Marjon van Royen worked as a journalist and foreign correspondent for the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, covering Italy, the Balkans, Mexico and Latin America, and later for Dutch radio. Her first book, Italy on a Monday (1998), sold over 50,000 copies. She now lives in Rio de Janeiro, where she is working on a third book, this time about Brazil.
The Night of the Scream is the absorbing account of a friendship between two women of very different classes and cultures. When Marjon van Royen arrives in Mexico City to take up a new job as correspondent for NRC Handelsblad, she has just spent four years covering the Balkan wars and thinks she can handle Mexico. Instead she finds herself wandering through a labyrinth of silent macho males and life-sized talking puppets, courteous robbers and corrupt policemen. She cannot penetrate the silence that dominates this Latin American country, where the only opportunity to let off steam seems to be the annual ‘day of the scream’.
