THIS HAUNTING MASTERPIECE of a novel has been hailed as "a masterpiece" by Luis Bunuel and "one of the great novels not only of Spanish America, but of our time" by Carlos Fuentes. The story of the last member of the aristocratic Azcoitia family, a monster deliberately surrounded by other freaks to protect him from the knowledge of his deformity, The Obscene Bird of Night is a triumph of imaginative visionary writing. Among the first examples of the "magic realism" emanating from South America, its luxuriance, fecundity, horror, and energy will not soon fade from the reader's mind.