Vargas Llosa and Latin American Politics - by Kenneth A Loparo & N Birns (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Written from diverse perspectives, the eleven essays that make up Vargas Llosa and Latin American Politics portray the Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian novelist not only as one of the most celebrated writers of the last 50 years, but also as a central influence on the region's political evolution. Ever since his conversion to free market ideology in the 1980s, Mario Vargas Llosa has waged public battle against what he believes are the scourges of socialism and populism. This book studies the fiction and journalism of Vargas Llosa in the context of his political thought.

Review Quotes

"Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. Just in time to recognize that honor, Castro and Birns (both, the New School) provide 11 essays outlining Vargas Llosa's part in literature's insurrection in modern culture... The essays elegantly balance one another, leaving the reader with the vision of an erudite, cultured man whose energies and interests explain the variability of his documentary vision and whose 'incendiary' views like those of Sartre, Camus, and Grass will be assessed positively because of Vargas Llosa's commitment to the debate of ideas in contemporary culture... Recommended.'

- Choice

"This superb collection of essays brings together a series of lively and sometimes polemical perspectives on the political dimensions of Mario Vargas Llosa's writings. Indispensable reading for anyone seeking a better understanding of Vargas Llosa's intellectual trajectory." - Maarten Van Delden, Professor of Latin American Literature, UCLA

About the Author

Juan E. De Castro is an associate professor of Literature at Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts. He is author of Mestizo Nations: Culture, Race, and Conformity in Latin American Literature (2002).