Reputations

One of the most original voices in new Latin American literature.— Mario Vargas Llosa Javier Mallarino is a living legend, the country's most influential political caricaturist. Politicians fear him, and the government pays him homage. At sixty-five, after four decades of a brilliant career, he can say he has the country at his feet. But all that will change when he receives an unexpected visit from a woman. After returning with her to the memory of a long-ago night, Mallarino will be forced to reevaluate his entire life and question his place in this world. In the demanding genre of the short novel, which has produced so many masterpieces in the Latin American tradition, Vásquez presents us with his most intimate work: an intense reflection on the weakness of public and private judgments, on the irreversible encounters that forever alter what we believe to be definitive in ourselves.