Burnout - Jara Patricio

Some time around the year 1875. Lucio Carbonera, veteran of the Bolivian wars and latter-day smuggler of Arabic tobacco across the plains of the Southern Cone, finds himself in Asunción, Paraguay. By chance he rescues a man with two heads (or two men with one body) from a mental hospital as it burns to the ground. They tell him of other former inmates who had previously escaped: a Venezuelan covered in a thick black coat of hair and a boy with distinctly amphibian features. Carbonera tracks them down and proposes that they form a troupe and take to the road as exotic entertainers. They eventually make their way down into Chile, where they discover that in some towns the welcome is distinctly warmer than in others . . .

Patricio Jara was born in 1974 in the port city of Antofagasta in Northern Chile. His publications include half a dozen novels and a similar number of short story collections, not to mention various works of non-fiction. As well as writing, he teaches at the School of Journalism, Universidad de Chile.