The latest addition to my website is Mario Vargas Llosa‘s Cinco Esquinas [Five Corners]. Sadly this book confirms what we have known for a while, namely that Vargas Llosa’s talents have waned as he has got older. As you can see from the cover at left, soft-core porn features in the book (the newspaper headline … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jorge Eduardo Eielson‘s El cuerpo de Giulia-no [The Body of Julia-n]. Eielson was best known as an artist and poet and this clearly shows in this book. Though there is a sort of a plot – how the narrator grew up on a farm, did not like it, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Augusto Higa Oshiro‘s La iluminación de Katzuo Nakamatsu [The Illumination of Katzuo Nakamatsu]. The hero of the novel, Katzuo Nakamatsu, is a fifty-eight year old Peruvian widower, of Japanese origin. He has feelings of imminent death and a terrible feeling of not belonging. He has always felt different, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ciro Alegría‘s El mundo es ancho y ajeno (Broad and Alien Is the World), a classic Peruvian novel of the 1940s. Alegría was a fighter for the rights of the native population of Peru. This novel is about the brutal exploitation of the natives by the rich and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jeremías Gamboa‘s Contarlo todo [Tell It All]. Though a first novel, this work has had considerable pre-publication promotion in the Spanish-speaking world. It has been hailed as part of the new boom and garnered many favourable pre-publication reviews. It is very much an autobiographical work, telling, in considerable … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mario Vargas Llosa‘s El héroe discreto [The Discreet Hero]. This is his latest novel, which has yet to be translated into English, though will undoubtedly appear in English before long. Amazingly, it is already out in German. It is not one of his great works but one of … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Iván Thays‘ La disciplina de la vanidad [The Discipline of Vanity], a superb Peruvian post-modern novel about writers and writing. The nominal plot is a conference organised by the Spanish Centre for Young Writers. They have invited young authors from all over the Spanish-speaking world to a conference … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Peter Elmore‘s Las pruebas del Fuego [The Trials of Fire]. Elmore has not been translated into English (nor, as far as I can see, any other language), despite the fact that he teaches in the United States. This novel, while certainly enjoyable, is not a great novel, telling … Read more
The latest addition to my website is yet another Latin American novel that has not been translated into English (or any other language) – Miguel Gutiérrez‘ El mundo sin Xóchitl [The World Without Xochitl]. It deals with a subject which, while not unknown to the modern novel is less common than it might be – … Read more