Andrea Yaryura Clark Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Andrea Yaryura Clark is a literary fiction author that is best known as the author of the bestselling title “On a Night of a Thousand Stars.”

The author was born in Argentina and spent much of her childhood in the political chaos of the 1970s. During the late 1970s, the family would move to the United States where she would complete her high school studies.

When she was done with her high school studies, she went to the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She would then study at the Buenos Aires-based Universidad del Salvador and then did her MBA at the Toronto-based York University.

Thereafter, she went back to Buenos Aires as she had a strong urge to reconnect with her roots.

By the middle of the 1990s, many daughters and sons of the victims of the 1970s military dictatorship in Argentina were coming of age and asking questions about their families.

Andrea Yaryura began interviewing these children who told her about their experiences, most of which were unknown outside the country. It was these that would be the inspiration for “On a Night of a Thousand Stars,” her debut novel.

She currently makes her home in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband her two kids, and their spirited terrier.

Clark’s research goes back to when she was living in Buenos Aires during the late 1990s.

It began when a human rights lawyer who was a family friend told her of weekly meetings of children of “the Disappeared,” who were coming to age about two decades following the military coup in 1976.

Many of the gatherings were held at the organization of the Daughters and Sons for Justice and Identity Against Silence and Oblivion, simply known as HIJOS.

Andrea Yaryura Clark went to several of the HIJOS meetings and it was not long before she gained the trust of the participants. Thereafter, she began asking the members if it was fine to write their stories.

Initially, she was thinking that she should make what she gathered into a documentary and in fact, she filmed several of her subjects going about their daily lives in interview settings.

She would also pen several drafts of creative nonfiction and even played around with penning a screenplay inspired by the narratives. While the material would never evolve into a viable product, the stories would stay with her.

Several years later, they would inspire her bestselling novel. Ultimately, it would take about seven years to pen the years in its current form.

Just like many authors, Andrea Yaryura Clark has been influenced by all manner of authors and books.

She has always been drawn to works in which she felt like someone was reading a story out loud.

These are works from the likes of Kazuo Ishiguro, Sigrid Nunez, and Elena Ferrante just to name a few which usually flow in a conversational and uncomplicated way.

Clark equally loves reading beautifully written novels that make her pause and meditate from the likes of Tracy K. Smith, Marilynne Robinson, and Toni Morrison.

It was from reading such works that she would expand her fiction repertoire to the likes of “A Visit from the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan and “Lincoln in the Bardo” by George Saunders.

Yaryura Clark also grew up reading many American authors such as John Irving, S.E. Hinton, Kurt Vonnegut, and Judy Blume.

Her father also had a very huge library and when she was in her teenage years she was introduced to Latin American authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, and Ernesto Sabato.

Reading literature from across the world gave her insights and shared human experiences in love, joys, struggles, and suffering.

Lastly, she learned how to interplay two different time periods when she read “The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje.

Given that it took quite a long time to pen her novel, Andrea Yaryura Clark had the pleasure of writing from all manner of spaces.

She has written from a desk at her hotel room, from a Maine cabin she borrowed from a friend, at the dining room table as her children were asleep, and in many different cafes.

Andrea is lucky that she can often tune out from whatever is happening around her. Just get her some earphones and some good music and you are feeding her imagination and getting her in the mood.

Clark’s family recently moved to Brooklyn where they got a new bigger space and so she has her own office space overlooking a ginkgo tree.

She usually leaves her cell phone in the living room and lights a candle in her office where she writes in the company of her dog, her books, and her plants.

Andrea loves writing in the mornings and writes at least one page every day. If she cannot do that, she ensures that she does some research or revises or reviews what she did the previous day.

Andrea Yaryura Clark’s novel “On a Night of a Thousand Stars” is a work set in New York in 1998.

The lead in the work is a wealthy Argentine diplomat named Santiago Larrea. He holds court alongside Lila his wife Paloma his daughter who is a budding jewelry designer and college student at the yearly summer soiree and polo match.

Everything has been going very well in his world until they receive an unlikely guest who he had gone to university with.

She has some cryptic comments that shake Santiago’s usually unperturbed demeanor and makes Paloma curious about her father’s little-known past.

At some point, the family has to move to Buenos Aires as Santiago has just gotten an ambassadorial appointment at the United Nations.

His daughter will do anything to learn about Santiago’s life in the years just before the 1976 overthrow of the Argentine government.

Working with Franco Bonetti an activist with HIJOS and a local university student, she uncovers a chain of events. These are some dark and shocking events that make her question her identity and her family but also put her in a lot of danger.

It is a compelling work that speaks to identity, orality, and relationships during a very brutal period of history in Argentina. It also provides the redemption and understanding that people desire during a tragedy.