Nationality in Latin America has long been entwined with questions of racial identity. Just as American-born colonial elites grounded their struggle for independence from Spain and Portugal in the history of Amerindian resistance, constructions of nationality were based on the notion of the fusion of populations heterogeneous in culture, race, and language. But this rhetorical celebration of difference was framed by a real-life pressure to assimilate into cultures always defined by Iberian American elites. In Mestizo Nations, Juan De Castro explores the construction of...

This study examines representations of the cityscape and of a so-called "new urban violence" in both detective-centered and detectiveless crime fiction produced in Spanish America and Spain during recent decades. It documents the emergence and permutations of this production as an index not only of local perceptions of contemporary urban experience and of a contemporary urban "ecology of fear," but also as a transnational index of the globalization of literary forms and markets. It centers on the inscription of urban space in novels set in the metropolitan centers of the Hispanic World:...

Mario Vargas Llosa is a heterogeneous writer whose positions have often not been consistent from novel to novel, between his fictional and nonfictional work, between his literary and political commentary, and as his political commentary has proceeded over the decades. This analysis of his work reveals his insights into socio-political matters.

It would have been an ardent debate: Hugo Chavez, outspoken emblem of Latin American socialism, on one side and Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian novelist, polemical champion of the free market, and eventual winner of a Nobel Prize for literature, on the other. Unfortunately, it was not to be. For author Juan E. De Castro, what was most remarkable about the proposed debate was not only that it was going to happen in the first place but that Chavez called it off, a move that many chalked up to trepidation on the Venezuelan president's part. Whatever the motivation, the cancellation served to affirm...

Roberto Bolano as World Literature provides an introduction to the Chilean novelist that highlights his connections with classic and contemporary masters of world literature and his investigation of topics of international interest, such as the rise of rightwing and neofascist movements during the last decades of the 20th century. But this anthology also shows how Roberto Bolano's participation in world literature is informed in his experiences, identity, and, more generally, cultural location as a Chilean, Latin American and, more generally, Hispanic writer and man. This book provides...

Mario Vargas Llosa is a heterogeneous writer whose positions have often not been consistent from novel to novel, between his fictional and nonfictional work, between his literary and political commentary, and as his political commentary has proceeded over the decades. This analysis of his work reveals his insights into socio-political matters.

The Spaces of Latin American Literature: Tradition, Globalization, and Cultural Production examines how Latin American writers, artists, and intellectuals have negotiated their relationship with Western culture from the colony to the present.