining with wit and irreverence. VERDICT In a tale of survival, resilience, and resistance, of forming connections and establishing personal priorities, De Robertis (Cantoras) delivers a meditation on human feeling, both ugly and beautiful. The ex-president always felt close to the earth, with living things a balm to his soul, just as a beautiful story like this one is a balm to readers.-Shaunna E. Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA