This book is supposed to be if not an equivalent to "100 years of solitude", then pretty close to that. In fact, it`s not bad but I didn`t like it at all. The book is a story of a German nobleman going to find the House of the Sun (also known as Eden and Eldorado). He is a man of a pure heart and of rather tolerable morals, yet in early 16th century such people weren`t really demanded. Oh, no, it was the time of Cortes and Lope de Aguirre (who I am familiar with from the Werner Herzog movie) who went to America in order to kill the natives and get lots of gold from them. In the spare time from killing and spreading the word of God there was always some time for raping the women and killing the hostages. Those were the days, my friend. Yeah, there are rapes, there are witch burnings, there are murders of whole tribes and extermination of villages in this book - you name it. Therefore I can`t really say that it was a pretty book. I have no doubt that it was rather realistic yet I`d be quite happy without reading it. Most of the characters are too creepy and too disgusting for me to be able to enjoy a book like this. On another note - this is surely the first time I`ve read a venezuelan book. For memory: the book is titled "The Moon of Faustus" for the following reason: Philipp von Hutten, the main character is warned by a seer named doctor Faust (the same character Marlowe, Goethe and others used and who was at least partly a historical person) not to go to America for he will find his death her on a night of full moon. This Faust is quite a fellow - he has sold his soul to the devil who now resides within his dog and he enjoys doing sodomic tricks with young boys. This doesn`t mean though that his vision is wrong. By the way most of the events in this book are historically accurate, which is no surprise for nasty things are usually true.