by Kerrin Ross Monahan
Nicholas Shakespeare is a talented award-winning British author. The 1995 fiction he wrote is based upon the manhunt and capture (in 1992) of Abimael Guzman, the leader of Peru’s violent guerilla organization, The Shining Path.
The author’s antagonist is Ezequiel, actually “the dancer upstairs,” or, more accurately, the choreographer of violence and chaos. Rejas, the policeman/pursuer is a very sympathetic and complete character who possesses the most admired trait of humankind. In the end, he is the one who loses the most. He won the battle, but lost the war. He is Peru, and, as one critic remarked, Everyman. It is impossible to separate the cold political from the agonizing personal.
Everything and everyone is as tightly intertwined as a Peruvian highland cap, and, as the narrator’s aunt remarks at the end: “What they say about her is true. Love is eternal for as long as it lasts.”