Purgatory: A Bilingual Edition

Purgatory: A Bilingual Edition

<div>Raúl Zurita’s <i>Purgatory,</i> a landmark in contemporary Latin American poetry, records the physical, cultural, and spiritual violence perpetrated against the Chilean people under Pinochet’s military dictatorship (1973–1990) in the fiercely inventive voice of a postmodern master. This beautiful <i>en face edition,</i> superbly translated by Anna Deeny, brings to English-language readers an indispensable volume written by one of the most important living poets writing in Spanish today. Zurita was a 24-year-old student in Valparaíso when, on the morning of the coup, he was arrested, detained, and tortured. Conceived as the first text of a Dantean trilogy that includes <i>Anteparaíso (Anteparadise)</i> and <i>La Vida Nueva (The New Life), Purgatory</i> is his anguished response to Chile’s violent recent history.</div>