Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the master storytellers of our time. -- Chicago Tribune

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature comes a haunting novel about power, corruption, and the complex search for identity.

Conversation in The Cathedral takes place in 1950s Peru during the dictatorship of Manuel A. Odría. Over beers and a sea of freely spoken words, the conversation flows between two individuals, Santiago and Ambrosia, who talk of their tormented lives and of the overall degradation and frustration that has slowly taken over their town.

Through a complicated web of secrets and historical references, Mario Vargas Llosa analyzes the mental and moral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it. More than a historic analysis, Conversation in The Cathedral is a groundbreaking novel that tackles identity as well as the role of a citizen and how a lack of personal freedom can forever scar a people and a nation.

En La Fiesta del Chivo (2000) asistimos a un doble retorno. Mientras Urania visita a su padre en Santo Domingo, volvemos a 1961, cuando la capital dominicana a n se llamaba Ciudad Trujillo. All un hombre que no suda tiraniza a tres millones de personas sin saber que se gesta una maquiav lica transici n a la democracia.

Con un ritmo y una precisi n dif cilmente superables, este peruano universal muestra que la pol tica puede consistir en abrirse camino entre cad veres, y que un ser inocente puede convertirse en un regalo truculento. Mejor novela espa ola del siglo XXI seg n los expertos consultados por el diario ABC.

Rese as:
«Mario Vargas Llosa ha vuelto a la novela hist rica con el arte acumulado tras su ya extenso periplo literario. El resultado es un libro espl ndido, de lo mejor que ha dado su innegable talento.
Joaqu n Marco, El Cultural de El Mundo

«Una estructura perfectamente engarzada, donde el desarrollo de las tres l neas argumentales se refuerza sostenidamente a un ritmo apasionante de thriller pol tico e intriga dram tica.

Fietta Jarque, Babelia

«Esta novela atrapar a todo aquel que caiga en sus fauces. El fest n narrativo organizado por el autor invita a continuar insomne hasta el ltimo lamento de esperanza final... podemos disfrutar, una vez m s, de un talento torrencial, el que se vierte en las voces y acontecimientos de una obra llena de incertidumbres morales.
Andr s Magro, Diario 16

«El doctor Vargas Llosa ha escrito mucho m s que la historia de un magnicidio... Esta es la vuelta triunfal a su mejor literatura.
Javier Aparicio, El Peri dico de Catalunya

«Plet rico de imaginaci n, t cnica narrativa y altura de pensamiento, vuelve el mejor Mario Vargas Llosa con La Fiesta del Chivo , una feroz cr tica de la tiran a impuesta por Trujillo a la Rep blica Dominicana y una excepcional novela sobre la corrupci n que envuelve cualquier forma absolutista de ejercicio de poder.
Francisco Garc a P rez, La Nueva Espa a

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own. In this 'masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written' (Bookforum), Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

In The Feast of the Goat, this 'masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written' (Bookforum), Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit.

Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own.

A fierce, edgy and enthralling book ... Mr. Vargas Llosa has pushed the boundaries of the traditional historical novel, and in doing so has written a book of harrowing power and lasting resonance.--The New York Times

Si tuviera que salvar del fuego una sola de las novelas] que he escrito, salvar a sta.
Mario Vargas Llosa

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
A conversation is held in the Cathedral during the Manuel A. Odr a dictatorship in Peru; over beers and a sea of freely spoken words, the conversation describes the degradation and the frustration of a town. Through a complicated web of private lives, the author analyzes the mental and moral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it. Conversaci n en la Catedral is more than a point of reference; it is a landmark in the history of present Literature.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Translated to over 30 languages, this is perhaps Vargas Llosa's most violent book. Set in a military school in Lima, where an unwritten code of survival of the fittest is imposed. Here, he focuses on the brutality of military life and the strong pyramidal hierarchy that mirrors Peruvian society, where violence, exploitation and human degradation guarantee that each layer of the social pyramid maintains its place. All the conflicts of Peruvian society arise with rage and impotence in this testimonial novel in which Vargas Llosa paints a social and political picture.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Mario Vargas Llosa's brilliant, multilayered novel is set in the Lima, Peru, of the author's youth, where a young student named Marito is toiling away in the news department of a local radio station. His young life is disrupted by two arrivals.

The first is his aunt Julia, recently divorced and thirteen years older, with whom he begins a secret affair. The second is a manic radio scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho, whose racy, vituperative soap operas are holding the city's listeners in thrall. Pedro chooses young Marito to be his confidant as he slowly goes insane.

