Zumbido. (Buzz)

Anticipating grief or emotional upheaval after learning of his sister's death, the anonymous narrator (and main character) of this experimental novel runs away with the same strange woman who consoled him in the waiting room-and in whose car his sister died. Together they dwell on the streets of a nameless city and commune with birds, eggs, dogs, and humans with sharp animal instincts, among others. Long, detailed descriptions of the landscape and the city's spaces play a main role in the narrative and create an atmosphere in which things like hotel bathrooms, parks, and abandoned houses become mysterious. In the tradition of experimental writers, such as William Burroughs, there's no plot, but Colombian author Cárdenas uses a sober tone and hyper-real language within a dreamlike logic to organize what at first seems to be a story of capricious encounters and random characters with nothing in common. Recommended for public libraries with a large or popular contemporary literature collection.—Angela Lang, New York