Talking Books with Mario Vargas Llosa

Talking Books with Mario Vargas Llosa
Author: Raquel Chang-Rodríguez,Carlos Riobó
Publsiher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2020-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781496220257

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This collection of essays associated with Mario Vargas Llosa’s visits to the City College of New York offers readers an opportunity to learn about his body of work through his own perspective and those of key fiction writers and literary critics.

Talking Books with Mario Vargas Llosa

Talking Books with Mario Vargas Llosa
Author: Raquel Chang-Rodríguez,Carlos Riobó
Publsiher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2020-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781496220837

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The essays included in Talking Books with Mario Vargas Llosa celebrate Mario Vargas Llosa’s visits to the City College of New York, the creation of the Cátedra Vargas Llosa in his honor, and the interests of the Peruvian author in reading and books. This volume contains previously unpublished material by Vargas Llosa himself, as well as by novelists and literary critics associated with the Cátedra. This collection offers readers an opportunity to learn about Vargas Llosa’s body of work through multiple perspectives: his own and those of eminent fiction writers and important literary critics. The book offers significant analysis and rich conversation that bring to life many of the Nobel Laureate’s characters and provide insights into his writing process and imagination. As the last surviving member of the original group of writers of the Latin American Boom—which included Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Julio Cortázar—Vargas Llosa endures as a literary icon because his fiction has remained fresh and innovative. His prolific works span many different themes and subgenres. A combination of literary analyses and anecdotal contributions in this volume reveal the little-known human and intellectual dimensions of Vargas Llosa the writer and Vargas Llosa the man.

The Discreet Hero

The Discreet Hero
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publsiher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780374711573

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WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE A tale of two cities—Piura and Lima—rocked by scandal, and the disintegrating bonds of loyalty between the generations Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's novel, The Discreet Hero, follows two fascinating characters whose lives are destined to intersect: neat, endearing Felícito Yanaqué, a small businessman in Piura, Peru, who finds himself the victim of blackmail; and Ismael Carrera, a successful owner of an insurance company in Lima, who cooks up a plan to avenge himself against the two lazy sons who want him dead. Felícito and Ismael are, each in his own way, quiet, discreet rebels: honorable men trying to seize control of their destinies in a social and political climate where all can seem set in stone, predetermined. They are hardly vigilantes, but each is determined to live according to his own personal ideals and desires—which means forcibly rising above the pettiness of their surroundings. The Discreet Hero is also a chance to revisit some of our favorite players from previous Vargas Llosa novels: Sergeant Lituma, Don Rigoberto, Doña Lucrecia, and Fonchito are all here in a prosperous Peru. Vargas Llosa sketches Piura and Lima vividly—and the cities become not merely physical spaces but realms of the imagination populated by his vivid characters. A novel whose humor and pathos shine through in Edith Grossman's masterly translation, The Discreet Hero is another remarkable achievement from the finest Latin American novelist at work today.

Notes on the Death of Culture

Notes on the Death of Culture
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publsiher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2015-07-14
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780571300556

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In the past, culture was a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated and revivified everyday reality. Now it is largely a mechanism of distraction and entertainment. Notes on the Death of Culture is an examination and indictment of this transformation - penned by none other than the Nobel winner Mario Vargas Llosa, who is not only one of our finest novelists but one of the keenest social critics at work today. Taking his cues from T. S. Eliot - whose treatise Notes Towards the Definition of Culture is a touchstone precisely because the culture Eliot aimed to describe has since vanished - Vargas Llosa traces a decline whose ill effects have only just begun to be felt. He mourns, in particular, the figure of the intellectual: for most of the twentieth century, men and women of letters drove political, aesthetic, and moral conversations; today they have all but disappeared from public debate. But Vargas Llosa stubbornly refuses to fade into the background. He is not content to merely sign a petition; he will not bite his tongue. A necessary provocateur, here vividly translated by John King, provides an impassioned and essential critique of our time and culture.

Harsh Times

Harsh Times
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publsiher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780374601249

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The true story of Guatemala’s political turmoil of the 1950s as only a master of fiction can tell it Guatemala, 1954. The military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the government of Jacobo Árbenz. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changes the development of Latin America: the accusation by the Eisenhower administration that Árbenz encouraged the spread of Soviet Communism in the Americas. Harsh Times is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War, the echoes of which are still felt today. In this thrilling novel, Mario Vargas Llosa fuses reality with two fictions: that of the narrator, who freely re-creates characters and situations, and the one designed by those who would control the politics and the economy of a continent by manipulating its history. Harsh Times is a gripping, revealing novel that directly confronts recent history. No one is better suited to tell this riveting story than Vargas Llosa, and there is no form better for it than his deeply textured fiction. Not since The Feast of the Goat, his classic novel of the downfall of Trujillo’s regime in the Dominican Republic, has Vargas Llosa combined politics, characters, and suspense so unforgettably.

Sabers and Utopias

Sabers and Utopias
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publsiher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2018-02-27
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780374708917

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A landmark collection of essays on the Nobel laureate’s conception of Latin America, past, present, and future Throughout his career, the Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa has grappled with the concept of Latin America on a global stage. Examining liberal claims and searching for cohesion, he continuously weighs the reality of the continent against the image it projects, and considers the political dangers and possibilities that face this diverse set of countries. Now this illuminating and versatile collection assembles these never-before-translated criticisms and meditations. Reflecting the intellectual development of the writer himself, these essays distill the great events of Latin America’s recent history, analyze political groups like FARC and Sendero Luminoso, and evaluate the legacies of infamous leaders such as Papa Doc Duvalier and Fidel Castro. Arranged by theme, they trace Vargas Llosa’s unwavering demand for freedom, his embrace of and disenchantment with revolutions, and his critique of nationalism, populism, indigenism, and corruption. From the discovery of liberal ideas to a defense of democracy, buoyed by a passionate invocation of Latin American literature and art, Sabers and Utopias is a monumental collection from one of our most important writers. Uncompromising and adamantly optimistic, these social and political essays are a paean to thoughtful engagement and a brave indictment of the discrimination and fear that can divide a society.

The Language of Passion

The Language of Passion
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publsiher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2011-03-04
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9781429921893

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Internationally acclaimed novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has contributed a biweekly column to Spain's major newspaper, El País, since 1977. In this collection of columns from the 1990s, Vargas Llosa weighs in on the burning questions of the last decade, including the travails of Latin American democracy, the role of religion in civic life, and the future of globalization. But Vargas Llosa's influence is hardly limited to politics. In some of the liveliest critical writing of his career, he makes a pilgrimage to Bob Marley's shrine in Jamaica, celebrates the sexual abandon of Carnaval in Rio, and examines the legacies of Vermeer, Bertolt Brecht, Frida Kahlo, and Octavio Paz, among others.

The Cubs and Other Stories

The Cubs and Other Stories
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publsiher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2012-08-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780571268238

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The Cubs and Other Stories is Mario Vargas Llosa's only volume of short fiction available in English. Vargas Llosa's domain is the Peru of male youth and machismo, where life's dramas play themselves out on the soccer field, on the dance floor and on street corners. The title work, The Cubs, tells the story of the carefree boyhood of PP Cuellar and his friends, and of PP's bizarre accident and tragic coming of age. In a candid and perceptive foreword to this collection of early writing, Vargas Llosa provides background to the volume and a unique glimpse into the mind of the artist.