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
“The novel is heartrending as it maps the chasms between childhood innocence and the brutal banality of adulthood. Its accounts of often gendered violence are unflinching but respectful to the lost and scarred. . . . A monumental novel about the persistent aftereffects of revolution, resistance, and war.”—Foreword Reviews, 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
Praise
- “Pacheco Medrano dazzles in her English-language debut. . . . It’s a powerful meditation on the irrevocable toll of political violence.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
- “[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”
“The Year of the Wind is the English-language debut of Peruvian writer powerhouse Karina Pacheco Medrano. Her success has steadily grown throughout Latin America and Europe, lending her an international audience that has finally culminated in The Year of the Wind—an emotionally resonant, deeply reflective novel.”—Lindzey Jacoby, Rooted Literary Magazine
