Fiction. Translated from the Spanish by Mary G. Berg. Selected as 1994's Best Novel of the Year in Peru, Riesco's North American debut is an intimate, beautifully wrought story of a young girl whose growing consciousness of social injustice during the 1940s coincides with the discovery of her own storytelling powers. The frail only child of wealthy parents, Ximena continually seeks to get beyond the parameters of her narrow existence by reading books ...