THE YEAR OF THE WIND

A Peruvian woman seeks a cousin lost to the siren call of political violence.

In her intriguing first book to be translated into English, Peruvian novelist Pacheco Medrano explores “what there [is] to be learned from [the] abyss.” Her story centers on the intimacy and horror generated by Shining Path rebels and Peruvian government soldiers who slaughtered residents in spasms of dueling atrocities. The author, an anthropologist, makes certain to give the official count: 69,280 people killed and disappeared from 1980 to 2000. But this ambitious, intelligent novel casts its spell narrowly, through a trio of women: the charismatic and reckless Bárbara Varas; her grandmother, Bernarda, a widowed shepherd tucked high into the Andes; and the narrator, Nina, Bárbara’s younger cousin. Forty years after Bárbara disappears, a middle-aged Nina spots her cousin’s doppelgänger in Madrid. The shock propels Nina back to the Andes, where she and Bárbara sang Beatles songs, smirked at Garfield the Cat, trekked up granite peaks, and milked cows. Nina plunges back into their shared history and the conundrum of communities who both know and don’t know what befell them. The first murder—of Bernarda’s 28-year-old husband—arrives quickly, and at first feels apart from the forces that later ensnare his widow and granddaughter. As Nina hunts the truth, she travels folkways, carefully collects the testimony of neighbors, and, yes, dives into human rights archives, giving the book a whiff of autofiction. She also traces her nightmares and dreamscapes in a story that shape-shifts time. The prose is occasionally awkward, the doubling-back can be confusing. But as the current political violence—in Sudan, Haiti, Gaza—and its creeping assertion in North America both attest, people will “ask what we’ve done to deserve this.” Then, chillingly, “the news in our country was horrific, but we got used to it.”

A timely callback to Peruvian political bloodletting that blurs the line between victims and perpetrators.