Red April

Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011: 'We united to salute the very special combination of narrative prowess, psychological drama and social revelation with which Roncagliolo's novel rewards its page-riffling reader.' Boyd Tonkin, lead judge 'Vargas Llosa's premier position as Peru's major international literary figure has, admittedly, been challenged by the emergence of Santiago Roncagliolo, whose remarkable debut political thriller Red April (2006, English translated 2010) not only won Spain's major literary prize, it was translated by Vargas Llosa's long-time collaborator, Edith Grossman.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times (headline: 'Vargas Llosa wins Nobel Prize')

Red April is an internationally acclaimed sensation - a bizarre and brutal murder investigation exposes the compelling, visceral drama of a society dominated by terror. The winner of Spain's coveted Alfaguara Prize.The war against the Shining Path is over. Yet when a charred and mutilated body is discovered during Carnival, the people of the small town of Ayacucho understand that death has once more returned to their land. Only now the terror emanates not from the government death squads, nor from the guerrillas in the mountains, but from a single source. A serial murderer. And now everyone is afraid. Everyone is a suspect.