cover image Oro

Oro

Cizia Zyke. St. Martin's Press, $15.95 (281pp) ISBN 978-0-312-00093-6

Born in Morocco of Albanian descent, Zyke has had a life of daring and adventure on several continents, earning money by gambling, fighting and other activities that skirted lawlessness. This book concerns his doings in Costa Rica, where he followed rumors of an exceedingly rich source of gold in that country's mountainous jungle and found them to be true. And so, surrounded by mud, snakes, malaria-carrying mosquitoes and jealous rival prospectors, he set up a camp, peopled by ex-convicts and fugitives, to mine gold. Zyke's venture prospered for a while, until his fellow entrepreneurs betrayed him to the police, who charged him with drug trafficking, counterfeiting and intimidation. While awaiting trial, he fled to Panama with only 3000 grams of gold as a souvenir of his Costa Rican mine. The story of Zyke's wenching, drinking and drug-taking is hardly unique in the contemporary world, but Oro was a bestseller in France, perhaps due to its racy situations and lively, slangy prose. Author tour. (June 16)