Description: A novel that works on our nerves, The Wilderness examines human flesh in all its gruesome fascination: disease, madness, hunger, the taste of flies in the mouth. By day, the story is one of winding streets, filth, and poverty, of the Indian coastal town of Cochin as seen from the carriage of a three-wheeled trishaw -- the ring of its bell a lament and a warning. By night, the story follows the crooked path of the cart collecting the deceased, or nearly so.

The voice of The Wilderness is that of an American, widely traveled, who has chosen to end his journey here. Living among the Cages -- ramshackle housing -- he traces a map of the world on his walls, its deserts and valleys in dirt and urine. There was a woman, his lover. She died in Africa. "Why do you need to wander?" she asked -- in Fiji, in Suva. "I'm leaving you", she said. "You've destroyed me". Now he is haunted. Wandering the streets, he meets a crippled albino, a poetess who writes of blood. In an alley, he speaks with a corpse, moments before it is hauled away. "The hooks were dull, perhaps rusted steel, or bronze corroded and dark. The tall man took his hook and inserted it under the dead man's jaw, its blade pointing up into the cranium. The short man slid his into the groin, turning it to one side so it caught at the pelvis". Why have you come here? Why do you stay? the people ask him. But as those about him disappear, his reasons become all too clear.

Stuefloten's words stand like sweat on the page -- hot, lurid, and intoxicating. His India is seen through a fever-dream -- amber tinted, drunk on arak, stumbling over bodies. The Wilderness is sure to leave even the most impassive reader stunned and disturbed, butunable to turn away.

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