FUENTES, Carlos - Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins - (Hardcover in Wrapper)

Did belong to a library before but book and wrapper survived surprisingly well.    >>>    Although there are virgins aplenty in this collection - from mannequins to Madonnas - the author's principal theme is the collision of different worlds.  In The Prisoner of Las Lomas, a rich entrepreneur is held captive in his mansion by a dispossessed family;  in Constancia, the narrator finds himself in bed with a ghost.  Fuentes's genius lies not only in the sleights of hand by which he achieves his strange connections, but also in the intricate way that he explores their potential as metaphors (a wooden doll comes to represent a real woman, Mexico and the poet's art).  Viva Mi Fama in particular - a dense, haunting exposition of one of Goya's paintings - shows him at his imaginative and lyrical best.   (Anthony Gardner on Goodreads)  >>>   Carlos Fuentes Macías was a Mexican writer and one of the best-known novelists and essayists of the 20th century in the Spanish-speaking world. Fuentes influenced contemporary Latin American literature, and his works have been widely translated into English and other languages.