An electrifying memoir from the acclaimed Nicaraguan writer(“A wonderfully free and original talent”—Harold Pinter) andcentral figure in the Sandinista Revolution. Until her early twenties, Gioconda Belli inhabited an upper-classcocoon: sheltered from the poverty in Managua in a world of countryclubs and debutante balls; educated abroad; early marriage andmotherhood. But in 1970, everything changed. Her growingdissatisfaction with domestic life, and a blossoming awareness ofthe social inequities in Nicaragua, led her to join theSandinistas, then a burgeoning but still hidden organization. Shewould be involved with them over the next twenty years at thehighest, and often most dangerous, levels. Her memoir is both a revelatory insider’s account of the Revolutionand a vivid, intensely felt story about coming of age underextraordinary circumstances. Belli writes with both strikinglyricism and candor about her personal and political lives: abouther family, her children, the men in her life; about her po
