"The novel takes place in two very distant points: Piura, in the desert of coastal Peru, and Santa Maria de Nieva, a factory/mission compound lost in the heart of the Amazonia. The symbol that locks the mystery of this story is the mythical pleasure house that Don Anselmo, the foreigner, erects in the outskirts of Piura."--Amazon.com

The first novel by the Peruvian author José María Arguedas, published in 1941. It is considered as part of the Latin-American indigenista movement. Set in the village of Puquio (in the Southern Sierra of Peru) it depicts the performance of a bullfight in the Andean style (turupukllay) as part of a celebration called 'yawar punchay'. According to critics, it is the most successful of Arguedas' novels, from a formal point of view. The author's effort...

Seeing a photograph of an Amazon tribal storyteller, a Peruvian writer becomes certain that the man is one of his old school friends, and begins to imagine his transformation from the person he knew into a central member of the Machiguenga tribe.

José María Arguedas is one of the few Latin American authors who loved and described his natural surroundings, and he ranks among the greatest writers of any time and place. He saw the beauty of the Peruvian landscape, as well as the grimness of social conditions in the Andes, through the eyes of the Indians who are a part of it. Ernesto, the narrator of Deep Rivers, is a child with origins in two worlds. The son of a wandering country lawyer, he...

Mario Vargas Llosa's novel takes place in a Peruvian town, situated between desert and jungle, which is torn by boredom and lust. Don Anselmo, a stranger in a black coat, builds a brothel on the outskirts of the town while he charms its innocent people, setting in motion a chain reaction with extraordinary consequences. This brothel, called the Green House, brings together the innocent and the corrupt: Bonificia, a young Indian girl saved by the nuns...

Julio Ramon Ribeyro has been widely acclaimed Peru's master storyteller. Until now, however, few of his stories have been translated into English. This volume brings together fifteen stories written during the period 1952-1975, which were collected in the three volumes of La palabra del mundo. Ribeyro's stories treat the social problems brought about by urban expansion, including poverty, racial and sexual discrimination, class struggles, alienation,...