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Vargas Llosa, Mario (Translated by Gregory Kolovakos & Ronald Christ) : The Cubs And Other Stories

Harper & Row, New York City, NY, 1979

ISBN 0060144912

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 139 pages. The author's debut collection of short stories and first book. One of the most important literary debuts of the 20th century. 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 rare. Presents Mario Vargas Llosa's "The Cubs" in a felicitous English translation. His sensational debut. The eponymous novella piece is about the horrifying castration of a boy by a Great Dane. How he goes through life emasculated, that is, what being powerless really means, particularly in the machismo culture of Latin America, is one of the most moving stories anyone is ever likely to read. 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 title is a classic. This is one of few copies of the First American Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a beauty. Please note: Among "Boom" writers, Mario Vargas Llosa has been grossly under-valued for the longest time. The collectible value of his books will not only keep but keep going up. A rare 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 0060144912.

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