The first book in English on canonical Spanish American writer Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay 1878-Argentina 1936), Pariah in the Desert examines his works through the theoretical lens of the heroic and the complementary phenomenon of the monstrous. This focus on reveals the ethical coherence galvanizing the extraordinary range of Quiroga's work and its engagement with multiples discourses of his time: gender conflict, immigration politics, neocolonial economics, foreign popular culture and film, scientific debate, and pedagogical innovation.