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Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine. New York. 1983. New Directions. 081120846x. Translated from the French by Ralph Manheim. 446 pages. hardcover. Cover drawing and design by Harold Wortsman.

DESCRIPTION - Few first novels have had the impact of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of the Night (1932). Written in an explosive style that fairly jumps off the page, the book shocked most critics but found immediate success with the French reading public, which responded enthusiastically to the violent misadventures of its petit-bourgeois antihero, Bardamu, and his scabrous nihilism. His military experiences in the first years of World War I, his travels to colonial French West Africa, New York, and Detroit, his return to postwar France and his beginning medical practice in the slums of suburban Paris—all these have some parallels with the real life of the author. However, repeated attempts to prove the novel strictly autobiographical have become exercises in academic futility: the picaresque extravagance of this twentieth-century classic clearly marks it as a forerunner of absurdist black humor. The publication of Ralph Manheim's translation of Journey to the End of the Night follows some years after his rendering into English of its companion novel, Death on the Installment Plan. Manheim, more than any other translator, has been able to capture the savage energy of Céline's French, drawn from the Parisian argot he made his own.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961), better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline was a French novelist, polemicist, and physician. His first novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932) won the Prix Renaudot but divided critics due to the author's pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his writing style based on working-class speech. In subsequent novels such as Death on the Installment Plan (1936), Guignol's Band (1944) and Castle to Castle (1957), Céline further developed an innovative and distinctive literary style. Maurice Nadeau wrote: "What Joyce did for the English language...what the surrealists attempted to do for the French language, Céline achieved effortlessly and on a vast scale." From 1937 Céline wrote a series of antisemitic polemical works in which he advocated a military alliance with Nazi Germany. He continued to publicly espouse antisemitic views during the German occupation of France, and after the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944, he fled to Germany and then Denmark where he lived in exile. He was convicted of collaboration by a French court in 1951 but was pardoned by a military tribunal soon after. He returned to France where he resumed his careers as a doctor and author.Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961), better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline was a French novelist, polemicist, and physician. His first novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932) won the Prix Renaudot but divided critics due to the author's pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his writing style based on working-class speech. In subsequent novels such as Death on the Installment Plan (1936), Guignol's Band (1944) and Castle to Castle (1957), Céline further developed an innovative and distinctive literary style. Maurice Nadeau wrote: "What Joyce did for the English language...what the surrealists attempted to do for the French language, Céline achieved effortlessly and on a vast scale." From 1937 Céline wrote a series of antisemitic polemical works in which he advocated a military alliance with Nazi Germany. He continued to publicly espouse antisemitic views during the German occupation of France, and after the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944, he fled to Germany and then Denmark where he lived in exile. He was convicted of collaboration by a French court in 1951 but was pardoned by a military tribunal soon after. He returned to France where he resumed his careers as a doctor and author.Céline is widely considered to be one of the greatest French novelists of the 20th century, and his novels have had an enduring influence on later authors. However, he remains a controversial figure in France due to his antisemitism and activities during the Second World War.

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The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 1969. Harper & Row.  Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. 407 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Guy Fleming.

DESCRIPTION - THE TIME OF THE HERO immediately established Mario Vargas Llosa as an important contemporary novelist - one of a number who have come out of Latin America since World War II. In THE GREEN HOUSE Vargas Llosa has expanded his vision and his boundaries and has written an epic and powerful novel that gives a deep sense of the gigantic and painful adventure of human existence. The story of The Green House moves back and forward in time, weaving its darkly glittering fabric. It merges dream, memory, and present-tense experience to create a total reality. There are the city and the jungle. The city is Piura and across the river from the city, at the edge of the desert, stands ‘The Green House,’ the brothel founded by the stranger, Anselmo. On the fringes of the city is the slum, La Man gacheria, where the police dare not go, filled with murderers, ugly smells, and dirty bars-a world apart, a breath of hell. Far up the river, deep in the green heart of the Amazon jungle, is the settlement of Santa Maria de Nieva with its army outpost and its Mission, and farther still into ‘the heart of darkness’ is the island in the river where Fushia, the legendary Japanese smuggler, lives. The world that contains these places and these people casts a spell over the reader. Lives touch tangentially or overlap: Bonifacia, the timorous Indian servant at the Mission becomes a prostitute at the Green House. Fushia, endlessly scheming, limitlessly cruel, disappears in a leper colony in the jungle. ‘The Green House’is burned down by a mob whipped to frenzy by Father Garcia and is rebuilt again. Anselmo becomes a harp-player and a saintly figure in La Man gacheria. And the ‘heroes’-Jose, Monk, Josefino, and Lituma - continue their round of magnificent exploits and sordid orgies. The world turns; the river flows through the city and jungle, weaving the web of life over and over. THE GREEN HOUSE is full of the legendary, the exotic, the heroic, encompassing many lives and many levels, from nobility to degradation. It is the profound and moving exercise of a brilliant imagination that searches the very center of man’s experience.

