Slash and Burn by Claudia Hernández, trans. Julia Sanches (And Other Stories, £11.99; Tablet price £10.79), reflects on the scorched-earth policy of the US-backed Salvadoran army behind the murders of St Oscar Romero and his fellow priest Rutilio Grande. A peasant girl takes to the hills to join the guerrillas, and finds herself fighting not only the regime but overpowering machismo. As brutal warfare gives way to uneasy peace, her narrative voice becomes subsumed into those of her four daughters, one of whom she was forced to sell in order to fund the resistance. Hernández gives fiercely female voice to an account of war and its aftermath.