His Name was Death

Never before in English, this legendary precursor to eco-fiction turns the coming insect apocalypse on its headA Wall Street Journal Best Science Fiction Book of 2021A bitter drunk forsakes civilization and takes to the Mexican jungle, trapping animals, selling their pelts to buy liquor for colossal benders, and slowly rotting away in his fetid hut. His neighbors, a clan of the Lacodn tribe of Chiapas, however, see something more in him than he does himself (dubbing him Wise Owl): when he falls deathly ill, a shaman named Black Ant saves his lifeand, almost by chance, in driving out his fever, she exorcises the demon of alcoholism as well. Slowly recovering, weak in his hammock, our antihero discovers a curious thing about the mosquitoes buzzing, which to human ears seemed so irritating and pointless. Perhaps, in fact, it constituted a language he might learnand with the help of a flute and a homemade dictionaryeven speak. Slowly, he masters Mosquil, with astonishing consequences Will he harness the mosquitoes global might? And will his new powers enable him to take over the world thats rejected him? A book far ahead of its time, His Name Was Death looks down the double-barreled shotgun of ecological disaster and colonial exploitationand cackles a graveyard laugh.