Víctor Haya de la Torre was one of the most important political leaders in twentieth-century Peru, and indeed in Latin America. Born in 1895, he entered into politics as a university student but had to go into exile in 1923. He traveled first to Mexico, where he lived to see the installment of the postrevolutionary order, and then to revolutionary Russia. Afterward, he lived in various European countries, where in 1926 he founded the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), the most powerful Peruvian political party up to the beginning of the twenty-first century. In 1930, he came back to Peru, and for decades thereafter would attempt to become president of the country. Until his death in 1979, Haya de la Torre was the undisputed leader of the APRA. Although he did not succeed in becoming president of Peru, he was president of the Constituent Assembly in 1978-79 and signed the new democratic constitution into being on his deathbed.

This book is the first academic biography of Haya de la Torre. Iñigo García-Bryce focuses on the political life of Haya de la Torre, the APRA, and of Peruvian politics. He analyzes the ideological forming of Haya de la Torre in the 1920s and 1930s and the numerous attempts by his party to come to power between the 1930s and the early 1960s. The reader gains a profound understanding not only of Haya de la Torre and the APRA, but also of mid twentieth-century Peru.

Three topics in García-Bryce's research are particularly interesting. First, he highlights the international background to Haya de la Torre's political ideas and networks. According to the author, the years spent in Mexico, Russia, and other European countries were crucial for Haya de la Torre's political formation. He decided that the Mexican Revolution would be the example to follow in Peru and elsewhere in Latin America. At the same time, he took elements from European Marxism-Leninism as well as German and Italian Fascism. This was a peculiar mix of ideas, but one typical of Latin American populism across the continent. Although Haya de la Torre promoted a nationalist agenda in Peru, he was part of an international network of political activists with hubs in Mexico, London, and Paris. From the 1920s onward, he spent a great part of his life outside Peru; García-Bryce underlines how at many points in time, Haya de la Torre's political ideas were the product of the European or Mexican realities that he encountered during his long stays abroad.

Second, the APRA, the party founded and presided over by Haya de la Torre, is crucial for understanding women's entry into the political sphere in twentieth-century Peru. On the one hand, thousands or even tens of thousands of women held positions in the party at all levels. The best known was Magda Portal, the only important female APRA leader on the national level. She left the party in 1948. On the other hand, both the APRA and Haya de la Torre personally were opposed to promoting women's suffrage or gender equality. Women's suffrage was introduced when the APRA was banned during the dictatorship of Manuel Odría (1948-56), as a means of undermining the party's electoral prospects. Even during the 1960s and 1970s, the APRA did not open its doors to the feminist movement. The APRA, therefore, is an illustrative example of both female political activism and the extremely anti-female political and public sphere in twentieth-century Peru.

Third, García-Bryce describes brilliantly the ways in which Haya de la Torre tried to both live out and to hide his homosexuality. He spent many years in liberal countries and towns where it was possible for him to have same-sex intercourse. At the same time, he had to deny his homosexuality when in Peru. Many political and military leaders opposed Haya de la Torre's claims to the presidency by referring directly to his homosexuality. A homosexual should not be president of Peru, even if he had never confessed to being one. García-Bryce shows that the APRA would try everything (and still does, even today!) to deny Haya de la Torre's homosexuality. Within the party, he is considered a heterosexual man who chose the celibate life for the well-being of his country. Party leaders even invented love stories to prove his heterosexuality. However, for García-Bryce, it is more likely that at the beginning of the 1960s Haya de la Torre accepted that as a homosexual he would never be president of Peru. With that in mind, we should celebrate that he still managed to become president of the Constituent Assembly in 1978 and 1979.

García-Bryce's book is an excellent political biography of Haya de la Torre. It is based on extensive primary sources and on interviews with apristas, as well as people who knew him personally. By describing the world of Haya de la Torre, García-Bryce offers fascinating insights into party politics and the political realm of Peru in the mid twentieth century. The book represents then a must-read for everyone interested in Haya de la Torre himself, the APRA, and the history of contemporary Peru.