Medellín · 1994 · citedOur Lady of the Assassins
Fernando Vallejo
An ageing, embittered grammarian returns to the Medellín of the early 1990s, at the height of the cartel wars, and takes up with teenage sicarios, hired killers from the hillside slums, in a bitter lament for a city drowning in violence. Vallejo maps the real Medellín: the old churches of the centre he wanders in nostalgia, the comunas climbing the hills that breed the young gunmen, the metro that is the city's fragile pride, and the shrine at Sabaneta where the sicarios pray for their bullets to strike.
5 places →