Deconstructing Paradise investigates fiction by Arlt, Asturias, Borges, Castellanos, Cortázar, Donoso, García Márquez, Garro, Rulfo, Vargas Llosa, and other authors that inverts Christian symbols to generate a social, political, cultural, or even artistic commentary. Each text underscores a search for meaning that rejects the centering presence of the more traditional Christian focus and, when considered together, the texts underscore a broad pattern to facilitate the synthesis of a large body of twentieth-century Latin American literature.