Its setting is uniquely exotic: the Jewish community in Guatemala, a country haunted by its violent history. The author recalls the turmoil of his surroundings, and the conflict between the Jewish family rites of his home and the crippling macho code of Latin America, with an often subversive wit and with devastating clarity. It was not a safe world, for a moment: the army political strife and homosexual prostitution soon claimed their victims from among Perera's classmates. But he recalls it with tenderness, nevertheless, and makes sense of the violence - between fathers and sons, rulers and ruled - that holds Guatemala in its grip. It is this which gives to this single life its deeper resonance