Renato Cisneros

Translated by Fionn Petch

A Peruvian journalist returning to his home in Madrid, determined to rebuild his life after a divorce, falls into conversation with his taxi driver, who he discovers is a compatriot. Decades earlier, another Peruvian, Matías Giurato Roeder, leaves his country for the United States and experiences the shock of migration, followed by the horrors of World War II when he signs up as a pilot in the US Air Force. Yet his own family origins lie in the Axis countries, and some of his relatives are still there...

Based on real events that transport the reader to the vertigo and rawness of aerial warfare, The World We Saw Burning is both a striking account of war and a reflection on identity and uprootedness in a time when everything seems on the verge of exploding or disappearing forever.