The Discreet Hero

The Discreet Hero PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374711577
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
In this tale of two Peruvians in separate cities who each stand up to injustice, the Nobel laureate is “a master playing at his craft” (Los Angeles Times). Felícito Yanaqué, a small businessman in the Peruvian city of Piura, finds himself the victim of blackmail—and finds within himself the will to refuse. Meanwhile, Ismael Carrera, a successful owner of an insurance company in Lima, cooks up a plan to avenge himself against the two lazy sons who want him dead. As their small acts of rebellion unfold, their lives are destined to intersect. In The Discreet Hero, Vargas Llosa examines the possibilities of honorable individuals who insist on taking control of their destinies. He also revisits some unforgettable characters from his previous 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.

The Story Teller

The Story Teller PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa (Book Analysis)

The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa (Book Analysis) PDF Author: Bright Summaries
Publisher: BrightSummaries.com
ISBN: 2808002122
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
Unlock the more straightforward side of The Time of the Hero with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa, which follows a group of cadets at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy (which the author himself attended as a teenager) as they navigate racial and social differences and grapple with the pervasive violence that surrounds them. The book catapulted its author to worldwide fame but was met with hostility at his former school, where it was publicly burnt. Mario Vargas Llosa was one of the key writers of the Latin American Boom in the 1960s and 1970s and has long been a key political voice in his native Peru. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010 after a literary career spanning several decades, and is still active as a novelist and journalist. Find out everything you need to know about The Time of the Hero in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you: • A complete plot summary • Character studies • Key themes and symbols • Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com? Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you on your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1429921455
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Mario Vargas Llosa's brilliant, multilayered novel is set in the Lima, Peru, of the author's youth, where a young student named Marito is toiling away in the news department of a local radio station. His young life is disrupted by two arrivals. The first is his aunt Julia, recently divorced and thirteen years older, with whom he begins a secret affair. The second is a manic radio scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho, whose racy, vituperative soap operas are holding the city's listeners in thrall. Pedro chooses young Marito to be his confidant as he slowly goes insane. Interweaving the story of Marito's life with the ever-more-fevered tales of Pedro Camacho, Vargas Llosa's novel is hilarious, mischievous, and masterful, a classic named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review.

A Fish in the Water

A Fish in the Water PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429922540
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 849

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Book Description
In this literary memoir, the Nobel Prize–winning author and Peruvian politician shares “a convincing self-portrait . . . an often funny and cautionary tale” (Time). In 1990, Mario Vargas Llosa decided to run for the presidency of his native Peru. He campaigned on a platform of economic reform and stringent counterterrorism against the far-left gorilla group, Sendero Luminoso. His failed campaign against Alberto Fujimori generated international headlines, transforming the renowned author into a politician of world stature. A Fish in the Water is Vargas Llosa’s personal account of his life as seen through the lens of his time as a candidate. He evokes the experiences that gave rise to his fiction, while—in parallel—he describes the social, literary, and political influences that led him to enter the political arena as a crusader for democracy and a free-market economy.

Notes on the Death of Culture

Notes on the Death of Culture PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374710317
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
The Peruvian Nobel laureate presents a collection of essays on the decline of intellectual life in the age of media spectacle. 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 Mario Vargas Llosa, who is not only one of our finest novelists but one of the keenest social critics. Taking his cues from T.S. Eliot—whose essay “Notes Toward a 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. 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. A necessary gadfly, the Nobel laureate Vargas Llosa, here vividly translated by John King, provides a tough but essential critique of our time and culture.

The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429922079
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta is an astute psychological portrait of a modern revolutionary and a searching account of an old friend's struggle to understand him. First published in English in 1986, the novel probes the long and checkered history of radical politics in Latin America.

The Perpetual Orgy

The Perpetual Orgy PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429922354
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The Perpetual Orgy is Mario Vargas Llosa's brilliant analysis of Gustav Flaubert's masterpiece Madame Bovary. In this remarkable book, "we not only enjoy a dazzling explication, but experience a master discoursing at the top of his form on the craft of the novel" (Robert Taylor, The Boston Globe). It is a tribute to The Perpetual Orgy that it sends the reader back to Flaubert's work with renewed interest.

The War of the End of the World

The War of the End of the World PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429921986
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 993

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Book Description
The Nobel Prize–winning author’s classic novel of civil war in nineteenth-century Brazil: “A modern tragedy on the grand scale . . . As dark as spilled blood” (Salman Rushdie, The New Republic). Deep within the remote backlands of Brazil lies Canudos, home to all the damned of the earth: prostitutes, bandits, beggars, and every kind of outcast. It is a place where history and civilization have been wiped away. There is no money, no taxation, no marriage, no census. Canudos is a cauldron for the revolutionary spirit in its purest form, a state with all the potential for a true, libertarian paradise—and one the Brazilian government is determined to crush at any cost. In perhaps his most ambitious and tragic novel, Mario Vargas Llosa offers his fictionalized vision of the story of Canudos, inhabiting characters on both sides of the massive, cataclysmic battle between the society and government troops. The resulting novel is a fable of Latin American revolutionary history, an unforgettable story of passion, violence, and the devastation that follows from fanaticism.

Harsh Times

Harsh Times PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374601240
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
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.