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Red April Main Edition
Author(s): Santiago Roncagliolo (Author), Edith Grossman (Translator)
- Publisher: Atlantic Books
- Publication Date: 1 April 2010
- Edition: Main
- Language: English
- Print length: 288 pages
- ISBN-10: 1843548305
- ISBN-13: 9781843548300
Book Description
Red April Main Edition 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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
`Riveting… As the moral line dissolves between terrorist and counter-terrorist… Edith Grossman’s versatile translation spans hard-boiled noir, punctilious legalese, and the illiterate scrawls of a would-be serial killer… Red April is rooted in Peru’s past and present, but resonates far beyond.’ –Guardian
`Violence stalks the pages of this… sophisticated work of terrifying cunning; here is a novel to make one gasp and wonder anew at the furtive extremes of human behaviour… A dark and almost unhinged display.’ Irish Times –Irish Times
`The meticulous documenting of barbarities, magical beliefs, the colourful details of Holy Week… rites of blood and torture… the extreme cynicism of government… The terrible story of a society without hope.’
–Independent on Sunday
About the Author
Santiago Roncagliolo is the youngest winner of the Alfaguara Prize, awarded to him in 2006 for Red April Main Edition. He was born in Lima, Peru, and currently lives in Barcelona.
Edith Grossman is the award-winning translator of such masterworks as Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera.
