Synopses & Reviews
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
"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
Synopsis
Mario Vargas Llosa is a heterogeneous writer whose positions have often not been consistent from novel to novel, between his fictional and nonfictional work, between his literary and political commentary, and as his political commentary has proceeded over the decades. This analysis of his work reveals his insights into socio-political matters.
About the Author
Juan E. De Castrois 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).
Nicholas Birns teaches at Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts. His books include Understanding Anthony Powell (2004), A Companion to Australian Literature Since 1900 (2007), and Theory After Theory: An Intellectual History of Literary Theory Since 1950 (2010).
Table of Contents
Introduction - Juan E De Castro and Nicholas Birns * Part I Mario Vargas Llosa and the Neoliberal * Mr. Vargas Llosa Goes to Washington - Juan E De Castro * The Wars of an Old-Fashioned (Neoliberal) Gentleman - Fabiola Escárzaga * Lets Make Owners and Entrepreneurs: Glimpses of Freemarketeers in Vargas Llosas Novels - Jean OBryan Knight * Part II The Writings of the 1980s and 1990s * Appropriation in the Backlands: Is Mario Vargas Llosa at War with Euclides da Cunha? - Nicholas Birns * Mario Vargas Llosa, Fabulist of Queer Cleansing - Paul Allatson * Going Native: Anti-Indigenism in Vargas Llosas The Storyteller and Death in the Andes - Ignacio López-Calvo * The Recovered Childhood: Utopian Liberalism and Mercantilism of the Skin in A Fish in the Water - Sergio R. Franco * Part III Mario Vargas Llosa in the 21st Century * Sex, Politics and High Art: Vargas Llosas Long Road to the Feast of the Goat - Gene Bell-Villada * Humanism and Criticism: The Presence of French Culture in Vargas Llosas Utopia - Roland Forgues * Part IV Mario Vargas Llosa, Man of Letters * Mario Vargas Llosas Self-definition as ‘the Man Who Writes and Thinks - Sabine Köllmann * Vargas Llosa and the History of Ideas: Avatars of a Dictionary - Wilfrido H. Corral