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Vargas Llosa, Mario (Author) & Grossman, Edith (Translator) : Death In The Andes

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York City, NY, 1996

ISBN 0374140014

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 276 pages. The author's eleventh 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 "Death In The Andes" in a felicitous English translation. His so-called "Revolutionary" novel. As such, it would not be his first (that honor belongs to "The War of The End of The World"), but it is his most personal, as Vargas Llosa comes to grips with Peru's tragic history dating back to pre-colonial Amerindian culture. For much of the late-20th century, Peru was held hostage and then almost completely paralyzed by the "Sendero Luminoso" ("Shining Path") Maoist movement, whose megalomaniacal leader, Abimael Guzman, a philosophy professor-turned-guerrilla leader, cultivated a cult of personality that surpassed many of the world's worst tyrants in its murderous madness. 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 prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Mario Vargas Llosa. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. It is also very prominently and beautifully signed, placed, and dated (in the month and year of publication) in black pen-marker on the same page by his great translator: "Edith Grossman 5-30-96 NYC". This title is a classic. As far as we know, this is the only such double-signed and publication-month dated 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 collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER MARIO VARGAS LLOSA TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0374140014.

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