El naranjo / The Orange Tree
Short stories and novellas , 1993
Alfaguara
Pages: 264
The characters in these stories risk their lives and suffer injustice without realizing their ambitions: a Portuguese sailor throws a bottle into the sea, a Spanish soldier lives amongst indigenous people and is an interpreter for the Spanish Cortés, a noble Greek who sets siege to Numancia, a son of Cortés who is implicated in a conspiracy against the king and a Hollywood actor who visits a brothel in Acapulco. The author shows the poverty caused by the colonization of the Americas, the horrors of wars in Europe and the exotic features of the contemporary world through the emblematic figure of the orange tree, a symbol of miscegenation.