Book description
El Salvador, 1982, is at the height of a ghastly civil war. Joan Didion travels from battlefields to body dumps, interviews a puppet president, considers the distinctly Salvadorean meaning of the verb 'to disappear' and trains a merciless eye not only on the terror there but also on the depredations…
Why read it?
1 author picked Salvador as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
An account of El Salvador’s era of “disappearances” from one of the best non-fiction writers of her generation. Didion interviews the president, visits smoldering body dumps on the edge of San Salvador, and captures the atmosphere of revolution, civil strife, and Soviet-American rivalry that afflicted El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala in the 1980s. Essential reading for understanding the scars that continue to plague the region today.
From Ryan's list on Central America.
If you love Salvador...
Norman Mailer at 100
Winner of the Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.
Celebrating Mailer's centenary and the seventy-fifth publication of The Naked and the Dead, the book illustrates how Mailer remains a provocative presence in American letters.
From the debates of the nation's founders, to the revolutionary traditions of western romanticism,…
Want books like Salvador?
Our community of 13,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Salvador.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,395
readers submitted
so far, will you?
