Our Lady of the Assassins (novel)
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| Author | Fernando Vallejo |
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| Original title | La virgen de los sicarios |
| Country | Colombia |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre | Narcoliteratura |
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Publication date
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1994 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Our Lady of the Assassins (Spanish title: La virgen de los sicarios) is a semi-autobiographical novel by the Colombian writer Fernando Vallejo about an author in his fifties who returns to his hometown of Medellín after 30 years of absence to find himself trapped in an atmosphere of violence and murder caused by drug cartel warfare. The novel was later adapted into a film that received different international recognitions like the Aware of the Italian Senate, the Venice Film Festival (2000) as the best Latin American film and the La Habana International Festival "Nuevo Cine" (2000).
A growing body of scholarship and critical commentary already exist about this controversial work, most of it in Spanish. The brief sections below attempt to give the reader a basic understanding of some main approaches to what undoubtedly is a central work in Colombian fiction of the 1990s. An elaborated and discussed fictional work dealing with events related to the drug trade and its deleterious consequences in Colombian society.
Notice:
A writer named Fernando returns to Medellín, after an absence of 30 years, to find the place transformed into Colombia's "capital of hate." Fernando meets Alexis, a 16-year-old male prostitute and sicario - a contract killer - with whom he falls in love. Alexis needs no reason to kill: like an Angel of Death he opens fire on anybody who rubs him the wrong way. Fernando and Alexis are bound by an intense passion as they wander from church to church, murder to murder. Alexis explains the meanings and symbols of the dangerous world of Medellín guns, while the author recounts his childhood memories in a Medellín that is no longer the one he once knew. When Alexis is finally killed by two teenagers on a motorbike, Fernando seeks out his killer.
He finds Wilmar, another with a surprising resemblance to the late Alexis, not only physically but also in his behaviour. Attempting to recapture his old life with Alexis, he soon finds out that he has started a relationship with the killer of Alexis, but chooses not to kill him as Wilmar explains that Alexis had killed his brother. Fernando asks Wilmar to leave the country with him. The boy agrees, but while visiting his mother to say goodbye, he too is shot and killed. Fernando winds up alone in the middle of a city where love seems impossible.
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Wikipedia