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Lost City Radio, by Daniel Alarcòn; 257 pp. HarperCollins; $24.95

Daniel Alarcòn’s captivating first novel is set in a nameless country – a stand-in for any Latin American state teetering between turmoil and regimented control where an uprising is only a well-planned gunshot away. In this anonymous country the survivors of the region’s most recent civil war are left to wonder the fate of “los desaparecidos” – their friends and family members who were “disappeared” and never heard from again. (It was under military dictatorships that the verb first twisted into an action inflicted on someone, rather than something that only passively happened to someone).

The novel centers on Norma, the host of the Lost City Radio program who reads the names of the missing in hopes of reuniting families. It’s an unspoken reality that the disappeared were most likely victims of the repressive government but their families still cling with hope to Norma’s comforting voice over the airwaves.

What her listeners don’t know is that Norma has also been living in limbo. A decade earlier, her husband Rey left for what was to be a scholarly trip to the jungle and never returned. Norma is forced out of her stupor when a young boy arrives in the city and asks her to read the names of the lost from his village. His arrival leads to a flurry of startling revelations.

After the novel’s release earlier this year, Alarcòn’s reputation as a rising young writer has become widespread. Although he was raised and schooled in the United States and now lives in California, this native of Peru clearly has an affinity for the region and culture that he writes about with such passion.