SOURCE: Boldy, Steven. “La tierra de nadie or La región más transparente: Onetti and Fuentes.” In Onetti and Others: Comparative Essays on a Major Figure in Latin American Literature, edited by Gustavo San Román, pp. 21-34. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Boldy explores similarities between Onetti's La tierra de nadie and Carlos Fuentes's La región más transparente despite the rapidly changing political and social climates of their respective times of publication.

The first full-length novel by Juan Carlos Onetti, Tierra de nadie [No Man's Land], from 1941, and Carlos Fuentes's first novel La región más transparente [Where the Air is Clear], from 1958, have as much in common as they are disparate in style and tone. Both are landmark novels about a city and a country: Buenos Aires and Argentina (and by extension the River Plate area...