Way Far Away

Rosero follows up Toño the Infallible with a potent fever dream about an old man named Jeremías Andrade whose yearslong search for his missing granddaughter, Rosaura, takes him to a strange town in the Andes. The locale is ominous: the atmosphere is blanketed by mist and the streets are strewn with fossilized mice that crunch when Jeremías walks down the street. The residents of the sparsely populated town utter warnings: the landlady at the hotel where Jeremías stays tells him to “beware of the nightmares”; a man sleeping on the steps of the church tells him “it’s best to turn back”; and a blind woman explains that the mice “come from every corner of the globe to die here.” Jeremías’s quest culminates in a nightmarish descent into the “faraway place,” where he’s been told his granddaughter might be found. Rosero sidesteps straightforward answers and resolution in favor of uneasy vibes. The story’s most memorable quality is how effectively he renders Jeremías’s solitude and desperation: “all these years, he thought, Rosaura had been the only thing separating him from death.” This novella packs a powerful punch. (Mar.)