Fuentes's meta-thriller [The Hydra Head] takes the Arab-Israeli conflict as its paradigm of political dirty tricks; Mexican oil-fields, Mexican men and their passions are no more than the organisms on which violation and revenge feed. However many heads the human Hydra grows, 'the two-headed eagle laughs and devours' them.

This double-headed eagle—America/Russia—may be the final control on Felix, The Hydra Head's 'unconscious hero', but it takes him a long, convoluted journey to find it out. A Mexican convert to Judaism, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Diego Velasquez, Felix one day steps out of a taxi full of hidden assignations and into a lost identity. No one in his office at the Ministry of Economic Affairs knows who he is. The parallel with Kafka, though, is fleeting: Fuentes shares something of the bite of K's narrative, but offers more fierce gusto—as well as more sex. (p. 334)

The Hydra Head is gripping, not least because of its sharply focused political discussions, whose dialectic is reminiscent of The Magic Mountain. (p. 335)