Don Bueno — Zulfikar Ghose

The river flowed in a dark, narrow channel. Light filtered in diagonal streaks through the canopy of overhanging trees. Cries from unseen animals filled the air from time to time. Flocks of parrots went shrieking past overhead, almost drowning out the clatter of the diesel of the battered old boat, The Princess Isabella, that chugged its way into the dark Amazon jungle. On board the boat, sprawled in a hammock, César Calderón stared into the dank nothingness. He had just deserted a pregnant mistress and abandoned his business. In a bar in Santa Rosa a strange man had threatened to kill him. A man to whom he had done nothing, had in no way provoked, yet who claimed he, Calderón, owed him his life. Perhaps Calderón had no alternative but to fulfil a bewildering yet murderous destiny. For had his grandmother not offered him this disturbing advice: ‘Go and find your father, hug him and embrace him, but stick a knife in his chest and let him fall at your feet.' For in this haunting work of fiction the son must both abandon and become the father, and the father must always embrace death in the person of the son. Writing in a style of deceptive simplicity, Zulfikar Ghose weaves a magical spell. Don Bueno is both straightforward and rich in resonance and symbol, wonderfully dreamlike yet solidly of and about this world. In this, his ninth novel, he demonstrates once again that he is a writer of increasing stature and accomplishment who makes his own way and creates his own world without regard for facile trends or shifting tastes.