307 pages · Released 1998 · Serpent's Tail Limited
Content report card
The Tattooed Soldier parent’s guide: what’s inside
High confidence
LGBTQ+ themes
None · 0/5
What it offers
Educational value
Good · 3/5
A note for parents
This is a literary thriller for adults centered on trauma, loss, and the aftermath of political violence in Guatemala. The novel deals seriously with genocide, murder of a family, and the psychological toll of refugee trauma. While not gratuitously graphic, the violence and heavy mature themes make it unsuitable for teens under 16 and require mature emotional capacity to process.
In a shabby apartment in downtown Los Angeles, Antonio Bernal waits to be evicted. It is the final defeat in a series of blows that drove him from Guatemala after a death squad murdered his wife and child, a boy of two. Not far from Antonio?s apartment, Guillermo Longoria is playing chess. Utterly absorbed in the game,...In a shabby apartment in downtown Los Angeles, Antonio Bernal waits to be evicted. It is the final defeat in a series of blows that drove him from Guatemala after a death squad murdered his wife and child, a boy of two. Not far from Antonio?s apartment, Guillermo Longoria is playing chess. Utterly absorbed in the game, he stretches for the queen revealing the tattoo on his arm which bears witness to his past - as a member of the Jaguar Battalion of the guatemalan Army. The Tattooed Soldier tells the riveting story of two haunted men and the fatal intersecting of their lives.
