Julio Ramón Ribeyro

Alienación

After being rejected by the girl of his dreams because of the color of his skin, Roberto Lopez will be transformed from a brown-skinned Peruvian into a blond American.

Fallen from Heaven

An ambitious black comedy that tells three loosely related stories: a couple of elderly landowners, laid low by economic conditions and reformist politics, are trying to gather enough money to build themselves a marble tomb that would keep their remains in the style to which they still aspire; they give their now blind former housekeeper a pig that proves to be more trouble than it's worth as the effort to fatten it up destroys what little family the woman has; and one of the couple's tenants, who is presenter of a relentlessly optimistic radio self-help show, tries to put his own counsel into effect when he saves a young woman from suicide.