Interweaving the story of Marito's life with the ever-more-fevered tales of Pedro Camacho, Vargas Llosa's novel is hilarious, mischievous, and masterful, a classic named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review.

Toño Azpilcueta, experto en música criolla, descubre a un guitarrista virtuoso, Lalo Molfino, cuyo talento parece confirmar todas sus intuiciones: el amor profundo que siente por los valses, marineras, polkas y huaynos peruanos tiene una justificación social. Tal vez lo que ocurra es que la música criolla sea, en realidad, no sólo una seña de identidad de todo un país y expresión de esa actitud tan peruana de la huachafería («la mayor contribución de Perú a la cultural universal , según Toño Azpilcueta), sino algo mucho más importante: un elemento capaz de provocar una revolución social, de derribar prejuicios y barreras raciales para unir al país entero en un abrazo fraterno y mestizo. En un país fracturado y asolado por la violencia de Sendero Luminoso (la novela transcurre a principios de la década de los noventa, en plena ofensiva terrorista), la música podría ser aquello que recuerde a todos los que conforman la sociedad que, por encima de cualquier otra cosa, son hermanos y compatriotas. Y en esto, es posible que el virtuosismo de Lalo Molfino tenga mucho que ver.

Toño Azpilcueta decide investigar más sobre este guitarrista, viajar a su lugar de origen, conocer a este personaje esquivo, saber de su historia, de su familia y amores, de cómo llegó a convertirse en un músico tan excelso. Y se propone también escribir un libro donde contar la historia de la música criolla y desarrollar esa idea que ha inoculado en su mente el descubrimiento de este músico extraordinario.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The most prestigious author in Spanish literature today returns with a novel set in his native Peru. I Give You My Silence is the story of a man who dreamed of a country united by music and went mad trying to write the perfect book to tell it.

The waltz, born in the alleyways of Lima, integrated Peru. Here I tell this story, and with it I thank a secret love that has been with me my entire life: the love I feel for Creole music, specially, for my country's waltz. --Mario Vargas Llosa

Toño Azpilcueta, Creole music expert, discovers a guitar virtuoso, Lalo Molfino, whose talent seems to confirm every instinct: his profound love for Peruvian waltzes, marineras, polkas, and huaynos has social grounds. Maybe what happens is that Creole music is in fact not just a symbol of an entire country's identity and the expression of a very Peruvian attitude, huachaferia (Peru's greatest contribution to universal culture, according to Toño Azpilcueta), but something of far greater importance, an element capable of igniting a social revolution, of tearing down prejudices and social barriers to unite a country in one brotherly, mixed-race hug. In a country fractured and devastated by Sendero Luminoso's violence (the novel is set at the beginning of the nineteen-nineties, at the height of the terrorist campaign, ) music could remind society at large that they are brothers and sisters, and fellow countryfolk. And it is possible that Lalo Molfino's virtuosity has much to do with this.

Toño Azpilcueta is set to investigate more about this guitar player, go to his birthplace, get to know this elusive character, learn his personal history, his family history, and his love stories, how he became such a magnificent musician. And he is also determined to write a book about Creole music and develop the idea inoculated in his mind after finding this extraordinary musician.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

This wonderful detective novel is set in Peru in the 1950s. Near an Air Force base in the northern desert, a young airman is found murdered. Lieutenant Silva and Officer Lituma investigate. Lacking a squad car, they have to cajole a local cabbie into taking them to the scene of the crime. Their superiors are indifferent; the commanding officer of the air base stands in their way; but Silva and Lituma are determined to uncover the truth.

Who Killed Palomino Molero, an entertaining and brilliantly plotted mystery, takes up one of Vargas Llosa's characteristic themes: the despair at how hard it is to be an honest man in a corrupt society.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Deep within the remote backlands of nineteenth-century Brazil lies Canudos, home to all the damned of the earth: prostitutes, bandits, beggars, and every kind of outcast. It is a place where history and civilization have been wiped away. There is no money, no taxation, no marriage, no census. Canudos is a cauldron for the revolutionary spirit in its purest form, a state with all the potential for a true, libertarian paradise--and one the Brazilian government is determined to crush at any cost.

In perhaps his most ambitious and tragic novel, Mario Vargas Llosa tells his own version of the real story of Canudos, inhabiting characters on both sides of the massive, cataclysmic battle between the society and government troops. The resulting novel is a fable of Latin American revolutionary history, an unforgettable story of passion, violence, and the devastation that follows from fanaticism.

