Mario Vargas Llosa

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 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...

Set in Peru during the 1950s, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is the story of an 18-year-old student who falls for a 32-year-old divorcée. Mario, an aspiring writer, works at a radio station that broadcasts live each day, up to a half-dozen short-run soap operas. At the same time that the author meets his Aunt Julia, the radio station, which...

Urania Cabral, a New York lawyer, returns to the Dominican Republic after a lifelong self-imposed exile. Once she is back in her homeland, the elusive feeling of terror that has overshadowed her whole life suddenly takes shape. Urania's own story alternates with the powerful climax of Dictator Rafael Trujillo's reign. In 1961, Trujillo's decadent inner circle (which includes Urania's soon-to-be...

'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....

The Time of the Hero has been acclaimed by critics around the world as one of the outstanding Spanish novels of recent decades. In the author's native Peru, this powerful social satire so outraged the authorities that a thousand copies were publicly burned. The novel is set in Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, where a group of cadets attempt...

Deep within the remote backlands of nineteenth-century Brazil lies Canudos, home to all the damned of the earth: prostitutes, bandits, beggars, and every kind of outcast. It is a place where history and civilisation have been wiped away. There is no money, no taxation, no marriage, no census. Canudos is a cauldron for the revolutionary spirit in its purest form,...

'The most approachable and exhilarating Latin American writer of our times.' Robert McCrum, Observer In the past, culture was a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated and revivified everyday reality. Now it is largely a mechanism of distraction and entertainment. From one of the world's great literary intelligences, Notes on the Death of Culture is an examination and indictment...

When a high-profile businessman is blackmailed by a notorious magazine editor, his comfortable life is threatened by the salacious exposé. While attempting to field the scandal, the businessman's wife, seeking comfort, begins a secret affair with the wife of his best friend. Then the editor is found murdered, and the two couples have no choice but to descend into the...

As The Dream of the Celt opens, it is the summer of 1916 and Roger Casement awaits the hangman in London's Pentonville Prison. Dublin lies in ruins after the disastrous Easter Rising led by his comrades of the Irish Volunteers. He has been caught after landing from a German submarine. For the past year, he has attempted to raise an...

A New York Times Notable Book of 2007 From Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa comes The Bad Girl, a "...splendid, suspenseful, and irresistible novel... A contemporary love story that explores the mores of the urban 1960s–and 70s and 80s." – The New York Times Book Review Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as...