Atusparia, Gabriela Wiener

A left-wing politician, a victim of lawfare, is imprisoned in a high-security prison deep in the Amazon rainforest. She calls herself Atusparia, like the leader of the 19th-century Peruvian indigenous resistance and like the delusional communist school where she studied in the throes of the Cold War. Love in times of capitalism engulfs her in a spiral of drugs and frenzied sexuality that will distance her from the old ideals of her upbringing until the call of her roots leads her on a journey to the foot of Lake Titicaca and to emulate the revolutionary hero of her childhood.

There are no traceable precedents for this new novel by Gabriela Wiener. Atusparia is groundbreaking and exquisite; satirical, autofictional, and slightly futuristic. Straddling social realism and poetic fantasy, Wiener makes a masterful leap in her literature and shows us, in her post-indigenist "great Russian novel," how hierarchies and power struggles reach emancipatory movements, shattering them.

Winner of the Ciutat de Barcelona Literary Award in Spanish

"Following Wiener's trail is one of the few luxuries we have left." -Alejandro Zambra