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Article: Horacio Castellanos Moya. Senselessness.(Book review)
- Article from:
- The Review of Contemporary Fiction
- Article date:
- March 22, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Review of Contemporary Fiction. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Horacio Castellanos Moya. Senselessness. Trans. Katherine Silver. New Directions, 2008. 142 pp. Paper: $15.95.
In Horacio Castellanos Moya's biting English-language debut, a self-described "depraved atheist" agrees to work in an unnamed country (apparently located in Latin America) for a human-rights organization associated with the Catholic Church. His job is to edit a 1,100-page manuscript documenting the tortures suffered by indigenous Indians at the hands of the local military--or, as he puts it, to "make sure that the Catholic hands about to touch the balls of the military tiger were clean and had even gotten a manicure" As he reads through the survivors' ...