Santiago Roncagliolo ©

Santiago Roncagliolo [Peru/ Spain]

Born in 1975 in Lima, Peru, Santiago Roncagliolo is a Peruvian novelist, journalist, and translator.

In 2006, his novel Abril rojo (Eng: Red April) won the Alfaguara Prize. In its English translation, it received the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It has been translated into more than 20 languages.

His nonfiction book Memorias de una dama (2009, tr: Memories of a Woman) recalls his time as a ghostwriter for the daughter of a powerful Dominican family with roots in fascism, mafia, and Caribbean dictatorships. The book, however, was censored by the family. It was retired from shelves, and, to this day, the author is forbidden to talk about it.

In 2014, Roncagliolo published La pena máxima (tr: The Maximum Penalty), a new adventure featuring district prosecutor Felix Chacaltana, the protagonist of Red April, set amidst the backdrop of the 1978 World Cup and the Argentinian dictatorship. In the same year, The Wall Street Journal named Roncagliolo as one of six authors following in the footsteps of Gabriel García Márquez.

Roncagliolo has also been a screenwriter, investigative journalist, and political adviser. His novel Pudor (tr: Modesty) was made into a film. His novels Tan cerca de la vida (tr: So Close To Life) and Oscar y las mujeres (tr: Oscar and the Women) explore the realm of the psychological thriller and black humour. He has worked with Spanish newspaper El País and various Latin American newspapers and has translated a number of authors, including Jean Genet, Joyce Carol Oates, and André Gide.

His latest book, El año en que nació el demonio (tr: The Year the Devil Was Born), was published in 2023. In Peru in 1623, on a black night like no other, the devil becomes flesh in the City of Kings when, in the convent of Santa Clara, a novice gives birth to a horrifying beast with two heads, a forked tongue, and eight limbs. The birth of the beast coincides with the appearance in the capital of a woman named Rosa, said to be able to talk to God and the Devil. Roncagliolo brings a dark era, abundant in intrigue and shrouded in the ghosts of superstition and idolatry to life.