The novels in this collection, written by Perla Suez in Spanish and expertly translated here to English by Rhonda Dahl Buchanan, take place in Entre Rios, the Argentine province where thousands of Jewish immigrants settled at the end of the nineteenth century. Suez weaves history and memory in these tales of passion, violence, and intrigue. Deborah, the protagonist of "Lethargy," narrates the traumatic experiences of her youth in Basavilbaso, and captures the stifling atmosphere of intolerance and repression during the 1950s. In "The Arrest", Lucien Finz, a young Jewish farmer, leaves the rice fields of Villa Clara to study medicine in Buenos Aires, where he becomes a victim of 'La Semana Tragica,' the 'Tragic Week' in January of 1919, when government forces arrested, tortured, and murdered striking workers and many innocent people. "Complot" is an intricate web of lust, deceit, murder, and power, which spans the first three decades of the twentieth century, when Great Britain influenced the growth of the Argentine nation.
