Bücher von Mario Vargas Llosa

The War of the End of the World is one of the great modern historical novels. Inspired by a real episode in Brazilian history, Mario Vargas Llosa tells the story of an apocalyptic movement, led by a mysterious prophet, in which prostitutes, beggars and bandits establish Canudos, a new republic, a libertarian paradise.

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 disgraced father) enjoys the luxuries of privilege while the rest of the nation lives in fear and deprivation. As Trujillo clings to power, a plot to push the Dominican Republic into the future is being formed. But after the murder of its hated dictator, the Goat, is carried out, the Dominican Republic is plunged into the nightmare of a bloody and uncertain aftermath. Now, thirty years later, Urania reveals how her own family was fatally wounded by the forces of history. In The Feast of the Goat Mario Vargas Llosa eloquently explores the effects of power and violence on the lives of both the oppressors and those they victimized.'The Feast of the Goat will stand out as the great emblematic novel of Latin America's twentieth century and removes One Hundred Years of Solitude of that title.' Times Literary Supplement

'A comic novel on the grand scale written with tremendous confidence and verve. Mario, 18-year-old law student and radio news-editor, falls scandalously for his Aunt Julia, the 32-year-old divorced wife of a cousin, and the progressively lunatic story of this affair is interwoven with episodes from a series of radio soap-operas written by his friend Pedro Comacho. Vargas Llosa's huge energy and inventiveness is extravagant and fabulously funny.' New Statesman

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREA painstakingly researched and lively novel about a neglected human rights pioneer by the Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas LlosaIn 1916, the Irish nationalist Roger Casement was hanged by the British government for treason. Casement had dedicated his life to improving the plight of oppressed peoples around the world. But when he dared to draw a parallel between the injustices he witnessed in African and American colonies and those committed by the British in Northern Ireland, he became involved in a cause that led to his imprisonment and execution. Ultimately, the scandals surrounding Casement's trial and eventual hanging marred his image to such a degree that his pioneering human rights work wasn't fully reexamined until the 1960s. Dream of the Celt is a fascinating fictional account of an extraordinary man in the original and dynamic style of Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREOn December 7, 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His Nobel lecture is a resounding tribute to fiction's power to inspire readers to greater ambition, to dissent, and to political action. "We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist," Vargas Llosa writes. "Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute-the foundation of the human condition-and should be better." Vargas Llosa's lecture is a powerful argument for the necessity of literature in our lives today. For, as he eloquently writes, "literature not only submerges us in the dream of beauty and happiness but alerts us to every kind of oppression."

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREA landmark collection of essays on the Nobel laureate's conception of Latin America, past, present, and futureThroughout his career, the Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa has grappled with the concept of Latin America on a global stage. Examining liberal claims and searching for cohesion, he continuously weighs the reality of the continent against the image it projects, and considers the political dangers and possibilities that face this diverse set of countries.Now this illuminating and versatile collection assembles these never-before-translated criticisms and meditations. Reflecting the intellectual development of the writer himself, these essays distill the great events of Latin America's recent history, analyze political groups like FARC and Sendero Luminoso, and evaluate the legacies of infamous leaders such as Papa Doc Duvalier and Fidel Castro. Arranged by theme, they trace Vargas Llosa's unwavering demand for freedom, his embrace of and disenchantment with revolutions, and his critique of nationalism, populism, indigenism, and corruption.From the discovery of liberal ideas to a defense of democracy, buoyed by a passionate invocation of Latin American literature and art, Sabers and Utopias is a monumental collection from one of our most important writers. Uncompromising and adamantly optimistic, these social and political essays are a paean to thoughtful engagement and a brave indictment of the discrimination and fear that can divide a society.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURESpanning thirty years of writing, Making Waves traces the development of the Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa's thinking on politics and culture, and shows the breadth of his interests and passions. Featured here are astute meditations on the Cuban Revolution, Latin American independence, and the terrorism of Peru's Shining Path; brilliant engagements with towering figures of literature such as Joyce, Faulkner, and Sartre; and observations about the dog cemetery where Rin Tin Tin is buried, Lorena Bobbitt's knife, and the failures of the English public-school system.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREOne of Latin America's most garlanded novelists-and the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature-Mario Vargas Llosa is also an acute and wide-ranging cultural critic and an acerbic political commentator. Touchstones collects Vargas Llosa's brilliant readings of seminal twentieth-century novels, from Heart of Darkness to The Tin Drum; incisive essays on political and social thinkers; and contemporary pieces on 9/11 and the immediate aftermath of the war in Iraq.Fantastically intelligent, inspired, and surprising, Touchstones is a landmark collection of essays from one of the world's leading writers and intellectuals.

"Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the master storytellers of our time." -- Chicago TribuneFrom the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature comes a haunting novel about power, corruption, and the complex search for identity.Conversation in The Cathedral takes place in 1950s Peru during the dictatorship of Manuel A. Odría. Over beers and a sea of freely spoken words, the conversation flows between two individuals, Santiago and Ambrosia, who talk of their tormented lives and of the overall degradation and frustration that has slowly taken over their town.Through a complicated web of secrets and historical references, Mario Vargas Llosa analyzes the mental and moral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it. More than a historic analysis, Conversation in The Cathedral is a groundbreaking novel that tackles identity as well as the role of a citizen and how a lack of personal freedom can forever scar a people and a nation.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREThis wonderful detective novel is set in Peru in the 1950s. Near an Air Force base in the northern desert, a young airman is found murdered. Lieutenant Silva and Officer Lituma investigate. Lacking a squad car, they have to cajole a local cabbie into taking them to the scene of the crime. Their superiors are indifferent; the commanding officer of the air base stands in their way; but Silva and Lituma are determined to uncover the truth.Who Killed Palomino Molero, an entertaining and brilliantly plotted mystery, takes up one of Vargas Llosa's characteristic themes: the despair at how hard it is to be an honest man in a corrupt society.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREThe Real Life of Alejandro Mayta is an astute psychological portrait of a modern revolutionary and a searching account of an old friend's struggle to understand him. First published in English in 1986, the novel probes the long and checkered history of radical politics in Latin America.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREThis delightful farce opens as the prim and proper Captain Pantoja learns he is to be sent to Peru's Amazon frontier on a secret mission for the army-to provide females for the amorous recruits. Side-splitting complications arise as world of Captain Pantoja's remarkable achievements start to spread.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREThe Cubs and Other Stories is Mario Vargas Llosa's only volume of short fiction available in English. Vargas Llosa's domain is the Peru of male youth and machismo, where life's dramas play themselves out on the soccer field, the dance floor, and on street corners.The title story, "The Cubs," tells the story of the carefree boyhood of P.P. Cuellar and his friends, and of P.P.'s bizarre accident and tragic coming of age. Innovative in style and technique, it is a work of both physical and psychic loss.In a candid and perceptive forward to this collection of early writing, Vargas llosa provides background to the volume and a unique glimpse into the mind of the Nobel Prize-winning artist.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREThe book's first section is a tete-a-tete with Emma Bovary; the second traces the gestation and birth of the novel, as well as Flaubert's method, his mania for documentation, and the novel's literary sources; the third situates it in literary history. Vargas Llosa's first work of non-fiction will send the reader back to Flaubert's masterpiece with renewed interest.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREThe action of The Time of the Hero, Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa's first novel, takes place at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, Peru. There, four angry cadets who have formed an inner circle in an attempt to ward off the boredom and stifling confinement of the military academy set off a chain of events that starts with a theft and leads to murder and suicide. The Time of the Hero presents, with great accuracy and power, the cadets' nightmare life: brutal initiation rights, poker in the latrines, drinking contests; and, above all else, the strange military code which, whether broken or followed, can only destroy.When The Time of the Hero was first published in Peru in 1962, it was considered so scandalous that a thousand copies were burned in an official ceremony at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy. That same year, the book received the Biblioteca Breve Prize, an award given to the best work of fiction in the Spanish language."...[A]s with other fine writers, Vargas functions on more than a single level of meaning." - The New York Times

Mario Vargas Llosa erschließt in der spannend entfalteten Handlung dieses Romans, der von dem »Geschichtenerzähler« der Machiguengas und einem verschollenen Studienfreund erzählt, ein brennendes Thema Lateinamerikas: die Kultur der Indios im Amazonasgebiet. Welchen Platz lassen wir dem ganz anderen, wie es sich in der Welt der »Primitiven« zeigt und entzieht, in unserer »modernen« Gesellschaft? Welche Rolle kann der »aufgeklärte« Intellektuelle, der engagierte Schriftsteller in dieser Auseinandersetzung zwischen den Kulturen einnehmen?

Die Stadt und die Hunde ist eine kritische Durchleuchtung der peruanischen Gesellschaft, eine leidenschaftliche Prüfung ihrer Widersprüche, ihrer Heucheleien, ihrer falschen Mythen und Konfusionen.

Gegen den »Ruf der Horde« (Karl Popper), gegen den weltweit grassierenden, primitiven Populismus vergegenwärtigt Mario Vargas Llosa die Traditionen des Liberalismus, die ihn geprägt, bereichert und ein ganzes Leben lang geleitet haben - als politischen Schriftsteller wie als schreibenden Politiker. Mit essayistischer Verve und analytischem Scharfsinn schreibt Mario Vargas Llosa über seine Heroen des historischen Liberalismus, über Adam Smith, José Ortega y Gasset, Friedrich Hayek, Karl Popper, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin und Jean-François Revel. Sie haben ihn mit einer ganz anderen Denkungsart vertraut gemacht, mit einer Denkungsart, die das Individuum stets höher stellte als die »Horde«, die Nation, die Klasse oder die Partei und die die freie Meinungsäußerung immer schon als fundamentalen Wert für das Gedeihen von Demokratie zu verteidigen wusste.

