Budapest

Fascinated by the Hungarian language - he is after all a man who lives by language, ghost writing speeches, advertisements, books - he spends the night watching television, trying to pick out words in this tongue, 'the only one the devil respects'. In charting the life of a Brazilian ghost writer enamoured with the Magyar, Chico Buarque has created his most original fiction yet. The novel coils round the reader like a magical snake from "The Arabian Nights". It is a storytelling labyrinth in Borges or Calvino mode, as Costa's myth-making, love-making and essays into another culture become mired in the world where celebrities make reputations and fortunes from the writing of anonymous others, where the reader is not sure what language, what reality is being offered.