Red April

By: Santiago Roncagliolo, Edith Grossman - translator

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

The winner of Spain's coveted Alfaguara Prize and the UK's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Red April is an internationally acclaimed sensation.

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.

©2010 Santiago Roncagliolo (P)2011 Audible Ltd

Critic reviews

"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)

"Riveting... As the moral line dissolves between terrorist and counter-terrorist.... Edith Grossman's versatile translation spans hard-boiled noir, punctilious legalese, and the illiterate scrawls of a would-be serial killer.... Red April is rooted in Peru's past and present, but resonates far beyond." (Guardian)

"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, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Chair)