In "The Culture of Fiction", the reader is introduced to the overlooked fiction of Colombian novelist Manuel Zapata Olivella. Analysing Zapata's unique form of dialogic communication, Yvonne Captain-Hidalgo establishes that the one constant in Zapata's work is his humanising of the socially or economically dispossessed: the urban underclass, African-Americans, and the educated but politically oppressed elite. By exploring Zapata's overall development, Captain-Hidalgo reveals shifts in style and ideology that come to define his literary production as one work that has rewritten itself from 1947 through the 1980s. As these shifts emerge, powerful moments of transition stand out: the evolution of the omniscient narrator's stance from a judgemental one to one more accepting of cultural differences among groups that are traditionally considered non-Western; a structural transformation in Zapata's works from social realism to other forms of realism; and, finally, the transition from texts with no identifiable core to those that are decidedly Afro-centric. Captain-Hidalgo concludes that in Zapata's emphasis on race he shows the common ground between his works and those of other artists in the Afro-Americas. His novel "Chago, el gran putas" receives special attention here not only because of its pan-African stance, but because Zapata feels that some common misconceptions about Africa must be addressed through a reading of this novel. This book-length study of Manuel Zapata Olivella, "The Culture of Fiction" provides a useful addition to Afro-Hispanic literature.