Testigos de épocas convulsas y florecientes en ciudades como Londres, París, Tokio o Madrid, ambos personajes verán sus vidas entrelazarse sin llegar a coincidir del todo. Esta danza de encuentros y desencuentros hará crecer la intensidad del relato página a página hasta propiciar una verdadera fusión del lector con el universo emocional de los protagonistas. Pasión y distancia, azar y destino, dolor y disfrute... Cuál es el verdadero rostro del amor?

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

A New York Times Notable Book of 2007

From Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa comes The Bad Girl, a ...splendid, suspenseful, and irresistible [novel]. . . A contemporary love story that explores the mores of the urban 1960s--and 70s and 80s.--The New York Times Book Review

Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as Lily in Lima in 1950, when she fits into his life one summer and disappears again without explanation. He loves her still when she reappears as a revolutionary in 1960s Paris, then later as Mrs. Richardson, the wife of a wealthy Englishman, and again as the mistress of a sinister Japanese businessman in Tokyo. However poorly she treats him, he is doomed to worship her. Charting Ricardo's expatriate life through his romances with this shape-shifting woman, Vargas Llosa has created a beguiling, epic romance about the life-altering power of obsession.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

At a small gallery in Florence, a Peruvian writer happens upon a photograph of a tribal storyteller deep in the jungles of the Amazon. He is overcome with the eerie sense that he knows this man...that the storyteller is not an Indian at all but an old school friend, Saul Zuratas. As recollections of Zuratas flow through his mind, the writer begins to imagine Zuratas's transformation from a modern to a central member of the unacculturated Machiguenga tribe. Weaving the mysteries of identity, storytelling, and truth, Vargas Llosa has created a spellbinding tale of one man's journey from the modern world to our origins, abandoning one in order to find meaning in both.

La aventura que narra esta novela empieza en el Congo en 1903 y termina en una c rcel de Londres, una ma ana de 1916.

Aqu se cuenta la peripecia vital de un hombre de leyenda: el irland s Roger Casement. H roe y villano, traidor y libertario, moral e inmoral, su figura m ltiple se apaga y renace tras su muerte.

Casement fue uno de los primeros europeos en denunciar los horrores del colonialismo. De sus viajes al Congo Belga y a la Amazon a sudamericana quedaron dos informes memorables que conmocionaron a la sociedad de su tiempo. Estos dos viajes y lo que all vio cambiar an a Casement para siempre, haci ndole emprender otra traves a, en este caso intelectual y c vica, tanto o m s devastadora. La que lo llev a enfrentarse a una Inglaterra a la que admiraba y a militar activamente en la causa del nacionalismo irland s.

Tambi n en la intimidad, Roger Casement fue un personaje m ltiple: la publicaci n de fragmentos de unos diarios, de veracidad dudosa, en los ltimos d as de su vida, airearon unas escabrosas aventuras sexuales que le valieron el desprecio de muchos compatriotas.

El sue o del celta (2010) describe una aventura existencial, en la que la oscuridad del alma humana aparece en su estado m s puro y, por tanto, m s enfangado.

La cr tica ha dicho:
El sue o del celta re ne algunas de las mejores virtudes del escritor y se integra, adem s, en la estela de motivos tem ticos fundamentales reiterados a lo largo de su obra. Ricardo Senabre, El Cultural

Vargas Llosa no tiene rival: en El sue o del celta la tarea de lectura y documentaci n previa es ingente, descomunal y tit nica. Pero jam s abruma al lector. He aqu el primer m rito de esta novela: contar una historia como si todo fuera verdad escondiendo la mentira. El segundo m rito estriba en el dominio absoluto y constante del creador sobre su criatura. Ha escrito novelas m s complejas t cnicamente, pero la estructura de esta queda perfectamente encajada en lo que el novelista se ha propuesto... Con un dominio absoluto de la novela, que empieza en 1903 y acaba en una c rcel de Londres en 1916, demuestra por qu la Academia sueca lo premi con el Nobel. Ricardo Baixeras, El Peri dico

El sue o del celta dibuja, con los recursos de la ficci n, los despiadados entresijos del poder y la fuerza de la individualidad... La novela avanza envolvente, a ritmo impecable, y nos sumerge en una cr nica sobrecogedora del despotismo, con unos personajes tan enraizados en su doliente y contradictoria humanidad que hacen de esta novela un gran regalo literario. C. M ndez, Expansi n

