A dictator's body is discovered in his enormous crumbling palace. Revolutionaries burst in and find his rotting corpse in an anarchic tangle of past and present, a present already lost and decayed, a past of almost unimaginable richness in which the palace was crowded with the dictator's ministers, bodyguards, and servants, who kept him precariously balanced in power, and also with the thrive of women and children. The atmosphere is dreamlike - even nightmarish-real, vibrant and sensually exact, and at the same time vague and almost unbelievable.
From this very definite beginning this novel moves round and round - in time, backward, forward, and sideways, in a narrative of remanence. The action takes place in a Latin American country in an advanced state of corruption, anarchy, savagery, and physical exuberance. The time is the modern period, though not specified. An air force is mentioned, a league of Nations exists somewhere. American ambassadors with names like Wilson move in and o

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