Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun

<p><i>The ear is the organ of fear. It is a door to that which is not of this world.</i><br><br>Leaving behind the dread and decay of the city, Noa and her best friend, Nicole, travel up into the Andes, heading for Solar Noise: an eight-day festival that takes place on the side of a volcano, in the infinite expanse of the páramo. A world of mysticism and underground music, in tune with the thunder of the earth and the bellows of the mountains.<br><br>Noa has been drawn there in search of her father, who, wrestling with the violence of Ecuador, abandoned her as a child. But soon after their arrival at the festival, Noa appears possessed, speaking in a voice that is not her own. Believing Noa to be in danger, Nicole struggles to care for her friend. Until, as the party spills into Inti Raymi - the Incan festival of the sun - the girls' desire for belonging burns, incandescent, collapsing the thin membrane separating life from death, and trauma from transcendence.<br><br> Wild and incantatory, <i>Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun</i> is both an hallucinogenic trip of a novel, and a heartfelt meditation on love, family and kinship - one that announces the arrival of a major writer.</p>