The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? - Tapa dura

"The Art of Political Murder is a work of unique moral acuity and masterful storytelling.... This is a real-life whodunit, a murder conspiracy that lays bare the poisonous heart of politics and power in contemporary Guatemala. In the story of the murder of Bishop Gerardi, Goldman is not only our writer, but our trustworthy detective." "Bishop Juan Gerardi directed the investigation into the Guatemalan terror. One night in the spring of 1998, the bishop published the results of the investigation. Two nights later, he was found lying in his own blood, his skull shattered by blows from a brick. A gigantic international operation was launched to disguise the crime and safeguard the untouchable impunity of the authors of the murder and two hundred thousand murders more. This book by Francisco Goldman is the irrefutable response to the dirty work of the specialists in misleading public opinion." "This is an impressive book. Goldman has focused his superb novelist's talents--compassion, precision, muscularity, great thoroughness, and an instinct for the exotic--on modern-day Guatemala's ineradicable crime against itself. This remarkable book would seem not to remind us of ourselves, yet somehow it does." "One of our hemisphere's finest writers has done it again. This magisterial book is a marvelous chimera of reportage, history, and autobiography, but also a riveting whodunit, all rendered with Goldman's trademark intelligence, compassion, and verve. Goldman details how--through war, corruption, impunity, blackmail, silence, and murder--a country's soul can be brought to the brink of extinction. And how--through faith, perseverance, sacrifice, courage, always courage--it can be brought back to the light. Devastating, gripping, irresistible."

Acclaimed novelist Goldman tells the story of the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, Guatemalas leading human rights activist, who had been bludgeoned to death in 1998, after releasing a church-sponsored report implicating the military in the murders and disappearances of some 200,000 civilians.