Robert Olen Butler

A visionary and poignant novel centred around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early twentieth century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South and his time in the trenches of the Great War...

Christopher Marlowe Cobb ('Kit'), the swashbuckling American newspaper war correspondent, travels to Mexico in 1914 during that country's civil war and the controversial presidency of Victoriano Huerta, El Chacal (The Jackal). Covering the war in enemy territory and in the sweltering heat, Cobb falls in love with Luisa, a young Mexican laundress, who is not as innocent as she seems....