Sara Castro-Klarén

'This book provides an intelligent & perceptive reading of Vargas Llosa's narratives; it will become a standard reference for understanding the Peruvian writer's works. . . '--Choice.

Understanding Mario Vargas Llosa

Christian Fernández

This edited volume offers new perspectives from leading scholars on the important work of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), one of the first Latin American writers to present an intellectual analysis of pre-Columbian history and culture and the ensuing colonial period. To the contributors, Inca Garcilaso's Royal Commentaries of the Incas presented an early counter-hegemonic discourse and a reframing of the history of native non-alphabetic cultures that undermined the colonial rhetoric of his time and the geopolitical divisions it purported. Through his research in both Andean and Renaissance archives, Inca Garcilaso sought to connect these divergent cultures into one world. This collection offers five classical studies of Royal Commentaries previously unavailable in English, along with seven new essays that cover topics including Andean memory, historiography, translation, philosophy, trauma, and ethnic identity. This cross-disciplinary volume will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American history, culture, comparative literature, subaltern studies, and works in translation.

Inca Garcilaso and Contemporary World-Making

Mario Vargas Llosa is considered one of the great Latin American writers of our time. This book probes and analyzes in a scholarly way the entire work to date of this celebrated author of The War of the End of the World. Sections include the helix narrative, conversation as a vehicle of narrative, stories within stories, double and multiple time and space, cinema and narrative technique, fragmentation and coherence, fiction and history, the hero and society, the failed hero and the writing of fiction, autobiography and fiction, and the writer as hero.

The Space of Solitude in Cien Años de Soledad

John Charles Chasteen

Patterson Distinguished Term Professor of History John Charles Chasteen

How did the nationalisms of Latin America's many countries -- elaborated in everything from history and fiction to cookery -- arise from their common backgrounds in the Spanish and Portuguese empires and their similar populations of mixed European, native, and African origins? Beyond Imagined Communities: Reading and Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, discards one answer and provides a rich collection of others. These essays began as a critique of the argument by Benedict Anderson's highly influential book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Anderson traces Latin American nationalisms to local circulation of colonial newspapers and tours of duty of colonial administrators, but this book shows the limited validity of these arguments. Instead, Beyond Imagined Communities shows how more diverse cultural influences shaped Latin American nationalisms. Four historians examine social situations: FranÃ§ois-Xavier Guerra studies various forms of political communication; Tulio HalperÃ­n Donghi, political parties; Sarah C. Chambers, the feminine world of salons; and Andrew Kirkendall, the institutions of higher education that trained the new administrators. Next, four critics examine production of cultural objects: Fernando Unzueta investigates novels; Sara Castro-KlarÃ©n, archeology and folklore; Gustavo Verdesio, suppression of unwanted archeological evidence; and Beatriz GonzÃ¡lez Stephan, national literary histories and international expositions.

Sara Castro-Klarén

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