Revolution & Change

El Salvador’s civil war is nearing its end, and exiled journalist Erasmo Aragón is preparing to return home after years in Mexico. Hoping to start a new life, he also wants to escape his troubled marriage and the anxieties that have consumed him. But when a doctor prescribes hypnosis to treat his persistent liver pain, Erasmo becomes obsessed with the memories and secrets buried in his subconscious. Haunted by political violence, uncertain recollections, and increasingly paranoid suspicions, he begins to lose his grip on reality. Darkly comic and psychologically unsettling, this novel explores exile, memory, and the complicated longing to return to a homeland transformed by violence.

In 1970s El Salvador, a young American poet is drawn into a country on the brink of civil war. When the enigmatic Leonel Gómez Vides invites twenty-seven-year-old Carolyn Forché to witness his homeland, she encounters military repression, impoverished communities, courageous clergy, and people risking their lives to resist injustice. As violence escalates and death squads hunt their opponents, Forché’s journey becomes a profound political and personal awakening. Part memoir, part testimony, this lyrical account explores the moral responsibility of bearing witness—and how confronting human suffering can transform the way we see the world. A finalist for the 2019 National Book Award, it is a powerful reflection on empathy, resistance, and the courage to speak when silence is easier.

El Salvador, 1923. Two sisters, separated by family secrets and raised in the shadow of a ruthless dictator, are destined for lives neither could have imagined. Graciela, a young Indigenous girl with the ability to foresee the future, is summoned to the capital to serve a rising tyrant. There, she discovers Consuelo, the sister stolen from her family years earlier. As the regime’s violence escalates and genocide devastates their Indigenous community, the sisters flee separately, each believing the other is dead. Their journeys take them from Hollywood to Paris and San Francisco, pursued by the ghosts of murdered friends whose stories refuse to be forgotten. Blending history, mythology, and magical realism, this haunting novel explores sisterhood, cultural memory, and the power of those silenced by history to reclaim their voices.