"This collection of essays, written in clear critical discourse, is a practical tool for first-time or hesitant Eltit readers who seek discussion of a particular book or books and are not familiar with the author's entire production."--BOOK JACKET.

A victimized woman victimizes by identical means: alienating surveillance, of her son and herself.

Chile's prize-winning novel of rebellious defiance in revolutionary prose--a feminist triumph of Joycean stature.

Ana spent one perfect night with Manuel. She told me about it quite unexpectedly, knowing in advance how hopelessly caught up I would become in her reminiscences. She went into a detailed description of her expensive, provocative outfit, and I could visualise her walking forward, her legs deliberately restricted by her shiny black dress. Ana confessed that she was so driven by her depraved desire that night that she consciously sought to focus people's looks on the violent rippling of her thighs, barely disguised beneath the shiny black material. I watched her smiling and it hurt.'As the forces of political repression encircle Santiago, the capital of Chile, the narrator raises the question of the relationship between her sexual cravings and fantasies and the domination of women in Chilean society. Sacred Cow is an intense, erotic unveiling of the human psyche.

One out of every six human beings lives in a very hidden world - the world of slums. Filmed on five continents, 'The Fourth World' takes viewers deep inside this hidden world, a world the United Nations says could triple in the next 30 years.

During the age of dictatorships, Latin American prisons became a symbol for the vanquishing of political opponents, many of whom were never seen again. In the postdictatorship era of the 1990s, a number of these prisons were repurposed into shopping malls, museums, and memorials. Susana Draper uses the phenomenon of the "opening" of prisons and detention centers to begin a dialog on conceptualizations of democracy and freedom in post-dictatorship Latin America. Focusing on the Southern Cone nations of Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina, Draper examines key works in architecture, film, and literature to peel away the veiled continuity of dictatorial power structures in ensuing consumer cultures. The afterlife of prisons became an important tool in the "forgetting" of past politics, while also serving as a reminder to citizens of the liberties they now enjoyed. In Draper's analysis, these symbols led the populace to believe they had attained freedom, although they had only witnessed the veneer of democracy—in the ability to vote and consume. In selected literary works by Roberto Bola–o, Eleuterio Fernandez Huidoboro, and Diamela Eltit and films by Alejandro Agresti and Marco Bechis, Draper finds further evidence of the emptiness and melancholy of underachieved goals in the afterlife of dictatorships. The social changes that did not occur, the inability to effectively mourn the losses of a now-hidden past, the homogenizing effects of market economies, and a yearning for the promises of true freedom are thematic currents underlying much of these texts. Draper's study of the manipulation of culture and consumerism under the guise of democracy will have powerful implications not only for Latin Americanists but also for those studying neoliberal transformations globally.

DIVTranslations of texts by important Latin American women playwrights, and performance artists, together with essays about their work./div