A nameless narrator and his friend Alberto move through a constantly morphing continuum of dream-like situations while discussing philosophy, literature, and war. The impossible question of an enormous student in a lecture hall at an English university sets off a series of alternate paths that open before them like a fan. In taverns, boats, and plazas, the two protagonists discuss John Donne, Lawrence of Arabia, and Lenin with English students, a group of young and old women, and eight hundred drinkers, all the while being dropped from one strange place into the next. A remarkable work of...

The existence of an afterlife is now a fact: heaven is the internet. Death is only an interruption as souls can be uploaded to the web and new bodies can be purchased by those wishing to reenter the physical world. The need to settle an old score pushes Ramiro Olivaires to move from the comfort of virtual existence back into a human body. Ramiro's grandson, however, can only afford the body of an overweight middle-aged woman. In the shell of this new body, Ramiro must adjust to the dizzying transformations that the world has undergone since his death. Using Ramiro himself as an avatar,...