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Letters to a Young Novelist

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Letters to a Young Novelist
Cover of 1997 first edition
AuthorMario Vargas Llosa
Original titleCartas a un joven novelista
TranslatorNatasha Wimmer
LanguageSpanish
GenreLiterary criticism (writing manual)
Publication date
1997
Pages136

Letters to a Young Novelist (Spanish: Cartas a un joven novelista) is a non-fiction book by the Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, published in 1997.[1] An English translation by Natasha Wimmer was published in 2001. In 2011, the book was listed byThe Guardian among the 100 best non-fiction books.[2]

Following in the footsteps of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Vargas Llosa in Letters to a Young Novelist discusses important tools and techniques of writing in eleven essays, in some cases using a classic text as an example, using letters as an organizational principle.[3] However, unlike in Rilke's book, the "young novelist" of the title is generally understood to be a conceit; there is no intended recipient other than the reader.[4]

Contents

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The eleven essays (and postscript) of the book are titled as follows:

  • The Parable of the Tapeworm
  • The Catoblepas
  • The Power of Persuasion
  • Style
  • The Narrator and Narrative Space
  • Time
  • Levels of Reality
  • Shifts and Qualitative Leaps
  • Chinese Boxes
  • The Hidden Fact
  • Communicating Vessels
  • By Way of a P.S.

References

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  1. ^ Barrós, Manuel (28 March 2017). "Libro de la semana: Cartas a un joven novelista de Mario Vargas Llosa". Casa de la Literatura Peruana (in Spanish).
  2. ^ "The 100 greatest non-fiction books". The Guardian. 14 June 2011.
  3. ^ "LETTERS TO A YOUNG NOVELIST". Kirkus Reviews. 15 April 2002.
  4. ^ Axelrod, Mark (Spring 2004). "Mario Vargas Llosa. Letters to a Young Novelist". The Review of Contemporary Fiction. 23 (1) – via Gale Literature Resource Center.
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