The Street of Night Book

It is Chile, 1985, and the dictator has succeeded in stamping his absolute control on the military, the universities, the church . . . oh, and also on cemeteries, the city dump and clowns . . . What subversives can be left on the unstoppable march forward of the Fatherland? Just the whores – that strange, indecipherable and mysterious group of women who offer themselves for money.

So it is that Colonel Arreola's study centre 'to unveil the mysteries of those sexual misfits who have devoted their lives to the malignant sins of the flesh' comes to pass and Martina, Esmeralda and María de las Mercedes find themselves locked in the same cell under the meticulous scrutiny of the Colonel. Arreola is determined to discover why these women refuse to submit to the 'chantilly lace blouse, low-heeled shoes and pleated skirt' category that he has labeled 'Submissive and a Good Mother'.

Harsh and hilarious by turns, The Street of Night ranges in style from brutal reality to magic realism and slices through all notions that it is possible to categorize anyone. As the book unfolds, a dictator discovers that absolutism is not so absolute, while the prostitutes discover values within themselves that lifetimes of abuse had all but erased.