This historical novel has the best of both worlds: the best of the novel and the best of history. And there is a third quality that makes Hochschild's List an original and especially interesting work: it presents the Second World War from a Bolivian perspective. Throughout the novel's almost three hundred pages, Verónica Ormachea takes us on a journey through time and space to the broken heart of the twentieth century, via a fast-paced and skillfully narrated story. From the persecution of the Jews in Warsaw to the horrors of Auschwitz, from the heights of La Paz to the rooms of the Waldorf Astoria in New York or the Dorchester in London, her characters are embroiled in conflicts that bring both their contradictions and their greatness to light-as in the case of Moritz Hochschild, a genuine Bolivian Schindler. The author breathes life into a cast of complex characters that includes eccentric dictators, Tin Barons, destitute indigenous people, Jewish refugees living in the jungle, and a group of Nazis in La Paz. Hochschild's List immerses us in a world of intrigue and hope and invites us to discover a country of contrasts, Bolivia, which is presented here as a generous, open, and welcoming land.
-Javier Moro, Spanish writer, winner of the Premio Planeta de Novela (2011)