In the Land of Silence

This masterful translation of a recent Bolivian novel, En el pais del silencio, transports us to a mysterious, silent, and unfamiliar land where astonishing truths are placed within our grasp. Like a parabola, this amazing story begins and ends in the same place on the same day in the life of a single persona with three interior entities: Jursaf, The Other, and The Dead Man. By portraying them as separate, Urzagasti accentuates their interrelatedness, for one character cannot grow without the others, nor can any one of them move toward an ultimate goal without the experience and knowledge of the other two. The authors mature and thoroughly Bolivian style is marked by a synthesis of poetic and novelistic techniques which blend perfectly the indigenous and European voices of his ancestral home.