Ayacucho, Goodbye
& Moscow's Gold
Two novellas by Julio OrtegaTranslated by Edith Grossman (Ayacucho, Goodbye) and Alita Kelley (Moscow's Gold)
ISBN: 0-935480-66-8
Price: $14.00
Pages: 104
When Peruvian peasant leader Alfonso Cánepa is murdered and mutilated by the police, he sets out to recover his missing bones and seek Christian burial. During the pilgrimage from his mountain village to the capital, the dead man relates an epic satire of a Peru torn apart by a decade of terrorism and government repression. Cánepa finds humor, cynicism and hope in a nation that has become "a graveyard with an airport."
In Moscow's Gold, another national allegory, a Peruvian teenager's life is unexpectedly disrupted and complicated by the strains and repressions of the Cold War era.
"Julio Ortega's two novellas display magic realism at
its most effectiveas political satire."
--Booklist
"Julio Ortega is a poet, fiction writer, dramatist,
anthologist, and one of Spanish America's most highly
respected literary critics. In the novellas Ayacucho,
Goodbye and Moscow's Gold he transforms matters
of national importance: violence, betrayal, corruption,
persecution, and other commonplaces of Peruvian life, into
subjects of universal significance....In these two brief
selections, Ortega demonstrates his versatility within the
genre of prose fiction with his skillful handling of black
comedy and the coming-of-age story. Thanks to the
translations, these works are now accessible to a wider
audience."
--World Literature Today
"A startling and very clever attempt by exile
Ortega to disguise Peruvian reality."
--Library Journal