Death in the Andes

Death in the Andes

First edition (Spanish)
Author	Mario Vargas Llosa
Original title	Lituma en los Andes
Country	Peru
Language	Spanish
Publisher	Planeta
Publication date	February 1, 1997
Media type	Print
Pages	288 p.
ISBN
OCLC	36562390

Death in the Andes (Lituma en los Andes) is a 1993 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. It follows the character Lituma, from Who Killed Palomino Molero?, after being transferred to the rural town of Naccos.

Corporal Lituma has been transferred as punishment, to the tiny Andean community of Naccos, where almost everyone besides him, his adjunct Tomás Carreño, and the vaguely threatening owners of the local bar are there as builders. Three men from the village disappear, and Lituma has to investigate, alongside his heartbroken young adjunct, the only other local policeman. Was it the terrucos of the Maoist Shining Path or something even more terrible that caused these vanishings?

This novel examines the tactics and motivations of the Maoists, but situates their violence in the context of an older world where life is brutal and in a society which is on the very fringe of the modern world.

A lot of magic realism is employed, with a great deal of references to old, "indian" spirituality, and to Pishtacos, vampires of Andean folklore.