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Manuel Puig (General Villegas, December 28, 1932 -
Cuernavaca, July 22, 1990) was an Argentinian
author. Among his best known novels are La
traición de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by
Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1973)
(Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña
(1976) Kiss of the Spider Woman, which was made
into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director,
Héctor Babenco and later turned into a Broadway
musical. 

He was born in General Villegas (in Buenos Aires
province). After graduating from Universidad de
Buenos Aires with a degree in philosophy, he began
working as a film archivist and editor in Buenos
Aires, then in Italy as a result of winning a
scholarship from the Italian Institute of Buenos
Aires. Puig's dream was to become a screenwriter,
to write TV shows and movies. This never took off.
In the 1960s he moved back to Buenos Aires, where
he penned his first major novel, "La Traicion de
Rita Hayworth". Being of leftist tendencies, and
seeing an oncoming rightist wave in Latin America,
Puig moved to New York, where he wrote his later
works (including El beso de la mujer araña). 

El beso is the story of two prisoners, Molina and
Valentín, and their relationship in prison.
Molina, an openly homosexual window-dresser, is in
jail for "corruption of a minor," while Valentín
is a political prisoner who is part of a
revolutionary group trying to bring down the
government.  The two men, seemingly opposites in
every way, form an intimate bond in their cell,
and their relationship changes both of them in
profound ways.  The novel's form is unusual,
considering that there is no traditional narrative
voice, one of the primary features of fiction.  It
is written in pure dialogue form, without any
indication of who is speaking, except for a dash
(-) to show a change of speaker. Due to the
absence of an "authoritative" narrator, the reader
is required to participate more actively in the
interpretation of the story and, therefore,
becomes part of the telling of the tale. In
addition to the conversations of the prisoners,
there are other "artefacts" in the novel that help
tell the story.  For example, the author includes
official reports as well as a long series of
footnotes on the psychoanalytic theory of
homosexuality.  

Puig lived in exile throughout most of his life.
In 1989 Puig moved to Cuernavaca (Mexico), where
he died in 1990.