Moreno’s tenth and last work of fiction was published originally in Mexico in 1981, with this edition being the first of his novels to appear in English. When this was published earlier in Uruguay it won the Ministry of Culture prize from the democratic government. EL INFIERNO chronicles the rise and fall of Uruguay’s Tupamaro urban guerrillas, and as democracy re-established a hold on the southern cone of Latin America, the guerrillas and the decade of state terror that followed were just being fully assessed, with this controversial novel being considered an important document in this debate. Set in a 1970s Uruguay that evokes Dante’s Hades, EL INFIERNO is a collage of stories about people caught up in political turmoil. Martinez Moreno, both the Virgil and Dante of this living Inferno, tells the stories he learned working as a lawyer defending political prisoners: stories of bankers and military advisers, their kidnappers, the desparecidos and their families, army officers, and innocent bystanders.