Other editions:

The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa. London. 1969. Jonathan Cape. Translated From The Spanish By Gregory Rabassa. 405 pages. Jacket design by Antoni Evora. 0224616986.

Vargas Llosa, Mario. The Green House. New York. 1973. Avon/Bard. 0380150999. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. 383 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - THE GREEN HOUSE was put up across the river from the city of Puira at the edge of the desert. The townspeople laughed at the odd-looking green structure and the stranger who had come into the town to build it. But when the Green House was finished and its first tenants had arrived, the citizens of Puira stopped laughing. For young girls looking for an easier life and the men of Puira, drowning in the monotony and misery of their day-to-day existence, the Green House became a nighttime pleasure oasis in the desert. For the religious and moral forces and the indignant matrons of Puira, the Green House became the very incarnation of the Devil-an evil that had to be destroyed at any cost. ‘A squirming mass of tatterdemalion humanity emerges in these pages. . . There are Amazonian river people and Amazonian women. There are missionary nuns, lawless speculators in raw jungle rubber, Indian tribesmen who use blowguns and pilots on river boats in the amphibious world., you get everything: the agony of a woman in childbirth, the brutalities of Indian torture, moments of intoxicated joy, a fatal game of Russian roulette, a provincial wedding. The catering is magnificent; every regional dish is served and savored . . . it is electrically alive.’ - The New York Times.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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Making Waves: Essays by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 1997. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374200386. Translated from the Spanish by John King. 338 pages. hardcover. Front jacket art: Mario Vargas Llosa, by Botero. Jacket design by Michael Ian Kaye.  

DESCRIPTION - Mario Vargas Llosa, renowned as a novelist, is one of our most brilliant and provocative public intellectuals as well. In Making Waves, the first collection of his essays, he explores, with characteristic brio and elegance, his long-standing preoccupations-literature and politics, Europe and the Americas, and the relations among them all. We follow Vargas Llosa from his native Peru to Madrid and then to Paris, the setting of essays on his great precursors Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus, as well as a comic account of his visit to the tomb of Rin Tin Tin and an affecting memoir of his time in the city as an aspiring writer in the 1960s. In passionately critical essays on the Cuban revolution and its aftermath, Vargas Llosa takes up vital questions of Latin American independence, while in essays on Faulkner, Garcia Márquez, and Julio Cortázar-and in an exchange with Günter Grass-he ponders magic realism. In more recent articles, he considers the terrorism of Peru's Shining Path and the presidency of Alberto Fujimori-and the failures of the English public-school system, which made his son into a Rastafarian. The essays in Making Waves are full of Mario Vargas Llosa's unflagging literary intensity and moral and political integrity. They are an important addition to the body of work of this major international writer.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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The Perpetual Orgy: Flaubert & Madame Bovary by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 1986. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374230773. Translated from the Spanish by Helen R. Lane. 240 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Cynthia Krupat. Author photo by Alicia Benwides (1982).  

DESCRIPTION - A handful of fictional characters have marked my life more profoundly than a great number of flesh-and-blood beings I have known,' Vargas Llosa writes, but with none of them ‘have I had as clearly passionate a relationship as Emma Bovary.' His devotion to her, the novel, and its creator, ever since he first read Madame Bovary during his student days in Paris, when he had ‘very little money and the promise of a scholarship,' has been so complete that he has written an entire book about them. The Perpetual Orgy is his first nonfiction book to appear in English. The book's first section, ‘An Unrequited Passion,' is a tête-a-tête with Emma Bovary The second, ‘The Pen-Man,' traces the gestation and birth of the novel, as well as Flaubert's method, his mania for documentation, and the novel's literary sources. The third, ‘The First Modern Novel,' situates Madame Bovary in literary history. Only the greatest of novels deserves, or can support, this kind of analysis. It is a tribute to THE PERPETUAL ORGY (Flaubert's phrase for losing oneself in literature) that it sends the reader back to Flaubert's masterpiece with renewed interest.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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My Life With Mario Vargas Llosa  by Julia Urquidi Illanes. New York. 1988. Peter Lang. 0820406899. Translated from the Spanish by C. R. Perricone. Series XXII Latin American Studies Vol.1. 264 pages. hardcover.

