Book Description
Mad Max meets J.G. Ballard in this gonzo, maximalist, high-octane speculative horror novel set against a post-apocalyptic Bolivia in thrall to a speed-worshiping cult
In 1970s Bolivia, a man and his young son are on the run from acolytes of a velocity cult hellbent on using their Plymouth Road Runner to unleash a primordial entity known as The Dream. In 1990, a teenage metalhead, whose brother died while drag racing, experiences visions and body transformations after a beating. A hundred years later—after the emergence of The Dream—a girl embarks on a journey across a dystopian wasteland to carry out her father’s dying wish.
The mystery behind the cult’s beliefs and gory rituals unfold across these three time periods. As the world is transfigured into a living apocalypse that is punctuated by spark plugs hanging like fruit from trees, the boundaries that distinguish humanity from machines, natural landscapes from those of the mind, and the realm of the living from that of the dead, are diluted under the intoxicating effect of The Dream.
Fusing elements of horror, gothic, and speculative fiction, Thousands of Eyes balances its chilling and cruel propulsion with quieter moments of emotional intensity and lyricism to reveal the grotesque beauty of desolation. Maximiliano Barrientos is a wholly original and bold new voice in Latin American letters, available to English-language readers for the first time.
Praise For This Book
Our Culture, A Most Anticipated Book of Fall"A disorienting tale of cosmic horror and really cool cars, Thousands of Eyes puts you in the passenger seat with three separate narrators as they tell of their roles fighting a speed-worshipping car cult in Bolivia from the 1970s to the post-apocalyptic future. In the process, Barrientos outlines a twisted world where spark plugs grow on trees, brains are kept alive, a in jars, and ritual sacrifices involve either jumper cables or crashing full-speed into gigantic celestial trees. At the heart of the novel is a story of grief, trauma, and a thousand-eyed ghost fish that uses wounds both physical and spiritual to incubate itself, all backed by a soundtrack of engine roars and black metal albums." —Sam Reader, Reactor
"With heavy metal themes, a machine- and death-obsessed conceit, and a sprawling speculative plot that stretches deep into the 21st century, Bolivian writer Barrientos’s exhilarating English language debut comes fully loaded . . . [his] propulsive narrative owes its strength to vivid depictions of its characters’ inner lives. It’s a daring work from an essential Latin American author." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Cars have never been so scary . . . Barrientos’ prose, in Bunstead’s able translation, is electric—noirish and tense and stylish without being showy . . . There are shades of J.G. Ballard’s surrealism here, but Barrientos makes this startling novel his very own. Bizarre and propulsive." —Kirkus Reviews
“This strange and fascinating novel by Maximiliano Barrientos brings together his usual elegant writing with pious references and obsessions: the fusion is extravagant and intense. The cult of cars and speed elevated to religion, black metal, rituals, Ballard and Mad Max in Bolivia.”—Mariana Enríquez
"I read Maximiliano Barrientos like a prophet. His books are a door to a literature that does not yet exist because he is creating it. If he set up a sect I would give him all my possessions."—Layla Martinez
“This is a book that stays in your eyes like the pain of a ghostly knife. Inside the flesh, carnivorous and wild. I read it in ecstasy, as if I wanted to set my parents' old car on fire at any moment or was waiting to transform myself into a cursed tree."—Elaine Vilar Madruga
“The novel [...] is pure vertigo.”—Agustina Larrea, El Diario AR
“A baroque wonder.”—Babelia, El País
“The Bolivian author surprised with a totally risky, innovative and mysterious novel. In Thousands of Eyes Barrientos creates [...] a world that, like the cars in the novel, speeds up in action and images until it crashes into the word of the unspeakable.”—Rodrigo Bastidas Pérez – HJCK
“The cult of speed becomes a cosmic sacrifice in Thousands of Eyes, a novel with which Barrientos ends up making his leap to the fantastic genre.”—Javier Mattio, La Voz
“From Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia [...] comes one of the best contemporary narratives: extreme, daring with the weird fiction stamp in its syntax and the pulp in the soul of the book.”—Lala Toutonian, Perfil
“The powerful new novel by Maximiliano Barrientos [...] is a racing car launched through routes where nature and bodies merge with steel, chrome and spark plugs.”—Nicolás G. Recoaro, Hora Argentina
