In Praise of Reading and Fiction

In Praise of Reading and Fiction PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429930780
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
On December 7, 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His Nobel lLecture is a resounding tribute to fiction's power to inspire readers to greater ambition, to dissent, and to political action. "We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist," Vargas Llosa writes. "Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute—the foundation of the human condition—and should be better." Vargas Llosa's lecture is a powerful argument for the necessity of literature in our lives today. For, as he eloquently writes, "literature not only submerges us in the dream of beauty and happiness but alerts us to every kind of oppression."

In Praise of Reading and Fiction

In Praise of Reading and Fiction PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429930780
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 50

Get Book Here

Book Description
On December 7, 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His Nobel lLecture is a resounding tribute to fiction's power to inspire readers to greater ambition, to dissent, and to political action. "We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist," Vargas Llosa writes. "Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute—the foundation of the human condition—and should be better." Vargas Llosa's lecture is a powerful argument for the necessity of literature in our lives today. For, as he eloquently writes, "literature not only submerges us in the dream of beauty and happiness but alerts us to every kind of oppression."

Sabers and Utopias

Sabers and Utopias PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher:
ISBN: 0374253730
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE A landmark collection of essays on the Nobel laureate’s conception of Latin America, past, present, and future Throughout his career, the Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa has grappled with the concept of Latin America on a global stage. Examining liberal claims and searching for cohesion, he continuously weighs the reality of the continent against the image it projects, and considers the political dangers and possibilities that face this diverse set of countries. Now this illuminating and versatile collection assembles these never-before-translated criticisms and meditations. Reflecting the intellectual development of the writer himself, these essays distill the great events of Latin America’s recent history, analyze political groups like FARC and Sendero Luminoso, and evaluate the legacies of infamous leaders such as Papa Doc Duvalier and Fidel Castro. Arranged by theme, they trace Vargas Llosa’s unwavering demand for freedom, his embrace of and disenchantment with revolutions, and his critique of nationalism, populism, indigenism, and corruption. From the discovery of liberal ideas to a defense of democracy, buoyed by a passionate invocation of Latin American literature and art, Sabers and Utopias is a monumental collection from one of our most important writers. Uncompromising and adamantly optimistic, these social and political essays are a paean to thoughtful engagement and a brave indictment of the discrimination and fear that can divide a society.

The Night

The Night PDF Author: Rodrigo Blanco Calderon
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 164421041X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
For readers who love Bolaño, a new voice of Latin American fiction, winner of the Mario Vargas Llosa Prize. Recurring blackouts envelop Caracas in an inescapable darkness that makes nightmares come true. Real and fictional characters, most of them are writers, exchange the role of narrator in this polyphonic novel. They recount contradictory versions of the plot, a series of femicides that began with the energy crisis. The central narrator is a psychiatrist who manipulates the accounts of his friend, an author writing a book titled The Night; and his patient, an advertising executive obsessed with understanding the world through word puzzles. The author shifts between crime fiction and metafiction, cautioning readers that the events retold are both true and manipulated. This is a political novel about the financial crisis and socio-political division in Venezuela from 2008 to 2010. The title of the book, originally also in English, is a gesture towards Chavism's failure to resist US influence. Yet, the form is unapologetically literary, a reflection on the depiction and distortion of reality through storytelling. Blanco Calderón said about the potential of language, "I am convinced that all the evil in the world begins in them: in words" (Caracas, 2010).

Talking Books with Mario Vargas Llosa

Talking Books with Mario Vargas Llosa PDF Author: Raquel Chang-Rodríguez
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496220250
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This collection of essays associated with Mario Vargas Llosa’s visits to the City College of New York offers readers an opportunity to learn about his body of work through his own perspective and those of key fiction writers and literary critics.

The Storyteller

The Storyteller PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429921935
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
At a small gallery in Florence, a Peruvian writer happens upon a photograph of a tribal storyteller deep in the jungles of the Amazon. He is overcome with the eerie sense that he knows this man...that the storyteller is not an Indian at all but an old school friend, Saul Zuratas. As recollections of Zuratas flow through his mind, the writer begins to imagine Zuratas's transformation from a modern to a central member of the unacculturated Machiguenga tribe. Weaving the mysteries of identity, storytelling, and truth, Vargas Llosa has created a spellbinding tale of one man's journey from the modern world to our origins, abandoning one in order to find meaning in both.

