Winner of the 2023 Jan Michalski Prize, a searing novel of loss and resilience that illuminates the often-overlooked human dimension of the migrant crisis, re-imagining the border as a dreamlike purgatory bridging life and death. In an unnamed Latin American country, a mysterious plague quickly spreads, erasing the memory of anyone infected. Angustias Romero flees with her family, but their flight is tragically cut short when she loses both her children. Consumed by grief, she finds herself within the hallucinatory expanse of Mezquitte--a town corrupted by greed and populated by storytellers, refugees, and violent, predatory gangs. Here, Angustias is finally able to lay her children to rest at the Third Country, a cemetery run by the larger-than-life Visitaci-n Salazar and a refuge beyond suffering and fear. While Visitaci-n remains defiant in her mission to care for the dead, the cemetery she oversees is the focal point of a bitter land dispute with Alcides Abundio, the most feared la
