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The art of letter writing is dead. And so, the epistolary novel is dead. Or dead in the form that Richardson and de Laclos imagined it. Technology has seen to that, or, at least, altered its literary conventions beyond remedy.
Who would take the trouble to write a structured epistle in prose when they could dial on the mobile, or exchange fragments of language by email or in text, and agree to meet over a glass of chardonnay to discuss the finer points later? Not Bridget Jones, for a start. A literary confection of messages, texts and emails is just about believable; but a whole novel of letters committed to paper and delivered by post? Impossible.
And yet. In The Eagle's Throne (Bloomsbury, £15.99) Carlos Fuentes, the august heavyweight of Mexican letters, has found a light, utterly convincing way to breathe
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The letter returns as a literary device in a country robbed of email, says tim auld
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life into the time-honoured form. How? By a brilliant sleight of futuristic hand. It's 2020 and, in a suicidal fit of isolationism, the president of Mexico has fallen out with America over the superpower's invasion of Colombia; he has also, more suicidal still, demanded that America pay more for guzzling Mexican oil. America's response is to shut down Mexico's satellite communication system, administered from Miami. At a stroke, the Latin American nation is deprived of electronic communication and its Machiavellian politicos must resort to snail-mail.
The double-crossing that ensues is compelling, and nicely layered with sexual frisson, even if the conclusion is no bombshell. It's strong satire - there must be some bruised egos in contemporary Mexican politics - and the reader is left longing for such clear, fearless political writing in British fiction. 
FIRST
POSTED FEBRUARY 20, 2006
More fiction: Turkish whorehouse
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