Una novela que aspira a abarcar todo el inabarcable espacio de la vida de un hombre... Con esa manera de contar de Vargas Llosa que emboba, arrastra, hipnotiza y demuestra una vez m s que, en efecto, la muerte lo encontrar escribiendo, pues, pasados los 70 a os, escribir un prodigio como El sue o del celta mueve a envidia, admiraci n ilimitada y aplauso cerrado. Francisco Garc a P rez, Informaci n

De nuevo en el mundo ficticio de Vargas Llosa se revela en toda su crudeza la verdad de las mentiras. Innecesarios los elogios. Juan A. Masoliver R denas, La Vanguardia (Cultura/s) ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Four years after publishing Travesuras de la ni a mala, Vargas Llosa has completed El sue o del celta, a work based on the provocative life of Irishman Roger Casement, one of the first to document human rights abuses in European-ruled colonies. Casement's shocking revelations exposed a painful truth: Europeans were committing unspeakably barbarous acts in the name of commerce, civilization, and Christianity. What Casement witnessed ultimately led him to confront England and the imperialist policies enforced in his native Ireland. He became a militant for the Irish Nationalist cause and during World War I conspired with the German government to purchase weapons for a revolt set to take place during the Easter holiday. But the weapons never made it to Irish shores, and the British brutally suppressed the Easter Rising. All Irish rebel leaders, including Casement, were executed. Many pleaded clemency for Casement including Arthur Conan Doyle, W.B. Yeats, and George B. Shaw.

The true story of Guatemala's political turmoil of the 1950s as only a master of fiction can tell it

Guatemala, 1954. The military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the democratic government of Jacobo Árbenz. Behind this violent act is a lie that will have drastic consequences for the entire region: the accusation by the Eisenhower administration, determined to protect American commercial interests in Central America, that Árbenz encouraged the spread of Soviet Communism in the Americas.

Harsh Times is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War, echoes of which still reverberate today. In this thrilling novel, the Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa invents vivid characters who go to the heart of the dilemmas of Guatemala's history in a deeply textured blending of fact and fiction that is his alone. Not since The Feast of the Goat, his classic novel about the downfall of the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic, has Vargas Llosa combined political intrigue and suspense so compellingly.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

A painstakingly researched and lively novel about a neglected human rights pioneer by the Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa

In 1916, the Irish nationalist Roger Casement was hanged by the British government for treason. Casement had dedicated his life to improving the plight of oppressed peoples around the world. But when he dared to draw a parallel between the injustices he witnessed in African and American colonies and those committed by the British in Northern Ireland, he became involved in a cause that led to his imprisonment and execution. Ultimately, the scandals surrounding Casement's trial and eventual hanging marred his image to such a degree that his pioneering human rights work wasn't fully reexamined until the 1960s. Dream of the Celt is a fascinating fictional account of an extraordinary man in the original and dynamic style of Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa.

Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman

A New York Times Notable Book of 2007

From Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa comes The Bad Girl, a ...splendid, suspenseful, and irresistible [novel]. . . A contemporary love story that explores the mores of the urban 1960s--and 70s and 80s.--The New York Times Book Review

Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as Lily in Lima in 1950, when she flits into his life one summer and disappears again without explanation. He loves her still when she reappears as a revolutionary in 1960s Paris, then later as Mrs. Richardson, the wife of a wealthy Englishman, and again as the mistress of a sinister Japanese businessman in Tokyo. However poorly she treats him, he is doomed to worship her. Charting Ricardo's expatriate life through his romances with this shape-shifting woman, Vargas Llosa has created a beguiling, epic romance about the life-altering power of obsession.

«Éste es el Perú de Mario Vargas Llosa, el que recorrió, vivió y vio evolucionar social, cultural y políticamente. El país en el que se inspiró para escribir sus novelas, el que incubó sus demonios literarios y el que despertó su inconformismo y su curiosidad intelectual. Éste es el Perú en el que proyectó sus ilusiones y con el que se enfrascó en más de una escaramuza; la sociedad que quiso transformar desde la acción política y que finalmente ayudó a moldear desde el debate público. Si como novelista Vargas Llosa logró fijar una imagen del Perú que hoy es mundialmente reconocida --una imagen ficticia, mítica, que sin embargo resume de manera fiel los conflictos, dilemas, frustraciones y anhelos de la vida peruana--, como intelectual logró contagiar a la sociedad con sus preocupaciones, ideas, gustos y valores. No es exagerado decir que la conversación publica en el Perú actual es la que es, en gran medida, porque a lo largo del último medio siglo Vargas Llosa ha publicado determinados artículos y determinados ensayos, y porque con ellos logró abrir debates económicos, morales, ideológicos y estéticos de enorme impacto en los distintos ámbitos de la vida peruana .

