La Secreta Guerra Santa de Santiago de Chile.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Tito Livio Trivino's life is a disaster. Although he is a successful ad man who writes publicity for everything from Julio Iglesias concerts to diapers, Tito Livio finds no satisfaction in his job. He is separated from his wife and having problems with his girlfriend. He is so estranged from his young daughters that he can't even remember their ages. His mother, who has been separated from his father for years, is a nag and a bore. Tito Livio wants to be a creative writer, but finds no time. All of a sudden, bizzare things begin to happen. Tito Livio is invited to go to Brazil to work on a project that could make him a star in the advertising business. At about the same time, he notices that two strange men are following him.

At a party given by Donkavian, for whom he will work in Brazil, he meets La Maga (from Julio Cortazar's 1963 novel Hopscotch), who is still gorgeous and seductive after all these years. The scene is a cross between a Fellini movie and The Bonfire of the the Vanities, with a touch of Almodavar. Every luxury and vice is available; every weird and exotic type is represented.

After a night of wild love-making with La Mega, Tito Livio meets with his father, who informs him that Donkavian and La Maga are agents of the Devil. (La Maga doesn't age, of course, because evil is eternal.) On the other hand, the two men who are following him are archangels. The elder Trivino knows about these things because he himself has been a double agent of the forces of good and evil. Tito Livio wants nothing to do with this mess, but there is nothing he can do about it; he is at the center of a secret Holy War of Santiago de Chile.

Shortly afterward, Trivino Senior is assassinated by the forces of evil and Tito Livio discovers that his father possessed secret information valuable to the Devil. Throughout the rest of the novel Tito Livio struggles to discover his father's role in the secret war and to carry on his work. In order to do this, he must retrace his father's steps, locate his old haunts, talk with people who knew him. As his quest draws him deeper into the war, his admiration for his father begins to grow.

La Maga attempts to win him over to the other side with promises of limitless pleasure. "Evil doesn't exist," she argues. Good is simply a convention that was invented to keep people in their place. Tito Livio is torn between desire and his love for his father. he is caught in a labyrinth--the streets of Santiago--in which false...