Purgatory

Raul Zurita's "Purgatory", a landmark in contemporary Latin American poetry, records the physical, cultural, and spiritual violence perpetrated against the Chilean people under Pinochet's military dictatorship (1973-1990) in the fiercely inventive voice of a postmodern master. This beautiful en face edition, superbly translated by Anna Deeny, brings to English-language readers an indispensable volume written by one of the most important living poets writing in Spanish today. Zurita was a 24-year-old student in Valparaiso when, on the morning of the coup, he was arrested, detained, and tortured. Conceived as the first text of a "Dantean" trilogy that includes "Anteparaiso" ("Anteparadise") and "La Vida Nueva" ("The New Life"), "Purgatory" is his anguished response to Chile's violent recent history.