  
DESCRIPTION - Living in a Paris garret with a struggling young writer who has since become a famous author was not fictional for Julia Urquidi Illanes when she married Mario Vargas Llosa. This English translation is an incredible but true 'portrait of an artist as a young man' and of his aunt by marriage, whom he later fictionalized in Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. Married for 9 years, Julia typed the first of his best-selling novels, The Time of the Hero, only to be abandoned when Mario fell in love with his first cousin Patricia, who is now his second wife. Readers will find this behind the scene account of a writer nominated for the Nobel prize gives insights into the creative processes of a novelist as it relates the range of human emotions in real life.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Julia Urquidi Illanes (30 May 1926 - 10 March 2010) was a Bolivian writer. Urquidi was born in Cochabamba. She was famous as the first wife of Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa (1955-1964) and also the namesake of one of his most famous novels, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. In 1983 she published her memories titled Lo que Varguitas no dijo (English: What Varguitas did not say). She died in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, aged 83.The English translator Catherine R. Perricone is Professor of Foreign Languages at Auburn University specializing in current Spanish American literature. She edited Alma y Corazon (Heart and Soul) an anthology of Latin American poetesses, and has published articles on Vargas Llosa and other novelists, an extensive bibliography on feminist criticism and Spanish American poetesses, and other subjects in Hispanic literature which have appeared in such journals as Hispania, Foreign Language Annals, Circulo, USF Language Quarterly, and The Americas Review.

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The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 1984. Farrar Straus Giroux. Translated From The Spanish By Helen R. Lane. 568 pages. Jacket design by Paul Bacon Studio. Author photograph by Thomas Victor. 0374286515. September 1984. Originally published in Spanish, La guerra del fin del mundo, by Editorial Seix Barral, S. A. , Spain.

DESCRIPTION - Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the world's great storytellers. His novel CONVERSATION IN THE CATHEDRAL is a classic narrative of tyranny and filial love, while his ribald tale AUNT JULIA AND THE SCRIPTWRITER is a comic masterpiece. The War of the End of the World, Vargas Llosa's new work, brings together all of its author's superb gifts in an epic historical novel, a realistic panorama of Tolstoyan sweep that is at once a magnificent literary accomplishment and an enthralling story. To compare THE WAR OF THE END OF THE WORLD with the great historical novels of a Tolstoy or a Stendhal is no hyperbole. Vargas Llosa has chosen to retell one of the crucial events of Latin America: the uprising in the Brazilian backlands that almost reversed the history of the continent. It is the story of an apocalyptic prophet and the state he created - Canudos, home to all the damned of the earth, to prostitutes, bandits, beggars, and their like. In Canudos, history and civilization are turned on their ears. There is no money, property, marriage, no income tax, decimal system, or census. Canudos is the revolutionary spirit in its purest and most apocalyptic form-a state which promises to be a libertarian paradise but which the forces of the modern world and of the nation-state cannot tolerate. The International Herald Tribune has described this novel as 'at one and the same time a major literary work, an adventure story, a historical drama, and an inquiry into ideological fanaticism and 'utopian' violence in Latin America'. ' Vargas Llosa has described it as his most ambitious novel to date; it will unquestionably be called his most successful.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 1987. Farrar Straus Giroux. Translated From The Spanish By Alfred McAdam. 151 pages. Jacket design 1987 by Honi Werner. Author photo 1987 by Jerry Bauer. 0374289786. June 1987.

DESCRIPTION - In WHO KILLED PALOMINO MOLERO? Mario Vargas Llosa has turned to detective fiction. The setting is Peru in the nineteen-fifties. Near an Air Force base in the northern deserts, a young airman is found tortured and murdered. Two local policemen, Lieutenant Silva and Officer Lituma, set out to investigate. They are not glamorous detectives with modern resources at their disposal; they don't even have a squad car and have to cajole a local cabdriver to take them out to the scene of the crime. Not that anyone seems to care very much if Silva and Lituma capture Palomino Molero's killer. The commanding officer of the air base seems to do everything he can to impede their investigations, and their own superior officers are, at best, indifferent. But Silva and Lituma persevere, and, in the end, uncover the truth. WHO KILLED PALOMINO MOLERO? is an entertaining and brilliantly plotted mystery. It is also, as might be expected of any work by Mario Vargas Llosa, serious fiction. Deftly, unobtrusively, the book takes up some of the great themes of all of Vargas Llosa's novels: guilt and innocence, and despair at how difficult it is to be an honest man in a society based on the corruption both of motives and of feelings. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 1966. Grove Press. Translated From The Spanish By Lysande Kemp. 409 pages. Originally published in Spanish as La ciudad y los perros, 1962 - Editorial Seix Barral, S. A. , Barcelona.

