Charras is the true story of Efraín “El Charras” Calderón Lara, a twenty-six-year-old union leader and student activist, and the Yucatecan government’s successful plot to kidnap and murder him. Acclaimed Mexican novelist Hernán Lara Zavala combines real-life newspaper articles and interviews with renderings of key events, laying the state-sanctioned narrative of Charras’s death beside the actual experiences of those involved. To kaleidoscopic effect, Zavala enters not only the mind of the hero but also those in his orbit: the governor of the Yucatán, Charras’s bureaucrat brother-in-law, even the mercenary hired to carry out the kidnapping—the chilling “you” whose point-of- view the reader must inhabit to unravel what took place during that fateful spring of 1974.

ISBN: 9781608012657
ISBN-10: 1608012654
Publisher: University of New Orleans Press
Publication Date: June 17th, 2025
Pages: 240
Language: English

Author Bio

Hernán Lara Zavala was born in Mexico City in 1946. He read English Lit. at the University of Mexico and made a Master’s Degree on “Studies on the Novel” at the University of East Anglia, England. He participated in The International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1987. He has published short stories, novels and literary essays, among them the novel Charras (1989), Península Península, (2008) Iberoamerican Novel Award 2009, and the Spanish Royal Academia Award 2010. Recently he published the novel The Last Carnival 2023. He teaches English Lit. at the National University of México.

Translator Bio

Christopher Louis Romaguera is a Cuban-American writer who lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was born in Hialeah, Florida and graduated from Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He has an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) at the University of New Orleans. Romaguera has been published in Passages North, New Orleans Review, Pleiades Magazine, Catapult, Massachusetts Review and other publications. He was a monthly columnist at The Ploughshares Blog from 2018-2023 and was the Poetry Editor at Peauxdunque Review. Romaguera was an Editorial Intern at Electric Literature. He is a VONA alum and was a 2023 Periplus Fellow.Author BioHernán Lara Zavala was born in Mexico City in 1946. He read English Lit. at the University of Mexico and made a Master’s Degree on “Studies on the Novel” at the University of East Anglia, England. He participated in The International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1987. He has published short stories, novels and literary essays, among them the novel Charras (1989), Península Península, (2008) Iberoamerican Novel Award 2009, and the Spanish Royal Academia Award 2010. Recently he published the novel The Last Carnival 2023. He teaches English Lit. at the National University of México.

Buy From These Independent Bookstores:

• Miami, Florida – Books & Books
• San Francisco, California – Green Apple Books
• San Francisco, California – Medicine for Nightmares
• Washington, D.C. – Politics and Prose
• Pass Christian, Mississippi – Pass Christian Books
• Lafayette, Louisiana – Cavalier House Books
• Boston, Massachusetts – Porter Square Books