Red April

In the wake of Roberto Bolaño’sThe Savage Detectives, a chilling, internationally acclaimed political thriller by one of Latin America’s most important young writers. Mother-haunted, wife-abandoned, literature-loving, quietly eccentric Félix Chacaltana Saldívar is a hapless, by-the-book, unambitious prosecutor living in Lima. Up to this moment, he has lived a life in which nothing particularly good or bad has ever happened to him. But he has just been put in charge of an...
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In the wake of Roberto Bolaño’sThe Savage Detectives, a chilling, internationally acclaimed political thriller by one of Latin America’s most important young writers. Mother-haunted, wife-abandoned, literature-loving, quietly eccentric Félix Chacaltana Saldívar is a hapless, by-the-book, unambitious prosecutor living in Lima. Up to this moment, he has lived a life in which nothing particularly good or bad has ever happened to him. But he has just been put in charge of an investigation into a bizarre murder that may be linked to Peru’s infamous terrorist group, the Shining Path. As the investigation proceeds, in propulsive twists and turns, Saldívar will be compelled to confront what it means to be moral in a corrupt and brutal society while witnessing what happens to both the individual and society when death becomes the only certainty in life. Remarkable for the self-assured clarity of its style, the inexorable momentum of its exposition, and the complexity of its concerns,Red Aprilworks brilliantly on the deepest historical, social, and psychological levels. It is an electrifying novel.