Demetrio Aguilera Malta , Don Goyo (Humana Press). A spellbinding novel, first published in 1933, dealing with the lives of a group of cholos who eke out a living by fishing from the mangrove swamps in the Gulf of Guayaquil, which are in danger of being cleared by white landowners.

 

Kelly Aitken , Love in a Warm Climate (o/p). Collection of short stories by a Canadian writer, all set in Ecuador and told by a series of North American female narrators. Imaginatively and compellingly written, bristling with tensions and conveying a strong sense of place.

Susan Benner and Kathy Leonard (eds), Fire from the Andes (University of New Mexico Press). Recently published anthology of short stories by women authors from Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. The eight Ecuadorian stories touch on themes such as patriarchy, racial prejudice, poverty and ageing.

William Burroughs , Queer (o/p). Autobiographical, Beat generation novel about a morphine addict's travels through Ecuador in an abortive search for yage , a hallucinatory drug from the Oriente.

Jorge Icaza , Huasipungo; the villagers (European Schoolbooks/Southern Illinois University Press). Iconic indígenista novel written in 1934, portraying the hardships and degradation suffered by the Andean indígena in a world dominated by exploitive, upper-class landowners.

Adalberto Ortiz , Juyungo (Lynne Rienner Publishers). A 1940s novel set in the tropical lowlands, about the life of a black labourer who kills two white men in self-defence. An atmospheric read, full of evocative detail.

Luis Sepulveda , The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (Harvest Books). Captivating and deceptively simple story of an itinerant dentist's twice-yearly voyages into a Shuar community in the Oriente - vividly evokes the sensations of travelling in the rainforest, while unobtrusively raising environmental questions.