Latin America encompasses myriad geographies, peoples, and cultures, but as Arana’s new book illustrates, over the last several hundred years the region as a whole has been shaped by three constants: exploitation, violence, and religion. With the historical mastery and psychological insight she showed in her biography, Bolívar, Arana, also a novelist and former Washington Post “Book World” editor, tells the story of three contemporary Latin Americans — an impoverished miner in the Andes, a Cuban veteran of the wars in Angola, and a Spanish Jesuit in Bolivia — whose lives reflect the ongoing impact of these continuing forces.

Arana will be in conversation with Carlos Lozada, Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post.