Aventura

In het hedendaagse Pakistan, met zijn grote tegenstelling tussen rijk en arm, zijn machtsstrijd, politiek gekonkel en corruptie dagelijks voorkomende verschijnselen.

The central character in this powerful and unforgiving novel is Ida Mancuso, a schoolteacher whose husband has died and whose feckless teenage son treats the war as his playground. A German soldier on his way to North Africa rapes her, falls in love with her, and leaves her pregnant with a boy whose survival becomes Ida's passion. Around these two other characters come and go, each caught up by the war which is like a river in flood. We catch glimpses of bombing raids, street crimes, a cattle car from which human cries emerge, an Italian soldier succumbing to frostbite on the Russian front, the dumb endurance of peasants who have lived their whole lives with nothing and now must get by with less than nothing.

Argentinian Puig will now command attention from readers not previously familiar with his fiction. In Pubis Angelical he interweaves three stories, the first about a beautiful Viennese actress held captive in a mysterious marriage to a World War II munitions maker. The second and most interesting story, since it encompasses a history of Peronism, concerns an Argentinian refugee, dying in a Mexico City hospital, and her conversations with an old friend and an old lover. The third narrative is a futuristic spy thriller about a secret agent called W218. The implication is that one of the three women is real, the others fantasies or projections. Feminist and political themes are clear; but, except for the moving story of the dying woman, the novel is more confusing than compelling. PW found this to be "a novel of feminine reverie and feminist polemic... revealing very little." --Janet Wiehe, Library Journal & Publishers Weekly.

This novel is set in Trinidad and explores the legacy of colonialism and slavery. The events are told from the point of view of a middle aged peasant woman named Eva. The characters of Bee the religious leader of the spiritual Baptist church in a rural village and Bolo who is disgusted that his people will not act against the Colonial Government controlling Trinidad chooses to intimidate and rob his fellow islanders.

A political novel with a Communist protagonist, Alejandro Mayta, who was a leader in the 1958 revolution.