Plot summary

After a ten-year insurrection set in a nameless South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

n country in which the totalitarian government defeated a rebel group, the government has eliminated all indigenous language

Indigenous language

An indigenous language or autochthonous language is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples but has been reduced to the status of a minority language. This language would be from a linguistically distinct community that has been settled in the area for many generations...

s and renamed all places as numbers; radio is the only remaining convenience. The protagonist, Norma, is the voice of a popular radio show that attempts to reconnect war refugees with their families. Yet Norma too has lost during the war: her husband disappeared on a trip to a jungle village called 1797. One day a boy arrives from 1797 along with a list of missing for Norma to read over the radio, jarring Norma to recall the details of her life with her husband and his possible fate.

Though the novel is set in South America it does not contain a single word of Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

. It has been remarked for the ability to describe the people's sense of displacement

Reviews

• "Blurring the moral lines: Fictional Latin American country is torn apart by violence" by John Freeman, Houston Chronicle, April 13, 2007.