Interviews with Latin American Writers (Current Continental Research; 551)

No other group of writers in the last twenty years has created so much interest throughout the world than have Latin American writers. Here in one volume are extensive interviews with fifteen of the most influential of them: novelists as well as poets, playwrights, and journalists. While each of the writers has specific concerns, the interviewer's careful use of recurring questions allows this collection to double as an invaluable forum on important themes: the presence of the occult in Latin American life and literature; the effect of censorship and exile on writing; the pressure exerted by North American politics and manners; the challenge of literary translation; the extent and nature of the so-called Boom in Latin American literature; and thoughts on the impending five hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the New World. With an introduction to the interviews by the editor, along with a ground-breaking work that will have an immediate appeal to anyone interested in this literature and will exercise a permanent influence on readers and critics for years to come. Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier has a remarkable ability to bring out the best of these writers in an interview format, serving to introduce both the writer and the work.