The Scorpion's Tail

"The Scorpion's Tail is a novel that is simultaneously compelling, complicated and insightful. Sylvia Torti deftly unites disparate elements and voices in this tale of the Zapatista rebellion of January 1, 1994, in Chiapas, Mexico-one of the most momentous events of the beginnings of the twenty-first century. Such personages as Subcomandante Marcos appear in the book, but the real characters are the nameless rebels, villagers, visitors and soldiers whose lives collided that fateful day, impacting them forever as this rebellion reconfigured and changed the face of the post-Cold War world."-Luis J. Rodriguez

Sylvia Torti's The Scorpion's Tail won the 2005 Miguel Marmol Prize, awarded annually by Curbstone Press for the best debut work in fiction by a Latino/a writer. This suspense-filled novel explores struggles of indigenous people in southern Mexico during the Zapatista rebellion. The Scorpion's Tail encompasses both the point of view of Amy, a young US biologist inadvertently caught up in the rebellion, and that of Chan Nah K'in, an insurgent woman guerrilla. It explores the dilemma of the Hach Winik people caught between their traditional life and the modern world, where they must take aggressive political and military action to preserve their very existence. The Scorpion's Tail is also an initiation story-Amy is plunged into the social realities of Mexico, an experience that shatters her neat, isolated world of science and changes her life forever.