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‘Cercas's writing has echoes of Scott Fitzgerald in the intense, shining clarity of its emotion, and of Faulkner' - Independent

‘A deeply affecting novel. A reflection on war, friendship, success and failure ... Cercas's novel carries a powerful warning for the war-hungry modern world' - Scotland on Sunday

‘Presents his narrator's foibles in a lucid, supple prose, well-matched to the novel's darker elements' - Financial Times
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A sweeping story of youth and age, war and peace, love, friendship and the quest for meaning

An aspiring young writer from Spain begins work as a teaching assistant on a Midwestern campus and finds himself sharing an office with Rodney Falk, a taciturn Vietnam veteran of strange ways and few friends. But when Rodney suddenly disappears the narrator becomes obsessed with discovering the secrets of his past. Why do people fear Rodney? What traumatic event happened at My Khe during the war? And, when the narrator's life takes a terrible twist, is Rodney the only person in the world who can save him?