The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta is an astute psychological portrait of a modern revolutionary and a searching account of an old friend's struggle to understand him. First published in English in 1986, the novel probes the long and checkered history of radical politics in Latin America.

Set in Peru during a war between U.S. Marines and a Cuban-Bolivian revolutionary army, a fictional memoir characterizes the evolution of a revolutionary, in a psychological portrait of the fanaticism and destruction of revolution.