DUST ON HER TONGUE by Rodrigo...

DUST ON HER TONGUE by Rodrigo Rey Rosa, translated from the Spanish by Paul Bowles (City Lights Books: $7.95; 91 pp.). Guatemalan author Rodrigo Rosa offers unsettling pictures of ordinary people struggling to exist in a society dominated by dictators and armed rebels, where the next corner may reveal a wretched beggar or a sadistic assassin. In “The Truth,” a wealthy boy calmly evades punishment for a crime he committed by blaming a barefoot peon; a woman savagely avenges the murder of her husband in “Angelica.” Violence that has engulfed Latin America in recent years permeates these brief, harsh stories.