"Very well translated by Gustavo V. Segade, Points of Departure... honestly and sympathetically reflects a culture that is simultaneously close and distant, and so much like our own that we tend to forget how different it really is." - The San Francisco Chronicle

Points of Departure is a collection of short stories by a group of established Mexican authors who have been published to national and international acclaim, but who are virtually unheard of in the United States since most have never before been published in English.

Magical realism and exoticism are nowhere to be found in this collection of sophisticated, very contemporary stories. Rather, the surreal contradictions and juxtapositions of daily life in Mexico are a permeating presence. A sharp sense of irony, incongruity, and hilarity pervades many of the scenarios offered here, along with an acid-tongued fatality in the harsh face of a life where poverty, lawlessness, and urban decay coexist alongside innocent dreams of love.

These stories represent the full panorama of modern Mexican writing—urban and rural, North and South—a literature that has grown far beyond earlier questions of "Mexican identity" and style to become cosmopolitan, universal, and an influential force in world literature.

Included are Bernardo Ruíz, Josefina Estrada, Rafael Pérez Gay, Humberto Rivas, Daniel Sada, Rosa Beltrán, David Toscana, Juan Villoro, Mónica Lavín, Juvenal Acosta, Álvaro Uribe, Rosina Conde, Eduardo Antonio Parra, Mauricio Montiel, Ethel Krauze, Enrique Serna, and Francisco Hinojosa.

Mónica Lavín (Mexico City) is a writer and a journalist. In Mexico, she has published short stories and novels, and she is a regular contributor to national magazines, writing columns of cultural commentary and criticism. A dedicated cultural organizer, she is president of the Association of Ibero-American Writers.

Gustavo Segade is Emeritus Professor of Spanish at San Diego State University. He has translated the work of many South American and Mexican writers, including Olga Orozco, Alberto Blanco, Rosina Conde, Sergio Elizondo, Mónica Lavín and Daniel Sada.