Description

"Since they shot her at point-blank range while she was being kissed, she confused the pain of love with that of death." Rosario Tijeras is the violent, violated character at the center of Jorge Franco's study of contrasts, set in self-destructing 1980s Medellín. Her very name-evoking the rosary, and scissors-bespeaks her conflict as a woman who becomes a contract killer to insulate herself from the random violence of the streets. Then she is shot, gravely wounded, and the circle of contradiction is closed.

From the corridors of the hospital where Rosario is fighting for her life, Antonio, the narrator, waits to learn if she will recover. Through him, we reconstruct the friendship between the two, her love story with Emilio, and her life as a hitwoman.

Rosario Tijeras has been recognized as an admirable continuation of a literary subject that was first treated by Gabriel García Márquez and then by Fernando Vallejo. A work in the Latin American social realist tradition, Rosario Tijeras is told in fast and vibrant prose and with poetic flourish.

About the Author

Jorge Franco nació en Medellín, Colombia. Hizo estudios de dirección y realización de cine en The London International Film School, en el Reino Unido y de Literatura en la Universidad Javeriana. Ha publicado el libro de cuentos Maldito amor, el relato infantil La niña calva y las novelas Mala noche, Rosario Tijeras, Paraíso Travel, Melodrama, Santa Suerte y con El mundo de afuera ganó el Premio Alfaguara de Novela 2014.

Sus obras han sido adaptadas al cine y a la televisión y traducidas a más de una docena de idiomas.