A leftist activist is chased by the police in 60's Mexico, and so he decides to flee the city and seek refuge in a small town, where his uncle and cousins live. He is absolutely penniless, but his uncle is the town's richest man. He is happy to see his nephew again, but the cousins are hostile and suspicious of his presence. Marcos -the nephew- tells his uncle he needs his help to make a big business that will give them both a lot of money (the business, of course, does not exist). The uncle decides to help him, and suddenly strange and dangerous things begin to happen. With all the lies he tells, the passions he arouses, his own passions, and the ambition of his cousins, Marcos provokes two crimes, and an extraordinary plot which develops in the midst of low and turbulent affairs.

Ibarguengoitia has a splendid use of the language, simple and cynical. As in his other, much-recommended novels, in this one he creates real characters, flesh and blood, as well as hilarious situations. This novel is a permanent sarcasm.

It is a pity that AVON-Bard series went bottoms up and took with it this great novel by the "King of Black Humor," Jorge Ibarguengoitia, famed Mexican fiction writer and columnist-his country's H. L. Mencken. The novel is short but many things and ever exciting: a satire of 60's style politics, both of the crooked establishment and the pretentious left, an erotic adventure story and a who-done-it told by an unreliable narrator.

Ernie Rehder erehder@mailer.fsu.edu

En este libro se reúnen los artículos que escribió Jorge Ibarguengoitia en un periodo de casi 8 años para el periódico Excélsior. La aparición de este libro se hace gracias a una compilación efectuada a 14 años de su muerte. Aparece plasmado en cada uno de sus artículos el humor característico del autor, toca temas actuales y comunes, dentro de los cuales hace un retrato de la vida de los años setenta en México.

This book is the first translation into English of Ibarguengoitia's works. It begins from a fact, the police find the bodies of six prostitutes buried in the yard of a brothel. From that fact, the book goes on to build a work of fiction, painting a picture about what might have happened to build the situation. The novel is well-written, but slight, and the pacing is odd, which makes the book difficult to enter.

This novel is based on a true story, which happened in Central Mexico in the 60's. It is the famous story of "Las Poquianchis", a couple of sisters from Guanajuato state, who successfully ran a number of brothels, always with the complacency of local authorities (at one scene, the mayor of a town cuts the ribbon of a new one, but then gets drunk and disgraces himself in a hilarious way). A series of unfortunate accidents, as well as stupid actions, bring the sisters' luck down, and then hell breaks loose.

This sordid story serves perfectly for another fictionalized account by the master of subtle, cynical humor, unfortunately little known out of Mexico (unfortunate for the potential readers). This is a small masterpiece of an objective, cold, cynical, sarcastic and great narrative. The characters are perfectly believable and Ibargüengoitia's stand as narrator is completely absent, dettached. Probably the best parts are the first-person accounts of people involved in the murders and their cover-ups. The trivial incidents are at the same time absolutely hilarious, disgusting and relevant to the plot. If you like this one, go further and read other works by this author, like "Two crimes", "Lopez's steps", "The lightnings of August" or "Kill the lion". They're all wonderful and intelligent sense of humor, with a pessimistic and dark twist.

The best thing about his writing is that he is Never trying to be funny. You get the feeling that the stories may be ludicrous, but the author is simply telling them the way they were. If you find them funny, that's your issue. It is that precisely which makes them funnier: in real life, stupid and humorous thing happen, without any need for inventing them. Life, says Ibargüengoitia, is absurd in every detail. Check it out.

Every title J. Ibargüengoitia wrote is great. He is usually refered to as the best humorist of his generation, and he is. But when he undertook the chore of writing about a real life escenario, and a rather morbid one at that, the public and the critics didn't know how to react. Still, this novel has very humorous moments, but beware: funny things are not meant only to cause a good laugh. The best humorists are moralists, they say. If not a moralist, Ibargüengoitia is a deep critic of the mexican society its civil heroes and history.