This ugly, mesmerising, masterly novel is as steeped in facts as Macbeth was in blood. Nothing could be further from the popular idea of the South American novel, and nothing could be a more remarkable demonstration of its strengths, obsessions and direction. It is the story of a terrible crisis in a small country's history, and, telling that terrible story, has no time to beguile foreign readers with exotica; this is not one of those South American narratives about sitting in the sun, minding the flower stall, stuffed with characters who grow wings and mate with tigers (you know the sort of thing). It is about oil, money, international relations and corruption; it has an appalling, irresistible reality.

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