This book analyzes the effect of the colonial experience on the protagonists in the novels of Pedro Juan Soto, a renowned author of the Puerto Rican Generation of 1950. Arguing - in keeping with Soto's generational and personal pessimism - that the protagonists are anti-heroes who struggle with their environment and succumb to it in different ways, it acknowledges that the themes of the Puerto Rican novel are firmly rooted in the island's reality, and offers a cogent review of the literary and socio-political context against which Soto's work must be understood. It also inserts Soto into the canon of post-colonial writers while foregrounding his realist approach to characterization, which is the author's means of articulating his social concerns.