La más reciente novela del Premio Nobel de Literatura Mario Vargas Llosa.«Él había pensado que, después de todo, un periodista puede ser a veces útil. "Y también peligroso", concluyó. Tuvo el presentimiento de que nada bueno saldría de esta visita.»«La idea de esta novela comenzó con una imagen de dos señoras amigas que de pronto una noche, de una manera impensada para ambas, viven una situación erótica. Luego se fue convirtiendo en una historia policial, casi un thriller, y el thriller se fue transformando en una especie de mural de la sociedad peruana en los últimos meses o semanas de la dictadura de Fujimori y Montesinos. Me gustó la idea de que la historia se llamase Cinco esquinas como un barrio que, de alguna manera, es emblemático de Lima, de Perú y también de la época en la que está situada la historia.»Si hay un tema que permea, que impregna toda la historia, es el periodismo, el periodismo amarillo. La dictadura de Fujimori utilizó el periodismo amarillo, el periodismo de escándalo, como un arma política para desprestigiar y aniquilar moralmente a todos sus adversarios. Al mismo tiempo, también está la otra cara, cómo el periodismo, que puede ser algo vil y sucio, puede convertirse de pronto en un instrumento de liberación, de defensa moral y cívica de una sociedad. Esas dos caras del periodismo son uno de los temas centrales de Cinco esquinas.»Mario Vargas LlosaENGLISH DESCRIPTIONA thrilling tale of desire and Peruvian corruption swirls around a scandalous exposé that leads to murderFrom the Nobel Laureate comes a politically charged detective novel weaving through the underbelly of Peruvian privilege. In the 1990s, during the turbulent and deeply corrupt years of Alberto Fujimori's presidency, two wealthy couples of Lima's high society become embroiled in a disturbing vortex of erotic adventures and politically driven blackmail. One day Enrique, a high-profile businessman, receives a visit from Rolando Garro, the editor of a notorious magazine that specializes in salacious exposés. Garro presents Enrique with lewd pictures from an old business trip and demands that he invest in the magazine. Enrique refuses, and the next day the pictures are on the front page. Meanwhile, Enrique's wife is in the midst of a passionate and secret affair with the wife of Enrique's lawyer and best friend. When Garro shows up murdered, the two couples are thrown into a whirlwind of navigating Peru's unspoken laws and customs, while the staff of the magazine embark on their greatest exposé yet.Ironic and sensual, provocative and redemptive, the novel swirls into the kind of restless realism that has become Mario Vargas Llosa's signature style. A twisting, unpredictable tale, The Neighborhood is at once a scathing indictment of Fujimori's regime and a crime thriller that evokes the vulgarity of freedom in a corrupt system.

Enrique ist glücklich verheiratet, beruflich erfolgreich und hat ein Riesenproblem: Er wird erpresst. Von Garro, dem Besitzer eines Boulevardblatts, der belastende Fotos hat und Enrique zwingen will, in die strauchelnde Zeitschrift zu investieren. Enrique sucht Rat bei Luciano, seinem alten Weggefährten und Anwalt, verliert jedoch im entscheidenden Moment die Nerven und bietet dem Erpresser offen die Stirn. Der bringt darauf die Fotos und wird kurze Zeit später tot aufgefunden, brutal ermordet. Enrique, geschäftlich wie moralisch ruiniert, glaubt, das sei das Ende. Doch es ist erst der Anfang. Denn während die Polizei ihn der Bluttat verdächtigt und er in undurchsichtige Machenschaften gerät, die aus den allerhöchsten Regierungskreise gesteuert scheinen, kommen sich seine und Lucianos Frau mehr als nur freundschaftlich nahe...»Die Enthüllung« ist eine brisante Spannungsgeschichte, ein erotisches Kammerspiel und ein zeitpolitischer Schlüsselroman - voller Überraschungen, Wendungen, Abgründe und Verheißungen. Mario Vargas Llosa hat ein so kunstreiches wie lebensechtes Panorama der menschlichen Verhältnisse geschaffen, ein Werk von staunenswerter Tiefenschärfe und bleibender Gültigkeit.

