From the author of the international bestseller, The Invisible Mountain, comes Perla , a coming-of-age story based on one of the darkest chapters in Argentinean history. Growing up as a privileged only child in Buenos Aires, Perla Correa learned early on not to discuss the profession of her naval officer father in a country still reeling from the abuses of a deposed military dictatorship. But when an uninvited visitor appears in Perla’s home, this encounter sets her on a journey that will force her to confront the unease she has suppressed all her life—and to make a wrenching decision about who she is, and who she will become. “Beautiful. . . . Wrenching. . . . De Robertis is an extraordinarily courageous writer who only gets better with every book.” —Junot Díaz “Mesmerizing. . . . A moving, poetic novel about the costs of revolution and the evolutionary process that is identity.” — O, The Oprah Magazine “Haunting . . . a sensitive exploration of love, loyalty, and hope in the wake of atrocity.” — The New Yorker “De Robertis brings the best of two cultures to bear in her work, melding the Latin literary tradition of magical realism with a thoroughly modern, politically charged North American sensibility. . . . [Her] extraordinary gift makes this brave, important book an object of beauty.” — Chicago Tribune  “De Robertis holds the reader’s attention with her entrancingly rhythmic and pulsating prose. . . . [Her] voice is distinctive and her novel vivid and memorable.” — The Wall Street Journal “A gripping journey that’s as heart-wrenching as it is healing; a reminder that the Disappeared must not be forgotten. . . . Both the story and prose flow like a glistening Rio de la Plata. . . . De Robertis’ writing . . . from beginning to end hypnotizes with poetic, crushing beauty.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune “Impressive. . . . Bold. . . . In an artful blend of beauty and horror, De Robertis has made the disappeared visible once again. With that, she has done them—and us—a great service.” — San Francisco Chronicle “This ambitious narrative . . . is propulsive and emotionally gripping. . . . Culminating in a wrenching catharsis about rebirth and healing.” — Publishers Weekly  (starred review) “[ Perla ] is a literary descendant of Toni Morrison’s  Beloved , but very much its own achingly original, hauntingly lyrical outing.” — East Bay Express “Enthralling.” —New York Daily News “It’s no exaggeration to say I’ve rarely read a more poetic novel than Carolina De Robertis’  Perla . What makes it doubly impressive is the subject matter that this author takes on. . . . De Robertis is a new voice for Latin America, following in the footsteps of Isabel Allende, and dare I say it, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” — Washington Independent Book Review “De Robertis skillfully weaves a lyrical voice around her characters that treats victims, perpetrators, and bystanders with the same care and honesty. The result is a powerfully humanizing effort that examines a nation struggling with a very dark, recent past.” — Library Journal  (starred review) “Lyrically combining into reality both the fantastic and the horrific, De Robertis weaves a beautiful and plain-faced tale about birth, rebirth, and the responsibility of inheritance from complex, startling history.” — Booklist  (starred review) “An elegantly written and affecting meditation on life in the wake of atrocity.” — Kirkus Reviews CARO DE ROBERTIS is the author of five novels, including  Cantoras,  winner of a Stonewall Book Award and a Reading Women Award, and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and a Lambda Literary Award; it was also selected as a  New York Times  Editors’ Choice. Their work has been translated into seventeen languages and they have received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Italy’s Rhegium Julii Prize, and numerous other honors. An author of Uruguayan origins, De Robertis teaches at San Francisco State University, and lives in Oakland, California, with their wife and two children. caroderobertis.com Excerpted from the Hardcover Edition 1. Arrival Some things are impossible for the mind to hold alone. So listen, if you can, with your whole being. The story pushes and demands to be told, here, now, with you so close and the past even closer, breathing at the napes of our necks. He arrived on the second of March, 2001, a few minutes after midnight. I was alone. I heard a low sound from the living room, a kind of scrape, like fingernails on unyielding floor—­then silence. At first I couldn’t move; I wondered whether I had left a window open, but no, I had not. I picked up the knife from the counter, still flecked with squash, and walked slowly down the hall toward the living room with the knife leading the way, thinking that if it came to fighting I’d be ready, I’d stab down to the hilt. I turned the corner and there he lay, curled up on his side, drenching the rug. He was naked. Seaweed stuck to his