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Santiago Roncagliolo

Autor(a) de Red April

27+ Works 765 Membros 53 Críticas

About the Author

Image credit: Manuel González Olaechea y Franco

Obras por Santiago Roncagliolo

Associated Works

Granta 117: Horror (2011) — Contribuidor — 174 exemplares
Granta 113: The Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists (2011) — Contribuidor — 156 exemplares
Barcelona Noir (2011) — Contribuidor — 39 exemplares
The Future Is Not Ours: New Latin American Fiction (2012) — Contribuidor — 26 exemplares
Selección peruana, 1990-2007 (2007) — Contribuidor — 3 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Nome canónico
Roncagliolo, Santiago
Nome legal
Lohmann, Santiago Rafael Roncagliolo
Data de nascimento
1975-03-29
Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
Peru
Spain
Local de nascimento
Lima, Peru
Locais de residência
Barcelona, Spain
Arequipa, Peru
Educação
Colegio de la Inmaculada (Lima, Peru)
Ocupações
writer
journalist

Membros

Críticas

La millonaria Diana Minetti quiere escribir sus memorias, una historia llena de glamour y fiestas de la alta sociedad en Londres y París. Pero contrata para el trabajo a un escritor peruano mediocre, arribista y casi ilegal que quiere publicar un libro de éxito cueste lo que cueste.
Durante la investigación, el biógrafo descubre los vínculos de la familia de Diana con el fascismo, la Mafia italiana, la CIA y las dictaduras caribeñas de Trujillo y Fulgencio Batista. Y decide escribir una historia muy distinta de la que quiere su clienta.
Jackie Kennedy, Benito Mussolini, la Revolución Cubana, Lucky Luciano, Mario Vargas Llosa desfilan por este libro, mezcla de comedia, thriller y novela histórica sobre las mentiras, el dinero y las buenas familias.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Natt90 | Mar 29, 2023 |
¿Qué es lo que hace que la gente agarre un fusil y comience a matarse? El fiscal Félix Chalcatana se ve envuelto en la investigación del primero de una serie de sanguinarios asesinatos. En un Perú amenazado por la guerrilla y los avances militares propios de una afianzada política dictatorial, para el fiscal la línea de investigación apunta hacia un solo camino: Sendero Luminoso.
 
Assinalado
Natt90 | 30 outras críticas | Mar 21, 2023 |
La tarde de ese viernes, Joaquín se había presentado en el archivo, con aspecto enfermo y pálido. Se había despedido con esas palabras: «Que te vaya bien. Todo saldrá bien». Al parecer, estaba equivocado. Nada había salido bien desde entonces. Lima 1978. Un hombre que porta una mochila sospechosa es perseguido por las calles de uno de los barrios más populares de la ciudad y asesinado a plena luz del día. Pero nadie ha visto nada. El asesino ha elegido el momento perfecto para cometer su crimen: la ciudad se halla en ese instante desierta y concentrada ante el televisor. La selección peruana se juega mucho en el Mundial de fútbol de Argentina.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Natt90 | 1 outra crítica | Feb 23, 2023 |
How best to express the horrors of a bloody civil war whose memory is still painful? How can one probe into wounds which are still open and smarting? An answer might be provided by literature in general, and genre literature in particular. One could cite as an example Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s “Cemetery of Forgotten Books” series, haunted by the memories of the Spanish Civil War. Zafon’s bestselling novels have shown that how the Gothic, so often dismissed as ‘mere’ entertainment, can successfully engage with and comment on troublesome recent history.

Peruvian writer and journalist Santiago Roncagliolo did something similar with his crime thriller Red April (Abril Rojo), originally published in Spanish in 2006 and subsequently in an English rendition by veteran translator Edith Grossman (it won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for 2011).

The civil war which acts as a backdrop to the events in this book is the armed conflict in Roncagliolo’s native country between the Government, the Communist Party (also known as Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path) and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. The conflict started in 1980 and has been largely dormant since 2000, albeit with occasional resurgences of violence.

The plot unfolds around the period of the presidential elections before Holy Week in the year 2000. In the context of this campaign, the Government is keen to make a statement that communist insurgents have been defeated. However, during Carnival, in the town of Ayacucho, a gruesome murder raises suspicions that Sendero Luminoso might once again be rearing its head. Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar investigates the matter and prepares a convoluted report which conveniently makes no mention of terrorism. And, possibly for this very reason, when this murder is followed by others, all bearing the stamp of a deranged serial killer or ritual murderer, the authorities assign the case to none other than Chacaltana. He is hardly the ideal detective but, in the eyes of his seniors, appears to be an official who can be easily manipulated.

As evidenced by the style of the legal reports spread throughout the text, Chacaltana is well-versed in the letter of the law, which he tries to follow with pedantic conscientiousness, but this hardly equips him for the complexities of life and for the intricacies of the tense political climate of his country. Abandoned by his wife and obsessed with the memory of his long-dead mother, the Prosecutor is often naïve and ingenuous, reminding me of Umberto Eco’s claim that “real literature is about losers”. Perhaps for this very reason, the novel’s protagonist brought to my mind failed journalist Colonna in Eco’s own Numero Zero or, to cite another Italian novel, Paolo Laurana in Sciascia’s A Ciascuno il Suo: hapless figures who end up embroiled in matters beyond their ken. Over the course of the novel, Chacaltana starts to wise up, and this change is not all to the good. Indeed, some unsavoury aspects of his character come to the fore and contributed to some of my dissatisfaction with what is an otherwise engrossing book.

As a crime novel, Red April is thrilling and intriguing. Much of its dark feel is given by the elements it borrows from the horror – and particularly the folk horror – genre. Indeed, we start to realise that the serial killer is borrowing imagery both from Christian traditions linked to Holy Week and from pagan Andean myths and rituals. An underlying theme of the novel, is the friction between Andean/pre-Colombian culture (as represented by the Quechua-speaking “natives”) and the subsequent Christian traditions imported by the Spanish-speaking settlers. It is suggested that underneath the veneer of Christian ritual, the old rites have never died out. The language/culture barrier becomes a symbol of this perennial conflict, which seems to fuel present-day violence. As one of the characters puts it:

"Ayacucho is a strange place. The seat of the Wari culture was here, and then the Chanka people, who never allowed themselves to be subjugated by the Incas. And later were the indigenous uprisings because Ayacucho was the half-way point between Cuzco, the Inca capital, and Lima, the Spaniards’ capital. And independence in Quinia. And Sendero. This place is condemned to be bathed in blood and fire forever."

Some readers have been put off by the very graphic murders. To be honest, however, an act of senseless sexual violence towards the end disturbed me much more than the admittedly gruesome crime scene descriptions. Plot-wise, the solution to the “whodunit” is rather too convenient – I believe that this is a novel which is best enjoyed by soaking up its dark atmosphere tempered by a streak of black humour.

Full review, with music to listen to at: http://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2019/04/red-april-roncagliolo.html
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
JosephCamilleri | 30 outras críticas | Feb 21, 2023 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
27
Also by
6
Membros
765
Popularidade
#33,261
Avaliação
½ 3.5
Críticas
53
ISBN
106
Línguas
10

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