Lima, 1970: a tremendous earthquake has just struck the Peruvian capital, and mayhem reigns. Tensions are high, with a population reeling from the disaster and mesmerized by the World Cup. Enter detective Simon Weiss, tasked with solving two seemingly unrelated murders: the crucifying and beheading of a Japanese man in a pool hall and an apparent murder-by-hanging of an elderly Jewish man. Joined by Lieutenant Kato Kanashiro, whose deep ties to Japanese-Peruvian culture inform the case in surprisingly personal ways, Weiss traces the histories of two very different criminals and their crimes. Weiss is haunted by the trauma of a childhood partly spent in a German concentration camp. Weiss is troubled boozing, coke-snorting, and vengeful. He is unfaithful to his prostitute lover and takes up with a younger, married woman who is a fellow survivor of the Holocaust. Weiss and Kanashiro's banter is hilariously recorded with Goldemberg's deadpan police procedural narration. Beyond a simple pulp, Remember the Scorpion tracks the wreckage of the Second World War and reconstructs it in the conflicted psyche of a South American detective. Weiss must uncover the relation between the perpetrators and their crimes, while searching deep within himself to conquer his own demons.
"I count Isaac Goldembergs novels, The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner and Play by Play as two of the most inventive and linguistically beautiful novels to have been written by any Latin American novelist in the last forty years or so. He and I were both published by Persea Books and their list was remarkable Juan Benet, Nazim Hikmet, Osip Mandelstaum, and others of a first rank, but Isaacs f
Oscar Hijuelos (Pulitzer Prize)
"The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner marks Isaac Goldemberg as one of the highest exponents of the new Latin American narrative. The humor, keen perception of everyday life, fluid narrative and depth of character, all make the experience of reading this novel highly recommendable."
