The Way to Paradise

The Way to Paradise

Mario Vargas Llosa

Literature & Fiction

The dramatic lives of two bold, independent adventurers--Paul Gaugin and his grandmother Flora Tristan, a trail-blazing women's suffragist--as imagined by "one of the master storytellers of our time" (Chicago Tribune Book World) In 1844, Flora Tristan embarked on a tour of France to campaign for workers' and women's rights. In 1891, her grandson Paul Gauguin set sail for Tahiti, determined to escape civilization and paint primitive masterpieces. Flora died before her grandson was born, but their travels and obsessions unfold side by side in this deft, utterly absorbing novel. Flora, the illegitimate child of a wealthy Peruvian father and French mother, grows up in poverty, and after fleeing a brutal husband, journeys to Peru to demand her inheritance. On her return, she makes her name as a popular writer and a champion of the downtrodden, setting herself the arduous task of touring the French countryside to recruit members for her Workers' Union. Paul, struggling painter and stubborn visionary, abandons his wife and five children for life in the South Seas, where his dreams of paradise are poisoned by syphilis, the stifling forces of French colonialism, and a chronic lack of funds, though he has his pick of teenage Tahitian lovers and paints some of his greatest works. Affectionate, astute, and quietly caustic, this double portrait is a rare study in passion and ambition, as well as the obstinate pursuit of greatness in the face of illness and death, from Mario Vargas Llosa, whose previous novels, "The Feast of the Goat," "pushed the boundaries of the traditional historic novel [in] a book of harrowing power and lasting resonance" ("The New York Times").
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Conversation at Princeton

Conversation at Princeton

Mario Vargas Llosa

Literature & Fiction

A series of conversations held at Princeton University between the Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa and Rubén Gallo.Princeton University, 2015. For one semester, Mario Vargas Llosa taught a course on literature and politics with Rubén Gallo. Over several classes, the two writers spoke to students about the theory of the novel and the relationship between journalism, politics, and literature through five beloved books by the Nobel laureate: Conversation in The Cathedral, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, Who Killed Palomino Molero?, A Fish in the Water, and The Feast of the Goat. Conversation at Princeton records these exhilarating discussions and captures the three complementary perspectives that converged in the classroom: that of Vargas Llosa, who reveals the creative process behind his novels; that of Rubén Gallo, who analyzes the different meanings the works took on after their publication; and that of the students,...
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The Call of the Tribe

The Call of the Tribe

Mario Vargas Llosa

Literature & Fiction

The intellectual autobiography of Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.From its origins, the liberal doctrine has represented the most advanced forms of democratic culture, and it is what has most defended us from the inextinguishable "call of the tribe." This book hopes to make a modest contribution to that indispensable project.In The Call of the Tribe, Mario Vargas Llosa surveys the readings that have shaped the way he thinks and has viewed the world over the past fifty years. The Nobel laureate, "tireless in his quest to probe the nature of the human animal" (Marie Arana, The Washington Post), maps out the liberal thinkers who helped him develop a new body of ideas after the great ideological traumas of his disenchantment with the Cuban Revolution and his alienation from the ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre, the author who most inspired Vargas Llosa in his youth.The works of Adam Smith, José Ortega y Gasset, Friedrich A....
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Death in the Andes

Death in the Andes

Mario Vargas Llosa

Literature & Fiction

In an isolated community in the Peruvian Andes, a series of mysterious disappearances has occurred. Army corporal Lituma and his deputy Tom�s believe the Shining Path guerrillas are responsible, but the townspeople have their own ideas about the forces that claimed the bodies of the missing men. This riveting novel is filled with unforgettable characters, among them disenfranchised Indians, eccentric local folk, and a couple performing strange cannibalistic sacrifices. As the investigation moves forward, Tom�s entertains Lituma with the surreal tale of a precarious love affair. Death in the Andes is both a fascinating detective novel and an insightful political allegory. Mario Vargas Llosa offers a panoramic view of Peruvian society, from the recent social upheaval to the cultural influences in its past.
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In Praise of the Stepmother

In Praise of the Stepmother

Mario Vargas Llosa

Literature & Fiction

Mario Vargas Llosa, the internationally acclaimed author of The Storyteller, adds his own finely-tuned poetic polish to this erotic exploration of carnality in one family. He turns the proverbial romantic triangle on its ear to create this New York Times bestselling erotic novel. French flaps and six full-color pages of classic artworks.
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Harsh Times

Harsh Times

Mario Vargas Llosa

Literature & Fiction

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE "A wildly enjoyable book; the 85-year-old Vargas Llosa is as sharp and mordantly funny as ever."Financial Times Guatemala, 1954. A CIA-supported military coup topples the government. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changed the development of Latin America: that those in power encouraged the spread of Soviet communism in the Americas. Mario Vargas Llosa has written a drama on a world stage, in which some persecutors end up as victims of the very plot they helped construct. Ironic and sensual, provocative and redemptive, Harsh Times is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War, the echoes of which are still felt today.
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Touchstones: Essays in Literature, Art and Politics

Touchstones: Essays in Literature, Art and Politics

Mario Vargas Llosa

Literature & Fiction

One of Latin America's greatest novelists, Mario Vargas Llosa is also a most acute and wide-ranging cultural critic and an acerbic political commentator. Touchstones includes his readings of major twentieth-century novels, from Heart of Darkness to The Tin Drum and Herzog and major works by Hemingway, Woolf, Orwell, Camus and Nabokov. There are long studies of George Grosz, vignettes on Botero and Picasso, and an appreciation of Cezanne and Van Gogh, including a visit to Cezanne's homes in the South Seas. Also included are essays on political and social thinkers, from the nineteenth-century feminist, Flora Tristan, to Isaiah Berlin, and contemporary pieces on 9/11, the aftermath of the war in Iraq, and the terrorist attacks on London and Madrid. Fantastically intelligent, inspired and surprising, Touchstones is a landmark collection from one of the world's leading intellectuals.
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