Chico Buarque, a Brazilian writer best known for his music, begins this pleasantly surreal novel by asking you to believe that there is an annual ghostwriting conference. But he does so with such nonchalant confidence that you don't realize you're being led down a rabbit hole. Or rather, you don't mind.

The narrator, Jose Costa, himself a ghostwriter, travels from Rio to Budapest to meet and cavort with his comrades in the hidden-artist business, but he gets waylaid at the airport and stays in Budapest much longer than he intended — becoming entranced with the language and with his various female tutors as the weeks stretch into months. Eventually, Costa returns home, and is swept up in a wonderfully unpredictable plot involving a memoir he ghostwrites, the fame it brings the "author," Costa's own shaky domestic life, and his obsession with the nuances of linguistic identification — fueled by a return trip to Hungary.

Despite such an indulgent plot, nothing in the novel seems improbable. Costa comments on the unfolding scenes with the sort of stranger-in-a-strange-land attention to detail that creates a dreamlike evenness; no single scene has greater magnitude than others, and the result is that nothing seems out of place. Irregular passages of time — long stretches slip by within pages, while hour-long scenes become entire chapters — enhance rather than distract from the intricate plot.

Having written a novel of ideas, Buarque is certainly trying to make a point, but the novel doesn't march toward a self-righteous, predetermined, sweeping conclusion. Costa the ghostwriter resembles an actor who sheds one character for another, although his key to each new identity is language. There's a hint of tragedy in Costa's tale: the sad fact that the journey from one identity to another will never end, if only because life would become unbearably mundane. Every time Costa boards a plane or puts pen to paper, the reader is invited to join him as he confronts issues of identity, nationality, and personal narrative.

-Tom Roberge