Dead Men Cast No Shadows - Paperback

by Sergio Ramirez (Author), Daryl Hague (Translator)

Volume 3 of The Managua Trilogy, following The Sky Weeps for Me and No One Weeps for Me Now. Exiled to Honduras, Inspector Dolores Morales undertakes a dangerous journey back into Nicaragua, hunted by agents of the secret police whose commissioner, with ruthless cynicism and the divinatory advice of his mother, serves as enabler-in-chief of the country's deranged politics. Desperate to reunite with his ailing main squeeze, Morales soon finds himself entangled by other concerns: a massive peaceful student protest erupts throughout Managua, only to be suppressed with extreme prejudice by police and paramilitary forces. Gradually a murky network is revealed, full of secrets, betrayals and dark maneuvers that Inspector Morales will have to face. Even as the 2018 massacre of 400 students is skillfully dramatized, and a portrait painted unsparingly of a society shaped by tyranny, corruption, poverty and misery, Ramirez never loses sight of the humanity of Nicaragua's people and their hopes.--Bruce

Back Jacket

On the dangerous journey back to Nicaragua from their Honduran exile, Inspector Morales and his old revolutionary comrade Serafín witness the brutal murder of their guide. Agents of the secret police are on their tail, forcing them to take temporary sanctuary with leftist priests, loyal friends, and common Nicaraguans, all swept up in the deranged cynicism, graft, and violence of a dictatorship built on the lies of a long-since-abandoned idealism. As Managua heaves with student protests, and hundreds die at the hands of police and paramilitary units, the inspector continues his dogged quest, uncovering a murky network full of secrets, betrayals and dark maneuvers that he will have to face, or be overwhelmed by. Dead Men Cast No Shadows's unsparing portrait of a society shaped by corruption and poverty led to its author's exile--but Ramírez's vision of the Ortega regime's savagery never overwhelms his exuberance or appreciation of the Nicaraguan people's humanity, and their capacity for irony, resilience, and resistance.

Author Biography

Sergio Ramírez was born in Masatepe, Nicaragua in 1942. His first book was published in 1963; the following year he earned a law degree at the University of Nicaragua. Returning after a lengthy voluntary exile in Costa Rica and Germany -- during which he continued to write works of fiction and nonfiction -- he became active as the leader of the Group of Twelve, consisting of intellectuals, businessmen and priests united against the Somoza regime. With the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in 1979, he became part of the Junta of the Government of National Reconstruction, where he presided over the National Council of Education. He was elected vice-president of Nicaragua in 1984, an office he held until 1990. He continued to serve as the leader of the Sandinista block in the National Assembly until 1995, when he founded the Movement for Sandinista Renovation (MRS). In 1996, however, Ramirez retired from politics. His outspoken opposition to the Ortega dictatorship, along with the publication of Tongolele no sabía bailar (English title: Dead Men Cast No Shadows), resulted in an arrest warrant in 2021 and his subsequent exile to Spain. In 2023 his citizenship was stripped and all of his property confiscated by Ortega's government. Sergio Ramírez is the author of thirty books, only ten of which have been translated into English. In 2017 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, Spanish literature's highest literary award. He has also received Spain's Dashiel Hammet Award, France's Laure Bataillon Award, Cuba's José María Arguedas Latinamerican Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Alfaguara International Novel Award. Ramirez is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of France, and a doctor honoris causa of Blaise Pascal University (France). He has received the International Prize for Human Rights awarded by the Bruno Kreisky Foundation, as well as the Order of Merit of the Federal Government of Germany. He held the Robert Kennedy Professorship in Latin American Studies at Harvard University in 2009.