Wakolda

Book Review

"Wakolda" by Lucía Puenzo is a novel in which the uneasy silence of the Argentine landscape becomes the backdrop for a confrontation between innocence and evil, hidden beneath the mask of the everyday. The author masterfully weaves real historical motifs into the fabric of the story, turning the tale of a family who takes in a mysterious doctor into a profound meditation on the nature of trust, obsession, and the destructive power of ideology. Puenzo writes with cinematic precision: every gesture, glance, and detail of the setting is charged with hidden tension, and the mounting sense of threat is almost palpable. Critics have praised the author's subtle psychological work with the characters—especially the young Lili, whose vulnerability becomes the arena for others' experiments and fears. The novel not only exposes painful pages of the past but also raises questions about the boundaries of human ethics, about how easily evil can infiltrate everyday life under the guise of care and science. "Wakolda" is a work in which horror and beauty coexist, and ordinary things suddenly become symbols of lost trust and innocence.