Recent years have brought forth powerful and violent fictions from Latin America, including Juan Villalobos’s and Laura Restrepo’s nightmarish meditations on the drugs trade, Evelio Rosero on state terror in Colombia and the dislocated cult novels of Roberto Bolaño. Given such nerve-jangling reading, it’s reassuring to be back with Mario Vargas Llosa in a landscape so familiar it even contains some of his old characters, as well as themes that have run through his work since the 1960s.

Literary Review

Apr 2015

Categories

Miranda France

A Perfectly Normal Chap Who Forgot He Was Gay

Very Plausible Dystopia

Folk Industries

Lines in the Sand

Whiskey Sour

National Trust View Not Needed

Life’s a Shopping Mall

Age Shall Not Weary Them

Range-Rovia to Ngotoland

Prisoners of the Past

Darkness Falls

Drinking in the USA

Holy Symmetry

Blood, Sweat and Tears

The Wisdom of Solomon

Humboldt’s Gifts

Recollections of a Wild Radish

Flower Powers

Raunchy Rhythms

The Flash of Fireflies

Big Trouble in Little Gerona

A Writer’s Roots

Droit Moral

One Up For Ireland