Bioy

Lima, 1980s. While the State and Shining Path wage a relentless war, Elsa, a communist militant, is raped and tortured by the military. Among them is Bioy, a young corporal paralyzed by the brutality. Lima, 2000s. Bioy now leads one of the city's most violent gangs, working for drug cartels and organized crime. His former army comrades are in prison or have fled to the United States. Twenty years have passed, plunging Peru into the abyss, and this novel tells the story of that fall through the intertwined destinies of Bioy, Elsa, the policeman Humberto, and the strange boy seeking revenge. The Lima that Trelles Paz recreates with his sharp prose resembles a savage and merciless jungle, where only the strongest survive. With a sprawling plot and a chaotic chronology that blends past and present and borrows from diverse forms such as screenwriting and blogging, Bioy (winner of the 2012 Francisco Casavella Prize) constructs a puzzle that unfolds before the reader all the facets of violence, horror, and human decay, while simultaneously attempting to answer this question: does the very idea of ​​redemption still hold any meaning? With this book, Trelles Paz establishes himself as one of the most promising Latin American voices in crime fiction.