Book excerpt: Rappaccini's Daughter is the Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz' lyrical tale of love, death and living for the present. Night of the Assassins is Cuban Jose Triana's controversial masterpiece, in which three siblings plot the murder of their parents. Griselda Gambaro's Saying Yes is an Argentine black comedy about man's grotesque inhumanity to man. Orchids in the Moonlight is Carlos Fuentes' dream play about the love between two Mexican women exiled in Hollywood's maze of mirrors. In Mistress of Desires, Mario Vargas Llosa erotically interweaves reality and fantasy as he investigates sex and money in darkest Peru.