Auxilio Lacouture is trapped. For twelve days she hides alone in a lavatory on the fourth floor of the university. Staring at the floor, she begins a heartfelt and feverish tale: she is the Mother of Mexican poetry.

This highly charged first-person semi-hallucinatory novel is a potent stream of consciousness through which the poets of Mexico rage and swirl. Filled with wild, dark literary prophecies, heroic poets, mad poets, artists ‘choked by the brilliance of youth’, Auxilio’s passionate narration – both heart-breaking and lyrical – is suffused with the essence of Bolano’s art.