Keynote
A lyrical novel depicting the devastating effects of political violence in Peru on three women’s lives
Book Title
The Year of the Wind
Subtitle
A Novel
Cover Image
- “Pacheco Medrano dazzles in her English-language debut. . . . It’s a powerful meditation on the irrevocable toll of political violence.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Body
Nina, a Peruvian writer in Spain on the eve of the pandemic, is pulled back into her nation’s fraught history after a fleeting encounter with a woman who is a doppelgänger of Bárbara, a cousin lost to time. The games, the candor, and the secrets of her youth come alive again, but these memories are tinged with disquiet, and what unfolds takes Nina back to a village nestled in the Andes where she must confront the terrors that stalked Peru in the early 1980s. As she travels from Cusco to Apurimac to uncover Bárbara’s fate, Nina begins to weave a new cloth of memory. She learns more about Bárbara’s political radicalization and involvement with the Shining Path, the Maoist terrorist group that instigated a bloody period of political violence in which tens of thousands of mostly indigenous Peruvians disappeared or were killed.
In her first novel to be translated into English, Karina Pacheco Medrano explores how war transforms family stories and complicates the distinction between prey and hunter. Part bildungsroman, part detective novel, The Year of the Wind records a significant chapter in Peruvian history rarely considered in the literature of political violence, exploring the anonymous stories marked by horror, loss, bewilderment, and, in some cases, redemption.
In her first novel to be translated into English, Karina Pacheco Medrano explores how war transforms family stories and complicates the distinction between prey and hunter. Part bildungsroman, part detective novel, The Year of the Wind records a significant chapter in Peruvian history rarely considered in the literature of political violence, exploring the anonymous stories marked by horror, loss, bewilderment, and, in some cases, redemption.
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About the Author
Credit: Musuk Nolte
Upcoming Events
Karina Pacheco Medrano reading and in conversation with Olga González, Bethsabé Huamán Andía, Alicia Muñoz, & Yansi Pérez about THE YEAR OF THE WIND at Macalester College
Date:
Location:
Macalester College in St Paul, MNview map
LOCATION: Macalester College library, Harmon room (first floor).
Praise
- “[An] ambitious, intelligent novel. . . . A timely callback to Peruvian political bloodletting that blurs the line between victims and perpetrators.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Pacheco Medrano dazzles in her English-language debut, the surreal story of a 50-something Peruvian writer reckoning with her cousin’s disappearance during the government’s conflict with a Maoist insurgency in the 1980s.”—The Millions’ “Great Fall 2025 Preview”
- “I loved The Year of the Wind—a gorgeous, uncanny novel that haunted me in the best way. This is a book of memory and ghosts, a book of longing and magic . . . a book that pulses with the ache of what’s been lost and the fierce beauty of what remains. . . . A brilliant literary achievement.”—Stuart Nadler
- “The Year of the Wind is an ode to friendship, home, family, but most of all to the pursuit of truth, no matter how hard it is to find or accept. Told with unmatched lyricism, this novel will grip you, hold you captive, and leave you amazed at the power of the human spirit.”—Alejandro Puyana
