The Blue Hour

Description

A stunning, prizewinning novel exploring the aftermath of the Peruvian Civil War, by one of the greatest living South American writers. Adrian Ormache, a high-flying lawyer with a beautiful wife and two daughters, leads a privileged and glamorous life in one of Lima's wealthiest neighbourhoods. But when his mother dies, he discovers a letter amongst her possessions making shocking claims about her now long-dead husband, Adrian's father - a commander in the army during the Peruvian Civil War of the 1980s. As well as being linked to atrocities committed against the 'Shining Path' guerrillas, it appears that he also kidnapped and kept a local girl, whose family now seeks retribution. Shocked out of his comfortable existence, Adrian becomes obsessed with finding the girl at the heart of the mystery, and sets out to face the harrowing realities of Peru's recent past, and uncover the truth about his father.

Born in Lima, Peru, in 1954, Alonso Cueto spent his childhood in Paris and Washington, returning to Lima at the age of seven. He studied literature at the Universidad Cat lica del Pero and later at the University of Texas, Austin. In 1985 he married Kristin Keenan Atwood, with whom he has two children. He lives in Lima.

The Blue Hour is a magnificent novel that describes ten years of civil war and terrorism with lucidity and resonant fantasy. * Mario Vargas Llosa * One of the major novelists of his generation. * Diario de Tarragona * The legacy of the Peruvian government's bloody war against the Maoist Sendero Luminoso guerillas in the 1980s has informed much of the country's best modern fiction, from Mario Vargas Llosa's Death in the Andes to Santiago Roncagliolo's Red April. Alonso Cueto's fine, prize-winning debut novel stands in that tradition ... The conflation of Adrian's personal trauma with his nation's dark history is beautifully, delicately done. * Financial Times * The strength of the plot pivots on the lovers' ambiguous feelings for one another: the intensity of their mismatched love and hatred is perfectly drawn. Cueto evokes the myriad of emotions ... plausibly and effectively ... Cueto manages to explore that quest both imaginatively and provocatively. * Times Literary Supplement * This is an intelligent novel ... there are fine scenes, especially when Adrian travels north in search of Miriam and learns something of the horrors of the war between the government troops and the terrorists. * The Scotsman *