Arguedas/Vargas Llosa

Dilemmas and Assemblages

"Mabel Moraña has accomplished an outstanding reading of the two major novelists from Peru, Mario Vargas Llosa and José María Arguedas, examining their respective trajectories as public intellectuals and representatives of two very different ways to conceive the Andean country. Both Vargas Llosa and Arguedas aim at a modern national project in which indigenous cultures play a pivotal role. This book is also a sophisticated reflection on current politics and on how ethnic issues still matter in the debate about literature and society in Latin America."

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– José Antonio Mazzotti

Tufts University

Author of Lima fundida: épica y nación criolla en el Perú (2016)

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This book offers a pioneering analysis of the most prominent writers of contemporary Peru, in which literary works and cultural representations are illuminated through the categories and propositions of the postcolonial theorist. The study involves a discussion of various topics, representation strategies and political contexts, as well as an audacious analysis of Vargas Llosa's Nobel Prize and Arguedas's suicide, as paradigmatic instances in the cultural and ideological developments of these authors. Topics such as indigenism, archaism, modernity, otherness, popular culture and cultural diversity run through this book, which constitutes, more than an academic exercise, a critical intervention in the field of Latin American Studies.

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Arguedas/Vargas Llosa. Dilemmas and Assemblages was translated by Andrew Ascherl from its original version in Spanish, which is available here.