A Nicaraguan writer reflects on exile from a dictatorship

“MONSIGNOR IS ARMED with the word. The word is more powerful than a four-barrelled machinegun, comrade,” says Lord Dixon, a character in “Tongolele no sabía bailar” (“Tongolele didn’t know how to dance”), a new novel by Sergio Ramírez, a Nicaraguan writer. “Those are stupidities,” replies another. “Bullets rip through cassocks too.” And yet it appears that Lord Dixon, whose role is that of a chorus, is right. In the novel the bishop in question is so dangerous to those in power that they secure his exile to Rome. And Mr Ramírez’s novel has so enraged the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega that this month it issued an arrest warrant for him. “I think the book was the trigger,” Mr Ramírez told Bello. Mr Ortega has banned it and customs officers have been seizing copies.