Andrew Altschul discusses his latest novel, The Gringa, with host Richard Wolinsky.
The Gringa tells the story of an American activist who goes to Peru in the early 1990s and becomes involved with a radical group who is eventually charged and incarcerated with terrorist crimes, based loosely on the real-life story of Lori Berenson. Paralleling that story is one of Andres, an American writer living in Peru years later, who must cope not only with his own feelings about politics and American influence around the world, but with the notion of American exceptionalism.
Andrew Altschul is the author of two earlier novels, Lady Lazarus and Deus Ex Machina.