"The whole spread of the major special forces at work in Peru today–the neighborhood of pimps and criminals where the Green House stands; the strange maniacal alliance between the army and the missionaries who together subjugate the Indians; and the frightful economic exploitation wreaked on everyone by the next higher echelon of power. All these forces are described in luxuriant and at times dazzling detail...an imaginative documentation of nature's sway over man, done with all the color and terror of anyone's worst nightmare. The translation by Gregory Rabassa is, as always, luminous and transparent." – New York Times Book Review
"His characters may be saints, villains, victims or nothing in particular, but they break out of the pages of this magnificent novel into the stubborn uncontainability of life itself." – New Statesman
A big, sprawling symbolic novel about dream and reality. – Kirkus Reviews
