Dance With Snakes (Trade Paper)

Description

As El Salvador returns to peace after more than a decade of civil war, Eduardo Sosa, an unemployed sociologist, becomes fascinated by a homeless man who lives in a beat-up yellow Chevrolet parked across the street from his sister’s apartment. An unexpected turn of events causes Sosa to assume the other man’s identity. When he becomes the driver of the mysterious yellow Chevrolet, Sosa discovers that it is home to four poisonous snakes. With the snakes as accomplices, Sosa unleashes a reign of terror on the city of San Salvador. Dance With Snakes is a macabre high-speed romp, in which violence and comedy become almost indistinguishable. The non-stop action raises provocative questions about social exclusion and the role of the media, but this novel by the author of the acclaimed Senselessness also evokes the tenderness of relations among those on society’s margins.

“Dance With Snakes is harrowing and violent, a deliberate and relentless effort to shock the reader. And, you will be shocked. There is something in here for everyone, to the extent that all boundaries are crossed and morals broken into insignificant pieces. Yet it is the ease with which Moya shows this happening that is the novel’s greatest strength.”—Damian Kelleher

“A romping, violent farce”—Ron Slate

“Dance with Snakes is the more “pulse-pounding” of the two novels, for sure, but both offer up incredible characterizations and Moya’s takes on the political situation in Latin America, with plenty of barbs directed at religion and the police. Hopefully we will see more of his fiction translated in the coming years.”—Rain Taxi

“The raw yet aloof descriptions of brutality throughout the novel keep the reader fully engaged.”—The Uniter