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From the Darkness |
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Aflame Books is an independent publisher based in the UK. It publishes, in English translation, works from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East; works whose brilliance has been hidden from the English-speaking world by the barriers of culture and language
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Desperate measures under a benign dictatorshipIt is the spring of 1939 and a man dies in agony at the San Juan de Dios de Amatitlán Hospital outside Guatemala City. His wife and children are accused of poisoning him, shattering the calm of a land kept in fearful order by the authoritarian president Jorge Ubico. One of the few Central American novels to explore the region's criminal history, From the Darkness is a captivating story of a murder and the ensuing judicial investigation that became known as 'The Gourd Poisoning' in a society unprepared for a crime that lay outside its powers of reasoning. Salazar explores the bitterly unhappy circumstances that can make a woman kill, and the unforgiving quality of male justice. From the Darkness has a magnificent narrative quality, exposition and style as well as a forceful central character, delivering the unexpected features of a species of crime novel within a work of historical reconstruction.” |
Oswaldo Salazar is a lecturer in philosophy at Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala City |
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