If Severo Sarduy's novels may be considered "coldly elusive," José Donoso's are "boldly hallucinogenic."…

Donoso's novels do not primarily describe places, events, and characters from the outside, but cram all of these elements into worlds of words, a world aware of its own verbal nature. More often then not his novels are complex and his characters fragmented and difficult to identify or distinguish from one another whether through their own dialogues or channeled through the consciousness of a narrator. Donoso's greatest gifts are his glorious flights of imagination, the frank revelation of his consciousness, the portrayal of his aesthetic sensations, and his profound insights into the realities elucidated through his startling prose. Language is the center of Donoso's novels, and Donoso abandons traditional plot, character, and thematic development in order to depict today's world in his own meaningful, spontaneous way, much in the spirit of the anti-novelists. (p...