According to a 1992 interview, the initial idea for a novel on this theme came after Fuentes encountered the work of Ambrose Bierce in his teens, and was one to which he occasionally returned over the decades.[4] Following publication, he commented that "What started this novel was my admiration for [Bierce] and for his Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. I was fascinated with the idea of a man who fought in the United States Civil War and dies in a Mexican civil war."[5] The novel was written originally in Spanish and Fuentes then worked closely with Margaret Sayers Peden on the English translation. Between the two versions there are some differences in wording and even in the number of chapters.[6]
Reviewers of the novel had difficulty with the postmodern rhetoric employed by Fuentes. The Los Angeles Times found it "not always easy to follow; perhaps his convulsive involvement with his native land prohibits that".[7] This is echoed by a comment in one encyclopedia that Fuentes' experiments in narrative are meant as a demonstration of the novel's master theme: the almost unbridgeable distance between the Hispanic and Anglo-American cultures.[8] Another critic sees in the novel "a negotiation of borders within and between selves and between and within countries", of which the mirrored ballroom that is all that remains of the Miranda hacienda is made the deceptive symbol.[9] Publishers Weekly summed it up by finding that, "in this fine short novel, Fuentes remains, as usual, wisely suspicious of both American politics and those of the Revolution".[10]
One key incident, however, is not of the novelist's invention. The murder, exhumation and posthumous execution of Bierce is based on the actual killing of the Englishman William Benton by one of Pancho Villa's generals in 1910.[11] In reality, no one really knows what became of Bierce, thus allowing Fuentes to make of his fate an existential parable of personal choice and redemption.[12]
