El beso de la mujer araña

The scheme of this novel is brilliantly simple. It is configured as a succession of dialogue scenes between two prisoners confined in the same cell of a Buenos Aires prison. Thus, Martín, a homosexual with a great imagination, will relate old film melodramas to Valentín, a political activist and idealist, to relieve him of the effects of the torture sessions to which the political police of the dictatorship subject him. In the conversation of the prisoners, Puig takes one of his most original narrative procedures to its final consequences: the use of elements of pop culture as an objective correlate of the experiences of the protagonists. The confrontation between the two men will be resolved in a deep inner transformation, to close in a sterile sacrifice only in appearance: immolating themselves they will finally see their true face, they will become themselves.