Zona

Zona is Geoff Dyer's appreciation of the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker. As in his other nonfiction books, Dyer illuminates the subject by making connections between it and passingly related works or experiences. An account of the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks, for example, also describes a leaky, ominous tunnel in the 1979 film: "The darkness grew loud with the sound of falling water, which turned out to be bands of mysterious subterranean rain ... falling from the confusion of ruin overhead." To hear Dyer tell it, cinema was invented to allow this film to be made. But if his claims stretch too far, or he takes a personal detour that seems odd, most readers will not mind. Such is the latitude given a great stylist.