Final Silence (Guatemala)
ISBN: 9780955233920 Price: £7.50 Click to BUY
By Ronald Flores
Translated by Gavin O’Toole
A SUCCESSFUL psychologist helping victims of torture gives up his comfortable life in the US to return to his homeland of Guatemala
On the eve of a peace deal after 30 years of civil war he finds himself treating a battle-hardened military torturer desperate to absolve himself for his heinous crimes… yet well versed in psychological warfare.
Final Silence is a compelling drama that explores the emotional wounds caused by torture that blighted a generation.
For the psychologist who fled civil war, the welcome anguish of homecoming scrapes open old emotional wounds. For the general who measures success by the bodycount, the violent transformation from conciliation to reconciliation cuts deep into his psyche
Through the quest for reconciliation takes an unexpected turn as conflict remains just below the surface.
This was Flores’ first novel and won the prestigious Mario Monteforte Toledo literary prize open to writers in Central America.
This is the first novel to deal with the aftermath of Guatemala’s civil war, and one of the first about that conflict translated into English.
‘Final Silence’ is a finely modulated meditation on guilt and forgiveness and Ronald Flores deserves praise for constructing from the rubble of a terrible history – a tale that affirms the possibility of a better future.
- New Internationalist
Último silencio is a highly intelligent novel that announced the arrival of a significant new protagonist on Guatemala’s literary scene’
- Latin American Review of Books
‘There is no improvising here - the author narrates well and directs with skilful technical solvency. The result is a powerful work of undoubted contemporary originality’
- Jury, Mario Montefore Toledo Prize, 1999