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The breakout book from a prizewinning young writer: a breathtaking, suspenseful story of one mans obsessive search to find the truth of another mans downfall.
Nelsons life is not turning out the way he hoped. His girlfriend is sleeping with another man, his brother has left their South American country, leaving Nelson to care for their widowed mother, and his acting career cant seem to get off the ground. That is, until he lands a starring role in a touring revival of The Idiot President, a legendary play by Nelsons hero, Henry Nunez, leader of the storied guerrilla theater troupe Diciembre. And thats when the real trouble begins.
The tour takes Nelson out of the shelter of the city and across a landscape hes never seen, which still bears the scars of the civil war. With each performance, Nelson grows closer to his fellow actors, becoming hopelessly entangled in their complicated lives, until, during one memorable performance, a long-buried betrayal surfaces to force the troupe into chaos.
Nelsons fate is slowly revealed through the investigation of the narrator, a young man obsessed with Nelsons storyand perhaps closer to it than he lets on. In sharp, vivid, and beautiful prose, Alarcn delivers a compulsively readable narrative and a provocative meditation on fate, identity, and the large consequences that can result from even our smallest choices.
