The Arid Sky tells the story of Germán Alcántara Carnero: the story of his time, the men and women who lived at his side and the non-existant plateau where Monge distills the essence of a savage Latin America. A dry place, where where the only constants seem to be solitude, the tireless sun, violence, loyalty, and the daily fight to forge something of a scale of values which will give life some sense. Monge's novel, which masterfully brings together epic and lyric, is a challenge to the reader to put aside the parameters by which they judge guilt and innocence, but also a journey to the limits of language. The book's narrator, classical and powerful, his mind made up - in vain - to get inside the story he tells us, dynamites, one by one, all the rules that the novel imposes. Perhaps this is what makes this, already, an essential work.