an master Evelio Rosero's ninth novel and has been billed by his Spanish publisher as "one of the most important Colombian works of fiction written in the past two decades." In search of his missing granddaughter Rosaura, an old man named Jeremías Andrade arrives in a town strewn with dead mice and overflowing with mist and fog. The owner of a rotten hotel and the dwarf who always accompanies her; children who play with sinister soccer balls and observe life from the ruined rooftops; an albino named Bonifacio who appears and disappears like a ghost; the cart driver whose only task is to pick up the mice piling up night after night; the charitable nuns in a nearby convent -- these are the characters that converge in a vigil turned nightmare. Jeremías's wanderings reveal a haunting truth, and a possibility of reunion in a place where all is lost, a forever-gaping abyss.