The Secret Crypt

Originally published in 1968, The Secret Crypt is something of a cult classic in Mexican literature. Elizondo’s impassioned, breathless prose launches the reader into a labyrinth that is also a hall of mirrors. Here, we find a small group of characters who are part of an underground sect called Urkreis, one of whose aims is to discover the identity of the sect’s founder, known only as “the Imagined.” The identities of narrator, author, and characters blur into one another as the narrative moves between the two worlds of the novel and the author writing the novel—an unclassifiable masterpiece containing initiation rites, sacrificial murder, conspiracy, and delirium.