A Funny Dirty Little War

In this political satire of postwar Argentina, a group of village officials, ordered by their city bosses to find ""infiltrators,'' brands the council leader and the local tax collector ``Marxist-Communists'' and sets out to arrest them. The two falsely accused men put up a fight, leading quickly to a siege of city hall, shootings, assassinations, arson, bombings. In a day, much of the village is destroyed in a spurious fight between people who all consider themselves followers of Peron. (Typically, a series of hostile notes between the two sides ends with the same phrase, ``Peron or Death!'') Reminiscent of works by Kurt Vonnegut and Vladimir Voinovich, this farce mirrors Argentina's self-destruction over the last three decades. Although written in 1980, it was published in that country only after the fall of the military junta in 1983. (March)