This singular book is one of the best thriller written by Santiago Roncagliolo.

Set on the 80's in

Ayacucho, an andean town located in Peru. Santiago present us, in first person, the incidents that
happens to the prosecutor, Felix Chacaltana, who is sent to that area to cover the rare events that
are taking place.

The main character, Felix Chacaltana, is a man who follows strictly the rules and has a high loyalty
of his work. It is for this reason that he accepts to be located in Ayacucho. Despite, the advices of his
collegues, which were afraid to go because something strange was emerging.

As is well known, in the 1980’s, Ayacucho was the place where terrorism began and the one which
suffered severe consequences. The story tries to connect and describes the worst episodes that
were happening there with the investigations of the prosecutor.

The lines describing the events are grisly. They transport you into that moment and is dramatic to
thinking about the fear of people who lived there. Also, factors such as the ignorance or minimization
about the events happened there by part of the government make you thinking about the degree of
responsibility of them.

In one way, the story is based in real facts, but is obviously not a true story. All the incidences tries
to represent the coldness and rawness in which things happened in those years and in which many
innocent people paid with the dead because of ideologies and irresponsibility of the government.

Although I enjoyed this book, I can imagine older people who were brought up when communism
was still strong in the world and have probably read a lot about the Russian Revolution, would enjoy
it even more.

289 word

Caterpillar: Confidential Green