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Murder City

Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields



Charles Bowden
March 2010     ISBN: 1568584490

Ciudad Juárez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border city, it now resembles a failed state—in 2008 alone, 1,607 people were murdered.

In Murder City, award-winning author Charles Bowden has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city collapses into violence. Interweaving stories of its inhabitants—a raped beauty queen, a repentant hitman, a journalist fleeing for his life—with a broader meditation on the town's descent into anarchy, Bowden reveals how Juárez's culture of violence will not only worsen, but inevitably spread north. Heartbreaking, disturbing and unforgettable, Murder City establishes Bowden as one of our leading writers working at the height of his powers.

Watch Bowden on Democracy Now! and listen to his interview on NPR's Morning Edition.

What readers are saying

"The druglords kill with style and nothing happens to them. Bowden tells of one killing after another with wonderful clarity; he keeps his voice low and comes up with scene-enders that stop you cold."
—Elmore Leonard

"Bowden uses his tremendous talents to tell a haunting, darkly poetic story of a city's horrifying descent into madness and anarchy" and "a potent book that readers won't soon forget."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"Writers who cover the border have stolen from Chuck Bowden for years. They skirt the abyss in their books, but in Murder City Bowden plunges in head-first, without a parachute. There are moments when the book threatens to burst into flames and burn your hands. Crawling with ghosts and demons, dripping blood, howling with rage and terror, it's go-for-broke apocalyptic prophecy. Forget Baghdad, forget Kandahar: Hell is only fifty yards away from your back porch, and Chuck Bowden is going to make you look or die trying."
—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil's Highway

"Bowden is a gifted writer; the book reads like a lyrical ode to arid despair. The literary quality of the writing, and its relentless fatalism, bring to mind Gabriel García Márquez's Chronicle of of a Death Foretold, except in this case it is not the protagonist's death in question, bun an entire city's."
—Washington Monthly

"It is dreamlike and haunting, beautifully poetic yet brutally savage — and difficult to put down once you’ve started."
—San Diego Union Tribune

About the Authors
The recipient of a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Sidney Hillman Award, Charles Bowden is the critically acclaimed author of numerous books, including Down by the River and Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing. He is a contributing editor for GQ and Mother Jones, and also writes for Harper's, The New York Times Book Review, Esquire and Aperture. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.



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Marfa Dialogues/Diálogos en Marfa: Politics and Culture of the Border

undef 0 | Marfa, Texas

See acclaimed Nation Books authors Charles Bowden and Mark Danner speak at Marfa Dialogues: Politics and Culture of the Border, three days of art, film, music, and literature. Presented by Ballroom Marfa and The Washington Spectator, in collaboration with The Big Bend Sentinel, Marfa Public Radio and Marfa Book Company.

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