This interesting novel by a well-established writer takes place simultaneously in Monterrey and, in a somewhat fantastical way, in the city of its title ("Ko nigsberg" is the German-language counterpart to "Monterrey") during the last year of WWII. With Anna Seghers' "The Outing of the Dead Girls" (1946) (written by Seghers in Mexico) as a clear but unnamed intertext, Toscana's novel centers on the disappearance of the narrator's sister and her classmates in Monterrey and different representations and echoes of the girls' disappearance, including the mass rape and murder of women and girls during the Soviet siege of Ko nigsberg. Mexico's position vis-a -vis global culture and politics is an important theme, characterized by a frustrated desire for protagonism.