Set in the Peruvian desert town of Piura and the Amazon jungle, this novel follows a group of characters whose lives connect around a brothel known as the Green House. Soldiers, traders, missionaries, a former boatman and young women taken from native communities all pass through its story.
The narrative jumps freely between places and decades, so that the reader assembles events like pieces of a puzzle. It explores exploitation, remote frontier life and the clash between official institutions and the people they claim to civilise. It is a key work of the Latin American boom.