What is a woman to do? Mean Woman raises and answers the question time and again. The female characters in the novel rule countries, are oppressed, and rise again individually and in groups. Shifting scenes of Latin American politics are evoked in kaleidoscopic play. Swaggering heroines of tango, the Argentines Eva and Isabelita Peron, the itinerant Filipina Imelda Marcos, and their male consorts may be glimpsed in a vision whose sustained humor dazzles us with the conundrums of violence, machismo, and exile.

Translated by: Cola Franzen
Introduction by: Cola Franzen