considers doing this work as a great honor to himself personally, but also as perhaps the best chance yet of his attaining the ninth square in his lifelong game of spiritual, emotional, and metaphysical hopscotch. Characters The main character, Horacio Oliveira, is a well-read and loquacious bohemian. He enjoys a mostly intellectual participation in life, as is characterized by his general passivity towards his environment, and appears to be obsessed with attaining what is referred to as a unifying conception of life, or center in which he can contentedly exist. "La Maga" (a nickname, as her real name is Lucía) is a beguiling, intelligent being whose love of life and spontaneous nature challenge Horacio's ego as well as his assumptions about life. Oliveira's lover in Paris, she is lively, an active participant in her own adventures, and a stark contrast to Horacio's other friends, with whom he has formed a philosophical social circle called the Serpent Club. She eventually develops into an indispensable muse for Horacio and a lens he employs to examine himself and the world in a more three dimensional manner. La Maga also has an infant son, Rocamadour, whose appearance in France causes a crisis in the relationship between Lucía and Oliveira. Apart from Horacio and La Maga, the other members of the Serpent Club include Ossip Gregorovius, who is presented as a rival for Lucía's affections, the artists Perico Romero and Etienne, Etienne's friend Guy Monod, Wong, and Ronald and Babs (who are married). The club meets either in La Maga's apartment or the flat Ronald and Babs share. When Horacio returns to Argentina he is greeted by his old friend Manolo, nicknamed "Traveler", and his wife, Talita. The two are employed at a circus and seem to enjoy a mostly serene existence. Talita bears a striking similarity to Horacio's great love interest, La Maga, while Traveler is referred to as his "doppelgänger." The relationship that develops between the three centers around Oliveira's interest in Talita, which seems disingenuous, and Traveler's attempts to lessen Horacio's metaphysical burden. Oliveira desires to inhabit Traveler's life, while Traveler appears to be mostly concerned with his friend's deteriorating mental health. Other major characters include Pola, another Parisian love interest of Horacio's, who is diagnosed with breast cancer after being cursed by La Maga; Gekrepten, Horacio's lover in Argentina; and Morelli, an Italian writer much discussed by the Serpent Club. Minor