For a novel dealing with quite timely issues – drug smuggling, coups d’état and illegal immigration – Lost Children is surprisingly nostalgic. Christopher Hart draws us into the tradition-steeped patterns of life in rural, poverty-stricken Chilitenango (on the El Salvador–Honduras border, though Hart doesn’t much care for lines on a map), where, were it not for the occasional reference to phones and the local Jesus Christ Is My Saviour internet cafe, we’d have few clues as to what century we were in, let alone what decade.

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