"Turbaned ladies hobbled towards the cathedral, scuffing the dust with feet too splayed and calloused to admit the wearing of shoes. Their cottons were printed with leaves and lions and portraits of military dictators" (Chapter One, pg. 8.)

"Someone had stolen the ivory Dove of Peace inlaid into the altar table. Though the Virgin still beckoned from her niche, her hands were tied in a tangle of cobwebs" (Chapter One, pg. 10.)

"It was the hour when the fetish priests slaughtered a fowl over Aizan, the Market God, an omphalos of cut stone standing alone in an empty space" (Chapter One, pg. 13.)

"Dom Francisco himself lay sleeping under his bed, in a chamber that overlooked a garden of red earth and plastic flowers where lizards sunned themselves on the flat white marble tombs" (Chapter One, pg. 17.)

"On thundery afternoons, when perpendicular clouds towered high in the sky, she would wander...