LIFE IN THE DAMN TROPICS

Despairing debut about the Jewish experience in 20th-century Central America that, though enlivened by innocent eroticism and comic absurdity, finds little to love in a sunny fool’s paradise.

At 53, Marcos Eltaleph has it made: a member of one of 1980s Guatemala’s wealthiest Jewish dynasties, he has so far avoided marriage, responsibility, serious illness, embarrassing business failures, or mediocre success. His brothers, especially Aaron, have become big men in the Jewish community, heading a business empire based on retail, paper products, and import-export. They have luxurious houses, their kids attend US schools, and Eltaleph weddings and bar mitzvahs are social events. Whenever the family brushes up against power-mad colonels or corrupt politicians, they seem to be spared the Nazi torments their father escaped by fleeing Hitler’s Germany. So, instead of disappearing into a dank jail when Aaron doesn’t pay a bribe, Marcos finds himself imprisoned in a hospital, where his attempt to enjoy the sexual favors of a nurse are interrupted by his girlfriend Esperanza, a sexy Colombian half his age whom he met on a cruise ship and is afraid to marry. Mysteriously sprung from his hospital, Marcos eventually proposes to Esperanza, who wants nothing but her own nightclub—but Marcos is suspicious of Rafael Mendoza, a “retired” colonel who offers to rent the couple his own failed nightclub. Suddenly the Etaleph family department store is bombed. Are Communist rebels to blame, or did Aaron fail to pay off the right people? As Aaron assures his brother that Jews really can make a homeland in paradise, Marcos learns that, as a Jew, he must count his blessing before they turn sour.

With echoes of Mordecai Richler’s antiheroic tales of urban Jewish life, Unger's downbeat exploration suggests that though success at the price of collaboration with evil is no success, when you meet the love of your life, you might as well live.