Bright Republic, Andrés Barba

What would have to happen for us to be forced to redefine our idea of childhood? The appearance of thirty-two violent children of unknown origin completely disrupts life in San Cristóbal, a small tropical city nestled between the jungle and the river. Twenty years later, one of its protagonists writes this Luminous Republic, a chronicle woven from facts, evidence, and rumors about how the city was forced to reformulate not only its idea of order and violence but even civilization itself during that year and a half when, until their deaths, the children took over the city. Tense and unsettling, with the clarity of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Barba adds here, to his usual narrative boldness and his talent for ambiguous situations, the dimension of a dark, metaphysical fable that has the breadth of great stories.