Carlos Fuentes has been called "the
Balzac of Mexico". Fuentes himself cited
Miguel de Cervantes,
William Faulkner and Balzac as the most important writers to him. He also named Latin American writers such as
Alejo Carpentier,
Juan Carlos Onetti,
Miguel Angel Asturias and
Jorge Luis Borges. European modernists
James Joyce,
Virginia Woolf and
Marcel Proust have also been cited as important influences on his writing, with Fuentes applying the influence from them on his main theme, Mexican history and identity.
Early works Fuentes' first novel,
Where the Air Is Clear (
La región más transparente), was an immediate success upon its publication in 1958. The novel was celebrated not only for its prose, which made heavy use of interior monologue and explorations of the subconscious, A year later, he followed with another novel,
The Good Conscience (
Las Buenas Conciencias), which depicted the privileged middle classes of a medium-sized town, probably modeled on
Guanajuato. Described by a contemporary reviewer as "the classic Marxist novel", it tells the story of a privileged young man whose impulses toward social equality are suffocated by his family's materialism.
Latin American boom Fuentes was regarded as a leading figure of the
Latin American boom in the 1960s and 1970s along with
Gabriel García Márquez,
Mario Vargas Llosa and
Julio Cortázar. The novel explores the corrupting effects of power and criticizes the distortion of the revolutionaries' original aims through "class domination, Americanization, financial corruption, and failure of land reform". A prolific writer, Fuentes' subsequent work in the 1960s include the novel
Aura (1962), the short story collection
Cantar de Ciego (1966), the novella
Zona Sagrada (1967) and
A Change of Skin (1967), an ambitious novel that attempts to define a collective Mexican consciousness by exploring and reinterpreting the country's myths. Fuentes' 1975
Terra Nostra, perhaps his most ambitious novel, is described as a "massive, Byzantine work" that tells the story of all Hispanic civilization.
Later works Fuentes' 1985 novel
The Old Gringo (
Gringo viejo), loosely based on American author
Ambrose Bierce's disappearance during the
Mexican Revolution, The novel tells the story of Harriet Winslow, a young American woman who travels to Mexico, and finds herself in the company of an aging American journalist (called only "the old
gringo") and Tomás Arroyo, a revolutionary general. Like many of Fuentes' works, it explores the way in which revolutionary ideals become corrupted, as Arroyo chooses to pursue the deed to an estate where he once worked as a servant rather than follow the goals of the revolution. In 1989, the novel was adapted into the U.S. film
Old Gringo starring
Gregory Peck,
Jane Fonda, and
Jimmy Smits. In the mid-1980s, Fuentes began to conceptualize his total fiction, past and future, in fourteen cycles called "La Edad del Tiempo", explaining that his total work was a lengthy reflection on time. The plan for the cycle first appeared as a page in the Spanish edition of his satirical novel
Christopher Unborn in 1987, and as a page in his subsequent books with minor revisions to the original plan. In 1992, Fuentes published
The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World, an historical essay that attempts to cover the entire cultural history of Spain and Latin America. The book was a complement to a
Discovery Channel and
BBC television series by the same name. Fuentes work of nonfiction also include
La nueva novela hispanoamericana (1969; “The New Hispano-American Novel”), which is his chief work of literary criticism, and
Cervantes; o, la critica de la lectura (1976; “Cervantes; or, The Critique of Reading”), an homage to the Spanish writer
Miguel de Cervantes. His later novels include
Inez (2001), ''The Eagle's Throne
(2002) and Destiny and Desire'' (2008). His writing also include several collections of stories, essays and plays. Mexican historian
Enrique Krauze was a vigorous critic of Fuentes and his fiction, dubbing him a "guerrilla dandy" in a 1988 article for the perceived gap between his Marxist politics and his personal lifestyle. Krauze accused Fuentes of selling out to the PRI government and being "out of touch with Mexico", exaggerating its people to appeal to foreign audiences: "There is the suspicion in Mexico that Fuentes merely uses Mexico as a theme, distorting it for a North American public, claiming credentials that he does not have." The essay, published in
Octavio Paz's magazine
Vuelta, began a feud between Paz and Fuentes that lasted until Paz's death. ==Political views==