The novel interweaves the personal story of Richard Garay, a gay Argentinian man with an English mother, and the political history of Argentina through the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.

Told entirely in the first person, the novel presents a wholly convincing picture of a character who could almost be described as an anti-hero, and who distills not just the Argentinian but the global late 20th century mix of sexual and economic "freedoms" in a single life: a "story of the night" lights otherwise shadowy places.

[1] The novel is split into three parts across various settings in Argentina and in Barcelona, and takes place in both domestic and public spaces.

Richard experienced a lack of political awareness before the war when the generals were in power, but he recalls one time he was having sex with a dark-haired man and heard a revving sound outside.

When Richard asked his partner what the noise was, he responded that the police station opposite were using a car to power cattle rods for torture.

His mother's family immigrated from England to Argentina when she was a child and, as a result, Richard himself felt he was English growing up.

Back at home his mother finds a job working in a "very refined" hotel, and is given some money by the English community in Buenos Aires to tide her over.

Richard is at these dinners when important political changes happen; when Alfonsin is elected president, when the generals are put on trial etc.

After this party he meets with Susan privately where they talk intimately; Richard tells her about his parents deaths and his relationship with his father.

Jorge is unsubtle about his relationship with Susan, and the way he flaunts their affair echoes back to his actions in Barcelona.

Canetto introduces Richard to an investment banker who will lend him large sums at a good rate of interest.

When Richard takes Pablo to visit his parents grave he thinks that after years of missing them and being alone he is finally content.

Richard goes to Miami for work, and hooks up with Tom Shaw, a blonde American he'd met a few times during previous trips.

Whilst in the hospital he realises he does not have anyone to put as his emergency contact, and gives his dead mother's phone number and information.

Pablo has to stay in hospital to treat CMV, an eye disease that can cause blindness, and to have a line put in his chest.

His homosexuality is for the most part hidden; he has mixed origins (an English mother); his class status is fragile (he and his mother are middle class but impoverished); he is affected, like all Argentinians, by the atmosphere of fear marking the years of military dictatorship; the neoliberal turn in Argentina provides him with the opportunity to adopt new identities but they come across as just that – adopted.

He is son, brother, colleague, friend, and lover throughout the novel and at different stages, but his sexuality remains a certainty.

His mother embodied binary heteronormative behaviour, embracing Britishness and heterosexuality, and was dismissive of any sense of the "other".

The alienation from the mother figure in favour of proximity with his partner Pablo, and other lovers, reinforces a negative portrayal of the constraints within a mother-son relationship.

The portrayal of the family is strictly nuclear, and all those who have the potential to be considered as powerful in Argentina are men with subordinate wives.

Susan, although in a position of equality with her husband, is portrayed as conforming to a typically patriarchal view of women by attempting to seduce Richard, and later Jorge.

Richard's mother's preoccupation with Englishness is a mirror of her failure to flourish in Argentina, particularly once her Argentinian husband has died leaving her reliant on the limited charity of in-laws and the local Anglican church, in particular its vicar.

Richard's bilingualism opens the way to many opportunities but they draw him into the orbit of the United States, not England, about which he exhibits neither interest nor a desire to visit.

Richard realizes he has always averted his gaze from evidence of police and official brutality in then military-ruled Argentina, the era of the Dirty War.

Later again, Susan Ford confesses to Richard that she was working for US intelligence in Santiago at the time of the overthrow of Allende (albeit in a subordinate role).

The two Americans, Susan and Donald Ford, are exemplary of the US wish to incorporate post-military Argentina into the US-led liberal world order.

Lacking any strong political attachment Richard goes along with this, in part because he is made to see (a telling episode comes when he assists some visiting IMF officials: "did I know, they asked me that the train system of Buenos Aires lost five time its annual revenue?

The novel was published in 1996, at a time when new drugs, in particular AZT and protease inhibitors, were holding out the possibility of living rather than dying with HIV/AIDS.

The novel captures a time – from the mid 1980s to the mid-1990s – when AIDS was not only deadly and fearsome but played havoc with many for whom neither their sexuality, nor the cause or character of their ill-health, could be disclosed to their families.

[2] Communication through spoken word is rare in the saunas too, and so the importance of silence is established because it manifests the sense of fear of the individuals in being discovered as homosexual in a largely homophobic society.