Mecha Iturbe, published in Buenos Aires in 1906, is the most ambitious and longest of Cesar Duayen"s five novels about the transformation of Argentina into a contemporary state in the early part of the 20th century. Cesar Duayen, pseudonym of Emma de la Barra (1861-1947), was the author of Argentina"s best seller, Stella of 1905, and Mecha Iturbe, too, was greeted with great excitement. A record number of copies were printed, and the author was paid an unprecedented amount. There were many editions, but none has been available in recent years. In Mecha Iturbe, elements of national reform and modernization are portrayed and debated in an even more complicated failed love story, also set in both Buenos Aires (drawing rooms, congress, the opera, a labor union rally) and in a utopian factory town. The central character, Mecha Iturbe, has just come from Europe so Argentina must be explained to her, and shown to her. But Mecha, from whose point of view everything is seen, is a very...