“The blood that runs through his veins” tells the story of a serial killer, the son of disappeared detainees, who aspires to take justice into his own hands. Or that’s what it says. The novel, which takes place in the Chile of the Transition, is the seventh book by the writer and journalist Francisco Marín Naritelli (Talca, 1986), published by Editorial Amuleto (belonging to Los Perros Románticos).
Chile, late 90s and early 2000s. Agustín Sinclair has one purpose: to do justice for his detained parents who disappeared during the Pinochet dictatorship. Or that’s what it says. Blood is his pleasure. His story, a fiction. Murder and dismemberment, an offering or gift.
Can justice coexist with revenge? Can a victim become a victimizer? Who is to blame for the protagonist’s action? Can you blame anything? In this police thriller, political, philosophical and literary discussions, friendship, bohemia, sex and betrayal appear, on routes that lead to Santiago, Valparaíso and Coltauco. In addition to former officers of the security apparatus who have managed to hide their outrages under the
protective mantle of a democracy still in transition.
The novel tells of Agustín’s transformation into a serial killer, connecting with the stubborn memory of a country where pain, rage and oblivion persist along with the demand, still in force, for truth and justice.
For the writer Juan Colil, the book “is a work that invites us to think about the recent past of the dictatorship and some of its consequences from a different perspective. Perhaps one of the darkest pages of those years was the kidnapping of boys and girls who were only days or weeks old, minors who were snatched from the arms of their mothers who were detained and who were subsequently made to disappear. The little ones were later handed over to families of collaborators of the dictatorship. Over the years those pages have unfolded before our eyes. Lives broken from the first seconds. How do you live knowing that truth? How do you understand justice when there is no possibility of applying it?”
Francisco Marín Naritelli is the author of the books Autumn (Editorial Piélago, 2014), The battles for the Alameda. Artery of demoliberal Chile (Ceibo, 2014), Disappear (Ceibo, 2015), Interior with ash (Ceibo, 2018), The perfect transitive (Phylacteria, 2019) and Endurance! (Phylactery, 2021). He is a professor at the Andrés Bello University and has collaborated in newspapers such as El Mostrador, El Dínamo and radio Biobío.
