Battles in the Desert (40th Anniversary Edition)

This heart-breaking novella is a key work of 20th-century dystopian Mexican literature and sadly all too apropos today

This landmark novella—one of the central texts of Mexican literature, is eerily relevant to our current dark times—offers a child’s-eye view of a society beset by dictators, disease, and natural disasters, set in “the year of polio, foot-and-mouth disease, floods.” A middle-class boy grows up in a world of children aping adults (mock wars at recess pit Arabs against Jews), w...