Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Sergio Gabriel Waisman. The stories in ASSUMED NAME, written before the 1976 military coup d'etat in Argentina, invoke a stark socio-political situation that foreshadows the repressive dictatorship that the country was to suffer from 1976 to 1983. But the plight of the marginalized characters in these stories is also a universal one, as they search for ways to communicate and live with each other, and to come to terms with the reality in which they find themselves. "Assumed Name," the novella which gives its title to the collection, is a unique and fascinating piece--doubling at times as literary criticism--reminiscent of the style exemplified by Jorge Luis Borges' work. The author himself is the protagonist attempting to solve the mystery of an unpublished manuscript allegedly written by the Argentine writer Roberto Arlt.