Countries of Origin

A Novel

By: Javier Fuentes

Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon

Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

This stunning debut chronicles a tumultuous, passionate love affair between two young men from vastly different worlds during one, extraordinary summer in Spain, in what is ultimately a meditation on identity, class, belonging and desire.

“Full of so many pleasures—literary, culinary, amorous… Fuentes has created something beautiful, honest, heartbreaking and hopeful.”—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost

It is 2007, and twenty-four-year-old Demetrio is a celebrated pastry chef in New York at the French restaurant Le Bourrelet. This will be his seventh year as the pâtissier and the chef-owner, stern but paternal, feels he should move on. When Demetrio is offered a position as head of pastries at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, he wants nothing more than to accept it.

But as an undocumented immigrant he is terrified that he will be found out, so Demetrio makes the difficult decision to return permanently to his homeland which he has not seen since he was a small child. It will mean leaving the only family he knows—his beloved uncle Chus who has brought him up. On his flight to Madrid, Demetrio sits next to the handsome, playful, and sensitive Jacobo, a student at NYU going home to his aristocratic, fascist family and there is an instant, unacknowledged electricity between them.

In dimly lit bars in Madrid and on pebbled beaches by the sea far outside the city, Demetrio and Jacobo’s subtle but intense relationship unfolds. Demetrio is tortured by a fear of true intimacy and by anxiety about their class difference. Both are struggling with their identities and sexuality, and they avoid their true feelings until a family tragedy sets them on a collision course back into one another’s lives.

Countries of Origin is powerfully sensual and moving. Javier Fuentes takes you on a journey that will immerse you in the intense and heartbreaking emotions and conflicts of love and loss.

Cover photograph: Boy on a Raft by Peter Hujar © 2022 The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

©2023 Javier Fuentes (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

A Best Book of the Summer from Bloomberg and Queer Forty

“Fuentes, a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow, has come charging out of the gate with a cool, terse debut.” —Bloomberg, “Summer’s Best New Books Tackle War, Theft and Scandal on the Beach”

“One of the most moving, tender, wise novels I have read in years. This portrait of a man between countries and between lives, following the map of his own heart, delves deeply into the mystery of how we come to know ourselves exactly when we feel most lost. A gorgeous debut.” —Stacey D’Erasmo, author of The Complicities

“Countries of Origin is a tender and heartfelt novel about homecoming in all its complexity and gay love in all its rawness and wonder. It paints a brilliant and evocative portrait of the city of Madrid as it slowly becomes a kind of home for our wandering hero.” —Colm Tóibín, author of The Magician

Beautiful descriptions of both New York City and Spain that match the mood and the sense of belonging.

Unless you allow yourself to follow the narrative's tempo, you will find yourself wanting for quick resolution. All that, at the expense of not enjoying the experience of places and people described in this book. That was my initial reaction and I realized towards the end how meaningful the journey had been once we reached our destination. Don't make the same mistake. Savour every dish, every landscape and every character and you won't be disappointed.

Wonderful!

The way the author describes the places, situations and emotions in such cinematic way not only enveloped me in the story, but made it easy to discover the multiple layers and definitions of borders: the ones separating countries and the internal ones we impose on ourselves. I truly enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

I tried to like it

Oh man! I don’t know where to start…I tired really hard to like this book but there were so many things that just didn’t work for me.
I didn’t feel any chemistry between the characters, sometimes it gave me a “talented Mr. Ripley” vibe, it’s full of cliches about Madrid and Spain, and I could go on and on. The writer is trying to develop the story, there are some tentatives to make it romantic, but it felt half way through.

I can see why for Spanish people it feels superficial, scratching the very surface of a culture that is so much more than all the famous vias or tourist places in Madrid.

It just didn’t work for me.