Description: "The sky was a donkey's swollen paunch hanging threateningly low overhead" begins Luis Sepulveda's gracefully written novel combining simple story-telling with mythic characters and artfully bold language. Antonio Jose Bolivar Proano takes refuge in his books: he reads paperback novels of faraway places that speak "of love in such beautiful words they sometimes make him forget the barbarity of man". He is an old man who wraps his false teeth in his handkerchief while cursing the gringos who bring tragedy into his life, the mayor who brings corruption into his life, the gold prospectors who bring opportunism into his life. He is an old man who curses all those who whore on the harsh and colorful jungle of his homeland: the rain-soaked Ecuadoran jungle. This novel is his story.

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