Banned in Peru when it was originally published because it was considered scandalous, and even burned publicly, THE TIME OF THE HERO is the story of a group of rebellious military school cadets. Mario Vargas Llosa was reportedly not happy with the American title. He wanted it to be closer to the book's title in Spanish, something like 'The City of the Dogs.'

DESCRIPTION - The scene: a pitch-black lavatory after eights-out in a military academy. Four cadets are drawing lots for the night's mission. Their objective: the captain's office. Their target: to steal a copy of the next day's chemistry examination. Thus begins THE TIME OF THE HERO, a work which has been hailed by critics around the world as one of the best Spanish-language novels of recent decades. The author has set his novel at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, Peru. In this microcosm, this city within a city, a group of cadets form still another circle in their attempt to break out of the vicious round of sadistic hazing, military discipline, confinement, and boredom. The cadets' rebellion is led by the Jaguar, an aloof, tough boy who refuses to be initiated and treated as one of the Dogs. Under his leadership seven cadets, later reduced to four, join forces to fight the system by smuggling in pisco and cigarettes, running midnight poker games in the latrine, selling answers to examinations, stealing or mutilating uniforms. The Poet, regarded as the class brain, writes and sells pornographic stories; the Boa, their sex hero, wins the contests they hold in their hide-out; and the Slave is their built-in scapegoat. But what began as pranks in their First Year turns into tragedy by the time the boys reach the Third Year-the point at which the novel opens. The officers' discovery of the theft of a crucial final exam sets off a cycle of betrayal, murder, and revenge which jeopardizes the entire military hierarchy. Moving back and forth from past to present, from inner thought to outer action, from within the Academy to the city outside, Vargas Llosa exposes the sordid world of the military elite, with its hypocrisy, moral decay, and power politics, and the corruption throughout the society beyond the Academy walls. Mario Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian writer who is one of Latin America's leading novelists and essayists.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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Death In The Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 1996. Farrar Straus Giroux. Translated From The Spanish By Edith Grossman. 276 pages. Jacket design by Michael Ian Kaye. Author photograph by Jerry Bauer. 0374140014.

DESCRIPTION - DEATH IN THE ANDES is Mario Vargas Llosa's first work of fiction since the best-selling IN PRAISE OF THE STEPMOTHER. The novel tells the story of army corporal Lituma and his deputy Tomas, who have been assigned to treacherous guard duty in an isolated, run-down mining community in the mountains of Peru. The men are homesick and far from enthusiastic about serving as foot soldiers in the Peruvian Army's ongoing war against the Shining Path guerillas. So, to pass the time, Tomas tells the story of his great love, Mercedes a troublemaking prostitute who leads him on a precarious, cross-country adventure. But life in the Andes soon turns eventful too. Lituma and Tomas find themselves caught up in a series of mysterious disappearances involving the Shining Path and, soon enough, a local couple performing cannibalistic sacrifices with a strange similarity to the Dionysian rituals of ancient Greece. Part detective novel and part political allegory, DEATH IN THE ANDES offers a panoramic view of Peru today - not only of the current political violence and social upheaval but also of the country's roots in Indian culture and pre-Hispanic mysticism. With his usual ?lan, Mario Vargas Llosa builds a magical assemblage of narrators, time frames, and sub-plots, which bursts with unforgettable characters - Senderista guerillas, disenfranchised Indians, eccentric townspeople, and overly curious foreigners. The result is a work of suspense, narrative drive, and keen insight into one of Latin America's most fascinating and complex countries.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 2007. Farrar Straus Giroux. Translated From The Spanish By Edith Grossman. 276 pages. Cover photograph by Abigail Pope. Cover design by Charlotte Strick. 0374182434.

DESCRIPTION - Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as 'Lily' in Lima in 1950, when she arrives one summer out of the blue, claiming to be from Chile but vanishing the moment her claim is exposed as fiction. He loves her next in Paris, where she appears as the enchanting 'Comrade Arlette,' an activist en route to Cuba, and becomes his lover, albeit an icy, remote one who denies knowing anything about the Lily of years gone by Whoever the bad girl turns up as - whether it's Madame Robert Arnoux, the wife of a high-ranking UNESCO official, or Kuriko, the mistress of a sinister Japanese businessman, and however poorly she treats him, Ricardo is doomed to worship her. The protean Lily, gifted liar and irresistible, maddening muse - does Ricardo ever know who she really is? The answer is as unclear as what has become of Ricardo himself, a lifelong expatriate shadowed by the sense that he is only ever drifting. In Mario Vargas Llosa's beguiling new novel, the strange bedfellows of good and bad turn out not to be what they appear.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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