First published 1996
A young woman emerges from the Argentine pampas after surviving a massacre at a killing field. She arrives at a Buenos Aires doorstep speaking only two words: "I am." A couple of physicians takes her in. Both doctors have built their lives around rational explanations, but their own daughter vanished during Argentina's Dirty War. The girl remains silent, yet inside her live the voices and stories of eleven people executed alongside her in the darkness. These ghostly presences speak through her, carrying the memories of those who disappeared without trace during the country's brutal regime. The physicians struggle to understand this mysterious survivor while confronting their own devastating loss. The eleven voices weave together tales of a nation torn apart by violence and a people working to mend the wounds left by political terror. Through this strange resurrection, the stories of the dead find their way back to the living.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, contemporary, magical-realism
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Argentina, Buenos Aires, Pampas
Period: Dirty War
272 pages · Paperback · Bantam
Content warnings: violence