ABSTRACT
An interest in historical themes has been a constant feature of the dramatic and fictional output of contemporary Mexican author, Ignacio Solares. Whilst El jefe maximo (1991) and El gran Elector (1993) can serve as outstanding examples of Solares's writing for the stage, Madero, el otro (The Other Madero) (1989) and Columbus (1996) illustrate the choice of subjects from the history of Mexico for treatment in the form of narrative fiction. An analogy with events in the narrative present is signalled quite plainly in the sustained reference to the physical act of writing. That analogy is then confirmed in the penultimate statement and reiterated in the forceful assertion of an equivalence between 'Me: you: him'. On such a basis, the narrative of The Other Madero would resemble nothing so much as a spiritualist event involving communication with the beyond, in which the reader is invited to act as sympathetic witness and participant in a session of 'seance fiction'.
