La investigacion del perturbador asesinato de una mujer de clase burguesa deja entrever la corrupcion y la impunidad extendida en la sociedad salvadorena.

Castellanos Moya es una figura estelar en el todavia en marcha segundo boom de la literatura latinoamericana. -The New York Review of Books

El desconcertante homicidio de Olga Maria, una mujer de clase alta y madre de familia, deja conmocionada a la sociedad salvadorena. Su mejor amiga no concibe que alguien pueda haber asesinado -a sangre fria, delante de sus dos hijas pequenas y en su propia casa- a esta mujer honesta y de reputacion intachable. Ante la incompetencia policial y la presion de la prensa, sera la amiga misma quien intente resolver tan terrible crimen. Su monologo delirante y atormentado arrastrara al lector a un torrente de hipotesis y descubrimientos que desvelaran los secretos de la vida intima y secreta de la victima y la podredumbre social y politica de la clase gobernante en El Salvador, un pais carcomido por la pasada guerra.

Con su habitual estilo contundente y depurado, Castellanos Moya nos brinda -a traves de la angustiada voz en primera persona de una protagonista que no da tregua al lector- una novela trepidante que, mas alla de representar una denuncia feroz de los males que azotan Latinoamerica, es un thriller politico que bebe de lo mejor del genero negro y detectivesco.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Salvadorean society is shocked by the gruesome murder of a young upper-class woman, and no one more so than her best friend Laura. In her first-person solo narration, Laura rattles on and on about her disbelief and horror at the evils all around her but who’s that in the mirror?

Laura Rivera can’t believe what has happened. Her best friend has been killed in cold blood in the living room of her home, in front of her two young daughters! Nobody knows who pulled the trigger, but Laura will not rest easy until she finds out. Her dizzying, delirious, hilarious, and blood-curdling one-sided dialogue carries the reader on a rough and tumble ride through the social, political, economic, and sexual chaos of post-civil war San Salvador. A detective story of pulse-quickening suspense, The She-Devil in the Mirror is also a sober reminder that justice and truth are more often than not illusive. Castellanos Moya’s relentless, obsessive narrator female, rich, paranoid, wonderfully perceptive, and, in the end, fabulously unreliable paints with frivolous profundity a society in a state of collapse.

Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness was acclaimed an innovative and invigoratingly twisted piece of art (Village Voice) and a brilliantly crafted moral fable, as if Kafka had gone to Latin America for his source materials (Russell Banks).