“The novel’s scenes are compact and eventful, and its sentences direct and percussive. The hardboiled depiction of extreme lawlessness invites comparisons to Graham Greene. And like Phil Klay’s outstanding novel “Missionaries” (2020), also about America’s interventions in Colombia’s civil unrest, the realistic story doubles as a kind of allegory of modern war, in which alliances and rationales are fluid, money is primary and violence generates more violence. “It was transgression to be alive,” orejas thinks in a particularly infernal scene, and there is a sense in this powerful novel that freedom from sin is only truly granted to the dead.” 

-Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"Grim yet affecting…This war story stands out for its heartrending portrait of the conflict’s impact on individual lives.”

-Publishers Weekly

"Grostephan traces the shifting fortunes of several characters in 1990s Colombia ... a harrowing tale of survival at increasingly brutal costs."

-Kirkus Reviews

“Told from several compelling perspectives, this novel is blistering, unflinching, and hard to put down.”

— Jen Beagin, author of Big Swiss

“The Banana Wars is as fine a novel as Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo or Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season. Alan Grostephan’s prose is devastatingly precise, with a beauty that arises—perversely—only from horrifying situations.  I have not read anything as fine as The Banana Wars in ages.”

— Michelle Latiolais, author of She

"From its opening quote by A.S. Ramos to its final chapter, Alan Grostephan’s THE BANANA WARS is a riveting and indispensable novel that hails life as monumental, and the only force of the Universe worth talking about—fuck all them Riders of the Apocalypse! It just so happens that life burns brightest when its opposing forces are present and Grostephan knows this well; he is marvelous at detail, an engrossing storyteller and a deep feeler to boot. What a book! It was both a surprise and a balm for this war-torn heart and mind to read it."

—Ismet Prcic, author of Unspeakable Home