Vargas Llosa Among the Postmodernists

Mario Vargas Llosa’s work is marked by technical sophistication and by its alliance with a variety of trends in modern culture. To date, little criticism of his work has made use of the important developments in literary theory in the past two decades. This book aims to do that, analysing Vargas Llosa’s place in modern and postmodern criticism. Booker begins with an analysis of
The Green House
within the context of modernism, using this early work to develop several hypotheses concerning the differences between modernism and postmodernism in literature. He tests these hypotheses in the remainder of the book through detailed readings of Vargas Llosa’s later novels (from
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service
onward) and within the context of theoretical discussions of postmodernism by such critics as Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton, Linda Hutcheon and Andreas Huyssen. Booker’s specific readings of Vargas Llosa’s work are also informed by the insights of a number of critics, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault and Theodor Adorno. The readings focus on the formal characteristics of Vargas Llosa’s writing and on the intense political engagement - characterised in later works by scepticism toward the claims of various political programmes - that marks his career. As a result, this study yields insights into both the aesthetics and the politics of postmodernism, and it should be useful to those interested in Latin-American literature and in the social and cultural landscapes of Vargas Llosa’s works. The book ends with a description of published theories of modernism and postmodernism.