Modern Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #298

by Roberto González Echevarría

In the 1960s, Latin American literature became known worldwide as never before. Writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Mario Vargas Llosa all became part of the general culture of educated readers of English, French, German, and Italian. But few know about the literary tradition from which these writers emerged. Modern Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction remedies this situation, providing an overview of Latin American literature from the late eighteenth century to the present. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria covers a wide range of topics, large and small, highlighting how Latin American literature became conscious of its continental scope and international reach in moments of political crisis, such as independence from Spain, the Spanish-American War, and the Mexican and Cuban revolutions. Within this narrative, the author discusses the major writers of Latin American literature, from Andres Bello and Jose Maria Heredia through Borges and Garcia Marquez to Fernando Vallejo and Roberto Bolano.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam"

Genres: Nonfiction, Literature, Literary Criticism, Latin American Literature, History, 20th Century, Spanish Literature

152 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 2011

About the author

Roberto González Echevarría is Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale.

Reviews

[Traveller · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Very Short Review For A Very Short Book
Simply too short to be of much value to anyone who wants more than just names mentioned. See what I did there?

[Cleo]

diss book 1/?, I got lots of good book recs from this! also learned that castro hated the gays which wasn't very slay comrade of him

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Prof Echevarria's online course on the Quixote in its historical context. While I wish more of a bridge was built in this VSO to the Cervantine influence on Latin American literature, this overview delves into the poetry for 4/5 of the contents. For the novel had to catch up with modernism, rather than to recite over and over the regionalist, nationalist, or Conquest-colonial clashes ad infinitum. My Kindle copy has lots of highlighted passages, always an apt indicator of an admired book. He writes clearly, free of jargon, and you will, as did I, mark titles you never heard of, or comments that show than not all academics have been taken in, this late in the endgame, by Cuban rhetoric or trendy intellectual theories, ideologies, or fads. Echevarria proves a steady, thoughtful guide to the top tips.

[Zuberino · Rating 4 out of 5]

My constant companion for the last month and more. A portal to new worlds, in so many more ways than one. There are a few gaps, of course, the most obvious of which are Bioy Casares and Mutis. But in a survey as sweeping as this, covering everything from Bello to Bolaño, some choices are inevitable.

So, anything less would be graceless carping. Gracias señor Echevarría, ¡ciertamente estoy en deuda con usted!

[Kyaw Zayar Lwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chapter 6ခန္းခြဲထားပါတယ္။Chapter 1ကေတာ့ introductionျဖစ္ၿပီး 2-5ကေတာ့ ကဗ်ာနဲ႔ စကားေျပဝတၳဳေတြကို ေခတ္ေဟာင္းနဲ႔ ေခတ္ၿပိဳင္အျဖစ္ခြဲထားပါတယ္။ေနာက္ဆံုးအခန္းကေတာ့ ယခုေခတ္ေပၚ post-boomကာလ စာေပအေၾကာင္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ေနာက္ဆံုးအခနိးႏွစ္ခန္းကို အႀကိဳက္ဆံုးပါ။Borgesတို႔ marquezတို႔ Pazတို႔ Cortazarတို႔လို နာမည္ႀကီးေတြအျပင္ တျခားလက္တင္အေမရိကျပင္ပမွာ သူတို႔ေလာင္နာမည္မရွိေပမယ့္ ဖတ္ဖို႔ေကာင္းတဲ့ စာေရးဆရာေတြကိုလဲ ရွာေဖြေတြ႕ရွိဦးမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။အထူးသျဖင့္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔နဲ႔ မရင္းႏွီးေသးတဲ့ က်ဳးဘားက စာေရးဆရာေတြပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

[Sky · Rating 4 out of 5]

A subject from the Very Short Introduction Series, this book focuses on the history & evolution of Latin American Literature, centrally the literature of Central & South America. Basically, this work goes over the most promenint literary movements of the regions & their authors.

Good background source, but a little strenuous to read if you are trying to read for entertainment. Best for scholarly use.

[Uriel Aceves · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm just writing a review because I read the other reviews and they wildly missed the point.

The very short introduction series is not meant to be a thorough review. It is an introduction, and it is very short. Why get upset over something that was right there in the cover. Moreover, the book is around 110 pages, who seriously expects more than a list of names and some context in between? Whoever does is for sure deranged

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been enormously useful for finding what works to focus on in a personal study of Latin American literature. It's clearly written and doesn't opinionize too noticeably. It /does/ seem anti-communist (in the anti-Cuban sense, basically), but hardly enough to invalidate the book's recommendations and literary assessments. I really wanna read Pablo Neruda now.

[Jordan S · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book serves its purpose, and every other review was kind of like “well what else did you expect?” But it’s just an egregiously reasonable ask to write a historical survey of Latin American literature in a way that’s far more engrossing and fun than this 150 page list of names and dates.

[Marta Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely readable. Just what I needed to start building a reading list. Historical context extremely helpful.

[Belal Darder · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is what it says it is in the title. A very short introduction to modern Latin American literature.

[heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

great introduction! I learned a lot from this.
Roberto bolano and gabriel Garcia Marquez mentions were elite

[Diego Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Como futuro professor de Literaturas Hispano-americanas, com certeza usarei esse material como referência.

[Catherine Oughtibridge]

I would have liked the poems to have been quoted in Spanish as well as their translations into English.