http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/09/RVGOHJLSUH1.DTL Reviewed by Andrew Ervin July 9, 2006 Turing's Delirium By Edmundo Paz Soldn; translated by Lisa Carter HOUGHTON MIFFLIN; 288 PAGES; $24 [ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/061854139X/c4iorg - WK] By bringing the entire history of cryptography to bear on a story about anti-globalism protests and a would-be revolution in Bolivia, "Turing's Delirium" combines the excitement of a political thriller with the intellectual ambition of a literary novel of ideas. Upon its initial publication in 1992, the novel won the Bolivian National Book Award, and it now appears in English for the first time, translated by Lisa Carter. It's the second of Edmundo Paz Soldn's novels to appear in English, after "The Matter of Desire." The author is associated with the McOndo literary movement, which opposes the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Mrquez and his generation (albeit while splashing laudatory blurbs from the likes of Mario Vargas Llosa on their book covers). If "Turing's Delirium" provides any indication, McOndo rejects the essentializing cliches about Latin America and looks instead to the cosmopolitan reality as influenced by American popular culture and by globalism in general. In keeping with his complicated subject, Paz Soldn, now a professor at Cornell University, tells his story unconventionally, with chapters dedicated to different members of a larger ensemble cast than one might typically expect in a book this size. The events of his story unfold slowly and sequentially and they occasionally overlap, with the same encounter or conversation repeated from different perspectives. It's difficult to know whom to believe or even whom to side with for very long. The closest thing to a protagonist is an aging cryptanalyst named Miguel Senz (which is, tellingly, pronounced "signs"). Nicknamed Turing by his colleagues, after the English mathematician, Senz works for the mysterious Black Chamber, a governmental department dedicated to preventing and solving computer crimes. He's an unlikely hero, one whose best days are clearly behind him now that he has been demoted to the archives department, consigned to an abysmal basement where he is forced to urinate into paper cups he keeps in his desk drawer. The chapters focusing on Turing are the only ones told in second person: "You were happy when Montenegro returned to power through democratic means; you thought that everything would change under his rule and your work would again become urgent. What a disappointment. There was no significant threat to national security as there had been during his dictatorship. You were forced to admit that times had changed." Of course the rise of cyber-terrorism keeps the Black Chamber in business and provides the foundation for this labyrinthine potboiler. The immense pleasure of reading "Turing's Delirium" derives from a carefully orchestrated moral ambiguity. No one's hands are clean here, and with the exception of the formerly evil dictator Montenegro, it can be tough to distinguish the good guys from the bad. Not even the heartless Italian-American consortium GlobaLux, which has taken over the operation of Ro Fugitivo's electricity grid, is universally reviled. Montenegro has charged Turing and those at the Black Chamber with the difficult task of tracking down the evil mastermind Kandinsky, a renegade "cyberhacktivist" bent on overthrowing the government. Kandinsky has been inspired by the social upheaval he's seen on television. "In 1999, his attention had been held by the enormous protests by anti-globalization groups against the WTO in Seattle. Young people from the West were protesting against the new world order in which capitalism was the only option. If there was discontent in industrialized nations, the situation was even worse in Latin America." With his computers, and some irony, Kandinsky sets out to use the electric power GlobaLux provides against itself. Normally, it would be easy for a reader to invest sympathy in such a cause, but some of his methods appear rather questionable, to say the least. Turing's long-suffering wife, Ruth, is equally conflicted. She wants to expose the goings-on of the Black Chamber and its complicity with an evil regime, but that would mean sacrificing her family for the sake of the nation's well-being. Their dreadlocked teen daughter Flavia, a hacker in her own right, eventually provides the novel's moral compass. When Turing's boss at the Black Chamber gets desperate to track down Kandinsky, he turns to Flavia for help. She's a fascinating character, one deserving of her own novel or at least more space than she gets in this one. There's a problem, however, with the book's narrative strategy -- it takes Paz Soldn much too long to establish the setting. One must wade through approximately 50 pages of background exposition before anything resembling a story rears its head. Once past the setup, though, "Turing's Delirium" turns into an exciting and rewarding techno-thriller. It reads like a Robert Stone novel that has been watered down for the mass-market paperback crowd. That is to say, it's an excellent page-turner, perfect for a lazy afternoon next to the pool. Andrew Ervin's story "Yin & Yang," co-written with Ricardo Cortez Cruz, will appear in the next issue of Fiction International. 2006 San Francisco Chronicle _________________________________ Attend the Black Hat Briefings and Training, Las Vegas July 29 - August 3 2,500+ international security experts from 40 nations, 10 tracks, no vendor pitches. www.blackhat.com
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