Half of the entries in this edition of Granta deal with Latin America, marking a change from the magazine's usual Eurocentric focus. The main pieces document Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa's unsuccessful campaign for President of Peru in 1989. The two following articles give insight into the campaign from his son, Alvaro, who was the Press Officer, and Mark Malloch Brown, a campaign strategy consultant from a US public relations firm. All in all, these three voices provide a unique look into the campaign.
The fiction ranges from a nearly unreadable story about the personal consequences of the fall of communism in Europe in the late 1980s, to a sterling story by T. C. Boyle about a resourceful woman working alone in a firewatch tower in the middle of the wilderness who has to decide what to do about a man who shows up with romantic intentions. ( )

Mario Vargas Llosa is one of my favorite writers. Originally from Peru, I think he might live in Paris now. He came to Pittsburgh once to talk. I didn't go. I heard he was harrassed by a political activist. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe because he's a political 'moderate' or 'conservative' or some such. I wonder if the person who berated him has ever read his bks? Most of them are political, most expose dictatorial abuses, & most are sensitive to political radicalism even w/ Llosa not being one himself. Anyway, this Grant publication is about Llosa running for president of Peru. He lost. I wish he'd won. He cdn't've possibly been any worse than what they've already had. & I'm sure that he wd've been better than the more 'radical' Sindira Luminosa. Besides that, though, the bk's pretty lackluster - that might just be better than being sensationally full of promises for a better society. After all, no politician ever keeps such promises - or, if they do, somebody hired by the CIA snuffs them & then puts some genocidal lunatic in their place. Vargas Llosa probably cdn't've pulled it off but he probably wd've tried w/ more integrity than most. ( )

i guess i read this before but my grantas must have been left in london. ( )