became the youngest winner ever of the Alfaguara Prize, to be one of the protagonists of his thriller "Abril Rojo" (Red April, 2006). Inspector Chacaltana is the assistant district inspector in Huamanga province and he believes in law, he believes in order, he believes that we will all be happy if we respect the procedures established on the civil code, which he knows how to quote by memory. «During my creative work, I have been obsessed with two types of figures:», Santiago explains, «psychopaths and losers. Psychopaths are willing to ignore any acquaintanceship norm to satisfy their individual appetites. Losers, by respecting norms so much, don't even satisfy their own basic emotional needs. This novel is a confrontation between both types».
As a matter of fact, in this novel Chacaltana faces a serial killer who considers cutting an art, and sculpts his victims with religious Holy Week motifs, a kind of criminal not foreseen by the juridic order, who makes the tight borders between which the inspector tries to enclose the world crack. «I've always wanted to write a thriller», Roncagliolo continues, «That is, a bloody police story with serial killers and monstrous crimes. And I found the necessary elements in my country's history: a war zone, a death celebration like the Holy Week, a city populated with ghosts. What else could I ask for?».
Solitary, milk livered, a lover of poetry and traditions, this observant and fairly unhappy protagonist, an archetype of innocence with an obsession about his dead mother, who "had never done anything which was not stipulated on the regulations of his institution", has to approach the irregular methods of the Peruvian police and army. Slowly, Inspector Chacaltana converts into an undesirable person for everyone and a stranger to himself. Abril Rojo does not dissimulate the barbarism of Sendero Luminoso terrorism, nor the horrors of the dirty war against terrorism, nor the Church connivance, nor the brutality of the farmers. As Inspector Chacaltana progressively changes in front of our eyes, he loses his innocence, he becomes more violent, he feels tempted by the power previleges and enjoys the domination sensation which violence gives him, and we are induced to think that no one is left unscathed after stepping down on a living hell. This mix of dark thriller with social and political novel presents the serial killer story (with exquisite details of millenial and ritual meaning) and, perhaps more importantly, the brutal and funny contrast between innocence and corruption. The result is powerful and effective.
2 comments:
Interesting novels--as an ignorant American I only hear of the Spanish writers, as if Spain's the only country on the Iberian penninsula. On the other side, the only Portuguese lit I know of is Afro-Brazilian stuff.
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