Del prólogo de Carlos Granés

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Peru is to me a sort of incurable disease, and my relationship with it is intense, rough, full of the characteristic violence in passion.

The more than five decades during which Mario Vargas Llosa's journalistic work has been developing are dotted by essential works on culture, politics, history, and Peru's social reality, and in this volume, he reveals to the reader the deep bond the Nobel Prize winner has with his native country.

This is Mario Vargas Llosa's Peru, the one he traveled, lived, and watched evolve socially, culturally, and politically. The country that inspired him to write his novels, the one that incubated his literary demons, and the one that sparked his nonconformity and his intellectual curiosity. This is the Peru where Vargas Llosa cast his illusions, and the one he skirmished with more than once; the society he wanted to transform through political action and which he finally got to mold through public debate. If, as a novelist, Vargas Llosa managed to set an image of Peru today that is known worldwide--a fictitious, mythical image, that nevertheless faithfully summarizes the conflicts, dilemmas, frustrations, and yearnings of Peruvian life--as an intellectual he managed to spread his concerns, ideas, tastes, and values through society. It is no exaggeration to say that public dialogue in current Peru largely is what it is because Vargas Llosa has been publishing certain articles and certain essays for the last half a century, and because through them he managed to open financial, moral, ideological, and artistic debates of great impact in the different spheres of Peruvian life.

From the prologue by Carlos Granés.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

This delightful farce opens as the prim and proper Captain Pantoja learns he is to be sent to Peru's Amazon frontier on a secret mission for the army--to provide females for the amorous recruits. Side-splitting complications arise as world of Captain Pantoja's remarkable achievements start to spread.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

The action of The Time of the Hero, Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa's first novel, takes place at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, Peru. There, four angry cadets who have formed an inner circle in an attempt to ward off the boredom and stifling confinement of the military academy set off a chain of events that starts with a theft and leads to murder and suicide. The Time of the Hero presents, with great accuracy and power, the cadets' nightmare life: brutal initiation rights, poker in the latrines, drinking contests; and, above all else, the strange military code which, whether broken or followed, can only destroy.

When The Time of the Hero was first published in Peru in 1962, it was considered so scandalous that a thousand copies were burned in an official ceremony at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy. That same year, the book received the Biblioteca Breve Prize, an award given to the best work of fiction in the Spanish language.

...[A]s with other fine writers, Vargas functions on more than a single level of meaning. - The New York Times

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

A tale of two cities--Piura and Lima--rocked by scandal, and the disintegrating bonds of loyalty between the generations

Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's novel follows two fascinating characters whose lives are destined to intersect: neat, endearing Felícito Yanaqué, a small businessman in Piura, Peru, who finds himself the victim of blackmail; and Ismael Carrera, a successful owner of an insurance company in Lima, who cooks up a plan to avenge himself against the two lazy sons who want him dead.

Felícito and Ismael are, each in his own way, quiet, discreet rebels: honorable men trying to seize control of their destinies in a social and political climate where all can seem set in stone, predetermined. They are hardly vigilantes, but each is determined to live according to his own personal ideals and desires--which means forcibly rising above the pettiness of their surroundings. The Discreet Hero is also a chance to revisit some of our favorite players from previous Vargas Llosa novels: Sergeant Lituma, Don Rigoberto, Doña Lucrecia, and Fonchito are all here in a prosperous Peru. Vargas Llosa sketches Piura and Lima vividly--and the cities become not merely physical spaces but realms of the imagination populated by his vivid characters.

A novel whose humor and pathos shine through in Edith Grossman's masterly translation, The Discreet Hero is another remarkable achievement from the finest Latin American novelist at work today.

Dazzling. . . . An imaginative documentation of nature's sway over man. --New York Times Book Review

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, an important and passionate novel set in Peru, that explores man's struggle with both nature and civilization

Vargas Llosa's classic early novel takes place in Puira, a Peruvian town situated between desert and jungle, and which is torn by boredom and lust. Don Anselmo, a stranger in a black coat, builds a brothel on the outskirts of the town while he charms its innocent people, thus setting of a chain-reaction with extraordinary consequences.

This brothel, called the Green House, brings together the innocent and the corrupt: Bonificia, a young Indian girl saved by the nuns only to become a prostitute: Father Garcia, struggling for the church; and four best friends drawn to both excitement and escape.

The conflicting forces that haunt the Green House evoke a world balanced between savagery and civilization--and one which is cursed by not being able to discern between the two.