Description
A self-loathing, hard-drinking writer—sex-obsessed and openly contemptuous of authority—finds himself hired by the Catholic Church to proofread a massive report tied to the army, a task that drags him into the machinery of institutional violence. Running in parallel, the novel traces the lived aftermath of a population that was tortured and nearly erased, forcing the narrator to confront what “documentation” can conceal and what it can never fully redeem. With biting wit and a relentless, unsparing voice, the book explores themes of complicity, moral numbness, the ethics of testimony, and the way language can both preserve and sanitize atrocity. In a style marked by dark humor and psychological intensity, Castellanos Moya turns the act of reading and rewriting into a confrontation with senselessness itself.
Available Editions
paperback
New Directions
Published May 29, 2008
160 pages
ISBN: 9780811217071
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Details
First Published
2008
Language
eng
Content Warnings
No content warnings identified.