The Sky Weeps for Me - Paperback

by Sergio Ramirez (Author), Leland Chambers (Translator)

In this Nicaraguan noir (the first in The Managua Trilogy), Inspector Dolores Morales and Deputy Inspector Bert Dixon "¬‚¬" former Sandinista guerilla fighters now attached to the Narcotics Unit of the National Police "¬‚¬" investigate the disappearance of a young woman after the discovery of an abandoned yacht and a wedding dress. As the mystery widens the two inspectors and their ad-hoc team are brought face to face with drug smugglers from the Cali and Sinaloa cartels. With tension and irony, Sergio Ramirez (A Thousand Deaths Plus One; Divine Punishment) portrays an unsettled and impoverished Central American country struggling in the 1990s to retain the shreds of its revolutionary ideals.

Translated by Leland H. Chambers (with Bruce McPherson)

Front Jacket

In this Nicaraguan noir (the first in a series), Inspector Dolores Morales and Deputy Inspector Bert Dixon "¬‚¬" former Sandinista guerilla fighters now attached to the Narcotics Unit of the National Police "¬‚¬" investigate the disappearance of a young woman after the discovery of an abandoned yacht and a wedding dress. As the mystery widens the two inspectors and their ad-hoc team are brought face to face with drug smugglers from the Cali and Sinaloa cartels. With tension and irony, Sergio Ramirez (A Thousand Deaths Plus One; Divine Punishment) portrays an unsettled and impoverished Central American country struggling in the 1990s to retain the shreds of its revolutionary ideals.

Translated by Leland H. Chambers (with Bruce McPherson)

Back Jacket

In post-revolutionary Nicaragua, the Chief of Intelligence in the Office of Drug Investigations, Dolores Morales, takes a call from his counterpart, Deputy Inspector Dixon, who alerts him that a large luxury yacht is grounded and abandoned on the Caribbean coast. It appears to be a simple case of drug smuggling. But when Morales opens the scanty evidence package there's only a bloody T-shirt and a singed paperback book.until Doña Sofía, the office janitor, asks "Have that book's pages been checked over yet?" and a woman's business card falls out. Through a maze of deception, corruption, and murders, the irrepressible Doña Sofía joins the two inspectors as sidekick in their race to learn why the boat was ditched and where the bodies are buried. Soon, though, the trio suspect that a Cali drug cartel capo known as Pinocchio, along with Caupolicán, one of their Sandinista comrades from long ago, might be master minding a dangerous, international conspiracy. The Sky Weeps for Me offers a host of memorable characters drawn from every strata of Nicaraguan society - rich and poor, working class and professional, as well as scheming politicians, shady casino operators, and tent revivalists - all of them caught up in a relentless drama that bit by bit exposes what happens when revolutionary leaders turn into reactionaries, and how no one is entirely innocent in a country struggling to hold onto the last shreds of its ideals.

Author Biography

Sergio Ramírez was born in Masatepe, Nicaragua in 1942. His first book was published in 1963; the following year he earned a law degree at the University of Nicaragua. Returning after a lengthy voluntary exile in Costa Rica and Germany - during which he continued to write works of fiction and nonfiction - he became active as the leader of the Group of Twelve, consisting of intellectuals, businessmen and priests united against the Somoza regime. With the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in 1979, he became part of the Junta of the Government of National Reconstruction, where he presided over the National Council of Education. He was elected vice-president of Nicaragua in 1984, an office he held until 1990. He continued to serve as the leader of the Sandinista block in the National Assembly until 1995, when he founded the Movement for Sandinista Renovation (MRS). In 1996, however, Ramirez retired from politics. His outspoken opposition to the Ortega dictatorship, along with the publication of Tongolele no sabía bailar, resulted in an arrest warrant in 2021 and his subsequent exile to Spain. In 2023 his citizenship was stripped and all of his property confiscated by Ortega's government. Sergio Ramírez is the author of thirty books, only ten of which have been translated into English. In 2017 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, Spanish literature's highest literary award. He has also received Spain's Dashiel Hammet Award, France's Laure Bataillon Award, Cuba's José María Arguedas Latinamerican Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Alfaguara International Novel Award. Ramirez is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of France, and a doctor honoris causa of Blaise Pascal University (France). He has received the International Prize for Human Rights awarded by the Bruno Kreisky Foundation, as well as the Order of Merit of the Federal Government of Germany. He held the Robert Kennedy Professorship in Latin American Studies at Harvard University in 2009.