Mario Vargas Llosa: A Life of Writing - Softcover

Williams, Raymond Leslie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1477309837 ISBN 13: 9781477309834

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2014

Synopsis

Awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010 at the age of seventy-four, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has held pivotal roles in the evolution and revolutions of modern Latin American literature. Perhaps surprisingly, no complete history of Vargas Llosa's works, placed in biographical and historical context, has been published—until now. A masterwork from one of America's most revered scholars of Latin American fiction, Mario Vargas Llosa: A Life of Writing provides a critical overview of Vargas Llosa's numerous novels while reinvigorating debates regarding conventional interpretations of the work.

Weaving analysis with discussions of the writer's political commentary, Raymond Leslie Williams traces the author's youthful identity as a leftist student of the 1960s to a repudiation of some of his earlier ideas beginning in the 1980s. Providing a unique perspective on the complexity, nuance, and scope of Vargas Llosa's lauded early novels and on his passionate support of indigenous populations in his homeland, Williams then turns his eye to the recent works, which serve as a bridge between the legacies of the Boom and the diverse array of contemporary Latin American fiction writers at work today. In addition, Williams provides a detailed description of Vargas Llosa's traumatic childhood and its impact on him—seen particularly in his lifelong disdain for authority figures—as well as of the authors who influenced his approach, from Faulkner to Flaubert. Culminating in reflections drawn from Williams's formal interviews and casual conversations with the author at key phases of both men's careers, this is a landmark publication that will spark new lines of inquiry into an intricate body of work.

About this title

About the Author:

RAYMOND LESLIE WILLIAMS is Distinguished Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. His previous books include The Twentieth-Century Spanish American Novel; The Writings of Carlos Fuentes; and The Colombian Novel, 1844–1987.

Review:

"An excellent study that synthesizes well the major points of the Peruvian writer’s career and the controversies it has provoked." (David William Foster, Regents’ Professor of Spanish and Women and Gender Studies, Arizona State University)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1477309837
• ISBN 13: 9781477309834
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248