As a major literary figure and significant contributor to not only literature of the developing world but to world literature in general, Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012 ) is a vital literary tour de force, providing the world outside of Latin America… Read More ›
Hopscotch is not only Julio Cortázar’s most celebrated literary achievement, it stands alongside Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude as one of the most important and influential novels of the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s. Referring… Read More ›
The Harp and the Shadow (1979) is the fifth novel by Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier (1904–80). Carpentier, a master of the modern Latin American novel, is credited with coining the term magic realism. As implied by its title, the novel… Read More ›
Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Green House won the Crítica Prize in Spain (1966), and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in Venezuela (1967), the latter being most important literary prize in Hispanic America. The novel was inspired by a trip that Vargas… Read More ›
More than 20 years after first gaining international acclaim with One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez (1928–2014) fulfilled a lifelong ambition in The General in His Labyrinth, an historical novel about the last months in the life of… Read More ›
The Feast of the Goat, the seminal work by Mario Vargas Llosa (1936– ), describes the end of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s regime in the Dominican Republic. The novel begins in the present day with the return of Urania Cabral to… Read More ›
Written by the brilliant Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho (1947– ), Eleven Minutes was originally published in Portuguese. This novel differs from the rest of the writer’s oeuvre as it deals with a subject which, Coelho states in the book’s dedication,… Read More ›
Often hailed as Argentina’s national epic and an elegy for a lost frontier past, Don Segundo Sombra is also regarded as the masterpiece of Ricardo Güiraldes (1886–1927). Completed and published just before his death, this novel brought Güiraldes the fame… Read More ›
Considered Venezuela’s “national novel,” Doña Bárbara vividly depicts the classic struggle between civilization and nature. Its author, Rómulo Gallegos (1884–1969), was an important statesman, educator, and public figure during the first half of the 20th century, and his political service… Read More ›
Generally regarded as the finest novel of José María Arguedas (1911–69), Deep Rivers marks a break with his earlier work, for in it the Peruvian author abandons conventional realism in favor of a lyrical manner more appropriate for communicating the… Read More ›
The third novel by internationally acclaimed Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012), The Death of Artemio Cruz distills the history of postrevolutionary Mexico into one man’s personal journey. Fuentes published this novel after he had established his reputation in communications and… Read More ›
Written three years after the author’s defeat in the 1990 presidential election in Peru, Death in the Andes won for Mario Vargas Llosa (1936– ) the Planeta Prize, one of the most important literary awards in the Hispanic world. This… Read More ›
Like all other novels by Isabel Allende (1942– ), Daughter of Fortune was first written and published in Spanish. In some ways, this story represents a return to the motifs and themes of the author’s earlier works, including her first… Read More ›
Crossroads is the second of 12 novels written by the Brazilian writer Erico Verissimo (1905–75). In contrast to the writer’s debut novel, Clarissa (1933), in which a teenager’s life is told in a romantic, rather rosy tone, Crossroads is the… Read More ›
Historically and politically important, this novel by Mario Vargas Llosa (1936– ) is based on the social conditions in Peru during the eight-year dictatorship of Manuel A. Odría. Lima, the capital of Peru, is the central stage of the narrative,… Read More ›
The works of the 20th-century modernist Jorge Amado (1912–2001), one of the most famous Brazilian writers of the 20th century, have been read around the globe. He is particularly remembered for his books Cacao and Dona Flor and Her Two… Read More ›
A Brief Life is the first major novel by Juan Carlos Onetti (1909–94), although the work is fourth in chronological order when placed with his related novels. It marks a watershed in the Uruguay-born Onetti’s career as well as in… Read More ›
The Body Snatchers is arguably the masterwork of Uruguay-born Juan Carlos Onetti (1909–94), a distinction that ranks it above many other great novels. It was written at the margins of the so-called Latin American Boom— a period of intense literary… Read More ›
José Saramago (1922–2010 ), one of Portugal’s most famous writers, was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1988. His novel Blindness is considered one of his most outstanding literary achievements. A speculative parable reminiscent of Albert Camus’s The Plague,… Read More ›
The novel Baltasar and Blimunda, written in 1984, advanced José Saramago (1922–2010) from national popularity to international recognition. The historical novel was translated from the Portuguese into English by Giovanni Pontiero in 1986. José Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize… Read More ›
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