“A truly striking and innovative novel written by one of Latin America’s most highly regarded novelists. Piglia brings into play a swirl of tales mixing dark truths with hallucinatory adventures.”— Gwen Kirkpatrick, author of The Dissonant Legacy of Modernismo “Piglia is Argentina’s most important novelist, a compelling writer and committed intellectual who relentlessly deals with the complicated relationships between politics ... Read moreand fiction. And Sergio Waisman is an exceptionally gifted translator with a wonderful ear and eye for the reverberations of Spanish in English. The Absent City is a book for our times, one that transcends national boundaries.”—Francine Masiello, author of Between Civilization and Barbarism: Women, Nation, and Literary Culture in Modern Argentina “Though clearly walking in the riverbank footsteps of the whimsical Macedonio and the noir geniuses Arlt and Onetti, Piglia is a genuine original, gifted with a fluid imagination that rushes past traditional narrative boundaries. The Absent City is a kind of mock thriller that lures its reader on, not with the question, ‘What happens next?’ but with ‘What was it that just happened?’ ”—Robert Coover Show Less