Identical twin spinsters, Gloria and Constitución Gamal, enjoy their successful tailoring business in rural Mexico and take particular thrills in confusing people. When a new suitor arrives, one sister decides she wants all the benefits of true romance, and the competition between them boils.

"Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor-an attractive married woman and mother-while Polo dreams about quitting his grueling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he...

"This landmark novella -one of the central texts of Mexican literature, is eerily relevant to our current dark times- offers a child's-eye view of a society beset by dictators, disease, and natural disasters, set in 'the year of polio, foot-and- mouth disease, floods.' A middle-class boy grows up in a world of children aping adults (mock wars at recess pit Arabs against Jews), where a child's left to ponder "how many evils and catastrophes we have...