Vargas Llosa and Latin American Politics

by N. Birns (Editor)

Overview

Written from diverse perspectives, the eleven essays that make up Vargas Llosa and Latin American Politics Portray the 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230105294
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	10/18/2010
Edition description:	2010
Pages:	235
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

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).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Timeline ix

Introduction Juan E. De Castro Nicholas Birns 1

I Mario Vargas Llosa and the Neoliberal Turn

1 Mr. Vargas Llosa Goes to Washington Juan E. De Castro 21

2 The Wars of an Old-Fashioned (Neoliberal) Gentleman Fabiola Escárzaga 29

3 "Let's Make Owners and Entrepreneurs": Glimpses of Free Marketeers in Vargas Llosa's Novels Jean O'Bryan-Knight 47

II The Writings of the 1980s and 1990s

4 Appropriation in the Backlands: Is Mario Vargas Llosa at War with Euclides da Cunha? Nicholas Birns 71

5 Mario Vargas Llosa, the Fabulist of Queer Cleansing Paul Allatson 85

6 Going Native: Anti-indigenism in Vargas Llosa's The Storyteller and Death in the Andes Ignacio López-Calvo 103

7 The Recovered Childhood: Utopian Liberalism and Mercantilism of the Skin in A Fish in the Water Sergio R. Franco 125

III Mario Vargas Llosa in the Twenty-First Century

8 Sex, Politics, and High Art: Vargas Llosa's Long Road to The Feast of the Goat Gene H. Bell-Villada 139

9 Humanism and Criticism: The Presence of French Culture in Vargas Llosa's Utopia Roland Forgues 159

IV Mario Vargas Llosa, Man of Letters

10 Vargas Llosa's Self-Definition as "The Man Who Writes and Thinks" Sabine Köllmann 173

11 Vargas Llosa and the History of Ideas: Avatars of a Dictionary Wilfrido H. Corral 189

Works Cited 213

Contributors 227

Index 229

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher