Carlos Maria Dominguez was born in Buenos Aires in mid 50’s he has written a number of fiction and non fiction books ,he currently lives in Montevideo Uruguay ,he won the Juan Carlos Onetti prize .This book is one of those wonderful books about book s and people a short book at only a hundred pages it took me an evening to get through ,it is accompanied by wonderful illustrations ny Peter sis who’s cartoons appear regularly in Time and Newsweek .The action starts with the death of Bruma Lennon in Cambridge a unopened package a book then sends a friend on a long trip to Argentina after a book eccentric Carlos Brauer how lives in a house filed with books and a highly personal filing system ,in the end the action draws us to Montevideo and a great climax .

Books change people destinies .some have read the tiger of Malaysia and become professors of literature in remote universities.Demian converted thousands of young men to eastern philosophy ,Hemingway made sportsmen of them ,Alexander Dumas complicated the lives of thousands of women ,quite a few of whom were saved from suicide by cookery books .Bluma was their victim .

from the opening page the touching power of books .

This book is in the grand Argentina tradition from Borges and Manguel ,they always love dissecting books and people ,this book is about the love and lust of owning books ,how this can sometimes drift into obsession and crime ,it also seems a personnel journey for the writer himself ,maybe he is retreating his own reading and people he had come across .There is a fable like quality as well .A definite movie book (like a good movie can be read in a couple of hours ).THE translation is great on of the best from spanish, I’ve read and was by Nick Caistor who has work on translation of a lot of the major latin american writers in recent years .