Written in a unique mesmerizing style of questions and narratives -- with the immediacy and color of oral tradition, "Leopard in the Sun" is a Latin tragedy complete with chorus of local gossips and popular legend. It begins with a fight over a woman, when Nando Barragan kills his best friend and cousin Adriano Monsalve in a passionate, drunken delirium. As a result, the wise family patriarch separates the two families forever -- the Barragans will hold sway over the city, the Monsalves the port. Each year, on the day known as the zeta, and only on that day, they will have the opportunity to avenge the previous year's deaths -- and each year, the women are not yet out of their black mourning when a new round of deaths occurs.

In this fiercely original, vibrantly dramatic novel, Laura Restrepo explores what happens when people at the margins of society, justice, and capitalism, suddenly control an empire built on sophisticated weapons and vast quantities of cash.