Feast of the Innocents
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.
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.