The great virgin literary landscape of Latin America for a long time lay unspoiled, beckoning European writers with a taste for the exotic … to use it to build a complete little world for themselves. No one knew Latin America and therefore they were as free to invent as science fiction writers…. [The] European reader wanted exotica from Spanish and Portuguese America; the US reader wanted treacherous greaseballs and sexy dames.

They certainly got it. Those of us who knew Latin America first-hand waited and, generally speaking, we are still waiting for the realistic novel. Borges, it has always seemed to me, is as festooned with exotic literary flowers as any European hack sitting at home imagining Latin America.

Not a single lover of the bizarre is going to be disappointed by José Donoso, the Childean heir to Borges and Márquez. [A House in the Country] is not...