Can you narrate a country, that entelechy? Is it possible to articulate with words the motley sum of confusions that boils under the sad or hollow solemnity of a flag? Maybe not. Someone, however, has managed to narrate the persecution of that story and turn it into the great discovery. A man contemplates the road: “It would be a relief to have a mission. But I do not aspire to so much he writes. I'd be content to know what I'm looking for. Maybe down the road I'll get it." He gets it because he will find the search. The Interior is the dilated fog suspended behind the backs of the homelands that boast of their façade. The exterior of Argentina is called Buenos Aires: beyond it begins oblivion. Martín Caparrós came out to meet him armed with the trade of great storytellers (a good pen and a better ear); he contemplated it in pious churches and sordid brothels, on dusty roads, distant villages, farms, hospitals and ravines; he heard it in criminals and jailers, optimists and desperate, victims and executioners, masters and pawns, saints and whores. Where are the longed for essences? "When I hear the word essence I take out my revolver," the traveler replies. There are other no less essential questions and other literally adventurous answers. This book is the chronicle of those adventures and a melancholy. A relentless testimony. An impeccable melancholy.