Walk through Luisa Valenzuela's Open Door and into a world both lush and sinister. ?Cat's Eye? is a glittering, fearful story, sinuous like the panther that lurks in the central character's eye, in ?Country Carnival? we see the military-hero turned costumed surrealist arrive at the country carnival to upset the local women. In ?Legend? Jos? Maria and Maria Jos? are unhappy twins in a single, gender-confused body, and ?City of the Unknown? is a journey into the illusion of reality. From a dusty town in rural Argentina to the caverns of New York, Open Door admits the reader into a world of finely-crafted prose. Her black humour reveals a society dominated by male violence and militarism and shows why Luisa Valenzuela is, in the words of Carlos Fuentes, 'the heiress of Latin American ficition'.