Fiction. The narrator looks back on the muddle of his life as a literary translator. He dreams of finding literary fame while toiling away at his translation of an important but dauntingly bleak Peruvian novel. At one point he earns a living by working for a large multinational company whose hidebound hierarchy infuriates him. With his professional ambitions frustrated, his dead-end jobs take him to London and Lima, Paris and Madrid, Leiden and back...