Sepulveda's sparse but gripping story combines noir's thematic treatment of the past as an inescapable albatross with the noir trope of losers being made offers they can't refuse. When the Berlin Wall comes down, the race is on to trade in secrets from the past and retrieve long-hidden treasures. A mysterious man in a wheelchair enlists an exiled former Chilean revolutionary/guerilla/terrorist to return to his homeland and recover a cache of gold coins stolen by, and then from, the Nazis. Meanwhile, an ex-Stasi officer convinces a down-and-out former underling to do the same. For both men , this is a chance to break free their depressing conditions and make a new start, albeit a carrot with a considerable stick in the wings. As others have pointed out, Sepulveda has the same gift as the French writer Emmanel Carrere for being able to build tension with a bare minimum of plot and exposition. The settings are vivid and contrasting, from a gritty and racist modern Germany reminiscent of Jakob Arjourni's books, to the remote tip of Chile, which has whispers of Smilla's Sense of Snow. Underlying the basic thriller plot is a somewhat wistful and bitter questioning of the relevance and meaning of radical movements of the 70s and 80s in the post-Cold War era. Indeed the central metaphor of the race for the gold is that everyone in the book is trying to forget the past and make do in a world decidedly more interested in money than ideology.