A Dream Come True

A Dream Come True PDF Author: Juan Carlos Onetti
Publisher: Archipelago
ISBN: 1939810477
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
A Dream Come True collects the complete stories of Juan Carlos Onetti, presenting his existentialist, complex, and ironic style over the course of his writing career. Onetti was praised by Latin America's greatest authors, and regarded as an inventor of a new form and school of writing. Juan Carlos Onetti's A Dream Come True depicts a sharp, coherent, literary voice, encompassing Onetti's early stages of writing and his later texts. They span from a few pages in "Avenida de Mayo - Diagonal - Avenida de Mayo" to short novellas, like the celebrated detective story "The Face of Disgrace" and "Death and the Girl," an existential masterpiece that explores the complexity of violence and murder in the mythical town of Santa María. His stories create a world of writing which is both universal and highly local, mediating between philosophical characters and the quotidian melodrama of Uruguayan villages.

The Neighborhood

The Neighborhood PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374716137
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
A tabloid sex scandal leads to murder in the Nobel laureate’s politically charged thriller set among the wealthy elite of 1990s Peru. Through the 1990s, Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori oversaw a deeply corrupt society. Those among the elite enjoyed privilege beyond imagining. But two couples from Lima’s upper class are about to become embroiled in a disturbing vortex of erotic adventures and politically driven blackmail. Enrique, a high-profile businessman, receives a visit from notorious tabloid editor Rolando Garro, who attempts to blackmail him with graphic pictures from an old business trip. When Enrique refuses to pay, the images are on the front page. Meanwhile, Enrique’s wife is in the midst of a passionate affair with the wife of Enrique’s lawyer and best friend. When Garro shows up murdered, the two couples must navigate the unspoken laws and customs of Peru’s criminal underworld, while the magazine staff embarks on its greatest exposé yet. A twisting, unpredictable tale, The Neighborhood is at once a scathing indictment of Fujimori’s regime and a crime thriller that evokes the vulgarity of freedom in a corrupt system.

The Language of Passion

The Language of Passion PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312422547
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE Internationally acclaimed novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has contributed a biweekly column to Spain's major newspaper, El País, since 1977. In this collection of columns from the 1990s, Vargas Llosa weighs in on the burning questions of the last decade, including the travails of Latin American democracy, the role of religion in civic life, and the future of globalization. But Vargas Llosa's influence is hardly limited to politics. In some of the liveliest critical writing of his career, he makes a pilgrimage to Bob Marley's shrine in Jamaica, celebrates the sexual abandon of Carnaval in Rio, and examines the legacies of Vermeer, Bertolt Brecht, Frida Kahlo, and Octavio Paz, among others.

Letters to a Young Novelist

Letters to a Young Novelist PDF Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429921927
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
The Nobel Prize–winning author’s classic on the craft of novel writing “distills [the great works] brilliantly, revealing an architecture to their greatness” (The Washington Post Book World). In Letters to a Young Novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa condenses a lifetime of writing, reading, and thought into an essential manual for aspiring writers. Drawing on the stories and novels of writers from around the globe—including Borges, Bierce, Céline, Cortázar, Faulkner, Kafka, Robbe-Grillet and others—he lays bare the inner workings of fiction, all the while urging young novelists not to lose touch with the elemental urge to create. Conversational, eloquent, and effortlessly erudite, this little book is destined to be read and re-read by young writers, old writers, would-be writers, and all those with a stake in the world of letters.

Rosario Tijeras

Rosario Tijeras PDF Author: Jorge Franco
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609802977
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
"Since they shot her at point-blank range while she was being kissed, she confused the pain of love with that of death." Rosario Tijeras is the violent, violated character at the center of Jorge Franco's study of contrasts, set in self-destructing 1980s Medellín. Her very name-evoking the rosary, and scissors-bespeaks her conflict as a woman who becomes a contract killer to insulate herself from the random violence of the streets. Then she is shot, gravely wounded, and the circle of contradiction is closed. From the corridors of the hospital where Rosario is fighting for her life, Antonio, the narrator, waits to learn if she will recover. Through him, we reconstruct the friendship between the two, her love story with Emilio, and her life as a hitwoman. Rosario Tijeras has been recognized as an admirable continuation of a literary subject that was first treated by Gabriel García Márquez and then by Fernando Vallejo. A work in the Latin American social realist tradition, Rosario Tijeras is told in fast and vibrant prose and with poetic flourish.