City of the Beasts
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| Author | Isabel Allende |
|---|---|
| Original title | La ciudad de las bestias |
| Translator | Margaret Sayers Peden |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Spanish |
| Series | 2002 |
| Genre | Children's literature, Magic Fantasy |
| Publisher | Rayo |
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Publication date
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2002 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 406 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 49495107 |
| LC Class | PZ7.A43912 Ci 2002 |
| Followed by | Kingdom of the Golden Dragon |
City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias in Spanish) is the first young adult novel by Chilean-American writer Isabel Allende. Published in 2002, the story is set in the Amazon rainforest. The novel was translated by Margaret Sayers Peden from Spanish to English. Walden Media is said to be producing a movie.
City of the Beasts begins with the story of Alexander Cold, who is 15 years old and going through a family crisis. While his parents leave for Texas to try to treat his mother's cancer, Alex and his sisters are sent to live with their grandmothers. Despite his desperate pleading, Alex is sent off to New York City to stay with his eccentric grandmother Kate Cold, a reporter for International Geographic Magazine. His sisters, however are sent to live with their Grandmother Carla. Meanwhile, Kate announces that she will be taking Alex with her to the Amazon rainforest during his visit. Once Alex arrives in New York City, and finds out that his grandmother had no intentions of collecting him at the airport and is forced to walk to her apartment, several blocks away. In the process he meets a girl named Morgana, a homeless girl in her mid-20s. She offers him pot and steals his backpack that contained his clothes, his money and his flute. He is greatly saddened by the loss of his precious flute, but Kate gives him the flute belonging to his grandfather, Joseph Cold. Soon, they pack off to go to the Amazon with some professors and photographers. The reason Kate goes is to write an article about the Beast.
When Alex and his Grandmother Kate reach the jungle, they join the rest of the expedition group: Timothy Bruce (photographer); and his assistant Joel Gonzalez. Accompanying them is the famous anthropologist, Ludovic Leblanc, the beautiful Venezuelan physician Dr. Omayra Torres, who is coming along to vaccinate natives, and Cesar Santos, their Brazilian guide. Alex soon befriends Nadia Santos, Cesar's twelve-year-old daughter.
The group leaves by boat, traveling upriver toward their destination in Eye of the World. Everyone in the group feels uncomfortable, as if someone were watching them constantly. One of the soldiers who is with them dies when he is shot by a poisoned dart. Later, Joel Gonzalez, the photographer's assistant, is attacked and nearly killed by an anaconda. After another soldier's death, this time at the hands of a Beast, they decide to send several people back with the wounded Joel Gonzalez - and they are given the task to send help back to the expedition.
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Wikipedia