Sergio Ramírez’s “A Thousand Deaths Plus One” McPherson, 2009 , translated from Spanish by Leland H. Chambers, interweaves historical fact with outrageous fiction, painstaking truth with barefaced lies. In the novel, author and narrator become indistinguishable, memoir and invention collide, and the reader becomes wrapped in a complex net of interlocking anecdotes. A Thousand Deaths Plus One is what critics tend to call a "novel of ideas," but as with any great piece of writing, its rich conceptual structure does not mean that it lacks humor, compassion, or other less esoteric elements of human experience. The novel is divided into two sections, each beginning with a chapter attributed to another major Latin American author. The first is ascribed to Rubén Darío, Nicaragua's beloved national poet and the father of Latin American