Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio's "The Adventures of Ingenious Alfanhui" is a book that promises much. Here, as an invitation, is the complete first paragraph, in Margaret Jull Costa's translation:
"One night, a weathercock, cut out of a sheet of metal, and which stands fixed, sideways on to the wind and has but a single eye which can be seen from either side, came down from the roof of the house and started searching the stones for lizards. It was a moonlit night, and the weathercock pecked the lizards to death with its iron beak. It hung them up on nails in staggered rows on the white, windowless wall that faces east. It put the largest one on the top row and the smallest ones on the bottom row. The lizards, though freshly dead, were nonetheless embarrassed, because the little gland that secretes the red of blushes or the yellow of embarrassment - for lizards turn cold and yellow when embarrassed - had not yet dried up."
P.S. I tried to read "Darkmans", I did. I think I might have actually read the first ten or twelve pages, it's not easy to remember... I don't feel guilty extrapolating from the experience. Bloated book; mediocre prose style; worthy contender for the Booker. Go read.
