Purgatory

Rauacute;l Zurita'sPurgatory, 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) through the disruptive and fiercely inventive voice of a postmodern master. This beautifulen faceedition, superbly translated by Anna Deeny, brings to English-language readers an indispensable volume written by one of Latin America's most important living poets. Rauacute;l Zurita was a 24-year-old student in Valparaiacute;so when, on the morning of the coup, he was arrested, detained, and tortured. Conceived as the first text of a Dantean trilogy that includesAnteparaiacute;so (Anteparadise)andLa Vida Nueva (The New Life), Purgatoryis his anguished response to Chile's violent transformation. The book begins with a photograph of Zurita's mutilated face, building, through a series of economical yet powerful juxtapositions of voices and images, toward a crisis of faith in both God and humankind. Zurita's agonized and unsettling language expands and contracts as it traverses identities and landscapes, ending in the paradise of the lived moment of political struggle.