Faber & Faber

Touchstones: Mario Vargas Llosa

Synopsis:

Fantastically intelligent, inspired and surprising, Touchstones is a landmark collection of essays from one of the world's leading writers and intellectuals.

One of Latin America's most garlanded writers, Mario Vargas Llosa is also an acute and wide-ranging cultural critic and an acerbic political commentator. Touchstones includes his readings of major twentieth-century novels, from Heart of Darkness to The Tin Drum, and other major works by Hemingway, Woolf, Orwell, Camus and Nabokov.

There are long studies of George Grosz, vignettes on Bolero and Picasso, and an appreciation of Cézanne and Van Gogh, including a visit to Gauguin's homes on the South Seas.

Also included are essays on political and social thinkers, from the nineteenth-century feminist Flora Tristan to Isaiah Berlin, and contemporary pieces on 9/11, the aftermath of the war in Iraq, and the terrorist attacks on London and Madrid.

Tags:

Categorised as:

Non-fiction

Sub-categories:

Essays & Prose

Genres & Themes:

9 11; Culture; Politics; Terrorism

Awards & Prizes:

Nobel Prize in Literature - Winner 2010