Jacques Thiériot Books

Fascinated by the Hungarian language - he is after all a man who lives by language, ghost writing speeches, advertisements, books - he spends the night watching television, trying to pick out words in this tongue, 'the only one the devil respects'. In charting the life of a Brazilian ghost writer enamoured with the Magyar, Chico Buarque has created his most original fiction yet. The novel coils round the reader like a magical snake from "The Arabian Nights". It is a storytelling labyrinth in Borges or Calvino mode, as Costa's myth-making, love-making and essays into another culture become mired in the world where celebrities make reputations and fortunes from the writing of anonymous others, where the reader is not sure what language, what reality is being offered.

A struggle between good and evil unfolds in this full-bodied fable by the author of The Zahir . When a stranger arrives in an isolated mountain village, he brings with him a devilish offer: If anybody in the town is murdered within a week, every surviving resident will receive a fortune in gold. His evil instigation throws the townspeople into a moral tailspin that ends with a major plot surprise.