Divine Punishment
SKU:
40145
$30.00
$30.00
Clothbound, sewn, jacketed, 512 pages, 5.5 x 8.5", 2015, 978-1-62054-014-5
Winner of the 2017 Independent Press Award for World Ficiton
Finalist for Foreword Magazine's 2015 IndieFab "Book of the Year Award" for Historical Fiction
Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor with Hebe Powell.
Divine Punishment was declared by Carlos Fuentes to be the quintessential Central American novel. Here Sergio Ramírez transforms the most celebrated criminal trial in Nicaraguan history —the alleged murders in 1933 of two high society women and his employer by a Casanova named Oliverio Castañeda — into an examination of the entire Nicaraguan society at the brink of the first Somosa dictatorship. Passion, money, sex, gossip, political intrigue, medical malpractice and judicial corruption all merge into a novel that reads like a courtroom drama wrapped in yellow journalism disguised as historical fiction posing as a scandal of the first order.
“Divine Punishment is by far the best novel by Sergio Ramírez, former vice-president of Nicaragua, and one of my favorite novels, period. Set in the Nicaraguan city of León in the 1930s, and based on a true story, it concerns the case of Oliverio Castaneda, a young charmer and social climber accused of killing neighbors, patrons, and lovers by poisoning. The convoluted affair (still used as a case study in Central American law schools) was never solved, and Ramírez himself cagily leaves it open-ended. Hilarious, riveting, beautifully constructed and written.” — Dan Bellm
Winner of the 2017 Independent Press Award for World Ficiton
Finalist for Foreword Magazine's 2015 IndieFab "Book of the Year Award" for Historical Fiction
Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor with Hebe Powell.
Divine Punishment was declared by Carlos Fuentes to be the quintessential Central American novel. Here Sergio Ramírez transforms the most celebrated criminal trial in Nicaraguan history —the alleged murders in 1933 of two high society women and his employer by a Casanova named Oliverio Castañeda — into an examination of the entire Nicaraguan society at the brink of the first Somosa dictatorship. Passion, money, sex, gossip, political intrigue, medical malpractice and judicial corruption all merge into a novel that reads like a courtroom drama wrapped in yellow journalism disguised as historical fiction posing as a scandal of the first order.
“Divine Punishment is by far the best novel by Sergio Ramírez, former vice-president of Nicaragua, and one of my favorite novels, period. Set in the Nicaraguan city of León in the 1930s, and based on a true story, it concerns the case of Oliverio Castaneda, a young charmer and social climber accused of killing neighbors, patrons, and lovers by poisoning. The convoluted affair (still used as a case study in Central American law schools) was never solved, and Ramírez himself cagily leaves it open-ended. Hilarious, riveting, beautifully constructed and written.” — Dan Bellm
