Doña Bárbara by Rómulo Gallegos (Translated by Robert Malloy)
Author(s) from: Venezuela - He was forced into exile for a time in Spain due to his criticisms of the regime of longtime dictator, Juan Vicente Gómez. He did return to Venezuela.
Setting: Venezuela
Original Language: Spanish
First Publised: 1929
Description: Rómulo Gallegos is best known for being Venezuela’s first democratically elected president. But in his native land he is equally famous as a writer responsible for one of Venezuela’s literary treasures, the novel Doña Barbara. Published in 1929 and all but forgotten by Anglophone readers, Doña Barbara is one of the first examples of magical realism, laying the groundwork for later authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. Following the epic struggle between two cousins for an estate in Venezuela, Doña Barbara is an examination of the conflict between town and country, violence and intellect, male and female. Doña Barbara is a beautiful and mysterious woman—rumored to be a witch—with a ferocious power over men. When her cousin Santos Luzardo returns to the plains in order to reclaim his land and cattle, he reluctantly faces off against Doña Barbara, and their battle becomes simultaneously one of violence and seduction. All of the action is set against the stunning backdrop of the Venezuelan prairie, described in loving detail. Gallegos’s plains are filled with dangerous ranchers, intrepid cowboys, and damsels in distress, all broadly and vividly drawn. A masterful novel with an important role in the inception of magical realism, Doña Barbara is a suspenseful tale that blends fantasy, adventure, and romance.

Iphigenia: The Diary of a Young Lady who Wrote Because She was Bored by Teresa de la Parra (Translated by Bertie Acker)
Author(s) from: Venezuelan but was born in Paris, France and lived there as well as in Spain, Switzerland and Venezuela
Setting: Paris and Caracas, Venezuela
Original Language: Spanish
First Publised: 1924
Description: "...I didn't want to tell you the truth for anything in the world, because it seemed very humiliating to me..." The truth is that Iphigenia is bored and, more than bored, buried alive in her grandmother's house in Caracas, Venezuela. After the excitement of being a beautiful, unchaperoned young woman in Paris, her father's death has sent her back to a forgotten homeland, where rigid decorum governs. Two men—the married man she adores and the wealthy fiancé she abhors—offer her escape from her prison. Which of these impossible suitors will she choose? Iphigenia was first published in 1924 in Venezuela, where it hit patriarchal society like a bomb. Teresa de la Parra was accused of undermining the morals of young women with this tale of a passionate woman who lacks the money to establish herself in the liberated, bohemian society she craves.

It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo (Translated by Elizabeth Bryer)
Author(s) from: Lived in Venezuela for about 24 years before moving to Spain
Setting: Caracas, Venezuela
Original Language: Spanish
First Publised: 2019
Description: Told with gripping intensity, It Would be Night in Caracas chronicles one woman’s desperate battle to survive amid the dangerous, sometimes deadly, turbulence of modern Venezuela and the lengths she must go to secure her future. In Caracas, Venezuela, Adelaida Falcon stands over an open grave. Alone, except for harried undertakers, she buries her mother–the only family Adelaida has ever known. Numb with grief, Adelaida returns to the apartment they shared. Outside the window that she tapes shut every night—to prevent the tear gas raining down on protesters in the streets from seeping inWhen looters masquerading as revolutionaries take over her apartment, Adelaida resists and is beatenup . It is the beginning of a fight for survival in a country that has disintegrated into violence and anarchy, where citizens are increasingly pitted against each other. But as fate would have it, Adelaida is given a gruesome choice that could secure her escape. Filled with riveting twists and turns, and told in a powerful, urgent voice, It Would Be Night in Caracas is a chilling reminder of how quickly the world we know can crumble.
Other Books by the Author(s): No Place to Bury the Dead (2021)

