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Sarmiento’s Masterpiece

Fiction, history or sociology, documentary or fabrication, the explosive rhetoric of Sarmiento’s classic was formative in Spanish American literary culture. Kristal examines the composition and reception of a unique work from Argentina.

Screening Peru

Contradictions of his country’s breakneck urbanization in the cinema of Francisco Lombardi. Film’s rival media—tele-reportage, newspapers, radio, videotaped corruption—brought into play to create new cinematic forms.

The Lovelorn Librarian

Efraín Kristal on Edwin Williamson, Borges. A Life. The personal chagrins and political conversions of Argentina’s greatest writer, from youthful lyrics on the Red Guard to elderly pleasantries with Pinochet, and final recusances.

Lessons from the Golden Age

Efraín Kristal on Gabriel García Márquez, Living to Tell the Tale. Crossing the arts of autobiography, politics and fiction in the Caribbean littoral.

'Considering Coldly ...'

Does Spanish American literature illustrate or overturn the idea that in the ‘world republic of letters’ economic and cultural relations between centre and periphery run parallel? A Peruvian assesses Franco Moretti’s conjectures (NLR 1), and springs some surprises about Beckett.