ABSTRACT
A man mobilizes his neighbours to assassinate their ‘enemies’; other men, and some women, answer his call eagerly or reluctantly. Younger men, deemed ‘subversive’ as a group, are the fi rst 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.
