20 years after the end of the violent 1980s Peruvian Civil War a young woman tries to come to terms with the gang rape of her mother. Repelled by men and traumatised through the improvised folk ballads her mother has sung her, it is not till after her mother's death that she ventures beyond her mountain top village to take a job in Lima.
Both poetically and with magical realism 'The Milk of Sorrow' artfully deals with the sociological and psychological consequences of war and the slow process of healing.