Each protagonist is a political leader, in "The Prince" an adventurer on the model of Cesare Borgia, in "Mandragon" a charismatic like Savonarola. For the subject of "The Dissertation" political ambition is a disease, yet he accepts leadership when it is thrust upon him. Koster's storytelling seems heavily influenced by Vladimir Nabokov and the magical realists such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The prose abounds with flights of fancy, spectacular allusions to literature, chess terms, world history and theology, along with multiple puns in Spanish and English. The existence of the supernatural is taken for granted: President Sancudo's astrology-directed campaign is immensely successful; Camilo Fuertes's interviews with ghosts yield provable facts; Mandragon successfully extracts cancer tumors from patients. The tone is relentlessly black-comic but many of the base events portrayed—elections, smuggling, war—seem perfectly plausible.