SOURCE: Mora, Gabriela. “Enigmas and Subversions in Cristina Peri Rossi's La nave de los locos [Ship of Fools.]” In Splintering Darkness: Latin American Women Writers in Search of Themselves, edited by Lucia Guerra Cunningham, pp. 19–30. Pittsburgh: Latin American Literary Review Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Mora provides a thematic and stylistic analysis of La nave de los locos, focusing on the story's ambiguity and emphasis on harmony.

The Uruguayan Cristina Peri Rossi has published four books of poetry and eight of prose including two novels and six collections of stories. Committed to change in literature, politics and sexual mores, Peri Rossi breaks generic modes and traditional patterns and speaks with great imagination against oppression and the abuse of power.¹ The author's political and artistic sophistication, evident in her first novel El libro de mis primos [My Cousins' Book], are found again in La nave de los locos [Ship...