ABOUT
THE BOOK

A tragi-comic story of improbable, inevitable love. At the centre: a couple in love, in exile together and apart. He is Juan Manuel Carpio, a second-generation Peruvian of Native American origins, a middle-class singer-composer. She is Fernanda María de la Trinidad del Monte Montes, a polyglot and cultured Salvadoran. Through the mostly epistolary narrative set in 1960’s Paris, revolutionary El Salvador, Chile, 1980’s California and London, we follow the thirty-year arc of their relationship: the disastrous and traumatic marriages to other people; the ups and downs of their respective careers; the inexorable effects of politics on their personal lives; their shifting passions and gradual realisation that the truest bond between lovers is a tender, abiding and respectful friendship.