Talking Books with Mario Vargas Llosa

A Retrospective

Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, Carlos Riobó

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781496220257
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496220813
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

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 This volume contains previously unpublished material by Vargas Llosa himself, as well as by novelists and literary critics associated with the Cátedra.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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontispiece
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• In Conversation with the 2010 Nobel Laureate
• 1. Genesis and Evolution of Captain Pantoja and the Special Services
• 2. The Return of the Monsters
• 3. From Miguel de Cervantes to César Moro
• Life and Literature
• 4. Discreet and Injudicious Heroes in the Novels of Mario Vargas Llosa
• 5. A Life Worthy of a Novel
• 6. Vargas Llosa and Cervantes: Modern Knights
• History, Authority, and Ideology
• 7. A Poetics of Freedom
• 8. The Eye of the Beholder
• 9. Historical Fact/Historical Fiction in The Feast of the Goat
• Other Tales
• 10. The Storyteller: Narrating Latin America from Europe
• 11. Rubén Darío through Mario Vargas Llosa’s Looking Glass
• 12. Mario Vargas Llosa at the New York Public Library
• Contributors
• Index
• About Raquel Chang-Rodríguez
• About Carlos Riobó
• Series List