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In keeping with her South American roots, De Robertis steps confidently into the unsettling realms of magical realism. The stinking, liquefying living corpse that materialises in the sitting room of heroine Perla's Buenos Aires flat actually seems credible, when brought into being by the sheer force of De Robertis's viscerally affecting language. This naked wretch was a victim of the "Process", the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. He is just one of the 30,000 disappeared, in his case thrown from a plane to drown in the sea. Perla's tentative connection to her disturbing "guest" (as she thinks of him) grows into something that causes her to confront her suspicions about her father's role in the junta. Fatherhood and the deep bonds between children and parents are explored with a rare gravity in this serious, impassioned novel. De Robertis is unflinching in her depictions of the torments inflicted by the junta, but she comforts us, too, with beautiful sustained metaphors of water and light, connection and renewal.