Her next novel, MAL DE AMORES, won the 1995-96 Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo Gallegos as the best novel written in the Spanish language. She has also published the short-story collection MUJERES DE OJOS GRANDES (1991), three volumes of literary, autobiographical and journalistic pieces entitled PUERTO LIBRE (1994), EL MUNDO ILUMINADO (1998), and EL CIELO DE LOS LEONES (2004), and the novella NINGUNA ETERNIDAD COMO LA MÍA (1995). MARIDOS (2007) is her latest work of fiction.

The film based on the novel ARRANCAME LA VIDA, directed by Roberto Sneider, premiered in Mexico in late 2008 and was a great box office success, also receiving a warm critical reception. The film was among the nine preselected to compete in the Best Foreign Film category in the 2009 Oscar Awards.

Her direct and clear style allows her to approach complex topics with surprising grace and simplicity. In ARRÁNCAME LA VIDA, Catalina Ascencio, the novel's protagonist and narrator disapproves of the corrupt manner in which her husband, a regional chief in the post-revolution Mexico of the thirties and forties, is carving out his path to political power. She throws herself into the arms of another man, which brings fatal consequences. Romanticism and plots of power, feminine sensibility and social violence intertwine in a novel that has a surprising strength and freshness. It places the reader in a dynamic and absorbing world, its magnetism as difficult to explain as it is to resist.

Ten years passed before readers could enjoy another Ángeles Mastretta novel. MAL DE AMORES has the Mexican revolution as its backdrop, adding historical interest and local colour to this timeless story of the vicissitudes of love. This is not to say, however, that the politics of the period are left ignored, as Mastretta subtly points to several key factors that have helped to mark the subsequent historic transformation of Mexico. Mastretta’s writing is as strong as it was in ARRÁNCAME LA VIDA, but now there is also a maturity in her character design and the reconstruction of the period, which raises the novel to the level of masterpiece.

ARRÁNCAME LA VIDA and MAL DE AMORES have both become classics of the contemporary South American narrative, particularly within the boom of the feminine novel of the last two decades.