“This is more than a retranslation of a masterpiece. It amounts to a restoration: here is the magnificent book that Fuentes wrote originally, superbly rendered by Alfred Mac Adam into an English version that precisely meshes with Fuentes's Spanish.” —Douglas Day

“Carlos Fuentes is perhaps the only living Latin-American writer who has it in him to do for his country what Euclides da Cunha did for Brazil in Os Sertoes, and to make the passion of the land's rebirth and repossession comprehensible to the outsider.” —Anthony West, The New Yorker

“Remarkable, in the scope of the human drama it pictures, the corrosive satire and sharp dialogue.” —Mildred Adams, The New York Times Book Review