Lima Freak

NON-FICTION. PLANETA, 2007. 200 PAGES.

These aren’t success stories, although its protagonists could well compile an inventory of days, months and even years of glory. Neither is this an informative book. Anyone seeking to learn things about the characters, will have to do so on their own account and at their own risk: one of the characters ended up in prison, one lived under house arrest and another is still fighting several different cases in court. They all have huge egos and believe that they’ve done something great or useful. They are all strange and obsessive. None of them, until now, has been depicted with the meticulousness or detail of literary narrative, a genre that offers scene-setting, dialogues and revelations. True inhabitants of Lima. Vain, arrogant and extremely ambitious, Robles presents us with eight characters whose personalities, activities and history serve as paintbrushes with which to portray the more sympathetic, but also most sordid side of surreal Peruvian society.