Distant Relations

novel by Fuentes

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Article History

Distant Relations, experimental novel by Carlos Fuentes, published in 1980 as Una familia lejana, exploring the idea of alternate and shifting realities.

The main portion of the novel—which one writer characterized as a “metaphysical ghost story”—is told to the narrator one afternoon in Paris by a highly cultured French aristocrat, the Comte de Branly. Branly explains that, while visiting Toltec ruins in Mexico, he had befriended the archaeologist Hugo Heredia and his son Víctor. Months later, he meets a Frenchman also named Victor Heredia, and the author offers a string of strange conjunctions and unlikely coincidences. At the novel’s close, the narrator is revealed to be the double of Carlos Fuentes, living out an alternate life.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.