Corner of the Dead

"In her first novel, Lurie tells the chilling story of a woman's struggle to overcome the horror she's witnessed working in violent 1980s Peru. American photojournalist Lisette, her heart set on helping Peruvian citizens terrorized by the Shining Path guerrillas, does her best as a humanitarian worker to understand and protect her fellow villagers. Wracked with dismay and guilt, Lisette's good intentions don't always go as far as she would hope, and she finds herself powerless to stop her friends and neighbors from being captured or butchered. As the novel unfolds, Lisette finds love amidst the bloodshed in her housemate Karl, but a shifting chronology sees Lisette back in America with a husband and children, seemingly unable to cope with all she's witnessed. Lurie's haunting debut is a spare, confident look at third world tragedy and the complex, conflicting reactions it spurs in well-meaning citizens of the first world." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

This powerful novel depicts the reign of violence perpetrated in Peru in the 1980s by the Shining Path guerrillas, a Maoist-based organization, and the subsequent authoritarian counterattack by the Peruvian government. It explores these horrific events through the eyes of a young American photojournalist and humanitarian worker, Lisette, who bears witness to the genocide of the Peruvian Indians in whose village she has chosen to live. I use the camera to block my view, says Lisette. This is the start of her double vision--trying to forget and trying to recall--and her struggle to come to terms with the human capacity for cruelty. But the grim reality in Peru is so overpowering that she carries it with her back to New York and through the rest of her life. Having abandoned a lover along with the fight, she desperately tries to find meaning beyond that of mere survival.