Blue Label by Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles (Translated by Paul Filev)
Author(s) from: Venezula - moved to Spain as an adult.
Setting: Sounds like parts of it may take place in Venezuela but maybe also other parts of South America
Original Language: Spanish
First Publised: 2010
Description: Eugenia Blanc, a young Caraqueñan and quintessential teenager at war with the world around her, has one aim: after graduating from high school, to abandon Venezuela definitively. She embarks on a spontaneous road trip in a banged-up Fiat with her rebellious classmate Luis Tévez, in search of her grandfather, the one person who can provide her with the documents that would allow her to leave the country. While Eugenia and Luis’s tentative, troubled romance unfolds during the Chávez era, the story also looks back at Venezuela’s “lost decade” of the 1990s, a time of intractable violence, inequality, corruption, and instability that led to Chávez’s election. With an unvarnished fluidity that brings to mind Jack Kerouac and a crazy-ass playlist that ranges from REM to Bob Dylan to El Canto del Loco to Shakira, Blue Label is an audacious, dark novel with a gut-punch of an ending; the prize-winning first book by a writer who has cemented his reputation as a major young Latin American voice.
Other Books by the Author(s): The Lisbon Syndrome (2020)

The Sickness by (Translated by Maragret Jull Costa)
Author(s) from: Venezuela
Setting: ???
Original Language: Spanish
First Publised: 2006
Description: Dr. Miranda is faced with a tragedy: his father has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has only a few weeks to live. He is also faced with a dilemma: How does one tell his father he is dying? Ernesto Duran, a patient of Dr. Miranda's, is convinced he is sick. Ever since he separated from his wife he has been presenting symptoms of an illness he believes is killing him. It becomes an obsession far exceeding hypochondria. The fixation, in turn, has its own creeping effect on Miranda's secretary, who cannot, despite her best intentions, resist compassion for the man. A profound and philosophical exploration of the nature and meaning of illness, Alberto Barrera Tyszka's tender, refined novel interweaves the stories of four individuals as they try, in their own way, to come to terms with sickness in all its ubiquity.

Casas muertas / Oficina N.º1 by Miguel Otero Silva (Has not been translated into English)
Author(s) from: Venezuela - was repeatedly forced into exile but did return to Venezuela
Setting: Venezuela
Original Language: Spanish
First Publised: 1955 and 1961 for the Sequel
Prize: Venezuela's National Literature Prize in 1956
Description: "I saw neither the houses nor the ruins. I saw only the wounds of men." Once known as the "Rose of the Plains" for its beauty and prosperity, Ortiz is now a town in ruins, ravaged by war and disease. Amidst its rubble and the echoes of a bygone glory lives Carmen Rosa, a young woman who dreams of a future far removed from memories and death—out in the desert, where it is said that prosperity springs from the earth and brand-new towns rise overnight, teeming with vibrant life. With extraordinary lyricism, Miguel Otero Silva reveals to us the slow agony of a mortally wounded town, alongside the hurried birth of the country’s first oil settlements. (Used Google Translate to translate the description)
I have heard people say that it is about how yellow fever and the discovery of oil destroyed a small town. Someone else said in a Youtube comment that "It is a very important book, as it is a perfect representation of the transition from rural living to urban life to a lot of people in the middle of the 20th century." This book is highly reccomended.
Other Books by the Author(s): The Death of Honorio

The Animal Days by Keila Vall de la Ville (Translated by Robin Myers)
Author(s) from: Venezuela - moved to the U.S. around 37 years of age
Setting: Three continents (not sure which ones or if any part of it takes place in Venezuela)
Original Language: Spanish
First Publised: 2016
Prizes: 2018 International Latino Book Award
Description: A woman's story of movement as a both a lifestyle and a rite of passage, The Animal Days follows Julia's journey of love and rock-climbing across three continents. In this fast-paced novel, joy is linked to self-destruction, love is inseparable from death, freedom is twinned with unbearable solitude, and life is worth only as much as a given moment. The taste for risk and vertigo never stop: they feed each other as the abyss approaches. Julia, determined to never look back, lives perpetually on the brink, even if it means shedding her own skin in the process.