A freewheeling black comedy bound up in cultural confusion, political insanity, and environmental catastrophe.

"Fluid and poetic as well as terrifying." -New York Times Book Review

"Incisive and funny, this book yanks our chains and makes us see the absurdity that rules our world." -Booklist (starred review)

"Expansive and ambitious . . . incredible and complicated." -Library Journal

"This satiric morality play about the destruction of the Amazon rain forest unfolds with a diversity and fecundity equal to its setting. . . . Yamashita seems to have thrown into the pot everything she knows and most that she can imagine-all to good effect." -Publishers Weekly

A Japanese man with a ball floating six inches in front of his head, an American CEO with three arms, and a Brazilian peasant who discovers the art of healing by tickling one's earlobe, rise to the heights of wealth and fame, before arriving at disasters-both personal and ecological-that destroy the rain forest and all the birds of Brazil.