Umbriel Editores 2004

WINNER OF THE FIRST UMBRIEL AWARD FOR CRIME NOVELS

When Sebastián Mareco learns on television that an old friend has been murdered in a seedy boarding house, the temptation to immediately forget the news is supported by solid common sense and instinct for self-preservation. El Chivo Robirosa was never innocent, though, blurred in the third or fourth whisky of the early morning, the cherished images of the past caress Mareco’s memory. The temptation to return to someone who not long ago triumphed in Italy chasing an absurd oval ball, to at least embrace his corpse, returns mixed with other memories and far more unsettling nostalgias than the simple—and sometimes profound—friendship that once united them.

Throughout El Chivo’s life, all kinds of people passed through: from those who loved him to those who exploited every one of his gestures and who find little amusement in this curious friend who has come from the forgotten past to stir up stories that El Chivo took to his grave. And although the investigation becomes increasingly dangerous, for Mareco it is, at its core, a way to escape despair and confront his own ghosts at last.

A merciless portrait of Argentina’s last decade, Sueños de perro immerses the reader in a battered yet still-living Buenos Aires. Guided by a narrator who never gives up, the novel takes the reader through the streets of a city where crimes and loves exist without reason or punishment.