proper manky

Done reading.

Fantastic novel about a lawyer in Lima who uncovers his father’s brutal story as a high colonel in the Peruvian Armed Forces. About the country’s recent sordid past and the struggle against the Sendero Luminoso in the 1980s. Named for the hour of first light, this is a sweeping novel about a flawed but in the end sympathetic character (“I felt like a puppet of myself”) and his search for his deceased father’s story, his own family, a mysterious woman from Ayacucho, and ultimately himself. Part history lesson, part love story. Deeply moving and hard to put down. One of the better books to come out (in translation) this year. I got my copy from Amazon UK.

One review is here.

The book contains this short story that the main character wrote at some point:

Cueto has a way with picturesque descriptions. A small sample:

They’ll recognise me or my wife Claudia. My wife Claudia. It feels strange calling her that as though she was a stranger. The arc of her name reminds me of a rainbow – at least that’s what I told her last night.

[His wife’s aunt] liked to wear flowery dresses; she seemed determind to wear fabrics that represented all the gardens, forests and jungles of the world. She had dresses with creepers, lianas, bunches of flowers, grasses, but also tigers, butterflies and horses. I sometimes felt as though you could put on a hat, fill a water bottle, pay the entrance fee and step inside her dress for a safari. […]

As we were having coffee, I moved my hand too quickly and knocked the cup all over [her] dress. She threw up her hands and gave a shriek. The flower-print dress was streaked with coffee like dirt tracks through the forest. […]

‘It’s perfect,’ I said, pointing to her dress. ‘A perfect little path to go for a walk in the countryside, don’t you think?’ Then I bent down with a napkin to wipe her dress, but couldn’t stop myself from saying aloud, ‘If you didn’t wear dresses that make you look like a deranged parrot, I wouldn’t have been distracted.’ As I said it, I saw the words hang in the air, like a trail of red letters over the astonished company, and they seemed so alien to me I didn’t say anything more.

In winter, Lima takes the concept of misery to its highest level. […] Objects have no form. The sea is the sky. The ground is the air. The color of winter is not grey, it is the absence of color. Lima in winter might be said to be the grandeur of desolation. For all things that exist, Lima exalts towards nothingness.