THE LONG NIGHT OF WHITE CHICKENS, by Francisco Goldman (Faber and Faber, $68).
EVER since the black polo neck and expresso set discovered Gabriel Garcia Marquez, no self-respecting intellectual has been seen without a due quota of Latin American fiction and cafe banter about ''magical realism''.
A more recent development has been novels by US writers of Latin American descent that shuttle between both halves of the continent, the most well known being Oscar Hijuelos' hot and steamy tale of Cuban musicians in the US, The Mambo Kings Play Songs ofLove, recently made into a film.
Now comes The Long Night of White Chickens, by Francisco Goldman, which skips between Guatemala and Boston. The story opens with narrator Roger Graetz and his father visiting Guatemala to investigate the murder of Flor de Mayo Puac, a Guatemalan orphan who Graetz senior, in a fit of liberal pique, sent to school and university. On graduating she had returned to Guatemala to run an orphanage.
Has Flor been killed by the security services, a jealous lover, or - more ominously - because of her supposed involvement in the sale of orphans to the West? In the investigation into Flor's life and death, Goldman weaves an ambitious sprawling story that graphically depicts the conflicts of contemporary Guatemala, and the troubled morality of the West's relationship with South America.
He writes well with more than an eye on the lyrical flowing style of Latin American authors: long descriptive sentences that blossom with ideas and images.