Blood of the Dawn - by Claudia Salazar Jiménez (Paperback)

About the Book

Debut novel by Peruvian author viscerally revisits Peru's recent, traumatic history through the eyes of three women

Book Synopsis

Blood of the Dawn follows three women whose lives intertwine and are ripped apart during what's known as "the time of fear" in Peruvian history when the Shining Path militant insurgency was at its peak. The novel rewrites the conflict through the voice of women, activating memory through a mixture of politics, desire, and pain in a lucid and brutal prose.

Review Quotes

"A bold, breviloquent debut novel whose polyhedral story line plunges sans parachute into the bloody chamber of political violence unleashed during the massacre-ridden years in Peru." -- Valerie Miles, The New York Times

"With this courageous and necessary novel, Salazar Jiméeacute;eacute;nez refuses to let the stories of the victims of 'the time of fear' get away. The violence that permeated Peru in the 1980s and 1990s is unspeakable, which is exactly why it needs to be spoken. That's what Salazar Jiménez does in this beautiful, horrifying work of art." -- Michael Schaub, NPR Books

"Jiménez's prose is clear-cut and doesn't sugarcoat the realities of the insurgence and the effects it had on the people of Peru. When this debut novel was first published in Spanish, Jiménez received the 2014 Americas Narrative Prize. Read it, and you'll see why." -- Cassidy Foust, Literary Hub

"Fiery and political debut." -- Publishers Weekly

"Blood of the Dawn is a delirious, harrowing onslaught of mixed allegiances and betrayals, punctuated with machete chops and the machine gun's staccato call." -- Kenneth Rupp, The Habitat

"Jiménez's frequent shifts in scene, tense, and perspective reflect the relentless insecurity wrought by Shining Path's guerrilla tactics and terrorist acts... English-speaking readers will appreciate the ways in which Bryer's translation preserves each woman's unique cadence, reminding us that tragedy is experienced on a individual level, even as it ravages an entire country." -- The Arkansas International

"This incendiary novel manages to pair an honest look at a social and national trauma with an intimate portrayal of the personal tragedies within." -- Librairie Drawn & Quarterly blog

"A brief novel, but an intense one, whose every word flexes with a taut power." -- Josh is Writing blog

"Composed of very brief and stylistically varied sections--confession, interrogation, fever dream, prose poem--Blood of the Dawn rapidly switches between narratives, creating a sort of social collage." -- Ratik Asokan, The Nation

"A hair-raising look at violence, women and Perúuacute;uacute;. Highly recommended. And visceral." -- Santiago Roncagliolo

"Among the best books of the year . . . Her use of short paragraphs, quotes, photography, testimony and the different voices, turn this death tale into a recovery of the women's experience. Women are the ones who star in this sum of voices like a tragic chorus." -- Julio Ortega, El Boomeran

"It's an original novel. Beyond the polemic topic, Blood of the Dawn only talks about literature. . . . Lyrical and cinematographic. If there are certain things that can't be (shouldn't be) told with words, we cannot silence them either." -- Sophie Canal

"This may one be the first novels to talk about this issue from the women's point of view, and in a very effective way. . . . Blood of the Dawn is an original addition to the abundant literature on this difficult and polemic episode of our recent history." -- Javier Agreda, La Republic

About the Author

Claudia Salazar Jimenez was born in Lima, Peru, in 1976. Currently based in New York, she studied Literature in the National University of San Marcos and has a PHD in Literature from NYU. Salazar Jimenez is a literary critic, cultural manager, and the founder and director of PERUFEST, the first Peruvian cinema festival in New York. Her short stories have appeared in several online publications and in international anthologies, and her debut novel, Blood of the Dawn, was awarded the Americas Narrative Prize in 2014.
Elizabeth Bryer is a translator and writer from Australia. Her translations have previously appeared in Words without Borders and Overland Literary Journal, and her writing about translation has been published in Sydney Review of Books. In 2016 she curated an edition of Seizure Online, which she dedicated to translated fiction and poetry. Her creative writing has been widely anthologized in publications including The Lifted Brow, Meanjin and Best Australian Science Writing."