One of Latin America's most garlanded novelists-and the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature-Mario Vargas Llosa is also an acute and wide-ranging cultural critic and an acerbic political commentator. Touchstones collects Vargas Llosa's brilliant readings of seminal twentieth-century novels, from Heart of Darkness to The Tin Drum; incisive essays on political and social thinkers; and contemporary pieces on 9/11 and the immediate aftermath of the war in Iraq. Fantastically intelligent, inspired, and surprising, Touchstones is a landmark collection of essays from one of the world's leading writers and intellectuals.
"The bold, dynamic and endlessly productive imagination of the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the writing giants of our time, is something truly to be admired . . . As with any great writer, [he] makes us see clearly what we have been looking at all the while but never noticed."
Alan Cheuse, San Francisco Chronicle
"Generous in friendship, unfailingly curious about the world at large, tireless in his quest to probe the nature of the human animal, [Vargas Llosa] is a model writer for our times."
Marie Arana, The Washington Post
"In the star-studded world of the Latin American novel, Mario Vargas Llosa is a supernova."
