Looks like a Latin American novel - but it isn't - At Night We Walk in Circles

Daniel Alarcon's At Night We Walk in Circles sure feels like a Latin American novel, so it's sort of fun and amusing to keep reminding myself that, no, it's a U.S. novel written in English - by a guy of, I'm guessing, Latin American descent and with a lot of info about the LA culture and very steeped in Latin American literary tradition and style - not the magic realism of Garcia Marques and Cortezar and, to a degree, Borges, from the 60s but the more political and engaged Latin American literature of the past 15 years - Bolano of course, but also contemporary writers - some of whom I've posted on recent, Pron, for one example: novels about the political upheavals and how they broke apart families and ruined lives, and how the countries are coming back together now in an age of prosperity, and so many young people are oblivious of the past while others are wandering, astray, like survivors in rafts bobbing on a sea. In this very good novel a young man, Nelson, studying to become an actor, is fascinated by the radical theater that went on in his unnamed (possibly Peru) country during the right-wing oppressive dictatorship; one of the radical playwrights who'd been imprisoned for his work is now making a minor comeback and leading a touring troupe into the Andean villages, and Nelson gets cast in the three-person play (The Idiot President) and goes off with the troupe - his first time ever outside of the capital city. We also learn of his difficult relationship w/ actress girlfriend, tense relationship w/ older brother who'd moved off to the U.S. w/ promise, never fulfilled, of bringing Nelson along; the troubles of his recently widowed mother - Nelson feels he cannot leave her alone, and is tormented by his decision to go off w/ the theater troupe. The playwright is also a key element in the story - recollecting his horrible years in prison, haunted by these memories and by guilt over getting out before hundreds died in a prison riot and fire. Lots of promise and lots of material in the first 100 pages of so of this novel.