The Blue Hour (book)
| Author | Alonso Cueto |
|---|---|
| Original title | Le Hora Azul |
| Country | Peru |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre | Political thriller |
| Publisher | William Heinemann |
Publication date | 2005 |
Published in English | 2012 |
| ISBN | 9780434019410 (English H/B) |
| Followed by | Grandes Miradas (2006) |
The Blue Hour (La Hora Azul) is a 2005 novel by Peruvian novelist Alonso Cueto.[1] It won the Premio Herralde de Novela for Spanish language novels in 2006. First published in English in 2012, it was shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize the following year.
The story concerns a successful lawyer from Lima, and his search for a woman who he discovers had been kidnapped and held as a virtual sex slave by his now deceased father, a former military officer, during the war against the Shining Path guerrilla organization in the hinterland of Peru.[2] Although ostensibly a political thriller, it is also a story of redemption and an attempt by the protagonist to disperse some of the ghosts haunting his country after years of internal strife.[3]