At
Night We Walk in Circles is a book for the patient reader. Its exposition
slowly sets the stage for the meeting of the two main characters: Henry the
playwright and Nelson the actor. Nearly fifteen years earlier, during a war of
rebellion in an unnamed South American country, Henry had been imprisoned for
writing a seditious play, “The Idiot President.” Now that politics and
rebellion are no longer an issue, he has planned a revival of the play with a
three-man touring group. Nelson, a
rather naïve and directionless young man, joins the cast, leaving behind his
widowed mother and estranged girlfriend, Ixta.
As the troupe travels inland, performing in small mountain villages,
Henry tells Nelson more about his imprisonment. In the last village, Nelson
becomes involved with the elderly mother of a ruthless drug dealer, who
believes Nelson is her long-lost youngest son. When he begins to regret having
ended his relationship with Ixta, he suddenly bolts, deserting the mother,
heading back to the city and angering the drug dealer who sends his thugs after
Nelson to exact revenge. Back in the city, Nelson is a changed man, more
aggressive and more resolved to revive his relationship with Ixta, who is
pregnant and living with another man. Eventually, a tragedy occurs and although
a mysterious narrator has been hinting at a bad outcome for Nelson throughout
the book, the reader is taken by surprise by the actual event.
