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Blood of the Dawn

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Blood of the Dawn

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Overview

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.

Claudia Salazar Jiménez (b. 1975, Lima, Peru), critic, scholar, and author, founded PERUFEST, the first Peruvian film festival in New York, where she lives, and won the 2014 Americas Narrative Prize for her debut novel, Blood of the Dawn.

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About the Author

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ISBN-13:	9781941920428
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	12/06/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Claudia Salazar Jiménez was born in Lima, Perú, 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 Jiménez 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.

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Editorial Reviews

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…The camera angle zooms in and out, and the kaleidoscope turns round and round, creating a plurality of subjectivities that converge on a single, scarlet-infused point. "Horror can always grow," Melanie reminds us.

The New York Times Book Review - Valerie Miles

12/12/2016
In this fiery and political debut, Jiménez explores the rise of the communist Shining Path in 1980s Peru through the experience of three women caught up in it. Marcela is a former social worker who abandons her “little bourgeois life” in order to “transform into a revolutionary weapon.” Rechristened “Comrade Marta,” she leads a mountain insurrection not far from where the peasant Modesta imagines herself the “mistress of the clouds” to escape her husband’s complaints. A journalist named Melanie also heads from the city to the country, wondering, “What on earth are those guerrillas after?” Their attempt “to turn the world upside down” is little more than an excuse to kill; as Marta crows, “The revolution demands its share of blood.” Modesta is taken hostage while her husband is traveling, and Melanie and Marta soon share in her anguish. In turn, the “anticommunist journalist,” the “terrorist,” and the “flea-ridden Indian” are raped, each reduced to “a lump on the floor” by her various tormentors. But these are more archetypes than characters, and the occasional burst of ungrammatical prose (“mountains huge like the hills we burst”) that Jiménez uses to energize her novel are not enough to save it from seeming overly schematic. “We made no mistakes,” Marta reflects, her faith in the revolution hardly shaken despite its failure. “Violence is the midwife of history.” (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

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 Jiménez 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 Perú. 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

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