A graduate student at Yale University, Helmut Sanchez has discovered an ugly truth about his boss, a world-renowned German professor. In a letter written more than fifty years ago, Professor Werner Hopfgartner absolved Austria of any guilt for its participation in the Second World War.
What kind of sick mind would rationalize away the murder of millions of Jews, gypsies and other subversives, Helmut wonders. And how can it be that he has been helping, and even admiring, such a person? As the young researcher continues his quest for answers, he uncovers something even more horrific, something that fuels a dangerous obsession for justice—and a murderous plan.
But he isn’t the only one who hates Hopfgartner. Regina Neumann, a colleague in the department, is determined to nail the aged scholar for his sexual involvement with young co-eds, something everyone knows about but ignores. And there are former lovers and the students he has taken advantage of. Award-winning author Sergio Troncoso has penned a suspenseful novel that explores right and wrong, good and evil, and the murky borders in between. Ultimately, we are left to ask: what is the nature of truth?
Bronze Award for Multicultural Fiction in ForeWord Review’s Book of the Year Awards
Finalist, 2014 Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award – Multicultural (Adult Fiction)
Finalist, 2014 Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award – Thriller and Suspense (Adult Fiction)
Finalist for Fiction in Housatonic Book Awards
Finalist for Thriller and Suspense in ForeWord Review’s Book of the Year Awards
Top Ten Best Fiction Books for 2014 by TheLatinoAuthor.com
“Sergio Troncoso’s The Nature of Truth single-handedly redefines the Chicano novel and the literary thriller….And The Nature of Truth is a unique meditation on redemption and retribution that tackles racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism with sensitivity and skill. Troncoso’s legacy is in having expanded the social and geographical terrain of the Chicano narrative with enviable aplomb.”—El Paso Times
“The subtlety, and fairness, with which Troncoso presents these conflicting frameworks [Nietzschean valor, Christian pragmatism, and blind inductivism] stand as the novel’s crowning intellectual achievement, side by side with the artistic one: a convincing tale of murder and ruminating guilt.”—Janus Head Journal, a journal of Psychology, Philosophy and Literature
“Impressively lucid first thriller.”—The Chicago Tribune
“The Nature of Truth is the best psychological drama I’ve read in a long time. Like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, the main character descends into a ghost-plagued anxiety where he must discover the nature of truth. He commits the most heinous act, for only by taking action can he relieve his own existential crisis. Fascinating reading.”—Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless Me, Ultima
“A novel with a range and depth that is fearlessly consumed with issues of the mind. What a gutsy book!”—Dagoberto Gilb, author of The Magic of Blood and Woodcuts of Women
“Troncoso’s The Nature of Truth informs his mature works—From this Wicked Patch of Dust and Crossing Borders: Personal Essays—as they examine the ideas of borders, their permeability, and their dualistic nature of the real and the imagined. Troncoso, primarily known for his US-Mexican Border works, is, as The Nature of Truth suggests, the brightest and most able of the modern Border writers and thinkers. And somewhere in Troncoso’s raising within the Border’s transnational diaspora, he found that the nature of truth can only be located in the confines of the self, the family, the community, and our own definition of the truth.”—Prime Number: a journal of distinctive poetry and prose
“It is a book that can’t be put down…it keeps you on the edge of your seat to the very end.”—TheLatinoAuthor.com
“…absorbing, intelligent, world-wise thriller…”—Books, Books & More (New) Books
“The psychological debate of right and wrong raised by Troncoso in The Nature of Truth will live on after its final pages are read.”—You Decide: Should I Read It or Not?
Sergio Troncoso is the author of Crossing Borders: Personal Essays (Arte Público Press, 2011), From this Wicked Patch of Dust (University of Arizona Press, 2011) and The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, which won the Premio Aztlán and the Southwest Book Award. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College and two graduate degrees, in international relations and philosophy, from Yale University. He won a Fulbright scholarship to Mexico and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Alumni Hall of Fame. A resident faculty member of the Yale Writers’ Conference, he lives and works in New York City.
Learn more at sergiotroncoso.com.