Though Manuel Puig has most recently come to the attention of the general public through the successful 1985 filming of his novel El beso de la mujer araña (1976; translated as Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1979), he has been a well-known figure in Latin-American letters since the late 1960s, when he began to publish his experimental novels. Puig's work exemplifies modern Latin-American writing's most adventurous contribution to contemporary literary trends, which include a return to popular culture. His writing pertains to the traditions of both "high" and "low" art, and leads readers to examine the distinctions between these traditions and the hierarchy of values implicit in their labels. Puig's writing challenges conventional notions of literature and art as it draws on literary, subliterary, and nonliterary forms and languages to fashion new narrative models and radical ways of thinking about fiction.

Since the publication of his first novel, La...