By Night in Chile

Told in a delirious monologue, By Night in Chile is the final testimony of Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix--Chilean priest and member of Opus Dei, eminent literary critic and failed poet--as he is haunted by a shadowy figure known as the wizened youth. In Urrutia's feverish last hours, a deluge of memories pours from him: he hobnobs with Santiago's literary elite; he embarks on a tour of European cathedrals under existential threat by pigeon excrement at the behest of two foreign agents called Etah and Raef; he retreats into ancient Greek poetry during the darkest chapter in Chilean history; he undertakes the tutelage of Augusto Pinochet in Marxist theory, so that the General may better understand his enemies--throughout insisting, with fracturing conviction, that he was always on the right side of history. A novel about art and aestheticism, silence and complicity, and, ultimately, the weight of damnation, By Night in Chile is a deep-cutting satire and a work of devastating moral clarity.