Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal

Chris will join the faculty of the Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal next summer to teach the Writing the Luso Experience workshop.

Writing the Luso Experience is a multi-genre workshop that explores the global reach of the Luso diaspora, investigating how the past informs the present, how our heritage shapes our worldview, and how the creative possibilities of classic and contemporary Lusophone literature can inspire us to break boundaries in our own work. Through group discussions, manuscript critiques and craft exercises, we will discover new ways of thinking about literature, writing and our lives.

Joining Chris will be visiting writer Jarita Davis.

You can learn more about the program and its generous prizes and fellowships here.

Review: The New York Times Book Review

In The New York Times Book Review, Times Brazil bureau chief Ernesto Londoño calls The Third Bank of the River "a valuable addition to contemporary reportage out of Brazil," and "a searing look at the toll violence is taking on residents of the Amazon."

"Arnold’s account of the threats to indigenous communities — informed by a comprehensive and accessible litany of the abuses they have endured since colonial times — is the highlight of the book."

You can read the full review here.

Interview: National Geographic

Chris spoke about The Third Bank of the River with veteran journalist Simon Worrall of National Geographic's Book Talk. "More than half of Earth’s rain forests have been lost to the demand for wood and arable land," writes Worrall. "Nowhere is this environmental crisis starker than in the Amazon, where cattle ranching, clear-cutting, mining, and homesteading are eating away at what remains. Chris Feliciano Arnold’s new book The Third Bank of The River doesn’t address these well-known issues directly. Instead, he takes the reader on a journey behind the scenes to reveal the underlying social and political problems—from corruption, to drug-dealing, to illegal logging—and the links between them."

You can read the full interview here. (A Portuguese translation is available here.) 

Review: Latin America Bureau

The Latin America Bureau in London reviewed The Third Bank of the River at -length. "This book has been classified as ‘travel-writing’, but it is much more than that," writes Linda Etchart. "Like Claude Lévi-Strauss before him, in his Tristes Tropiques of 1955, Arnold traces the ongoing demise of Brazil´s indigenous peoples at the hands of the colonizers." The full review is online here. 

Review: The Santa Barbara News-Press

The Santa Barbara News-Press reviewed The Third Bank of the River in its Friday, July 6th issue: "A passionate, complicated and important account of life in the modern Brazilian Amazon basin.... It weaves a huge number of stories, from the political to the historical to the environmental to the personal, into a large tapestry that presents a striking picture of a country on the edge."

Review: The San Francisco Chronicle

The San Francisco Chroncile reviews The Third Bank of the River in its Sunday, June 17th issue. “Arnold has crafted a thrilling page-turner while delving into topics that often bypass Brazil’s mainstream media," writes Bruno Garcez of BBC World Service. "The Third Bank of the River ultimately stands out as an important book for Americans looking to better understand the glorious and troubled nation to their south ― in all its complexity."

 

You can read the full review here.

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Excerpt: Prisons of the Amazon

CrimeReads has published an exclusive excerpt of The Third Bank of the River, diving into organized crime, private prisons and the rise of the Família do Norte in the Amazon. 

"Every Saturday and Sunday, hundreds of women and children in the capital crowd into northbound buses, lumbering along BR-174, that strip of patchy highway that runs 2,234 miles straight to Venezuela. It’s a long, hot ride, past the Pioneer factory, the Whirlpool factory, the SC Johnson factory, the luxury golf resort, the landfill where cell phone signals flutter and the rumble of logging trucks scatters the vultures picking through the refuse before it gets buried."

Read more here.