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Vargas Llosa, Mario (Author) & Grossman, Edith (Translator) : The Discreet Hero

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York City, NY, 2013

ISBN 0374146748

First Edition / First Printing. As New in As New Dust Jacket. 325 pages. The author's fifteenth novel. One of Mario Vargas Llosa's finest achievements. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Mario Vargas Llosa's "El heroe discreto" in a felicitous English translation. Make that two indiscreet, unforgettable heroes. "Follows two characters whose lives are destined to intersect: Felicito Yanaque, a small businessman in Piura, who finds himself the victim of blackmail, and Ismael Carrera, the successful owner of an insurance company in Lima, who hatches a plan to avenge himself against his two sons who want him dead" (Publisher's blurb). Actually, it's three discrete hero-characters, as Don Rigoberto, who has appeared in Vargas Llosa's previous novels, is THE other central protagonist. Mario Vargas Llosa is the writer/intellectual/philosopher par excellence among the Latin-American geniuses of the so-called Boom: He refuses to be categorized, labeled, and reduced by ideology, whether it is Fascist conservatism, political correctness, or Leftist academicism, what he has condemned as "authoritarianism of the Left and the Right". He considers himself an heir to the great European cultural tradition yet his work is firmly grounded in Latin America's (not just his native Peru's) history and mythology. His aesthetics and literary practice - Vargas Llosa has embraced and appropriated every literary genre - prompted Roberto Bolano, his greatest successor, to consider him an inescapable influence, among a handful of others, on contemporary Latin-American literature. That is to say, to be a Latin-American writer is to become a Classical master of language and a Modernist artist, writing in language of the highest quality and reinventing literary form and convention at the same time. Literary genres are inventions of a particular culture's idea of imagination and storytelling, "templates" that Vargas Llosa transforms into "poetic tales" (in Harold Bloom's brilliant phrase). An absolute "must-have" title for Mario Vargas Llosa collectors. This copy is very boldly and beautifully signed in black pen-marker on the title page by Mario Vargas Llosa. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. Vargas Llosa's signature on this copy is one of the most beautiful we have ever seen. This title is a contemporary classic. As far as we know, this is the only such signed copy of the First American Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Among "Boom" writers, Mario Vargas Llosa has been grossly under-valued for the longest time even though he rarely does public signings. The collectible value of his books will not only keep but keep going up. A rare signed copy thus. Winner of the Cervantes Prize, awarded to the greatest living writers in Spanish by the Spanish Government, in 1994. Winner of the Jerusalem Prize in 1995. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. One of the greatest writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER MARIO VARGAS LLOSA TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0374146748.

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