Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the world's most respected and widely read living writers. His work is marked by technical sophistication and by its alliance with a variety of trends in modern culture. To date little criticism of his work has made use of the important developments in literary theory in the past two decades. This book does so, analyzing Vargas Llosa's place in modern and postmodern criticism. Keith Booker begins with an analysis of The Green House within the context of modernism, using this early work to develop several hypotheses concerning the differences between modernism and postmodernism in literature. He tests these hypotheses in the remainder of the book through detailed readings of Vargas Llosa's later novels (from Captain Pantoja and the Special Service onward) and within the context of theoretical discussions of postmodernism by such critics as Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton, Linda Hutcheon, and Andreas Huyssen. Booker's specific readings of Vargas Llosa's work are also informed by the insights of a number of critics, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, and Theodor Adorno. The readings focus on the formal characteristics of Vargas Llosa's writing and on the intense political engagement - characterized in later works by skepticism toward the claims of various political programs - that marks his career. As a result, this study yields insights into both the aesthetics and the politics of postmodernism, and it should be useful to those interested in Latin American literature and in the social and cultural landscapes of Vargas Llosa's works. The book ends with a lucid description of published theories of modernism and postmodernism.

William H. Gass and Lorin Cuoco here present an edited but uncut record of the proceedings of the first international conference convened by the International Writers Center at Washington University in St. Louis. Major addresses were delivered by Breyten Breytenbach, a white South African who was an early critic of apartheid serving seven years in jail before being exiled from his homeland; Nuruddin Farah, the Somali author of a number of internationally recognized novels, including the trilogy Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship, who has also suffered exile; Carolyn Forche, an American poet whose experiences as a Guggenheim Fellow in El Salvador led to her noted second book of poetry, The Country Between Us, Antonio Skarmeta, the Chilean short story writer, screen writer, and novelist whose Insurrection deals with the Nicaraguan Revolution; Luisa Valenzuela, an Argentine novelist and journalist who fled her home country in 1979 and returned a decade later after the restoration of democracy only to find remnants of the former military regime still a legitimate target for her absurdist prose; and Mario Vargas Llosa, the widely acclaimed Peruvian novelist who founded Libertad, the political party under whose banner he unsuccessfully ran for president of his country. The Writer in Politics also includes edited transcriptions of the panel discussions that followed each of the six major addresses. Panelists included Irish poet Eavan Boland, author of seven books of poetry, including In a Time of Violence; Marc Chenetier, professor of American literature at l'Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and translator of numerous american authorsincluding Gass - into French; RobertCoover, writer-in-residence at Brown University and author of such works as Origin of the Brunists and A Public Burning; Ron Himes, founder of the St. Louis Black Repertory Company, which produces African American and Third World

Jean Franco's work as a path-breaking theorist, cultural critic, & scholar has helped to define Latin American studies over the last three decades. In the process, Franco has played a crucial role in developing cultural studies in both the English- & Spanish-speaking worlds. Critical Passions is the first volume to gather a wide-ranging selection of Franco's influential essays. A key participant in the major debates in Latin American studies-beginning with the "boom" period of the 1960s & continuing through debates on ideology & discourse, Marxism, mass culture, & postmodernism-Franco is recognized for her feminist critique of Latin American writing. While her principal books are all readily available, Franco's several dozen articles are dispersed in a variety of periodicals in Latin America, Europe, & the United States. Although many of these essays are considered pioneering & classic, they have never before been collected in a single work. In this volume, Mary Louise Pratt & Kathleen Newman have organized the essays into four interrelated sections: feminism & the critique of authoritarianism, mass & popular culture, Latin American literature from the "boom" onward, & the cultural history of Mexico. As a group, these writings demonstrate Franco's ability to reflect on & judge with equal seriousness all spheres of expression, whether subway graffiti, a fashion manual, or an avant-garde haiku. A bona fide fan of popular & mass media, Franco never allows her critiques to dissolve into the puritanical or reductive; instead, she finds ways to present & debate complex theoretical questions in direct & accessible language. This volume will draw an extensive readership in Latin American, cultural, & women's studies.

This book gives specialists and students alike a comprehensive political history of Peru that includes the first full-length treatment of the 1980s, a decade in which early optimism sparked by the return of democratic rule gave way to widespread pessimism amidst a full-blown social, economic, and political crisis. The study traces the growth of the Sendero Luminoso insurgency; the economic collapse that brought Peru hyperinflation coupled with its deepest depression of the 20th century; and the evolution of the electoral political system that brought Alberto Fujimori, a political novice, to the presidency in 1990.