Salon.com Books | The rebel in winter

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, the charismatic, masked leader of the Zapatista movement for indigenous rights in Mexico, is hard at work on his most unorthodox manifesto yet: a crime novel. With the help of one of the genre's most popular authors, Pablo Ignacio Taibo II, "Muertos Incomodos" ("Awkward Deaths") is being serialized in Mexico City's brazenly leftist daily La Jornada and will soon be published, in book form, in eight countries. But does Marcos truly believe this novela policiaca will further his cause, or is this the pulp hobby of a revolutionary in twilight? What's the relevance of political fiction, anyway?