Fuentes, Carlos

(Mexican, 1928– )

Educated at the University of Mexico and in Geneva, Fuentes worked for many years as a diplomat, before taking up a series of professorships around the world. Start with The Crystal Frontier (1998), a novel in nine interlacing stories which portray the lives of individuals both provided for and ruined by the Mexican-American border. A more daring novel, perhaps, is Terra Nostra (1975) with its enveloping fusion of fact and fiction centring on Philip II of Spain (Felipe, El Señor). In this account Felipe builds El Escorial, marries England's Elizabeth Tudor, and witnesses the discovery of the New World. Blending the miraculous and fantastic with the grim and the grotesque, it stands as a sustained allegory, encapsulating both the promise of the New World and the corrupt decline of Spanish glory.

Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges. See MAGIC REALISM  RP