Desire, greed and betrayal are entwined with the landscape drawn intricately as a fresco. It brings a spectre of death and danger, sizzling heat, humidity, rain, mud, swarms of sandflies, deadly scorpions, mosquitoes 'firing high-pitched sirens', a cut-down silk cotton tree that looks like a woman in grey rags. There is immense beauty too–with clusters of 'pink wet fungus on leaves', 'the dawn sky is streaked as if a dye ran through it', sunsets are 'cracked with gold'. The rain is like 'jabbing needles that break the rivers' skin'.
