Igor Clark

Those who like novels where it often doesn't become unclear until the third or fourth read what's happening, who's speaking, who's listening, who's doing what, how most of the characters are related to each other, and how the series of events described are related to each other in time, would enjoy this novel. Otherwise, like me, they might not be able to appreciate it.

Mainly what I could grasp was that a man was looking for his father in a village that was a purgatory for dead sinners, where time turned backward. The father was the local landowner and a tyrant who'd committed many crimes. Eventually the searcher faded from the story. The historical background supplied by some other readers is valuable and enlightening but is immeasurably clearer in their descriptions than in the novel itself.

The novel consisted mostly of dialogue, with the features described above. There were also descriptions of the village and its surroundings. The atmosphere of the hot, bleak land and death and of the hopelessness of the characters was powerful. But for this reader, the book didn't need to continue for 120 pages. I might've been able to appreciate this surrealist masterpiece if it had been something closer in form to a short story, like some of the works in the same author's The Burning Plain, such as "Tell Them Not to Kill Me!" or "The Man."