This biting commentary on the follies of mankind by a noted Mexican author cuts deeply yet leaves readers laughing--at themselves as well as at others. With his surgical intelligence, Juan Jose Arreola exposes the shams and hypocrisies, the false values and vices, the hidden diseases of society. Confabulario total, 1941-1961, of which this book is a translation, combines three earlier books--Varia invencion (1949), Confabulario (1952), Punta de plata (1958)--and numerous later pieces.

Although some of the pieces have a noticeably...