Fuentes's meta-thriller [The Hydra Head] takes the Arab-Israeli conflict as its paradigm of political dirty tricks; Mexican oil-fields, Mexican men and their passions are no more than the organisms on which violation and revenge feed. However many heads the human Hydra grows, 'the two-headed eagle laughs and devours' them.

This double-headed eagle—America/Russia—may be the final control on Felix, The Hydra Head's 'unconscious hero', but it takes him a long, convoluted journey to find it out. A Mexican convert to Judaism, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Diego Velasquez, Felix one day steps out of a taxi full of hidden assignations and into a lost identity. No one in his office at the Ministry of Economic Affairs knows who he is. The parallel with Kafka, though, is fleeting: Fuentes shares something of the bite of K's narrative, but offers more fierce gusto—as well as more...