ABSTRACT
A man mobilizes his neighbors to assassinate their “enemies”; other men, and some women, answer his call eagerly or reluctantly. Younger men, deemed “subversive” as a group, are the first “enemies” targeted for murder; females, especially younger women, are sexually attacked and abused. Against this backdrop of violent upheaval, in an isolated rural region a peasant woman bleeds to death in childbirth, as her mother had before her. And on the other side of the world, in a silo deep underground, two men stand ready to turn keys that, in combination, will launch a nuclear missile capable of obliterating entire populations.
