The historical events gaudily disguised and deeply interred in ["The Lizard's Tail"], while recognizable enough, must be gleaned from the swirling, spiraling masses of language, image, metaphor, folklore, imaginative conceit, hallucination. One by one the events are exhumed: Eva (the "Venerated Dead Woman"); Isabel (the "Intruder" or "Madame President"); the Generalissimo; the succession of brutal, absurd, strutting, bloody-minded colonels and generals, pretenders and juntists who have made a nightmare of that enchanted dreamscape. Fantasy, myth, magical transformations, bizarre ritual, caustic satire prevail over any semblance of conventional narrative, much less plot. By turns exuberant, ribald, excessively self-indulgent, the novel is also modish in mocking some of the buzzwords and ideas of advanced literary theory and avant-garde writing: deconstruction, semiotics, textuality, direct entry by the author into the work. Readers may regard the novel as a stylish feat of imagination or as an exercise in literary chic, depending on...