by Daniel Alarcón
Peru. 288 pages. 2007.
A nameless, timeless South American country slowly emerges from a war everyone would prefer to forget. For ten years, Norma has been the voice of consolation for a people broken by violence, while hiding her own personal loss: her husband disappeared at the end of the war. Norma’s radio program is the most popular in the country, and every week the Indians in the mountains and poor of the barrios listen as she reads the names of those who have gone missing, those whom the furiously expanding city has swallowed. Loved ones are reunited, and the lost are found.
But the life she has become accustomed to is forever changed when a young boy arrives from the jungle and provides a clue to the fate of her long-missing husband.
Stunning, timely, and absolutely mesmerizing, Lost City Radio probes the deepest questions of war and its meaning: from its devastating impact on a society transformed by violence to the emotional scarring each participant, observer, and survivor carries with them for years.
About the Author:
Daniel Alarcón is Associate Editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning magazine published in his native Lima, Peru, and Visting Scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley.
He is author of two works of fiction, War by Candlelight (2006 PEN/Hemingway Award Finalist) and Lost City Radio, a novel published in more than a dozen countries. He has won numerous prizes, including a Whiting Award (2004), Guggenheim and Lannan Fellowships (2007), and a National Magazine Award (2008).
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