Sudden Death (Compact Disc)

Staff Reviews

We are in the midst of a new golden age of Mexican literature, and Sudden Death has opened up even more audacious paths for this most cosmopolitan storytelling. To retell the plot does the novel very little service --  which isn't to say it is plotless or even particuraly difficult to follow. Rather, it is tightly wound (not unlike the balls used in the epic duel of a tennis match that functions simultaneously as the novel's centerpiece and frame) and bounds expertly between centuries from Old World to New.

Sudden Death is, at its core, a very angry book -- specifically at the successes of the world's colonizers -- but it is an anger born of play and the centure of comedy. The bad guy may always win in the end, Enrigue sees resigned to say, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the losers' little victories along the way.