Elena Garro is one of the most innovative contemporary writers in Mexico. Garro developed her literary career in Europe, yet her works always evoke the elusive and mysterious, qualities crucial to the mask that according to Octavio Paz comprises a Mexican identity. Garro's writings can be divided into two periods. The first is characterized by the search for the marvelous, the poetic treatment of time, and inquiry into the female imagination. In the second phase her works evince the psychological disintegration and societal breakup of the contemporary world. Though many of Garro's later works may have been conceived much earlier, there is undoubtedly a connection between an early Mexican period and a later postmodern style that seems to emerge from the author's exile in Europe.

Since the facts of Garro's biography are scarce, critics are left to speculate as to the correspondences between her creative work and her...