I found myself awake in the early morning hours reading about the trials of the characters in their merciless world. Bodies ache, thirst goes unquenched and through it all the old man and the boy cling to their nearly wordless companionship. For long stretches of unbearable tension nothing happens, and then, when the pursuers catch up with the pair, the cruelty is searing. What saves the reader is Carrasco’s incredibly clean, crisp language (as translated by Margaret Jull Costa), and his precise, deliberate exclusions. Faced with horrible suffering, the novel asks us, will we dispense grace or cruelty?

Source: New York Times August 28, 2017 09:00 UTC