It’s a very male book (there is little reference to females beyond their “use” as sexual objects and all the characters are macho and difficult to like) and is full of bloody violence and power struggles. Red April is definitely not for the faint-hearted. Everything felt incredibly alien - and terrifying. But the story felt strangely distant to me, as if I couldn’t quite engage with the characters, because I was too busy trying to make sense of the cruel and corrupt society in which it was set. It’s hard to fault the brooding atmosphere of this novel, which builds and builds as more mutilated corpses are discovered. The entire scene is described in all its gruesome, stomach-churning detail. After a hellish seven-hour bus ride and a two-hour walk, he arrives to find slaughtered dogs hanging from the streetlights.
At times the book is incredibly shocking and disturbing, no more so than when Saldívar is sent to Yawarmayo, a rural outpost, to supervise the presidential elections.
His only saving grace appears to be the love of two women: his long-dead mother, to whom he’s built a shrine in the bedroom in which she used to sleep and Edith, a local waitress, with whom he develops a fledgling romance.īut, for the most part, Saldívar’s story is an unrelentingly bleak, violent and oppressive one, only matched by the terror and barbarity of the guerilla war being waged around him. When more bodies turn up, suggesting a serial killer may be on the loose, Saldívar buries himself in paperwork (his preposterously written reports are included in the text) and unwittingly becomes mired in a corrupt investigation that looks likely to end in Saldívar’s own death. But he’s out of his depth and seems strangely at odds with the military and legal rulers to whom he must report. But the carnival-like atmosphere and the procession takes a back seat to the gruesome discovery of a burnt and mutilated body in a hayloft.Īssociate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar is put onto the case. Holy Week, the religious festival held in the week before Easter, is a significant event on the calendar, and it is in this particular week of March 2000 that Red April is set. Whatever the case, it’s definitely hard boiled, as I guess you’d expect given it’s set in one of the most violent places on Earth: the city of Ayacucho in Peru, where the communist party ( Shining Path) began its bloody reign of terror in 1980.Īccording to Wikipedia, Ayacucho is also famous for its 33 churches, one for every year of Jesus’ life. Perhaps it might be better to describe it as socio-political thriller. Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo isn’t your usual crime novel.
Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. Fiction – hardcover Atlantic Books 288 pages 2010.
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