Facing the Pacific, an old man-a wise one would say today-fixed the horizon from the cliff of Barranco, south of the bay of Lima; here sitting on a bench. Foncho, a young schoolboy intrigued by staring into the distance, waiting for his bus that leads to college every day, comes and sits beside him. So begins a strange exchange. The wise evokes the schoolboy into ten chapters in the book, a story where reality merges with fantasy, epic, comparable to that of Ulysses, a boat leaving the port of Marseille, sailed by a crew toddlers. One of them struck by leprosy will be thrown into the sea ... and the troubles begin. First "Review" helmsman, also goes overboard, not by accident, but to reach the paradise of mermaids crossing in troubled waters and causing two real problems: The first is that the commander as his crew are lost in the Mediterranean and believe having spent sailing the Strait of Gibraltar to the unknown Atlantic ocean, and above all, the other crew members would join the heavenly world underwater. Then, in the last chapter that the riddle illuminates the reader (as in "Adventures of Captain Hatteras" by Jules Verne), but you deliver the essence would deprive you of the best of the imagination Nobel Prize for Literature. A book of our time, published last November, which opens a new way for Vargas Llosa in a sober and very colorful style or be seen in what is most precious in there ... to believe. Of course the book is written in Castilian ... but affordable for whom studied or practice regularly. A beautiful adventure in which we discover that each can teach the other, be it a simple schoolboy without hearing experience, but lived in the tradition of his own ancestors. You will also discover the Inka culture in what it can bring us closer to more of the Taoist philosophy and the right words of Gustave Flaubert. Do not miss. Frederic Bontemps
