More than a decade after the waning of the Shining Path rebellion, the conflict's legacy is fueling a literary renaissance. Peruvian writers are blazing a trail through Spanish and English language publishing with books exploring a saga as fascinating as it is painful.
It was a cruel, bloody and terrifying era. Rebels slaughtered villagers in the mountains and hung dogs from power lines, their carcasses daubed with Maoist slogans. The state responded with a Machiavellian mix of assassination, bribery and intrigue which brought down the rebel leader but also triggered the fall of the president.
Some call that period a successful counter-insurgency. Others call it a cautionary tale about the cost to democracy of fighting terrorism. Others simply call it a nightmare. Whatever you call it, however, there is no denying one thing: it is a great story.
Now, more than a decade after the waning of the Shining Path rebellion, the conflict's legacy is fuelling a literary renaissance. Peruvian writers are blazing a trail through Spanish and English language publishing with books exploring a saga as fascinating as it is painful.
In the past year two of the three top literary prizes in Spanish have been won by novelists from the capital, Lima. Alonso Cueto won the Herralde award for The Blue Hour, about a lawyer who discovers that his naval officer father tortured prisoners. Santiago Roncagliolo received the Alfaguara prize for Red April, which follows a prosecutor's attempt to unravel a murder in Ayacucho, a pre-Inca citadel which became a cradle of the Shining Path in the 1970s.
Daniel Alarcon, who was born in Lima but grew up in the US and writes in English, was shortlisted for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway award for his short story collection, War by Candlelight.
"For a writer this is one of the most stimulating environments you can have. Conflict is the basis of any type of storytelling," said Cueto, seated at a Lima cafe overlooking the Pacific where he does much of his work.
Lima's fog -- Herman Melville said it was the saddest city he had ever seen -- created an ambiguous atmosphere, said Cueto.
"Never dark, never bright, it's somewhere in between," he said.
Founded by a former philosophy professor, Abimael Guzman, the Shining Path waged a 12-year insurrection which claimed 69,000 lives and tapered off after its Maoist leader was captured in 1992. Guzman was found guilty of terrorism and sentenced to life imprisonment at a retrial last October.
President Alberto Fujimori's brutal crackdown was credited with taming the guerrillas, but he fled into exile in 2000 amid allegations of corruption and murder. He is now under house arrest in Chile fighting extradition to Peru. His former intelligence chief, Vladimir Montesinos, who is suspected of organizing death squads, is on trial for corruption and drug trafficking.
Peru remains one of South America's poorest countries but is enjoying economic growth and relative political stability.
"Societies can only look at themselves once the trauma has passed, and that's what is happening now," said Cueto.
Long regarded as a cultural backwater compared with Buenos Aires or Mexico City, the Peruvian capital is humming with new bookshops and publishing houses.
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