|
Featured Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
With Reviews and Articles From the Archives of The New York Times
Related LinksWalter Kendrick Reviews 'The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto' (June 28, 1998) First Chapter: 'The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto' In This Feature
Reviews of Mario Vargas Llosa's Earlier Books Articles About and By Mario Vargas Llosa
REVIEWS OF MARIO VARGAS LLOSA'S EARLIER BOOKS:
Vargas Llosa, photographed at the restaurant of the Lombardi Hotel on June 11, 1998. (CREDIT: Sara Kruwlich/The New York Times)
'The Time of the Hero' (1966)
"The young Peruvian novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa . . . is concerned less with society than with growth and change in the individual and the mystery of how these are accomplished."
'Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter,' reviewed by William Kennedy (1982)
"And now for something entirely different from Latin America: a comic novel that is genuinely funny."
'The War of the End of the World,' reviewed by Robert Stone (1984)
"Based on events in South America at the end of the 19th century, it succeeds brilliantly in penetrating and opening to examination the ancient significance of the millenarian myth."
'The Perpetual Orgy: Flaubert and Madame Bovary,' reviewed by Julian Barnes (1986)
"Mario Vargas Llosa fell deeply in love with Emma from the moment he first read 'Madame Bovary' - in Paris in 1959 - and at the start of this unconventional, shiningly intelligent and fiercely sensible homage to Flaubert he recounts how ever since he has been in thrall to Emma's social rebelliousness, her erotic power, her vulgarity and her promise of violence."
'The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta,' reviewed by Robert Coover (1986)
"There are in fact two stories in 'Mayta' - that of the title character and his abortive guerrilla uprising, and that of the unnamed narrator-investigator and his frustrated fictional exploration of this particular but elusive moment in past time."
'Who Killed Palomino Molero?' (1987)
"Evoking landscape and mores in writing that is spare, rich and cruelly beautiful, he both satisfies the requirements of the detective genre and demonstrates that it too can resonate like any other form of fiction."
'The Storyteller,' reviewed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1989)
"'The Storyteller' is science fiction at its best. Accurately following the investigations of a science - anthropology, in this case - as far as they have gone, it then asks: what if?"
'In Praise of the Stepmother,' reviewed by Anthony Burgess (1990)
"Acts of foreplay are described here fully but chastely; the erogenous zones are poeticized; art hovers over all."
'A Writer's Reality' (1991)
"Mr. Vargas Llosa is less concerned with politics than he is with method, and with the technical and personal anguish of writing a novel."
'A Fish in the Water: A Memoir' (1994)
" It serves as his mea culpa: he explains why the aspiring writer of the 1950's became a politician in the late 1980's and why, in the end, this was a terrible mistake."
'Death in the Andes' (1996)
"The foreground of this novel seems confusingly disorganized from start to finish. The individual vignettes are often brilliant, but neither Lituma nor the reader nor perhaps the author himself can put them all coherently together."
'Making Waves,' reviewed by Jay Parini (1997)
". . . a diverse and representative volume that allows us, for the first time, to trace this enigmatic, often brilliant writer's controversial, occasionally baffling intellectual journey."ARTICLES ABOUT AND BY MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
Is Fiction the Art of Living? (1984) by Mario Vargas Llosa
"Ever since I wrote my first short story, people have asked if what I wrote 'was true.' Though my replies sometimes satisfy their curiosity, I am left each time, no matter how sincere my answer, with a nagging sense of having said something that's not quite on target."
Politics Nevermore, Vargas Llosa Says, Embracing Writing (1990)
"Alive and apparently unscathed after three years in pursuit of the presidency, Mr. Vargas Llosa says he is disappointed but also 'a bit relieved' that the electorate rejected him in June."
Vargas Llosa Disparages Peru, and Vice Versa (1993)
"Ask Peruvians about Mario Vargas Llosa and more often than not the reaction is surprisingly bitter."
Home |
|