Professor Julio Gamboa, the protagonist of Carlos Fonseca s latest novel, Austral, is summoned by post to the Humahuaca mountain valley in Argentina. Here, renowned writer and intimate from Julio s youth, Aliza Abravanel, retreated in her final days to complete a tetralogy on the elements. The landscape perfectly matches Abravanel s project: the sunbleached-rainbow striations of sedimentary rock give visual form to her book on earth, Strata, or, alternatively-titled, her Dictionary of Loss.