Acapulcalypse

Patrick Parrinder

  • Christopher Unborn by Carlos Fuentes, translated by Alfred MacAdam
    Deutsch, 531 pp, £13.95, October 1989, ISBN 0 233 98016 4
  • The Faber Book of Contemporary Latin American Short Stories edited by Nick Caistor
    Faber, 188 pp, £11.99, September 1989, ISBN 0 571 15359 3
  • Hollywood by Gore Vidal
    Deutsch, 543 pp, £12.95, November 1989, ISBN 0 233 98495 X
  • Oldest living Confederate widow tells all by Allan Gurganus
    Faber, 718 pp, £12.99, November 1989, ISBN 0 571 14201 X

Christopher, the new Columbus, is conceived on a beach at Acapulco at the beginning of 1992. Mexico’s overseas debt stands at $1492 billion, soon to rise to $1992 billion, and the Yucatan peninsula has been ceded to the Club Mediterranée in the vain hope of paying the interest. The population of Mexico, or Makesicko, City has reached thirty million human beings and four times as many rats. Further north, the greater part of the old republic has been annexed by the United States, and further north still the Last Playboy Centerfold Contest is being held in Chicago – perhaps the one cheerful prophecy that Carlos Fuentes has to offer. Meanwhile, Chile is struck by a catastrophic earthquake, so that the whole country together with General Pinochet (who is still its leader) dissolves like a sugar lump into the sea.

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[*] Aura will be published in Britain for the first time, by Deutsch, next April.