7.4 /10 1 Votes
Original title Lituma en los Andes Publisher Planeta Media type Print Originally published 1993 Genre Novel Awards Premio Planeta de Novela | 3.7/5 Goodreads Language Spanish Publication date February 1, 1997 Pages 288 p. Country Peru | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Preceded by In Praise of the Stepmother Similar Mario Vargas Llosa books, Premio Planeta de Novela winners, Novels | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Death in the andes
Death in the Andes (Lituma en los Andes) is a 1993 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. It follows the character Lituma, from Who Killed Palomino Molero?, after being transferred to the rural town of Naccos.
Contents
Plot
Corporal Lituma has been transferred as punishment, to the tiny Andean community of Naccos, where almost everyone besides him, his adjunct Tomás Carreño, and the vaguely threatening owners of the local bar are there as builders. Three men from the village disappear, and Lituma has to investigate, alongside his heartbroken young adjunct, the only other local policeman. Was it the terrucos of the Maoist Shining Path or something even more terrible that caused these vanishings?
Themes
This novel examines the tactics and motivations of the Maoists, but situates their violence in the context of an older world where life is brutal and in a society which is on the very fringe of the modern world.
A lot of magic realism is employed, with a great deal of references to old, "indian" spirituality, and to Pishtacos, vampires of Andean folklore.