<DIV><p>"Like much of Mr. Bellatin's work, <B>Beauty Salon</B> is pithy, allegorical and profoundly disturbing, with a plot that evokes <B>The Plague</B> by Camus or <B>Blindness </B>by José Saramago."--<I>New York Times</I></p><p>"Including a few details that may linger uncomfortably with the reader for a long time, this is contemporary naturalism as disturbing as it gets."--<I>Booklist</I></p><p>A strange plague appears in a large city. Rejected by family and friends, some of the sick have nowhere to finish out their days until a hair stylist decides to offer refuge. He ends up converting his beauty shop, which he's filled with tanks of exotic fish, into a sort of medieval hospice. As his “guests” continue to arrive and to die, his isolation becomes more and more complete in this dream-hazy parable by one of Mexico's cutting-edge literary stars.</p><p><B>Mario Bellatin</B>, the author of numerous short novels, was born in Mexico City in 1960. In 2000, <I>Beauty Salon</I> was nominated for the Médicis Prize for best novel translated into French. This is its first translation into English.</p></DIV>