Original title Le Hora Azul Publication date 2005 Followed by Grandes Miradas (2006) ISBN 9780434019410 Country Peru | Language Spanish Published in English 2012 Originally published 2005 Genre Political thriller Publisher William Heinemann Published in english 2012 | |
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The Blue Hour (La Hora Azul) is a 2005 novel by Peruvian novelist Alonso Cueto. It won the Premio Herralde de Novela for Spanish language novels in 2006. First published in English in 2012, it was shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize the following year.
The story concerns a successful lawyer from Lima, and his search for a woman who he discovers had been kidnapped and held as a virtual sex slave by his now deceased father, a former military officer, during the war against the Shining Path guerrilla organization in the hinterland of Peru. Although ostensibly a political thriller, it is also a story of redemption and an attempt by the protagonist to disperse some of the ghosts haunting his country after years of internal strife.