Some Write to the Future: Essays on Contemporary Latin American Fiction

by Ariel Dorfman, George Shivers (Translator)

Formerly exiled Chilean author Ariel Dorfman, one of Latin America's greatest writers and a major literary figure of the twentieth century, is known for such critically acclaimed works as the novel Widows and the play Death and the Maiden . A master of various literary forms, this collection draws together Dorfman's critical essays on contemporary Latin American writing. Spanning more than twenty years and arranged in chronological order, each essay is devoted to a single author—Miguel Angel Asturias, Jorge Luis Borges, José Maria Arguedas, Alejo Carpentier, Gabrial Garcia Márquez, Roa Bastos—and one final essay looks at the "testimonial" or concentration camp literature from Chile. Praise for Ariel Dorfman
“One of the most important voices coming out of Latin America.”—Salman Rushdie “A remarkable writer . . . writing out of a very different cultural perspective from comfortable American readers.”—Digby Diehl, Los Angeles Herald Examiner “One of the six greatest Latin American novelists.”—Jacobo Timmerman, Newsweek

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 1991

About the author

Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literary essays of variable quality, with two -- one on memoirs of the post-1973 repression in Chile, which is must reading for anyone who has confronted the political/aesthetic divide, and another on Garcia Marquez's work -- standing out.