"Narrative Innovation and Political Change in Mexico" shows that novels, considered as part of their social context, are not simply reflections of society, but often manifest change before it is apparent in the political realm. The author explains this function by reference to narrative techniques as well as to thematic material. He uses the other arts (especially painting) as corroborating factors, in an exposition based on three periods of remarkable innovation in twentieth-century Mexican fiction, ending with the analogy of narrative fiction to politics in the nineteen-eighties.