Black Oxen

A fabulous and richly peopled otherworldly tale with echoes of Borges and Marquez, Black Oxen is the story of Carme's Risk's pursuit of her beautiful and not quite human father through two worlds and three changes of identity. In her forties, in the year 2022, Risk has entered narrative therapy. Her memories and her father's journal take her from the Eden of her earliest childhood to dusty, poor, Lequama, a Latin American country, where she and her father become involved with the slightly mad young leaders of the recent revolution and where everyone seems to practice black magic. And finally to Risk's life in northern California, still in thrall to her elusive father and now the widow of Lequama's most notorious torturer. Black Oxen features intrigue, machete murders, battles and bacchanals. Full of unforgettable characters, from the Taoscal chief, who is chosen because he is the luckiest person in the tribe, to a sexually ferocious therapist, and a frail billionaire who wants to live forever, it is a provocative, disturbing, ingenious and beautifully written novel where reality, fantasy and imagination dissolve and clash.