BOOKPATHS

Peru

“Chile has returned 3,778 books that its military had taken from Peru’s national library – more than 126 years overdue.”

Scott Timberg talks with Peruvia-born writer, Daniel Alarcón about his new novel, Lost City Radio.

“It's deliberate, he said, that the constant state of war in Lost City Radio in its nameless high-security state echoes more than only Peruvian history.

‘The war on terror that has been much publicized here is not anything new in a lot of parts of the world. In the U.K. and Ireland, they know all about it; in Latin America they know all about it. This is not new. And the way societies adapt to this kind of fear is not new.’" – from “Daniel Alarcón Steps Into a Brave New World,” by Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times

Peru

Rory Carroll writes about Lima, Peru’s “literary renaissance.”

“Now, more than a decade after the waning of the Shining Path rebellion, the conflict's legacy is fuelling a literary renaissance. Peruvian writers are blazing a trail through Spanish and English language publishing with books exploring a saga as fascinating as it is painful.” – from “Terror, Bribery and Intrigue: the Bloody Past Fuelling Lima’s Literary Renaissance,” by Rory Carroll, The Guardian

Peru

Simon Romero celebrates Peru’s writers in the New York Times.

“But Lima is once again one of Latin America’s brightest literary scenes, and in the last year, Peruvian writers have won prestigious literary prizes in the Spanish-speaking world for novels that deal with fallout from the war years and, in doing so, add to a growing literature of terrorism and the risks to democracy in fighting it.” – from “Past War and Cruelty, Peru’s Writers Bloom,” by Simon Romero, New York Times