RED APRIL

This is an internationally acclaimed political thriller by one of Latin America's most important and exciting young writers, the winner of Spain's coveted Alfaguara Prize. Translated by one of our most celebrated literary translators, Edith Grossman, "Red April" is quite simply a must read for anyone who loved Roberto Bolano's "The Savage Detectives and 2666". "Red April" evokes Holy Week during a cruel, bloody, and terrifying time in Peru's history, shocking for its corrosive mix of assassination, bribery, intrigue, torture, and enforced disappearance - a war between grim, ideologically driven terrorism and morally bankrupt government counterinsurgence. Mother-haunted, wife-abandoned, literature-loving, quietly eccentric Felix Chacaltana Saldivar is a hapless, by-the-book, unambitious prosecutor living in Lima. Until now he has lived a life in which nothing exceptionally good or bad has ever happened to him. But, inexplicably, he has been put in charge of a bizarre and horrible murder investigation. As it unfolds by propulsive twists and turns - full of paradoxes and surprises - Saldivar is compelled to confront what happens to a man and society when death becomes the only certainty. Remarkable for its self-assured and nimble clarity of style, "Red April" is at once riveting and profound.