Chilean author Skarmeta (The Postman, 1995, etc.) returns to
post-dictatorship Santiago in this tale of beauty, crime and
revenge.In an attempt to deplete Santiago's overflowing jails - and
in part to right a previous wrong - the government has suddenly
granted an amnesty for nonviolent prisoners. Among those released
are Angel Santiago, a young man who years earlier had stolen a
horse, and Nicolas Vergara Gray, a notorious (but gentle and
reflective) bank robber. Angel has been seared by his experience in
prison, most notably for having been literally tossed into a den of
thieves and brutalized at the behest of the evil warden Santoro.
Now that he's out he wants revenge, and because Santoro knows of
this desire, on the sly the warden also lets out Rigoberto Mar'n, a
lifer, for 30 days, to allow him to assassinate Angel. Angel,
however, doesn't just want revenge, he wants romance, and this
comes to him unexpectedly in the form of Victoria Ponce, a
17-year-old dancer who's recently been booted from school for
truancy and general recalcitrance. While their relationship is
intensely sexual, it's also very sweet, for Angel, who has a
photographic memory, begins to tutor Victoria so that she can
complete her academic education and attend dance school. Meanwhile,
Vergara Gray wants nothing more than to be reunited with his
long-suffering wife Teresa, but he finds her both indifferent and
impatient - she's suffered enough. Intrigue thickens as the
recently released prisoners find themselves woefully short of
money; they need to be creative in coming up with ways to find
enough cash to eke out a day-to-day existence on the gritty streets
of the city. To aid them, criminal genius Lira the Dwarf, whose
brilliance is in inverse proportion to his stature, sends Vergara
Gray a letter from jail outlining a plan to make them all rich. A
novel with a paradoxical combination of warmth and guile. (Kirkus
Reviews)
With prisons overflowing in Chile, the president declares a general
amnesty for all nonviolent criminals. Angel Santiago, a youth
determined to avenge abuse he received in jail, seeks out the
notorious bank robber Nicolas Vergara Grey, whose front-page
exploits won him a reputation he would rather leave behind. Their
plan for an ambitious and daring robbery is complicated by the
galvanizing presence of Victoria Ponce, a virtuosic dancer and
high-school dropout whose father was a victim of the regime.
Praised for his "ability to place a personal story in the context
of a national upheaval and make it warm, funny and universal" (San
Francisco Chronicle), Antonio Skarmeta sets this exuberant love
story against the backdrop of the new Chile, free from the Pinochet
dictatorship but beholden to the perils of globalization. The
Dancer and the Thief, which won Spain's prestigious Planeta Prize,
is a remarkable new novel from one of South America's finest
storytellers.
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