Dance With Snakes
by Horacio Castellanos Moya
translated by Lee Paula Springer
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.
close this panelHoracio Castellanos Moya was born in 1957 in Honduras, but grew up in El Salvador. He has lived in Guatemala, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain and Germany. His work has been translated into German, French, Italian, and Portuguese. His novel Senselessness was published in English to universal critical acclaim in 2008 by New Directions. He has published eight novels and is now living in exile as part of the City of Asylum project in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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