A Change of Skin (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Carlos Fuentes
- First Published: 1967
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Experimental
- Time of Work: April 11, 1965, Palm Sunday
- Setting: Mexico City, Xochicalco, and Cholula, Mexico
- Genres: Long fiction, Antistory
- Subjects: 1960’s, Traveling or travelers, Mythology or myths, Authors or writers, Mexico or Mexicans, Nazism or Nazis, Pyramids
- Locales: Mexico City, Mexico, Cholula, Mexico, Xochicalco, Mexico
Characters Discussed
Javier (hah-VYEHR), a middle-aged Mexican harboring aspirations of being a writer. He takes a drive with his American-born wife, Elizabeth; a friend, Franz; and Franz’s lover, Isabel, a young Mexican woman. Javier, who met Elizabeth when he was a student in New York City, is at once in love with and bored by her. Because of his ambivalence, he is taken in by the charms of Isabel, though in his imagination he sees her as a vacuous version of his wife. In this surrealistic novel, Javier may or may not have led Elizabeth and Franz to a terrible death inside...
[The entire page is 671 words long]
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