Feast of the Innocents - Tapa dura

Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso L?pez should be a happy man--he has a family, a thriving medical practice, and adoring patients--but he lives a troubled life. He is married to a beautiful woman, but she despises him, and thanks to her influence he is unable to win favor with his two daughters.

In his growing despair, L?pez becomes obsessed with exposing the myth of national hero Sim?n Bol?var--El Libertador, "The Liberator"--for what it truly is: a lie covering up years of massacres, betrayals, and sex scandals. But in interviewing elder locals about their memories of Bol?var he discovers that in Pasto, Colombia, the myth of Bol?var holds a tight grip on the identity of the city.

To put an end the cult of El Libertador, L?pez devises an elaborate stunt involving a carnival float on the day of The Black and White Carnival, celebrating the Feast of the Holy Innocents. In the feverish atmosphere of the Feast celebrations, Doctor L?pez watches his life come undone before his eyes.

From one of Colombia's foremost literary talents, Feast of the Innocents is both heartbreaking and triumphant, a literary portrait of obsession, alienation, and cultural identity in 1960s Colombia.

Evelio Rosero is a novelist and playwright whose work has been recognized by Colombia's National Literature Award and translated into more than a dozen languages. He is the author of sixteen novels, among which The Armies won the 2006 Tusquets International Novel Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2009. Rosero lives in Bogot?, Colombia.

Anne McLean has twice won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, for Cercas' Soldiers of Salamis and Evelio Rosero's The Armies.
Anna Milsom is Senior Lecturer in Translation at London Metropolitan University.