Bulman uses theories of intertextuality to read how contemporary Latin American drama from Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and the Cuban diaspora incorporate other texts and, in so doing, reimagine the nation in the twentieth century. She identifies the intertexts at work in the plays and proceeds to study their structure in relation to their origin, proceeding to read the play-texts within the political and cultural specificities of the countries in question to address how nation is defined and how readers might participate in the construction of a new national imaginary. Though her methodology is not necessarily groundbreaking, the ways in which European theorists enter into dialogue with critics of Latin American theatre is refreshing, as is the presentation to an English-speaking audience of important Latin American playwrights and theorists.

The analyses of plays by Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda and Maruxa Vilalta demonstrate how the Mexican master narratives of the Malinche myth and religion are rewritten. The chapter on Venezuela looks at plays by César Rengifo and Néstor Caballero to explore their use of intertexts to question the relations between Venezuela and the United States, and to force the reader/spectator to probe how Venezuela's past continues to haunt its present. In spite of some factual errors and the lack of theorization in the use of the term ‘transnationalism’, the examination of Cuban exile play-texts by José Corrales and Manuel Pereiras, Raúl de Cárdenas, and Pedro Monge Rafuls convincingly shows how they rewrite exile as a tragic experience, and break away from the imposed silence of the exiled within the national fabric. A major weakness, however, is Bulman's sole focus on dramatic texts in spite of her attempt to address their staged productions. Throughout the analysis, ‘reader’ and ‘spectator’ are used interchangeably or collapsed into one. There is a recognition from the very beginning of ‘the tension between the written play-text and the performance’ (p. 33), as well as of elements of the ‘spatial script’ through an analysis of the didascalia. However, the word ‘stage’ is used metaphorically throughout so that there is little analysis of how the words are staged outside the book, or how the different worlds are performed outside the playscript. In spite of this, Bulman's carefully researched study is an important addition to the field for the ways in which it demonstrates that drama is a powerful site for aesthetic and collective reconfigurations of imagined nations.