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Mario Vargas Llosa is a heterogeneous writer whose positions have often not been consistent from novel to novel, between his fictional and nonfictional work, between his literary and political commentary, and as his political commentary has proceeded over the decades. This analysis of his work reveals his insights into socio-political matters.

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Introduction; J.E.De Castro & N.Birns PART I: MARIO VARGAS LLOSA AND THE NEOLIBERAL Mr. Vargas Llosa Goes to Washington; J.E.De Castro The Wars of an Old-Fashioned (Neoliberal) Gentleman; F.Escárzaga Let´s Make Owners and Entrepreneurs: Glimpses of Freemarketeers in Vargas Llosa´s Novels; J.O´Bryan Knight PART II: THE WRITINGS OF THE 1980S AND 1990S Appropriation in the Backlands: Is Mario Vargas Llosa at War with Euclides da Cunha?; N.Birns Mario Vargas Llosa, Fabulist of Queer Cleansing; P.Allatson Going Native: Anti-Indigenism in Vargas Llosa´s The Storyteller and Death in the Andes; I.López-Calvo The Recovered Childhood: Utopian Liberalism and Mercantilism of the Skin in a Fish in the Water; S.R.Franco PART III: MARIO VARGAS LLOSA IN THE 21ST CENTURY Sex, Politics and High Art: Vargas Llosa´s Long Road to the Feast of the Goat; G.Bell-Villada Humanism and Criticism: The Presence of French Culture in Vargas Llosa´s Utopia; R.Forgues PART IV: MARIO VARGAS LLOSA, MAN OF LETTERS Mario Vargas Llosa´s Self-definition as ´the Man Who Writes and Thinks´; S.Köllmann Vargas Llosa and the History of Ideas: Avatars of a Dictionary; W.H.Corral

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"Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. Just in time to recognize that honor, Castro and Birns (both, the New School) provide 11 essays outlining Vargas Llosa´s part in literature´s insurrection in modern culture... The essays elegantly balance one another, leaving the reader with the vision of an erudite, cultured man whose energies and interests explain the variability of his documentary vision and whose ´incendiary´ views like those of Sartre, Camus, and Grass will be assessed positively because of Vargas Llosa´s commitment to the debate of ideas in contemporary culture... Recommended.´

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"This superb collection of essays brings together a series of lively and sometimes polemical perspectives on the political dimensions of Mario Vargas Llosa´s writings. Indispensable reading for anyone seeking a better understanding of Vargas Llosa´s intellectual trajectory." - Maarten Van Delden, Professor of Latin American Literature, UCLA

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Juan E. De Castro is an associate professor of Literature at Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts. He is author of Mestizo Nations: Culture, Race, and Conformity in Latin American Literature (2002).

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