

The Shining Path
Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes
Author: Miguel La Serna, Orin Starn
Narrator: Robert Fass
Unabridged: 12 hr 35 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Published: 06/04/2019
Categories: Nonfiction, History, Latin American History
Synopsis
Described by a U.S. State Department cable as "cold-blooded and bestial," Shining Path orchestrated bombings, assassinations, and massacres across the cities, countryside, and jungles of Peru in a murderous campaign to seize power and impose a Communist government. At its helm was the professor-turned-revolutionary Abimael Guzmán, who launched his single-minded insurrection alongside two women: his charismatic young wife, Augusta La Torre, and the formidable Elena Iparraguirre, who married Guzmán soon after Augusta's mysterious death. Their fanatical devotion to an outmoded and dogmatic ideology, and the military's bloody response, led to the death of nearly 70,000 Peruvians.
Orin Starn and Miguel La Serna's narrative history of Shining Path is both panoramic and intimate, set against the socioeconomic upheavals of Peru's rocky transition from military dictatorship to elected democracy.