Raúl Zurita's "Purgatory, " a landmark in contemporary Latin American poetry, records the physical, cultural, and spiritual violence perpetrated against the Chilean people under Pinochet's military dictatorship (1973-1990) in the fiercely inventive voice of a postmodern master.

This beautiful "en face edition, " superbly translated by Anna Deeny, brings to English-language readers an indispensable volume written by one of the most important living poets writing in Spanish today.

Zurita was a 24-year-old student in Valpara so when, on the morning of the coup, he was arrested, detained, and tortured. Conceived as the first text of a Dantean trilogy that includes "Antepara so (Anteparadise)" and "La Vida Nueva (The New Life), Purgatory" is his anguished response to Chile's violent recent history.