Feast of the Innocents
2017 Longlist

Feast of the Innocents

Translated from the original Spanish by Anne McLean and Anna Milsom

ABOUT
THE BOOK

Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López, adored by his female patients but despised by his wife and daughters, has a burning ambition: to prove to the world that the myth of Simón Bolívar, El Libertador, is a sham and a scandal.

In Pasto, south Colombia, where the good doctor plies his trade, the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents is dawning. A day for pranks, jokes and soakings … Water bombs, poisoned empanaditas, ground glass in the hog roast – anything goes.

What better day to commission a float for The Black and White Carnival that will explode the myth of El Libertador once and for all? One that will lay bare the massacres, betrayals and countless deflowerings that history has forgotten.

But in Colombia you question the founding fables at your peril. At the frenzied peak of the festivities, drunk on a river of arguardiente, Doctor Justo will discover that this year the joke might just be on him.

 

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Evelio
Rosero

Evelio Rosero studied Social Communication in the Externado University of Colombia. In 2006 he was awarded the Tusquets National Prize for Literature in Colombia for his novel The Armies, which was also the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Evelio Rosero studied Social Communication in the Externado University of Colombia. In 2006 he was awarded the Tusquets National Prize for Literature in Colombia for his novel The Armies, which was also the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

The layers of comedy and tragedy intertwined with burlesque, the irony of the situations and the lush South American baroquism make this reading experience a unique one.

Evelio Rosero won the National Literature Prize in 2014, the Ministry of Culture of Colombia ALOA Prize in 2011, the Foreign Fiction Prize in 2009, and the Tusquets Novel Award in 2006, among others. In 1986 he received the Ernesto Sabato Scholarship OroArtes Cali.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
01/01/2015
Author
Publisher
MacLehose Press
Translator
Anna Milsom, Anne McLean
Translation
Translated from the original Spanish by Anne McLean and Anna Milsom

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