"[Alarcón's] tales, set largely in the hardscrabble world of Lima,
build with all the power of a Flannery O'Connor story: a gentle enough
start, an innocent setting, and before long the reader is adrift in a
drama that defies the imagination--with characters that live long after
the book is closed." -- Washington Post Book World
In this exquisite story collection, Daniel Alarcón moves from Third
World urban centers to the fault lines that divide nations and people to
illuminate wars, both national and internal, waged in jungles, across
the borders, in the streets of Lima, and in the intimacy of New York
apartments. He tells of lives at the margins: an unrepentant terrorist
remembers where it all began, a would-be emigrant contemplates the
ramifications of leaving and never coming back, a reporter turns in his
pad and pencil for the inglorious costume of a street clown. War by
Candlelight is a devastating portrait of a world in flux from an
extraordinary new voice in literary fiction, one you will not soon
forget.