First printing. Fine in a fine dustjacket. (box 167)

First printing. Fine in a fine dustjacket. (box 167)

0374173974. Cover has light wear with a tiny ding along lower front edge.

0374173974. Cover has light wear with a tiny ding along lower front edge. Dustjacket has minor edge wear with a small creased and torn section along top edge of front panel.; 8vo 8"-9" tall; 291 pages.

First edition copy. Collectible-Very Good. Very Good dust jacket. In protective mylar cover. (mystery, spy)

First edition copy. Collectible-Very Good. Very Good dust jacket. In protective mylar cover. (mystery, spy)

New York. 1978. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Printing. Very Good in

New York. 1978. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Printing. Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket W/Some Tears. 0374173974. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. 292 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Honi Werner. keywords: Latin America Mexico Literature Translated World Literature. DESCRIPTION-A Third World spy thriller, action-filled, quick-paced, and terse novel of intrigue from Carlos Fuentes. One fateful morning, Felix Maldonado, a minor official in the Mexican bureaucracy, steps into a nightmare world in which he is ensnared in a murder he never intended: the assassination of the President. As he is gradually divested of his identity, he struggles between his Dostoevskian frenzy for affirmation and the Kafkaesque passivity of oblivion others try to impose on him: the Director General of his Ministry, who first proposes that Felix surrender his name in exchange for his life; the fat economics professor, Bernstein, who believes a man is recognized only when he is not being hunted down; and the ambiguous master spy, ‘Timon, ' who prefers defeat to success. They are surrounded by a cast of twilight figures: Ayub, a Lebanese punk; the posturing coward Rossetti and his ambitious wife, Angelica, a lady with a penchant for adventures in swimming pools; Licha, a sensual but unsatisfied nurse; the teenage Mexican agents Rosita and Emiliano; and the women in Felix's life, all three Jewish: Ruth, his wife; Sara Klein, a survivor of the Holocaust; and Mary Benjamin, who tortures her ugly merchant husband with her infidelities. Set in the houses of the rich and in sleazy hotels and sinister hospitals in Mexico City, in the steamy Gulf ports of Coatzacoalcos and Galveston and the luxury clubs and corporate offices of Houston, THE HYDRA HEAD has a constant political reality as backdrop: the permanent tension in the Middle East and the vast new oil resources of Mexico. Behind the individual drives for power, justice, money, love, or simple survival lurk the cold imperatives of the international chessboard and its masked players. inventory #25993.

First edition. Fine in very good or better price-clipped dust jacket with a

First edition. Fine in very good or better price-clipped dust jacket with a tear near the bottom of the spine, nick at the crown and indentation on the rear wrap at the gutter.