With his new novel, The Death of Artemio Cruz, Fuentes has tightened his narrative line and made his meaning unmistakable. His purpose is to show, through the story of one man, how the ruling class of present-day Mexico has been shaped in the crucible years from the beginning of the century to the present.

On a spring day in 1959, Artemio Cruz lies stricken by a sudden gastric attack in his house in Mexico City's fashionable Lomas district. Artemio is a fat cat, with a paw in every political and financial pie in the country. (p. 558)

Artemio's story of rape and rapine, greed and lust, brutal infighting and clever string-pulling, is an uncannily accurate view of the robber barons of Mexico….

[For the] evocations of the past, Fuentes uses the third person. There are two other voices, for the present and the future respectively. Artemio speaks as "I" of...