A tour de force of black humor, composed of short biographies of imaginary pan-American authors, providing sketch character portraits that are often pathetically funny, sometimes surprisingly moving, and on occasion, authentically chilling.

"During the course of a single night, Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix, a Chilean priest who is a member of Opus Dei, a literary critic and a mediocre poet, relives some of the crucial events of his life. He believes he is dying, and in his feverish delirium various characters, both real and imaginary, appear to him as icy monsters, as if in sequences from a horror film. Among them are the great poet Pablo Neruda, the German novelist Ernst Junger,...

Paris, 1938. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo is in the hospital, afflicted with an undiagnosed illness, when his wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud: the Mesmerist Pierre Pain. Pain, a timid bachelor, is in love with the widow Reynaud, and agrees to help. But two mysterious Spanish men follow Pain and bribe him not to treat Vallejo, and Pain takes the money. Ravaged by guilt and anxiety, however, he does not intend to abandon...