Es sind die späten fünfziger Jahre in Lima, Miguel liebt Flora, aber er fürchtet, dass sein Kumpel Rubén sie ihm ausspannen wird. Als die Clique, »die Raubvögel«, beisammensitzt, fordert Miguel den Rivalen zum Wetttrinken heraus, und im Überschwang lassen die beiden sich auf eine Mutprobe ein, bei der es schon bald um Leben und Tod geht ... Sonntag ist eine der frühesten Erzählungen Mario Vargas Llosas, ein kompaktes Meisterwerk aus psychologischer Einfühlung und ungestüm kraftvoller Sprache. Kongenial illustriert von Kat Menschik.

Creando una admirable tensión entre lo cómico y lo trágico, el Premio Nobel de Literatura y Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras, Mario Vargas Llosa, libera en esta novela una historia en la que el amor se nos muestra indefinible, dueño de mil caras, como la niña mala. ¿Cuál es el verdadero rostro del amor? Ricardo ve cumplido, a una edad muy temprana, el sueño que en su Lima natal alimentó desde que tenía uso de razón: vivir en París. Pero el rencuentro con un amor de adolescencia lo cambiará todo. La joven, inconformista, aventurera, pragmática e inquieta, lo arrastrará fuera del pequeño mundo de sus ambiciones. Testigos de épocas convulsas y florecientes en ciudades como Londres, París, Tokio o Madrid, que aquí son mucho más que escenarios, ambos personajes verán sus vidas entrelazarse sin llegar a coincidir del todo. Sin embargo, esta danza de encuentros y desencuentros hará crecer la intensidad del relato página a página hasta propiciar una verdadera fusión del lector con el universo emocional de los protagonistas. Mario Vargas Llosa juega en Travesuras de la niña mala (2006) con la realidad y la ficción para ilustrar la complejidad del amor: pasión y distancia, azar y destino, dolor y disfrute... ¿Cuál es el verdadero rostro del amor? La crítica ha dicho...«Una novela de amor de hoy, de erotismo, con encuentros, separaciones, sufrimientos, engaños, entrega, y también mucha verdad, y en la que Vargas Llosa, a modo de entomólogo, analiza minuciosamente la condición humana, como su gran admirado Flaubert en La educación sentimental, obra que se cita en la novela, entre otras muchas referencias literarias a las que alude el autor. Y es que la idea de novela para Vargas Llosa es "la experiencia totalizadora de la condición humana".»El País «La niña mala recuerda a los amorosos de Sabines: buscan la felicidadsin nunca encontrarla, pues encontrarla equivaldría a perderla sin remedio. Muy recomendable esta novela, en apariencia modesta, pero que en realidad rasca con saña exquisita en nuestros más íntimos deseos y frustraciones domésticas.»Javier Munguía, Revista de LetrasENGLISH DESCRIPTIONA New York Times Notable Book of 2007"Splendid, suspenseful, and irresistible . . . A contemporary love story that explores the mores of the urban 1960s--and 70s and 80s."--The New York Times Book ReviewRicardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as "Lily" in Lima in 1950, when she flits into his life one summer and disappears again without explanation. He loves her still when she reappears as a revolutionary in 1960s Paris, then later as Mrs. Richardson, the wife of a wealthy Englishman, and again as the mistress of a sinister Japanese businessman in Tokyo. However poorly she treats him, he is doomed to worship her. Charting Ricardo's expatriate life through his romances with this shape-shifting woman, Vargas Llosa has created a beguiling, epic romance about the life-altering power of obsession.

Una sátira exquisita de la literatura rosa y de la novela popular que tanto éxito ha tenido en los países de habla hispana, al tiempo que cuestiona la hipocresía, el racismo y el clasismo de la sociedad limeña de la época, con la maestría a la que ya nos tiene acostumbrados.Ya en el título de esta novela de Mario Vargas Llosa, publicada en 1977, se recoge la doble historia en que se vertebra su argumento: por un lado, la relación amorosa del joven escritor Varguitas con una mujer de su familia mayor que él, la tía Julia; y por otro, la desaforada presencia del folletinista Pedro Camacho en la misma emisora de radio donde Varguitas trabaja.La noble pasión amorosa entre la tía Julia y el aprendiz de novelista, que la sociedad limeña de los años cincuenta trata por todos los medios de impedir, se combina en esta novela de Vargas Llosa con las narraciones truculentas del folletinista de las ondas. El contrapunto de una encendida pasión con aires shakesperianos y su correlato melodramático y la inesperada confluencia del devoto de la alta literatura y el escribidor rastrero son algunas claves de esta narración mayor de Mario Vargas Llosa.La tía Julia y el escribidor (1977) reúne el interés de los relatos de aventuras, donde la atención del lector queda sujeta a un final feliz continuamente postergado, y el más desternillante y grotesco pasatiempo, gracias sin duda a las divertidas aportaciones del escribidor Camacho, uno de los grandes personajes del novelista peruano. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION A nautical chart can be much more than an indispensable instrument to navigate from one place to another; it is an etching, a page from history, and sometimes even an adventure novel.