Insightful essays express guarded hope for Latin America’s future.
Essays on Latin American politics reflect 5 tumultuous decades.
Nobel Prize winner Vargas Llosa (Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society, 2015, etc.), born in Peru in 1936 and who ran for president of his home country in 1990, reflects on the politics and culture of Latin America in essays written over more than 50 years. Translated by Kushner and selected and introduced by Carlos Granés, a Colombian-born social anthropologist and scholar of Vargas Llosa, the essays reveal the trajectory of the author’s views from a leftist supporter of Fidel Castro to a conservative critic of various “collectivist ideologies” that he sees as having blighted Latin America. Granés groups the essays into five sections that are thematically related but not presented chronologically. In an informative foreword, he contextualizes the author’s work as responses to political events that occurred from the Cuban revolution of the 1950s, which Vargas Llosa considered “a model within socialism,” to the current upheaval in “impoverished, damaged Venezuela, devastated by demagoguery and corruption” under the presidency of Nicolás Maduro. Castro’s regime lost Vargas Llosa’s respect in 1971 when the Cuban ruler imprisoned the poet Heberto Padilla for “counterrevolutionary criticism” expressed in his poems. In response to Padilla’s public humiliation—he was forced to engage in self-criticism—Vargas Llosa, along with dozens of other writers, sent a strident rebuke to Castro, communicating “shame and anger” over his repression of freedom and abuse of human dignity. Many essays argue for intellectual openness: “the way in which a country strengthens and develops its culture,” the author wrote in 1981, “is by opening its doors and windows, widely, to all intellectual, scientific, and artistic currents, stimulating the free circulation of ideas.” Headnotes would have been a welcome addition to the collection; although Granés dates each piece, there is no indication of where they appeared or for what occasion. An exception is a warm memoir of literary friendships delivered at the first “Canon of the Boom” Congress in Madrid in 2012.
Insightful essays express guarded hope for Latin America’s future.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-25373-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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