Shortlisted for the prestigious Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 2005, this book is swamped, in equal parts, with innocence, cruelty and luxury. It is D.J’s journey to the, for him, exotic North, where the snow camps out in the mountains and red-bearded old men tell interminable stories in the heat of a bar they call The People. There starts the amazing adventure of a fleeing urbanite. Chirinos caresses the reader’s neck with an enfolding touch and calms him. The rest, that comes from this writer’s talent for submerging himself, as few others can, in the miracle of the word.