Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District

Salvadoran author Manlio Argueta spent almost 20 years exiled from his native land during the turbulent decades of the El Salvadoran civil war. During that time he completed this, his second novel, which went on to became a huge success in his own country. The hero of this allegorical tale is Alfonso, a young student turned radical who eventually abandons his clandestine printing press and joins the guerrilla forces in the countryside. Before that, however, Alfonso is involved in a passionate love affair with his own "Little Red Riding Hood," whom he leaves pregnant in "the Red Light District," the impoverished barrio where he lives, (and also the allegorical name for El Salvador's repressive regime) when he goes off to war. Told through letters, dialogs and narrative, Argueta's political novel is both a compelling work of art and a vivid portrait of the lives of ordinary people in 1970s El Salvador.