Written from diverse perspectives, the eleven essays that make up Vargas Llosa and Latin American Politics portray the Peruvian novelist not only as one of the most celebrated writers of the last 50 years, but also as a central influence on the region's political evolution. Ever since his conversion to free market ideology in the 1980s, Mario Vargas Llosa has waged public battle against what he believes are the scourges of socialism and populism. This book studies the fiction and journalism of Vargas Llosa in the context of his political thought.

This analysis of the work of Mario Vargas Llosa reveals his great insights into socio-political matters

Introduction; J.E.De Castro & N.Birns PART I: MARIO VARGAS LLOSA AND THE NEOLIBERAL Mr. Vargas Llosa Goes to Washington; J.E.De Castro The Wars of an Old-Fashioned (Neoliberal) Gentleman; F.Escárzaga Let's Make Owners and Entrepreneurs: Glimpses of Freemarketeers in Vargas Llosa's Novels; J.O'Bryan Knight PART II: THE WRITINGS OF THE 1980S AND 1990S Appropriation in the Backlands: Is Mario Vargas Llosa at War with Euclides da Cunha?; N.Birns Mario Vargas Llosa, Fabulist of Queer Cleansing; P.Allatson Going Native: Anti-Indigenism in Vargas Llosa's The Storyteller and Death in the Andes; I.López-Calvo The Recovered Childhood: Utopian Liberalism and Mercantilism of the Skin in a Fish in the Water; S.R.Franco PART III: MARIO VARGAS LLOSA IN THE 21ST CENTURY Sex, Politics and High Art: Vargas Llosa's Long Road to the Feast of the Goat; G.Bell-Villada Humanism and Criticism: The Presence of French Culture in Vargas Llosa's Utopia; R.Forgues PART IV: MARIO VARGAS LLOSA, MAN OF LETTERS Mario Vargas Llosa's Self-definition as 'the Man Who Writes and Thinks'; S.Köllmann Vargas Llosa and the History of Ideas: Avatars of a Dictionary; W.H.Corral

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.