A living classic of the Latin American novel, Peruvian writer No. 1 - Mario Vargas Llosa (b. 1936) is well known to Russian readers from the books “The City and the Dogs”, “Aunt Julia and the Scribe”, etc. “Lituma in the Andes” is that a complex mixture of high literature, ethnographic essay and modern detective story, which is commonly called “magical realism”. It is difficult to stay away from politics in a country traditionally engulfed in Latin America by a fratricidal civil war. Lituma, the novel's hero, is a policeman assigned to handle business in a small village lost in the Andes. He tries his best to stay aloof from the unfolding events, but in the end, he too fails. The author does not confirm or deny the existence of vampires, to whom local residents, descendants of Indians, attribute a significant part of the crimes occurring in the mountains. But more terrible than any undead, any people from the other world, are the participants in the bloody civil strife, several episodes of which are described by the author with a realism that makes you shudder painfully. This book once again convinces us that the most sophisticated otherworldly horrors born in the writer’s imagination cannot be compared with a detailed and honest description of the war.